Romney Marsh

Posted on August 18, 2012 by davidsberry

Mitt Romney has less than three months to convince American voters that he is the man to lead them (and the rest of the planet) out of the biggest fiscal hole it has fallen into since the Depression. While we don’t have people throwing themselves out of tall buildings, the degree of damage to wealth (UK GDP down by 23% since the halcyon days of 2007) is major. It will not be fixable by voodoo economics.

Yet that appears to be what Romney’s new running mate and the next LBJ—if Mitt succeeds and we have another Dallas 1961—intends. Given the continued love of personal artillery (and a history of using it to settle arguments) across the pond, then the donations that the NRA give to the Republican party make that scenario anything but far-fetched.

Paul Ryan is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment—no great accolade. But that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon as his boss. His campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (aka: the top 2% earners) will do nothing to reverse US economic decline or avoid fiscal collapse. It has been calculated that Romney would pay 0.82% tax rate if the proposals were enacted.

Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk. But following that Republican doctrine since Ronald Ray-gun now saddle a bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion “defense” budget when the US has no advanced industrial state enemies and has already been fired (appropriately) as the world’s policeman for doing a Clancy Wiggum. That huge amount is half of Britain’s entire GDP.

Adjusted for inflation, today’s US defence (defense?) budget is double Eisenhower’s in 1961 (about $400 billion in today’s dollars)—a level Ike deemed sufficient to contain the Soviet nuclear threat in a post-Sputnik era. The Romney-Ryan school of attacking “Big Government” (always a winner among right-wingers there) is to increase an already outlandish warfare-state budget for sabre-rattling at an irrelevant Iran.

Far more urgent than environmental marginalia that Mitt Romney targets is that the giant Wall Street banks remain dangerous quasi-wards of the state—inexorably prone to speculative abuse of taxpayer-insured deposits and the Fed’s cheap money. Forget about “too big to fail”: these banks are too big to exist. They are too big to manage internally or to regulate externally: they need to be broken up.

Ryan’s greatest hypocrisy is his phony “plan” to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade. Instead of a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees, the supposedly courageous Ryan plan would cut nothing from the $1.3 trillion-per-year cost of US Social Security and Medicare over the next decade.

Instead, it shreds a measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable of America: $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and a $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting Medicaid costs to the states is make-believe if current federal financing to them is cut at the same time.

In his days representing Wisconsin, Ryan would give out copies of Ayn Rand’s book “Atlas Shrugged” as Christmas presents. He described the novelist of heroic capitalism as “the reason I got into public service.” But Mr. Ryan’s youthful, feverish embrace of Rand and his clumsy attempts to distance himself from her now is more than the flip-flopping of an ambitious politician: it is a window into the ideological fissures at the heart of modern conservatism.

Though Mr. Ryan’s advocacy of steep cuts in government spending might have pleased Ayn Rand, she would surely have opposed his social conservatism and hawkish foreign policy. She would have denounced him—as she denounced Ronald Reagan,—for trying “to take us back to the Middle Ages, via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.”

And when Ryan’s embrace of Rand drew fire from US Catholic leaders, he reversed course with a speed to make Mitt Romney proud. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he said earlier this year. “Give me Thomas Aquinas.” Mr. Ryan’s is a telling index how far American conservatism has moved from its founding principles. The creators of the movement embraced the free market, but shied from Rand’s promotion of capitalism as a moral system. They emphasized the practical benefits of capitalism, not its ethics.

Mr. Ryan’s selection as Mr. Romney’s running mate is the kind of stinging rebuke of the welfare state that Rand hoped to see during her lifetime. But Mr. Ryan is also what she called “a conservative in the worst sense of the word.” Like his new boss, Mr. Ryan has no serious plan to create jobs. America has some of the highest worker costs in the world; workers and business pay $1 trillion each year in their equivalent of PAYE/NI. Many argue for a national sales tax (a consumption tax, like our dreaded but efficient VAT) but neither candidate will have the gumption to create one.

Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, most would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts (savings via payroll deductions), state and local taxes and charitable giving. The plan seems devoid of credible arithmetic or hard policy choices. There is no element to face up to Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or even the present US fiscal calamity—not even a clear route to that American axiom of reviving capitalist prosperity.

They are like old-time fire-and-brimstone preachers doing a Canute—wading out into an unknown marsh and calling to their followers that faith alone will keep all their heads above water.

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Firstest with the Leastest

Posted on August 17, 2012 by davidsberry

I like Americans. They are generally direct people who can’t abide havering around and generally “tell it like it is”, albeit sometimes gracelessly. Their Confederate General Forrest went down in history ascribing victory to whoever entered battle the “Fustest with the Mostest”.

This week’s announcement by English Transport Minister Theresa Villers MP that First Group had won over Virgin to run the contract for West Coast Trains over the next 14 years shows that Cameron’s government is either not au fait with this American sentiment or that they seriously misinterpret it. Either way, it’s bad news if you plan to travel through Carlisle by train anytime before 2026.

After a long and ponderous period of bids being constructed, submitted and considered, the choice has gone to the one offering the most money. Such a simple criterion could have seen the matter sorted in an afternoon, without the lengthy sham that we have had. The Department for Transport (DfT) handed the contract to FirstGroup after Virgin’s rival made an offer to run the line for £423m a year or £5.5bn in total. Sir Richard Branson had bid £750m less.

At first (no pun) glance, this may appear reason enough. But, since this is one of the key rail services linking Scotland with the rest of the UK, we Scots need to know this is the best we could get. Leaving aside the whole debate about why we are running our railways in such an insanely inefficient fashion, let’s just focus on whether it’s the right choice.

Virgin West Coast had (rightly) come in for some serious stick during the dozen years  they ran this franchise (see below). Unlike East Coast’s 9-car trains, VWC would often run 5-car sets and get swamped by un-booked passengers. This was not helped by running through the rail spaghetti that is South Lancashire/West Midlands, falling foul of delays to other services in a ‘knock-on’ effect.

On the other hand, they had completely revamped the rolling stock, providing modern carriages, even groundbreaking Pendolino tilting trains and an electronic seat reservation system that others are lax in not copying. They also survived the horrendous upgrade of the WCML (think ‘trams in Edinburgh’) with passengers intact and broadly satisfied. Much was from innovative management thinking growth and improvement as much as short-term profit.

Contrast that with FirstGroup.

Although they are not immediately comparable, the transport companies that make up FirstGroup bid fair to be among the shoddiest in the business. It is not that they can’t turn a profit; it’s that they seem to know about little else.

Consider their bus companies. The ones based in Aberdeen and Edinburgh each chose to run a fare war with their local rival over most of a decade. Until they won one and lost the other, passengers were dazed by timetable changes and floods of buses timed to run in front of one another. First regularly uses cheap buses from anywhere (the ones in East Lothian are currently liveried in Welsh), pays the meanest wages, gazumps councils into paying over the odds for supported services and could not care a fig about ‘service’. They’ve mastered the ‘cheap’ but have some ways to go on the ‘cheerful’.

Maybe their train companies are better? Well, ScotRail has had eight years under First. In that time Airdrie/Bathgate or Alloa or Lawrencekirk or Waverley station were all driven by the Scottish Government or SPT or Network Rail. In all else—ticketing, promotion, new services, new rolling stock, new anything—they have been passive.

Opportunities abound. Glasgow/Edinburgh-Aberdeen services are toy trains—too small to avoid oil workers and their bevvy, they stop at every lamp post. Rickety, antiquated two-car diesels carry tourists through our spectacular Highland scenery. Whether to Oban, Mallaig, Kyle or Thurso, it’s all on cheesy kit we should be ashamed of. And what of the jewel in their crown: Edinburgh-Glasgow? Same speed as Victorian times, the quarter-hour frequency often fails and you get someone’s elbow in your ear all the way because they’ve skimped with another 3-car unit.

FirstGroup run four other rail franchises already (Great Western, Transpennine, Capital Connect and Hull Trains), with only the first of these providing any experience of running real express trains over long distances. A New Statesman article comparing FGW with Virgin services provides interesting statistical detail:

Virgin Trains: The average Virgin train was 8 years old in 2011. The majority of its trains are electric Alstom Pendolinos, built between 2001 and 2004, with a second set delivered between 2009 and 2012. They can run up to 140mph, but only travel at 125mph on the West Coast Main Line. They had 266 complaints per 100,000 passenger journeys in 2011, 53% responded to within 20 working days. 1% of contacts were praise. In passenger surveys, 87% of respondents were satisfied or better with the company’s performance. In every category given, more than half of passengers were satisfied or better, with the least popular aspects being how Virgin deals with delays, the toilets on their trains, and the amount of space for luggage on the trains. 88% of people were satisfied with the speed of the journey.

First Great Western: The average FGW train was 29 years old in 2011. On its high-speed route, it runs 54 “Intercity 125” trains, built between 1975 and 1982. Although the fastest diesel trains in the world, the line is stymied by the lack of electrification. They had 86 complaints per 100,000 passenger journeys in 2011, 100% responded to within 20 working days. 5% of contacts were praise. In passenger surveys, 83% of respondents were satisfied or better with the company’s performance. The least popular aspects of FGW were how well it deals with delays, value for money of its tickets, and the toilets on its trains; none of them satisfied more than 40% of passengers. The most popular was the speed of the journeys, satisfying over 80%.

The problem with these comparisons is that FGW is largely the king of the track in those sections that matter (Paddington-Bristol-Cardiff & Bristol-Exeter-Plymouth)—as East Coast is on the ECML. Virgin West Coast had no such priority through the Midlands maze.

And it is this East Coast history that bodes ill for FirstGroup overbidding and Ms Villers et al blinded by pound signs in their eyes in choosing them. Looking over comments online, the vast majority think the Department for Transport’s decision was completely wrong. This view is backed up by a survey by the Telegraph. With over 17,000 votes, over 92% of respondents believe FirstGroup will not deliver on its promises and the price they have paid is not deliverable.

The Torygraph published a good article on the lessons the Government should have learnt from both East Coast Main Line stumbles. A rather more pungent and recent article goes on to explain why the decision is “nuts” and how FirstGroup are looking to “exploit” the West Coast mainline. Richard Branson has warned: “The three times that Virgin has been outbid, the winning operator has come nowhere close to delivering their promised plans and revenue, and has let the public and country down dramatically.”

If only First would live up to its name as a class. But the runes are not good.

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Indy-Contrarian Broon Misgivings (ICBM) Strike

Posted on August 15, 2012 by davidsberry

From whatever hardened silo complex outside Auchtertool in which they had been nursing his wrath to keep it warm, the Hootsmon launched their secret weapon of Irn Broon full-frontal-page yesterday. For a man who can make the word ‘dour’ look like carnival in Rio by comparison, it was not the highlight of anyone’s day, but at least the man is consistent.

Presenting the annual Donald Dewar lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Mr Brown performed the now-familiar unionist rain-dance that Scotland would all but slide beneath the waves, were it not for the solid rock of the Union to keep it afloat. I looked hard for anything new being said but it really did consist of a stark choice between business-as-usual under Westminster’s wing or fiscal oblivion.

Now, whatever you may think of Gordon’s politics or even his tenure at No 10, the man’s not daft, nor can he be without ability to thole Blair as a boss and hoodwink an entire nation (two, actually) into thinking his girlfriend Prudence had put the hex on boom and bust. If I sound bitterly cynical, it’s because I believe he—more than any—was asleep at the financial switch and so allowed UK banks to grow as greedy as the late (un?)lamented Lehman Brothers, bust through hubris despite their $639bn in assets (roughly the size of the whole UK economy).

Yet so major a figure would not come out of retirement to flap his lip just for the exercise or nostalgia for the limelight. Do his assertions that keeping the pound would be ‘a colonial arrangement’ and would continued union offer a far safer path into increasingly uncertain futures?

Let’s look at background figures, published in the spring by Eurostat (I thank Andrew Wilson and his ever-astute (excepting where Motherwell FC is concerned) observations on events for drawing my attention to their detailed tables). They provide statistics how this recession has affected Gross Domestic Product per capita, broken down not just by country but by relatively small economic region across Europe. We hear today how Portugal’s economy has shrunk 1.5% in the last 3 months, even as Germany alone pulls off a small growth. We are all (as Cam might put it) in the mess together, no?

Well, no.

However much Irn Broon may regurgitate the bettertogether mantra of fiscal apocalypse at the gates, the implication that the UK is a financial life-raft for impoverished Scotland, whose continued survival involves clenching both eyes and nurse’s hand, should hold water when examined under the objective microscope of detailed Euro-based stats, no?

Er…again, no.

Let’s examine the story within the UK. How hard has the recession hit us and how evenly has its impact been spread? Looking at selected regions across Britain (with Scotland’s four regions compared to representative ones in England) gives a fairly consistent tale of how the recession affected GDP per capita in each area.

Chart 1—Recession by Selected UK Regions (source Eurostat)

Note how all regions show a consistent pattern, no matter which part of the UK, with Inner London keeping its clear lead in GDP through financial services and NE Scotland through the barely-affected Oil and Gas sector . Looking at the before-and-after change shows how serious this has been but that we are all roughly in the same boat.

Chart 2—Change in GDP in Selected UK Regions (source: Eurostat)

This shows that, although both Inner London and Aberdeen can be said to have weathered the storm best, everyone is pretty much in the 15-25% loss boat. In such dire times why would you think of casting yourself adrift in such stormy seas?

Well, because there is another story going on—one that both media and UK government seem reluctant to relate. While they are always prompt with dire news from the Continent, brought to us with much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how our biggest markets are there, so how can we possibly escape this recession, the news is rather at odds with that glum picture. Not only have the PIGS yet to grunt—let alone croak—but the figures are not what you would extrapolate from the UK stats. Chart 3 is the Euro-equivalent of Chart 1 above.

Chart 3—per Capita GDP for Selected European Countries (source: Eurostat)

Doesn’t that look pretty much the same? Well, no, it doesn’t. Note both the UK (light blue) and Scotland (red) are slashing down to the right much steeper than most others except Iceland and Ireland. In fact, Switzerland and Greece appear to be rising. Looking at the European equivalent in Chart 2 in Chart 4 below highlights this.

Chart 4—Change in GDP in Selected European Countries (source: Eurostat)

This looks nothing like Chart 2. In other words, a slew of European countries are riding out this recession with far less damage than the UK. In fact, the only countries sharing the dire 15-25% falls uniform across the UK are Iceland, whose banks were one of the few worse examples of hubris and overstretch than those of the US and UK, and Ireland, which is suffering the bursting of a property bubble that made London house price rises in the eighties look modest.

Elsewhere in Europe, the equivalent to the UK’s major stumble is nowhere to be found. The worst is Norway, whose GDP ‘dropped’ 8.5%—from 1.9 times ours to 2.3 times ours. Oh to have such ‘problems’. With statistics like that, is it any wonder that our European neighbours regard Britain as the sick man of Europe and get thoroughly fed up with Tory party backwoodsmen bleating on about sovereignty and hankering after halcyon days when Johnny Foreigner could be brought to heel with a well deployed gunboat?

These figures make any objective observer ask why a country in Scotland’s position would want to remain tied to a country run by such inept fiscal controllers—as Brown proved to be—and not establish itself as one of a body of progressive countries nearby that are clearly making a better fist of weathering the current fiscal storm than the UK is.

Despite its front-page coverage, what Gordon Brown was peddling yesterday was hokum. It was unsubstantiated scaremongering that simple research such as above disproves with the click of a mouse. None of the assertions made in the Hootsmon were substantiated—we just had to take Gordon’s word for it. Instead of the nuclear strike on arguments for independence that this ICBM deployment had intended, it was, to mangle a phrase from Westminster itself, like being savaged by a damp squib.

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Queen Elizabeth—Another ‘K’atastrophe?

Posted on August 14, 2012 by davidsberry

Regular readers will know of my interest in history in general and of naval history in particular. Last week, as part of North Berwick’s Fringe by the Sea, I gave a couple of talks on the former to be delighted and surprised by one attendee who, knowing I had a further talk on The Battle of May Island, generously gifted me a 1963 hardback first edition that filled a gap in my library. Reading it rekindled my deep suspicions about the two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers now building for the RN for some £7bn.

The book is Don Everitt’s The ‘K’ Boats and is the shocking, if eclectic, history of a class of disastrous submarines built by the RN during WWI. I had read it decades ago as a paperback, using much of its later material in my talk. But re-reading it refreshed me on the earlier section when the boats were being conceived, designed and trialled.

I impute no incompetence at any of the half-dozen major and hundreds of minor contractors involved in the aircraft carriers—any more than the similar number involved in the 21 K-boats built. But you do wonder at what they are/were asked to do. No amount of clever design, ingenious engineering or stout seamanship can compensate for a daft idea from what CPO Pertwee once referred to as ” The Admirality”. I can’t prove parallels between the K’s and QEII’s to be true at this stage. But consider the following:

In 1913, Britain was, in theory, at the peak of its global power. But it was financially strapped and building a fleet of dreadnoughts had severely strained the naval budget, not least because they required scouting cruisers, defensive destroyers, major docking facilities around the world, along with coaling stations, etc, etc. Worst of all was a paranoia that some new-fangled weapon like the submarine would render the lot vulnerable.

Problem was that subs of the day were new and had weak power plants. Submerged they could only make a few knots; on the surface they couldn’t do much better than half the fleet’s 24 knots. Never one to accept a situation he disliked, as First Sea Lord, Churchill bullied his Admirals into rectifying it. Fisher declined, citing inadequate technology. When Fisher left, having fallen out with him over the Dardenelles, Winston had his way.

Designed to make 24 knots, the ‘K’ class of submarine seemed an answer and were then rushed into production. Bigger than a destroyer at 2,600 tons, they were over 120m long, heavily armed (for a sub) with 10 torpedo tubes and three deck guns. Production was pushed with urgency, so no prototype was built. It was only on trials that shortcomings in the concept became apparent. That, in itself, is understandable. But the degree to which they were systmatically covered up, ignored and generally swept under various carpets was criminal. Because many men died; none of them at the hands of the enemy.

The basic problem, as Commodore Submarines Sydney Hall observed, “it is a bold advance of 300 percent in design” since they used steam. “So what?” you ask; “all ships of the day used steam.” Yes—but not underwater. Think about it. Dealing with the matter of funnels, ventilation, heat, condensation, boiler blowback and a host of things made them the most complex machine built to date and over a dozen holes in the hull of varying shape/size.

Read the book for a catalogue of trials failures and accidents, including several uncontrolled dives to the bottom, one of which had the future George VI on board. Their shape, length and weight made them almost impossible to trim; they were so long the bow could hit the bottom while the stern was in the air, propellers thrashing because of pressure differences. And, limited by sealing so many holes to 50m maximum depth, they were vulnerable in the many places the sea is deeper than that.

Several were lost with crews of 100 on board without trace. Yet the Admiralty glossed over the major shortcomings (they had invested over £6m—at the time the cost of an entire dreadnought squadron) and persisted with tinkerings with the design. The final straw was not until January 1918 when a night exercise in the Forth cost two sunk and four damaged with the loss of 100+ crewmen and the nearest Germans asleep in bed on Heligoland.

Wind forward a century to the concept that the UK needs real carriers. The original RN carrier fleet was scrap by the 1980’s and the STOL Harrier-equipped ‘through-deck cruisers’ the only means of projecting UK air power until they were binned in a strategic review two years ago. But the carriers are now to be equipped with the STOL F-35, which doesn’t need a 65,000-ton monster. Nor can F-35s mix it easily with land-based fighters like F-22 Raptors.

The original strategic review called for aircraft carriers for three main reasons (I quote):

  • Ability to operate offensive aircraft abroad when foreign basing may be denied.
  • All required space and infrastructure; where foreign bases are available they are not always available early in a conflict and infrastructure is often lacking.
  • A coercive and deterrent effect when deployed to a trouble spot.

Note how none of this refers to defending the UK. We have pared down most of the defence force of Britain—including ANY long-range maritime capability—to pay for this. So the rationale for carriers is so we can go elsewhere and hit somebody. Given the the USN has 18 comparable carriers and support groups, what likelihood is there we would be going to war without them? And, if we’re talking Afghanistan or the like, carriers cannot get close enough to make any meaningful addition to deploying force there.

So why the hell do we need any, other than for UK high heid yins to whine their way to the top table so they can chest-butt the bad boys?

And, as one US submarine Admiral said about ‘his boys’ in attack submarines: “You know what we call aircraft carriers? Targets.” The US deploy at least one Aegis cruiser, two DDGs and two FFGs, plus support oilers, etc, every time they let one of their carriers out to play away from home waters. That means pretty much the whole RN surface fleet committed to avoiding our carriers decorating the bottom of whatever ocean they’re engaged in gunboat diplomacy at the time.

The RN has form in deploying poorly conceived equipment when it comes to aircraft carriers. Losing Courageous while ‘chasing submarines’ in 1939, losing Glorious while transporting land aircraft in 1940, losing Illustrious to superior land-based bombers in 1941, losing Hermes to the better-equipped IJN in 1942—all can be attributed to the Admiralty appreciating the need for air power at sea but settling for poor tactics and worse equipment trying execute it.

The K-boat strategic concept of fleet submarine was flawed: as Jutland and WWII proved, the whole concept of ‘fleets’ was faulty. The idea that the UK needs what illusory 21st century clout a fleet aircraft carrier with inferior aircraft can offer reeks of similar delusions. And, given that no serving RN Admiral (let alone anyone at the MoD) can claim flag service in a proper fleet carrier, on what basis can our £7bn be anything other than wasted?

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A Proud City Goes Begging

Posted on August 13, 2012 by davidsberry

I have always been a booster for Edinburgh as a city: a walkable, architecturally inspired romp across hill and dale that encourages exploration of its compact city centre and trademark panoramas. Its soul sisters Lisbon and San Francisco come close but don’t, for me, quite make it. And, although lively and varied throughout the year, moves up several gears during August when the Festival puts it front-and-centre of the world stage.

Its city fathers or yore (there were no women) have generally discharged their duty of care well: they dodged a serious bullet when they shelved the 1960’s plot to drive a motorway up the Pleasance as the start of an inner-city ring road. Some things have been less far-sighted, as when they ripped out their trams in 1956, lost the plot on what to build on Princes Street then sanctioned debilitating eyesores like the Midlothian CC building or the St James Centre.

Through all that and the half-century since, Edinburgh City Council has had an office-full of time-served civil engineers whose job it is to plan the roads within the city and how to improve them. In that half-century, unlike any other major city in the UK, they have planned and built precious few roads at all. In fact, if you discount trunk roads, the Gyle and Sir Harry Lauder, they have provided diddly-squat.

So what HAVE they been doing all these decades to earn their serious five-figure crusts? At first it was hard: driving new roads through historic cities is difficult. Then twenty years ago, along came a young councillor with an anorak gleam in his eye by name of Begg. His 1995 manifesto for the new unitary council aimed “to help create a civilised, safe, inclusive and sustainable city. The strategy seeks to improve alternatives to the car, reduce the need for car travel, restrain traffic and improve safety”.

At that time, he was in the middle of executing a brainstorm. If he couldn’t build more roads, why, he’d just pretend there were more by overlapping them. With an expenditure on paint that shamed the Forth Bridge ECC covered most major arteries within the city with delineated lanes for buses and expanded bike lanes both on- and off-road. In itself, no bad idea to speed urban bus travel and encourage alternatives to the car, this was, unfortunately, the ONLY measure deployed.

The result was heightened hostility towards car drivers that was amplified by privatising the traffic wardens—the legendary ‘blue meanies’ whose ticket-issuing had far more to do with revenue than speeding traffic flow. On top of that came the proposal for Congestion Charging across the city, with higher rates for a city centre core zone. The funding would have built ‘better transport facilities’ but it was a pig in a poke because none would be put in place first. Worst of all was the absence of ANY transport structure (underground, trains, etc) that almost any city could offer as alternative to buses on narrow streets.

Given that city traffic keeps growing (despite all that paint) and bus journey times still lengthen (despite all the paint) and there were no alternatives to car/bus but bike/walk, when the citizens were polled, they gave it a huge thumbs-down. Such a setback did not faze the irrepressible David Begg. He would go ahead with a plan to provide Edinburgh with a modern tram system that would serve Leith and the northern suburbs, as well as the airport (the airport could easily have been served by re-opening Turnhouse station but that would not have been to the further glory of his status as transport visionary).

So in 2002, with the active collusion of then-Transport Minister Iain Gray, TIE was set up as a cosy cartel and given the contract to deliver two tram lines by 2008 for under £330m. This is no place for that ugly story (try here) but this set off a decade of street disruptions that would have caused riots, had their extent been known at the time. The office-full of roads engineers were switched from playing Picasso with paint to scheduling how to tear up most major arteries in the city multiple times.

Few sensible people advocate letting cars run riot in cities and most agree that areas where pedestrians have priority are far safer and more liveable. Edinburgh’s cycling fraternity have an honourable reputation in persuading Begg & his anorak buddies to listen to them. Where cycle paths were easy, such as across the Meadows or old rail tracks, they have generally been done. But on main roads like Clerk Street or rat runs like Grange Road or the Pleasance, bikes are unwelcome interlopers.

And in the tram wreck that was TIE and the ludicrous overspends/overruns they left in their wake, such niceties as people-friendly environments have gone completely out the window. Funnily enough, the now-Professor Begg jumped ship before all this went down and now:

“Appointed to the Board of First Group as a Non-Executive Director in August 2005. He is Chief Executive of Transport Times and a Non-Executive Director of BAA Limited. He is also Chairman of the Business Infrastructure Commission and a Director of Portobello Partnership. He is a visiting professor at Plymouth University and an adviser to Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive. Until 2005 he was Chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport and a Non-Executive Director of the Strategic Rail Authority”

Gotta hand it to the man—one of the coolest body-swerves out of trouble you have ever seen. Even assuming the tram fiasco ever gets running and paying back some of the £1bn it will cost the public purse, the damage done to the entire economic health of Scotland’s capital city is immense. And, what is worse than that is that the Beggite acolytes still in their transport engineer jobs at Chesser House are still behaving as if this scheme had few on-costs and they can play with the streets as they did in their Picasso ‘blue’ period.

This month, Edinburgh is close to gridlock. Shandwick Place has been closed for over a year; Haymarket is a bomb site; York Place is closed, messing up Leith Walk; St David St is a bomb site (right outside the Waverley tourist focus); Princes Street is clogged and, in their wisdom, the engineers have blocked George St for the Festival. Not only does it look a mess, but the only transport option available are losing customers trying to find ever-changing stop locations when not stuck in jams. It took 40 mins from Holyrood to Queensferry St on a 36—and this is typical.

I have no idea how many shops have gone to the wall. I have no idea how many visitors are heading home, shaking their head how stupid the Scots are to waste so much money ruining a perfectly good city. I have no idea—short of jobs-for-the-boys—how Begg walked away from this without a public lynching. But, than, no-one from TIE has even had their knuckles rapped, let alone had their six-figure salaries pinded.

The modern legacy at City Hall is the usual c.y.a. agency-produced guff that doesn’t even get to the point until halfway through whichever glossy publication it is we’re discussing. And when arch-Labour-loyal Cllr Lesley “don’t-confuse-me-with-a-sunny-day” Hinds pops up  to reassure us all that the project is back on track, the coverup and rank-closing must be well advanced.

Meanwhile, you don’t know whether to laugh or throw yourself into one of the many holes that still scar a once-beautiful city centre.

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How Come Big Countries Have Such Small Minds?

Posted on August 12, 2012 by davidsberry

I belong to a huge minority—the minority that shunned the Olympic opening ceremony because none of us were really sports fans in the first place and had not yet recovered from the previous two months unrelenting blanket coverage of football and tennis. Even that had not prepared me for the BBC monomiacal fixation where one or other of BBC1/2, BBC3, BBC24 and BBCWestminster provided unending coverage of the Olympics.

I was appalled. For this kind of entertainment fascism I pay a license fee? Then, because there was almost nothing else, I started watching. The first that intrigued me was absence of jingoism compared to Oplympics past: yes, TeamGB got coverage…but commentary acknowledged the myriad of other superb performances on display.

And that was the second thing—outstanding performances by athletes you’re never heard of from countries you’ve barely heard of. This tweaked my instinctive Scots contrarian streak to support the underdog…and yet be nonplussed that some of the underdogs were actually winning…and that Ethiopian distance or Jamaican sprint runners are nobody’s underdogs.

And so I came to my third realisation—that, if the athlete had physically made it to London they were each going to have a fair shake of the stick. Each event seemed to go off without a hitch: the facilities were there and worked; organisation seemed first-class; a myriad of events went off where they should when they should.

But most of all, the part when I normally allow my sport-indifference to switch off—the post-event interview—was icing on the cake. My allergy comes from footballers talking endless fatuous rubbish to barely-literate interviewers. This was so different. Whether matter-of-factness from Bradley Wiggins or obvious humanity from Kristin Armstrong in the world beating cycling team, the infectiously radiant enthusiam of Nicola Adams in the boxing ring or the unflappable sticking with stratospheric points scores in the dive pool by Tom Daley, it was the most powerfully positive display of human spirit I’ve witnessed.

So I (and I suspect many like me) became a convert, realising my lack of personal interest could have allowed me to miss this experience that might not (I reluctantly confess) have happened, had the Beeb not thrown the kitchen sink at coverage.

(Chomp…chomp…chomp—the sound of humble pie going down á la mode)

All of which made me the angrier when I read Eddie Barns in today’s SoS. Yes, I know their consistent position defending the Union. But, for once, they might try to rise above forever making sow’s ears out of silk purses. Eddie manages to fabricate an article out of the ‘news’ that TeamGB would still include Scotland in Rio 2016, whatever the outcome of a referendum here in 2014.

Well, duh!

But, much more that that, Eddie writes as if this matters, as if the First Minister, who has clearly stated his desire to see Scotland have its own Olympic team, is even now whipping cybernats up into a frenzy at such outrage. If this is the best that Eddie and his Editors can do to further the independence debate, the sooner they have him reporting shinty from Fort William the better.

The achievements of Team GB were superb. I have not heard anyone trying to make capital from the fact that had the Scots within that been a team on their own, they would lie 11th (below Australia but above Japan) and rUK would drop to 4th behind Russia. They WERE a team—along with their English, Welsh, etc cousins. And, had they not trained, worked, lived and bonded with their team-mates (quite apart from the superb training facilities the UK could afford) their theoretical performance would have been just that.

Because the Olympics are a good example of what could happen after 2014. A vote for independence is about running our own affairs and having our own voice on key issues like who we ally/trade/bond with…and who we don’t. A Scotland standing isolated was never sensible, nor part of the agenda. Once we have independence, weighty but secondary questions like the monarchy, currency, alliances and, yes, Olympic arrangements can be discussed, negotiated and settled in the fullness of time.

For years now, Nationalists have taken the broader view, the one that asks what is good for the Scottish people in the long run. No-one seems to want a UK football team but the British Lions tour regularly. The choice on Olympic membership will not be made by “Craig Reedie, a vice-president of the International 
Olympic Committee and former chairman of the British Olympic Association” or some other self-important flunky—as Eddie Barns and his ilk would have you believe.

So, stop the world so that Scotland can get on; we have bigger fish to fry in the meantime. But if we did want our own Olympic team, we might insist on shinty being included as a sport. The only downside is that we might have to thole Eddie Barns reporting on it.

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Why Our Friends Aren’t Idiots

Posted on August 11, 2012 by davidsberry

There has been much huffing an puffing in the press recently about the supposed ‘split’ in the SNP over NATO and some of my colleagues have taken advantage of the traditional summer silly season to pour a little gasoline of that conflagration as the opportunities to make an individual mark amidst an MSP phalanx as large and as disciplined as the SNPs are not frequent.

I call the motivation of none of my colleagues into question and some—like Dave Thomson—with a longstanding commitment to the CND would have been morally inconsistent had they not raised a debate about joining NATO. I don’t seek to change their principles, nor do I seek to muzzle their understandable desire for debate.

But what I do is to ask the less committed, the more open-minded people both within and without the SNP to consider the position of our non-nuclear neighbours and friends who are very much supportive of and active in NATO—and all of whom thole the idea that there are members with nuclear capability.

1. NORWAY Perhaps the most like the Scots from NATO’s perspective, between us we would hold the northern flank of NATO’s defence of Europe. Both of us (along with Iceland and Greenland) provide unsinkable aircraft carriers that would seriously hamper any hostile naval action from this direction. Norway already deploys the LRMP aircraft, fast patrol boats and SBS capability (all badly neglected by the present UK MoD) as well as modern interceptors. Because of relatively short ranges, aircraft carriers are actually superfluous and function more as attack sub targets (i.e. liabilities).

Norway’s posture is boosted by a significant portion of their GDP (already over 50% bigger per capita than the UK’s) going to defence. Their policy of “Smart Defence” was outlined this April in a speech from Mr. Roger Ingebrigtsen, State Secretary, Norwegian Ministry of Defence. In it, he asserts:

“Smart Defence is about striking a balance between legitimate and important national concerns – and the benefits we could obtain from a new culture of cooperation in the alliance and with important partners.”

In other words, it involves not just signing up to NATO as a joint defence but it involves trusting your neighbouring partners to supply key components of a joint defence posture. Even though that would render it more difficult to stand alone, it makes for a better, cheaper and more integrated joint capability.

Interestingly, he found no need to even mention nuclear weapons—none are deployed in Norway and NATO’s entire posture in the country is both non-nuclear and welcomed.

2. DENMARK Similar to Norway, Denmark outspends the UK per capita in defence but still keeps defence low as a proportion of GDP. The Danish Defence Agreement, signed by all political parties in 2009, defines its defense arrangements as:

“Denmark’s membership of NATO is a cornerstone of Danish security and defence policy. In a strategic perspective Denmark’s sovereignty is secured through NATO’s Article 5 commitment to collective defence of Alliance territory. At the same time, NATO provides a framework for the participation of the Danish Armed Forces in international missions.”

They accept that the Danish Armed Forces must continue to be able to fight conventional conflicts, but there will be an increasing need to be able to participate in other types of conflicts, such as counter-insurgency operations, peacemaking operations and reconstruction efforts. The fact of NATO members possessing nuclear weapons does not rate a mention as there is no arrangement for them to be deployed on Danish soil.

3. NETHERLANDS Not quite as comparable as the other two geographically or demographically, the Netherlands has a rather unique attitude towards international law and military obligations. The origins of the country’s long-standing global trade in the 17th century explains their strong support for international law, which follows from a combination of a law-abiding people in a small trading country with insufficient individual military capacity.

A paper from the CfESat the University of Twente reinforces this in some depth and explains how they forsook a long-held policy of strict neutrality and joined NATO in 1949 with similar provisos against deployment of nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, the Netherlands nonetheless proved to be an active and loyal member of the Alliance, which—in their eyes—allowed for a much larger role in international affairs than its size would justify.

In 1999, the Netherlands did debate similar issues to those underlying the SNP proposal.  Those on NATO’s nuclear strategy, on the need for a NATO no-first-use declaration, and on the need for an explicit UN mandate for NATO actions did not succeed in getting majority support.

TAKEN TOGETHER the position of Scotland’s three closest neighbours who are NATO members appear very similar and pragmatic about realities with which any small European country would need to come to terms.

It would be ideal if no nuclear weapons existed, failing which an international treaty were to abolish them and that abolition be enforceable, all the way down to rebels, splinter groups and dissidents. Given the world the way it is, steering our way out of a Cold War without Armageddon was perhaps the best we could realistically hope for.

But, join it or no, NATO and the US/UK/French nuclear arsenals around which it was originally built remain facts. An independent Scotland could be far more a force for good than its present role in shoring up England’s residual delusions of global empire and influence. But not if it sulks in the corner because no-one will accept their strict principles.

Without independence, we are a voiceless people people with a nuclear arsenal foisted on us by someone else, making mockery of our principles. If we refuse to join NATO, our influence on the world will be that of Nicaragua or Eritrea or Kirghizstan—all viable countries of around 5m with some regional influence but little on the global stage.

As an EU member, Scotland would have commercial access to a market of 300m and a correspondingly amplified voice in world trade and its regulation. As a member of NATO, it would have a similar military voice while still being able to limit its involvement to non-nuclear and UN-sanctioned involvements. More importantly, it would have a say in driving debate within NATO to make a non-first-strike declaration or one on a requirement for a UN mandate before any action.

The choice is stark, clear and easy because our neighbour friends—models to whom we would aspire—point the way: Do you want to stop the world so Scotland can get on? Or do you want to become Jocky-Nae-Freends, sulking in a corner by ourselves?

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The Last Resort

Posted on August 10, 2012 by davidsberry

“Patriotism: the last resort of a scoundrel.” Dr Samuel Johnston

The Edinburgh Festival is now launched full-scale and among the myriad of performances  is a play from  Tricycle Theatre at the always avant-garde Traverse called “Letter of Last Resort“. As with many socially articulate and relevant pieces, it is more than a little discomfiting, revolving as it does around a new Prime Minister being confronted with the need to write the same letter all prime ministers since the fifties have been asked to write—the instructions to follow in the event that London is vapourised, and the current government with it.

Now, much as I am a fan of the absurdities of nuclear warfare so pithily dissected by Kubrick and his splendid cast in Dr Strangelove, I do recognise that, if you insist on having a nuclear deterrent, there must be two mechanisms in place that are absolutely cast-iron in their effectiveness: 1) a method of launching a nuclear strike, even in the case of being attacked with no warning and 2) a method of preventing that happening through fluke, mistake or some form of evil intent.

Having lived my six-and-a-bit decades entirely under the threat of nuclear war and come this far without my molecules being vapourised, it appears that those countries with the ability, as the US Military so colourfully puts it, “to make the rubble dance” have at least got the latter bit right. But what of the first—not the actual mechanisms, but the moral dilemma outlined in the play: if your country has been vapourised, what exactly is the point of you retaliating? The game’s already over.

Throughout the Cold War, this was a dilemma we lived with because the Soviet Union had, since Stalin’s acquisitiveness before, during and after WWII, been such an obvious threat. Not content with the huge land army that had crushed Nazi Germany, they had developed a ‘blue water’ navy and rocket forces just as capable as the US of killing all life on the planet several times over. While this East-West eyeball-to-eyeball Mexican stand-off may not have been the most stable of arrangements, coming after the mayhem of WWII that was directly attributable to appeasement, it had a certain logic.

More importantly (and much to my surprise at the time) it actually worked. Ronnie Ray-gun’s military “see-you-and-raise-you spend” bankrupted the Soviets, broke up their Union and dissolved an Iron Curtain that had kept neighbours, families and countrymen apart for half a century. But what now? During the Cold War, the enemy was obvious and the target co-ordinates of British missiles were all Soviet.

Unpleasant though their duty may be, most people accept that the military has a purpose and, whether because of history or the need for feeling protected, most people are fairly patriotic about their soldiers and the things they are asked to do. Conventional forces do operate on a human scale and their exploits can make riveting novels or history.

For myself, I have been interested in many aspects of the military and studied them through simulations (aka wargames) for some time. Such simulations teach much about options open and decisions taken; refighting this battle or that campaign you can see how history might have been different—whether it be the French less hidebound in May 1940 or Marlborough less audacious at Blenheim.

But, while friends and I did attempt to simulate WW3 in the shape of Soviet ground and air forces thrusting through the ‘Fulda Gap’, one of our number ridiculed the concept. “This won’t happen” he claimed. “It will go nuke and the only way to simulate that properly is to pour lighter fluid all over the map and set fire to it”. Though intended as a joke, as a metaphor it had a dreadful truth to it.

We will now never know if a Soviet invasion of Western Europe would have triggered Armageddon. But at least there was startling clarity about who the enemy was and the scenarios available were strictly limited. The whole posture of British armed forces were as heavily armoured ground forces, supporting tactical air forces and a navy split between a nuclear-tipped sub fleet and the rest geared to hunting down the Soviet equivalent.

As a result, British military actions over the last half-century have been the equivalent of opening tin cans with a screwdriver—we don’t have the right tools for the job. Challenger tanks and ASW ships were little use in the Falklands, Sierra Leone, Kosovo or Afghanistan. Brave men have achieved much but that should not conceal the fact that our forces were seldom adequately prepared and equipped for what came next.

This applies to British nuclear forces more than to any other arm. Consider the sheer idiocy inherent in our entire strategy of deterrence: no country dare attack us for fear of our retaliation. Once, the Soviets could have obliterated us with one hand tied behind their back but any strike from us was always dependent on US permission. Lopsided though that was, there was a certain logic to it.

What we have now is insane. Our deterrent could plausibly be used against whom? When New York was hit on 9/11 and London was hit on 7.7, using nuclear weapons were not even considered, not least because there were no plausible targets. What if either scale of carnage were repeated—say Canary Wharf laid low by two planes and the Taliban claim responsibility, are we going to nuke Aghanistan? Hardly. What if nasty people sneaked a nuke onto a Iranian-flagged tanker and blew it up while anchored at Hound Point? You’d lose Edinburgh, West Lothian, West Fife, Dunfermline and, depending on wind direction, irradiate the Central Belt. But is there any chance the UK would retaliate by nuking Teheran or even one of their oil ports? No.

Having a nuclear strike ability, if it ever made sense, makes no sense now. Though it may always have been a moral obscenity the disappearance of any plausible target means it is now also a logical obscenity. Add in the double-dip recession we now suffer, severe cuts affecting not just conventional forces but every family and the prospect of spending £38bn in Trident replacement (more than the entire budget of the Scottish Government) adds fiscal obscenity into the mix.

Even if our nuclear strike ability of one sub carrying 16 missiles were not constrained by the US, what possible targets could they have? Could they stop last year’s riots? Did the US’s overwhelming nuclear might prevent 9/11? Have they been any use at all in Afghanistan? If Norwegians captured all our oil or the French decided to occupy Kent, is there any chance we would nuke ’em?

It escapes most normal people how, if we are committed to never being the first to use nuclear weapons, their risk and cost can be justified. And in the extremely implausible case of Britain being fried in a nuclear attack (by whom?), can there be any moral justification of rendering even more of this fragile planet a nuclear wasteland purely as vengeance? The play puts this dilemma on a very personal scale. And that is where each of us must think what this playground bluster (from Tories and Labour alike) about Britain “punching above its weight” is costing us all in morals as well as money.

If the last resort is oblivion, then it’s no resort at all.

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Here Comes Summer

Posted on August 9, 2012 by davidsberry

It’s been a long wait for summer to hit here in Sconnie Botland but the timing could not have been sweeter. This week is our biggest of the summer here in North Berwick. After a so-so day that allowed our barnstorming Highland Games another major success of forty-odd bands from around the globe that gave 10,000 people a ‘grand day out’, we were hoping for some sun as Fringe by the Sea took over for the balance of this week.

It took off with a bang—the Manfreds blew the roof off the even-larger spiegeltent we put up this year and had the 600+ people crammed inside singing along, with Paul Jones having his usual positive impact with the ladies in the audience. For those who missed this superb one-nighter, they’re on tour this year and back in Scotland in November.

West Beach and Craigleith, August 9th 2012

Today was one of those idyllic days when the sea seems so azure and inviting that it’s not just the kids that are tempted into the water. Trains were pouring hundreds of people into the town (lucky for them—parking spaces were like hen’s teeth), the High Street and harbour were mob scenes and emergency supplies of ice cream had to be blue-lighted down from Luca’s in Musselburgh.

Offshore was the great spectacle of the Laser 2000 UK Nationals being avoid by sundry trip boats taking sunburned visitors out around the islands. Altogether, it was the sort of day that you remember from your childhood—and the many kids running about today will have it etched in their memories that will probably bring them back in a couple of decades to pass it on to theirs.

East Beach with Seabird Centre & Spiegeltent beyond Paddling Pool, plus Lasers racing near Craigleith

While everyone had been complaining that this summer had been the pits, a couple of days of this magic and all is forgiven!

East Beach and Bass Rock, North Berwick, Augus 9th 2012

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England’s Not Foreign to Me

Posted on August 8, 2012 by davidsberry

Peter Jones is not a man with whom I would normally choose to cross verbal swords. Freelance journalist more recently for the Hootsmon but previously regular contributor to weighty pieces in the Times and Economist, he knows his stuff but—more than that—he’s a professional. How he balances his professional objectivity with his private life, from which there must be at least social pressure, I don’t know. The point is (and I say this as someone who has read him for decades): he does.

So when his Op Ed piece entitled “Questioning what the English have done for us“ pops up in yesterday’s Hootsmon, I recharge my java and dive in. And I am not disappointed—en vacances in his gite, Peter discovers that the French of Gascony came to like the English, despite their having been chucked bodily out of the place some 5 1/2 centuries ago (I paraphrase: Peter’s prose is far more resonant). More to the point, the present flood of ex-pats are being uniformly welcomed and not resented. He observes:

“This seems to me to be what Europe ought to be all about. Different nationalities, equally proud of their varying histories, conscious of clashing histories but not resentful of them, mixing together.”

I’m with him to this point. But then he spends the last 10% of the piece pouring cold water all over the concept that the Scots would be capable of welcoming either one-time would-be conquerors or current-day squatters. Here, he has lost me, perhaps because he makes no attempt to expand his basis for doubts. If you read this, Peter, walk with me through the following couple of paragraphs and point me to the parts you find inaccurate.

We Scots didn’t invent racial melting pots but we surely embraced the concept as well as any. When Kenneth MacAlpin hammered our kingdom together in the 9th century, it was out of Brythons and Picts, Norsemen and Anglians, as well as his own Scots—five mutually unintelligible languages that give us the pigs breakfast of place-names with which Ordnance Survey still strews the map of our country.

When Edward I came raging north in 1296 to steal our richest port of South Berwick, he cleared out the inhabitants first but found himself confronted with Flemish, Hanseatic, Danish, Mecklenburger and all other sorts of residents and a major international incident. Once we had established conclusively whoever was running the country, it wasn’t the English, the Scots were to be found all over the Low Countries and the Baltic, trading their little hodden grey socks off.

Seventy ports in Scotland were in the international trade business. The Staple (guild of merchants under a Conservator) was set up in Bruges in 1347 and transferred to Veere around 1510 (where the local museum is still in the Schotish Huis). More Scots fought in the armies of Gustavus Adolphus than any other nationality but the Swedes themselves. There are Scottish villages and descendants of Scots all around the Baltic; half the admirals in the early Imperial Russian Navy were Scots.

After the hugely ambitious Darien project was scuppered by jealous English merchants, we picked ourselves up and dominated the new tobacco trade, drove the Hudson’s Bay company all across the Americas’ higher latitudes and came to specialise in the ships with which we built an empire with our southern cousins. And in those colonies, whereas the Irish or Italians or whoever would hunker in immigrant ghettoes, the Scots were already out mixing with locals, exploiting opportunities.

It wasn’t all Carnegies coming home to build libraries and halls here or full-blood Shoshone indians from Saskatchewan showing up in Stromness looking for their ancestors or MacQuarries putting Australia together with their bare hands. We welcomed the Italians when they came a century ago, the Poles who settled after WWII, the flood of Pakistanis who have made curry our other national dish; they are all Scots now.

As our heavy industries declined we lost many of our best and brightest until it looked like Scotland would become a backwater, dependent on English handouts. Then came oil and gas and Aberdeen was on the same map as Dallas and Bahrain, becoming a melting pot of American, Norwegian and Doric accents. A financial services boom and cultural renaissance followed. Soon whole families were moving North as the combination of competitive houses with quality of life outbid spending your days on the 7:50 from Wokingham.

And, of all those English who have moved north only have few, if any, suffered even a cold shoulder, never mind hostility. Now that Scots have recovered a sense of themselves, now that they have cultural, media and political outlets that are not filtered through the alien prism of London, now that we’re back to our outgoing ways from year-outs in Thailand to commuting to New York, why on earth would we be hostile to people with enough sense to realise what we have—and do something about it by moving here themsleves?

Scotland, unlike England, is not full up.

Peter seems so open to what the French are telling him about their attitudes, why does he say nothing about his life here in Scotland? I lived here until 1971 when things were getting dire. The improvement to 1993 when I came back was startling—but nothing as compared to what’s happened in the two decades since.

It’s not just that you can get guava or papayas in the supermarket or catch a Kabuki play at the local rep. Whether commuting into Edinburgh or B&Bing on Mull, our English incomers are now at home—and as vocal against the incomprehension emanating from their former friends down south as they are signed up to what renewable energy, quality engineering, whisky exports and booming tourism can achieve for a nation of just 5m happily ensconced in one of the most beautiful corners of the globe.

Wallace’s argument against Edward’s accusations 700 years ago was both noble and correct: “How can I be a traitor when England is foreign to me?” But do we live in such brutal times that arrogant assertion is the only way we deal with each other? When you are fighting attempted conquest, broad-mindedness and tolerance are often the first traits out the window. That was then.

Though Scots who stayed at home undoubtedly became less international in the centuries we’ve been a partner in the United Kingdom, the splendid voyage we shared with our English cousins and the recent shrinking of distances around the world and the corresponding exposure of so many Scots to other cultures (as well as the hugely dominant English-speaking diaspora we helped build) is making us more international than we perhaps ever were.

Rubbing shoulders at our local Highland Games with a polyglot crowd of 10,000 that included as many ‘incomers’ living in the area as long-term locals is neither unique nor unusual. Our clubs and committees and societies are stuffed with English, Welsh, Irish, plus the odd American or European. I don’t know the fractious, apparently benighted place Peter Jones calls home but he should get out more. We like the English too; they brought much to this world and are not done yet.

We just don’t think they should be running our country.

Wake up and smell the java, Peter: it’s our New Scots as much as our Old who are brewing it for you.

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