Scotsman column today: It's time to get angry

Here is an extract from my column in The Scotsman today. It's a comment on the Legatum Prosperity Index - launched by Peter Mandelson, which ranks Norway number one and the UK 13 - behind Ireland and Iceland

"What’s Norway got that we haven’t?. More than 30 years after oil began to come ashore, our near neighbours have a sovereign wealth fund which last week hit a new peak of $518bn and, according to the Financial Times, now owns 1% of all global stocks. As well as providing a secure future for Norwegians,  the fund  encourages good corporate governance wherever it invests – firms that mistreat workers or damage the environment are excluded. 

When you think about it, Scotland in the 60s and 70s ought to have fared better than Norway when both countries struck oil. We had a mature industrial economy, close ties to world markets like the United States and The Commonwealth and other profitable exports like coal and whisky. We spoke English as a first language, had a reputation for the best education in the world and didn’t have to cope with arctic winters.

Yet forty years after oil was discovered and thirty years after it first came ashore, we have no fund for the future. Our manufacturing industry was largely destroyed in the 1980s and 1990s when it could have been modernised. We have pockets of the worst poverty in the United Kingdom, with communities in Glasgow and its hinterland where more than 50% of the population is economically inactive. Inequality is not just a feature of urban Scotland. There is an exodus of young people from rural areas.  During the relatively prosperous years 2007-2008, average income in The Borders actually fell. We die young. We have world leading rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and alcoholic liver disease. Our society is still too violent." 

To read the whole column buy The Scotsman today or subscribe to the premium content for a year  and read the article. You might also be interested in this recent FT piece on Norway's sovereign wealth fund. And if you are really, really keen here is a piece from the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute which tracks and analyses these funds - which have been accumulated by many countries and regions around the world. Alaska, for example, has a big wealth fund because of oil which it redistributes to qualified citizens in the form of dividend checks.

 

Comments

[Hamish Scott]

Joan. Re - buying the Scotsman. This has a slightly eerie aspect to it as I was thinking not only might I start buying the Scotsman on the day your column is published but I would make a point of informing the Scotsman itself (editors/owners?) why I have started buying it now and on only that day. Indeed, I was thinking a 'campaign' on those lines might encourage them if there was palpable increase in sales. More generally, it does seem as if the Scotsman has become a bit more moderate in its coverage of Scottish politics, less viscerally hostile to the SNP. Perhaps it's just a passing phase though.

[el el]

Quote, "no Scottish media at all?" Is this the ultimate aim of the few who control it? Those who follow them blindly are simply and eventually putting themselves out of a job. Scottish identity means Scottish careers.

[Davie Park]

Commentary is one thing Joan - editorial quite another.
We're invited to take issue with the former, aware that it's merely subjective.
The latter is presented as objective reality - simple reportage of the actuality.
Diverse commentary compensates for propogandising editorial no more than a decent letters page.

[joanmcalpine]

Re buying The Scotsman. I must take issue with you. The paper has made an attempt to expand the commentary section to offer a variety of voices. I don't agree with them all - but George Kerevan and myself are there, and Gerry Hassan who, though politically non aligned, is certainly no fan of Labour or the present constitutional arrangements. And there are now plenty of features and news stories about cultural and news events in Scotland. It has become more focussed on Scotland and better in the last year or so and I would urge you to have another look, even by buying it one Wednesday when I write. If you still think it is not for you then fine, but give it a go. Scotland's media does not reflect the balance of opinion in the country. I would like all the media to take a line that puts Scotland first instead of defending the union automatically - but do you want no Scottish media at all? That is the danger, we have very few places for public discourse on Scottish matters as it is.

[KBW]

Joan, good as your comments are nothing would induce me to give one penny to The Scotsman it is no more than an English owned propaganda sheet, totally biased and cheap sneery tabloid journalism, present company excepted. A wifie in Morrisons tried to get me to buy the SOS there on Sunday for £1. I had a nice wee chat to her and told her that I would not even hing it behind the lavvy door. I have stopped buying newspapers now and just read the blogs and Reuters and a few other News channels.

I see even the utterly New Labour biased BBC gave this subject air space on Newsnicht the other night, is the message finally percolating through? God knows there is enough evidence now, that Scotland cannot any longer afford the Union as it has damaged us, but we are not beyond repair. What ever people may think of Alex Salmond a strong vote for him and the SNP next May will send shock waves through Westminster. No Torys here.

[cynicalHighlander]

But when we live in the UK sandwiched between Qatar and Chile in the corruption perception index is it any wonder.
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results