Go Lassie Go

Give them candy: local people want to reclaim Greenock's historic sugar sheds

I've driven by past these buildings all my life, but only yesterday did I learn that the Greenock Sugar Sheds anticipated the Bauhaus and reference John Ruskin's Italian medievalism. They are cathedrals of industry, an essential part of the historic James Watt Dock and the largest brick and cast iron warehouses surviving from Victorian Scotland. Greenock had scores of sugar refineries in the mid 19th century, and was the most important trading centre for the sweet stuff outside London. It is with some shame we remember that this industry was built on slavery, but it is also of some comfort to know that independent West Indian countries still sent sugar to Greenock until the late 20th century - until the subsidies to European sugar beet finally killed a Clydeside industry as well as damaging Caribbean economies.

The sugar sheds were saved from demolition by Historic Scotland and partner agencies after a fire in 2006. Local people got to experience the vast space themselves last month during the Tall Ships Race, when the sheds were opened up and transformed into a magical stage set for bands, theatre groups and artists. Audiences loved what they saw so much that they want to reclaim the sheds for community use - they had been earmarked as offices. They have launched a culturally savvy campaign on facebook together with a blog. It reminds you how much pride people take in their social history and the importance of a sense of place, and of the past, in urban regeneration. I write about the campaign today in my Scotsman column.

Shamed by Calum Cashley's detective work

Fellow blogger and councillor Calum Cashley has put me and other professional journalists to shame. Following on from the row about the New Year Message from Iain McMillan of CBI in Scotland, Calum has taken a very close look at the organisation. You will remember that McMillan mounted a highly partisan attack on the SNP government which many feel was more reflective of his own political views than the businesses he claims to speak for. Calum has done a power of work by scutinising the CBI in Scotland. How many Scottish businesses does it represent? Who are they? You might be surprised to find it is a tiny per centage of indigenous companies and members include quangoes paid for with public funds. He lists all the Scottish members he can find. Wouldn't it be interesting if someone followed up on his hard work and asked these companies if McMillan's New Year Message was a fair reflection of their views? Lots more detail in Calum's blog here

Does this man have the hardest job in Scotland?

 Gavin Mitchell has always stood out in his comic roles for the brilliantly written Kings Theatre  panto in Glasgow. But what a tough gig the Still Game barman had this year, when he was asked to fill the Doc Martens of Gerard Kelly, who died suddenly aged 51, almost before the curtain rose for the season. Kelly was the King's panto, as big a star as Stanley Baxter and Jack Milroybefore him - and as much a Scottish institution too. His catch-phrase "Hiya Pals" was carried on from Milroy and in this interview for Theatre News, Mitchell said he would continue it, as a tribute. I went to Snow White with my family yesterday and his character - Muddles the Jester - changed the wording slightly, presumably having read the mood of the cast and audience over the season. Mitchell has a difficult tightrope to walk. You have a theatre full of  excited Brownie packs, extended families and works outings all looking for good cheer...but painfully aware that a star has gone out. How to you reconcile the frivolity of panto with the reality of death? Mitchell didn't ignore it - referring to Kelly and his loss at the start of the show and repeating some of his famous lines by reminding the audience that "our very dear friend" had said them first. He even did so with the gag about the white feather that pops up to get the audience out of their seats for the sing-a-long. (The ladies will remember the adult punch line...) Before the final curtain, Mitchell, in Kelly's trademark lavy brush style wig, stepped forward to dedicate the performance to the great man, as he must have done dozens of times since Snow White opened. There were lumps in throats. But it was the right approach, paying homage then getting on with what Gerard Kelly would have wanted: the ritual celebration of Glaswegian silliness, self-deprecation and patter. We all laughed - and cried a bit too.

http://www.theatrescotland.com/Scottish-theatre-writing/Articles/Gavin-Mitchell-actor-interview.html

http://www.ambassadortickets.com/King's-Theatre

Hogmanay 2011: Stonehaven Fireballs in words and pictures, with a few opinions swung around too

We waited two hours in the bitter cold of Stonehaven High Street to ensure a good view of the fireball swingers who parade between the old clock tower and the harbour at the stroke of Midnight every Hogmanay/Ne'erday  - and have done for hundreds of years. The fireballs are the size of small creels (lobster pots), doubled wrapped in chicken wire then stuffed with oily rags - old jumpers sometimes. They are then attached to fence wire and swung above the head. While most of the participants were of the burly variety, there were quite a few women too - including one even shorter than me, who was nevertheless able to perform the full circular swing in a way that looked effortless. Most of the men wore kilts and others dressed up in carnival style - I liked the giant guy with the necklace of blue fairylights and another whose t-shirt had a build-in digital clock giving a countdown to the 2011. Centuries ago Hogmanay was a time when people dressed up and went guising, so the display was appropriate. 

It was exhilarating to be there, even as a spectator. Fire is elemental and exciting - its seductive warmth comes with menace and danger. It transforms the night, and the people around you. In our case the risk was real - our spot on the narrowest stretch of the street meant the fireballs gie close.  The combustible parade, which was preceded by pipes and drums, captured the old Scottish spirit of Yule and New Year, which in Scotland used to be called "The Daft Days". It was a time when a society restrained by rules, religion and grinding labour could go a wee bit crazy.  Fire was traditionally used in Winter Festivals to purify and drive away evil spirits - just like it destroyed germs and drove away wild animals. It also symbolses the sun, and the spirit of optimism that keeps telling us it won't always be this cold and dark.

The ringleader of a group of boisterous Aberdonians preferred a more contemporary comparison: "It's like the X-factor for big hairy Scotsmen!" He was perturbed by the absence of a soundtrack - the drummers being further up the street.  So he spent the next few moments rousing the street to yet another rendition of Flower of Scotland. They complied. But the combination of crackling fireballs and yelps of encouragement from the crowd somehow made the soundtrack more authentic. The comparison with X-Factor was flippant but not irrelevant. What greater contrast could there be to the manufactured, monocultural entertainment that now dominates our lives than this? The Stonehaven fireball swinging is rooted in a real community and still organised by local people - with considerable time and skill given the health and safety requirements of the 21st century.

But there is a little spark of the x-factor culture in the ceremony.  One of the veteran fireball men told the Press and Journal  the ceremony had almost died out by the early 1960s - until it began to attract spectators. The fishermen who originally performed it did so because of ritual and superstition. Now it is a carnival, attracting 10-12,000 a year - people from the town and surrounding area, emigres who have left the "auld toon" and returned, and an increasing number from further afield. The crowds this week included Scots like us but also lots of voices from England, The United States, France Germany and other parts of Europe. The tradition survives because it has become a compelling spectacle. there's an element od showbiz now that would not have been the case 100 years ago. But culture is a living, dynamic thing and to survive it must adapt. In the age of the i-pod, x-box and laptop, people crave cultural experiences that are real, not virtual. The like to come together with other human beings - this explains the growth in popularity of summer festivals. It made me wonder whether other Scottish communities could learn from Stonehaven and revive traditions that have been allowed to die out. My old book  Scottish Festivals, by Sheila Livingstone documents fire ceremonies all over Scotland. A few still exist. As well as Stonehaven, there is Burning the Clavie in Burghead, Up-Helly-aa in Shetland and the Biggar Bonfire. But according to Livingstone, there were bonfires at Wick. In 1655 ministers in Moray complained of the idolatrous practice of fishermen circulating torches around their boats. At Comrie there was a torchlit procession with folk dressed in fantastic costume. The Lighting and carrying of a tar barrel, which continues in Burghead,  was once an annual event in Campbeltown, where an old boat would also be filled with burning barrels and dragged on its keel. In Galloway, tar barrels were carried through Minigaff and Newton Stewart until the First World War. Participants in costume would cross the River Cree on horseback. In Dingwall a large crate was set alight and pulled to the Mercat Cross by a heavy horse - It was accompanied by a band using handmade instruments  - drums, whistles and tambourines, to drive away the evil spirits. 

We now have a Winter Festival in Scotland, From St Andrew's to Burns night. The cities have embraced the concept. Smaller towns have even more to gain. It saddens me to travel around Scotland's and see the decline of our once proud burghs. Vibrant cultural and commercial centres have become shells of their former selves. They are victims of out of town retailing, the drift of talent to the cities, the centralisation of services and businesses like banking - and the current recession of course. Yet they also suffer from a loss of confidence - in their desperation to appear cosmopolitan, they have lost faith in the unique locality that made them fascinating.

Stonehaven could teach similar sized towns a thing or two. The Fireball festival is a sign post for its other attractions - there were surfers in the bay on Ne-erday and the harbourside bars were packed. Quite a few will doubtless return in summer. I love the word glocalisation, the use of local culture and singularity to appeal to the wider world. Reviving local traditions, and inviting the rest of the world to watch, might relight a few home fires.

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Morning after postscript...small tourist flings a dead fireball on Ne'erday. Not as easy as it looks on the night... 

 

Sir Iain Noble: The man who gave banking a good name

Sad to hear of the death of Iain Noble, the merchant banker who spent much of his life and personal fortune promoting Gaelic culture and fostering enterprise in the Western highlands. He funded the Gaelic College on Skye, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, as well as many other local businesses that - backed through his boutique banking group. His was the good face of capitalism and certainly a man who gave banking a good name.

Ben Thomson, who knew Sir Iain and recently retired as the head of The Noble group said of him:

"He was always looking to see how he could help develop a sector or develop something new based in Scotland. 

"He was an inspiration to many about how you could develop Scottish companies. He was a great ideas man; he had lots of them, and threw himself into them all enthusiastically. Some of them were 50 years ahead of their time and still haven't come to see the light of day.

"He believed entirely in Scotland empowering itself ... that Scotland (would] thrive under its own steam."

There is a full report here in The Scotsman

 

Keep warm with Motown

 

As you sit down to watch X factor, say a little prayer for Aretha

 

I voted for scouse princess Rebecca Ferguson in the X factor final. She's a self-effacing girl who doesn't realise just what a beautiful soul voice she possesses. It's clear Rebecca grew up listening to Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. Without Aretha there would be no Rebecca. It has just been confirmed that Aretha is suffering from pancreatic cancer and has had surgery. I cannot express in words the joy her voice has given me over the years. She once said: "Soul to me is a feeling, a lot of depth and being able to bring to the surface that which is happening inside, to make the picture clear. The song doesn't matter....it's just the emotion, the way it affects other people"

So as we sit down to watch the X Factor final, let's remember that for all its popularity, it's a derivative show that rides on the shoulders of ground breaking artists. Aretha and her contemporaries defied poverty and racism to create a new kind of sound that continues to uplift us. What joy she must have felt to sing at the inauguration of Barack Obama as her country's first African American President.  Let's say a little prayer for her tonight. Or, if like me you are not religious, you can write to her c/o the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detriot, which was where her late father preached and where she began singing as a child.

It's a big World Wide Web out there, so let's support dotscot on St Andrew's Day

Dot Scot is the campaign to get Scotland its own domain name on the internet.  It shouldn't really be too difficult, with the proliferation of .nets and .orgs.

Catalonia already has its own, which is great for business, culture and tourism. It's a big world wide web out there and the more distinctive you are the better. It's also a great way of uniting the Scottish diaspora, linking a world wide family with affinity to the country.

If the campaign is successful then this site's url could be www.golassiego.scot

That would be a particular boon to me as the .com version of golassiego has been snapped up by an Irish tourism initiative. (the site's current url is www.joanmcalpine.com) 

To celebrate St Andrew's Day the campaign Dot Scot Registry has launched a new website to track support. The site also answers the most frequently asked questions about '.scot'. 

The site can be found at http://www.dotscot.net/ .

The more supporters they can sign up the better so please do register...and send the link on to your friends and encourage them to support '.scot'.

Budget for a better nation

I have a piece in The Guardian today responding to the Scottish budget statement by John Swinney. It was originally commissioned as a post for Comment is Free, but they then promoted it to the main paper. Bear in mind it is written for a readership unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of devolved politics...but I was pleased that Libby Brooks, the paper's deputy comment editor, tweeted it as Scotland showing what a progressive budget could look like.

There is a more detailed look at the budget, explaining the agreement Swinney has reached with local authorities, at Newsnet Scotland. It also usefully details some percentage cuts across various departments. On a related topic, Peter Curran at Moridura looks at how the budget was explained on television and asks pertinent questions about interviewing techniques. 

John Swinney's assertion that Scotland must get full fiscal powers was the most important part of his statement for me. The finance secretary made a good a fist of what he got, but we're worth more than that. Anyway here is the McAlpine Budget, as outlined in a Scotsman column published on Wednesday morning before the speech to parliament. I think Mr Swinney's job is safe, but the point is to illustrate how flexible and creative we could be with real economic power. Let's face it, Britain is bankrupt. What do we have to lose? It would be great if others could suggest alternative budgets of their own for an independent Scotland. Five policies that would make things better.
 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

By Joan McAlpine

There’s little point in a pocket money parliament when the pocket money runs out.  That line got resounding cheers for Alex Salmond at the SNP conference. But for John Swinney, who must today eke out the sweeties from that reduced allowance, those words must be as bittersweet as a bag of soor plooms.

The cabinet secretary for finance is a meticulous man, and we have already had some hints as to how he will manage the hand-out from Big Daddy down south. Further speculation is pointless, as you will know the details some time today.

If Scotland is treated as a child under the current arrangements, it’s more like the successful teen star whose earnings are appropriated by controlling parents “for the good of the family”. The Government Expenditure and Revenues Statistics showed national income from Scottish sources in 2008-9 (the latest figures available) exceeded all state spending here by £1.3bn. That is a budget surplus of  0.9% of GDP (including contributions to bailing out the banks.

In order to cover up their embarrassment, the most recent unionist tack focuses on Scotland being profligate under devolution. We are Britney Speirs or Michael Jackson, too flaky to manage our own considerable wealth.  It’s an absurd analogy designed to mask exploitation – and besides, John Swinney is no Britney Spiers.

In a Scotland with economic powers – independence or full fiscal responsibility – Swinney’s budget would look completely different. It’s an interesting exercise to imagine how a Scottish Chancellor of the Exchequer might operate in the grown up world.

My list is entirely personal, I couldn’t second guess Mr Swinney. However you have to start with those oil revenues, which give a Scottish chancellor more money to play with. They account for a fifth of all UK corporation tax - £6.4 billion in 2009 according to the industry body UK Oil and Gas. This only covers production, the supply chain is estimated to raise another £5-6 billion. 

The Scottish government’s stated intention is to build up an oil fund like that of Norway, which has reached $518 billion. But we could immediately use oil revenue to move our economy away from the distorted UK model built on City of London speculation, property and services. We must develop renewables, skilled manufacturing, engineering, life sciences and digital industries. We need to encourage entreprenuership, and create a friendly environment for the small and medium sized enterprises that account for most private sector employment.

Diverting some oil revenue towards building an infrastructure for renewables would be an important first step – no hanging around for the UK Green Investment Bank. We wouldn’t have the problem of Scotland’s share of the fossil fuel levy being chopped off our block grant.  Indeed we could design a completely different model of transferring cash from carbon fuels to green energy.

Given Scotland’s ambitious targets for renewable electricity generation, it’s not unreasonable that an Edinburgh chancellor would feel able to reduce the cost of petrol at the pump. We have some of the highest prices in the world. It affects all business, not just in rural areas. So let’s use fuel duty, vehicle excise duty and air passenger duty to address any logistical problems we face because of geography.

Specific industries could benefit from a chancellor whose first loyalty is to Scotland. Take the digital industries – everything from mobile phone apps to computer games. Digital Inspirations, a report for Scottish Enterprise 18 months ago, found the sector employed 42,000 in Scotland and generated £3.16 bill. It predicted this could double by 2012 with the right support. Scotland is strong on creativity, but weaker on building commercial value. Digital Inspirations suggested tax breaks or the creation of an industry hub in Dundee. The coalition government in Westminster refused tax breaks and announced a gamers’ hub in London. That’s the sort of thing a Scottish chancellor could fix.

Of course all industries depend on digital infrastructure. The Royal Society of Edinburgh recently pointed out that Scotland was falling behind in high speed broadband – an area that is reserved to London. Westminster shows little inclination to act, other than offering a limited pilot scheme in The Highlands.  The RSE urged the Scottish government to fill the gap but admitted the £100m cost could not be met by the block grant. A Scottish chancellor with priorities closer to home, would not struggle to find the funds to upgrade broadband. What about a text tax to pay for it?  It would please the parents of teenagers. This might sound like a flippant suggestion, and it is. But the substantive point is, that with imagination and flexibility, any government can use the tax system to transfer money to where it will bring most benefit.

A Scotland in surplus could improve all infrastructure more easily if it had access to that surplus. Full fiscal autonomy would also give us the ability to borrow to invest – but not the crazy forfeiting of our future to the banks, which was the model of the Public Finance Initiative. We might choose to emulate the Catalans, who recently issued a government bond worth 1000 euro and offering an interest rate of  4.75%. Ordinary citizens snapped up 1000 million euros worth in the first week of sale.

It’s not just other governments that a Holyrood  chancellor might look to for ideas. The Scottish Green Party turned to the land reform campaigner Andy Wightman to develop an alternative to council tax and business rates. Wightman’s proposal, the Land Value Tax, proposes an annual valuation on unimproved land so property owners would not be penalised for improving their home. The idea is to redistribute the 80-90% gains enjoyed by property speculators - and stop the kind of craziness that cause the crash. It’s untried and new, but an example of the kind of imaginative proposal we could consider. One recent report said LVT could subsidise affordable housing.

The need for minimum alcohol prices would no longer exist with a Scottish exchequer  – we could raise the price of drink through duty without waiting for the UK. We could emulate the Danish experiment in taxing junk food at higher rates, then invest the revenue in free nutritious school meals. It would save the NHS by reducing illnesses such as diabetes.

Myriad options come with full economic power. These are just a few. Others might have better ideas. The important thing is that they are tailored to Scotland’s needs. It beats squabbling over the bag of sweeties. 

 

 

 

Old and new media - the battle for Scotland

Some of the most exciting things happening in Scotland are happening online. That's what I took from the Political Innovation Camp today at The School of Infomatics in Edinburgh. I already knew one of the main speakers, Pat Kane rather well.  It was great to put faces to some bloggers I hadn't met in person, such as James MacKenzie of Better Nation, Peter Curran of Moridura, David Farrer from Freedom in Whisky and of course the redoubtable Caron of Carons Musings. Also caught up with an old colleague from the Herald, David Milne, who is now heading STV's hyperlocal service. It was heartening to meet the young women behind mypolice.org, a tool that allows the public to give their feedback to the force in their own area.

I met some new people who impressed me greatly, such as Peter Geoghegan, an Irish writer living in Scotland who edits Political Insight and another Irishman, Mick Fealty of Slugger O'Toole, the Northern Irish politics, community and culture blog who organised the event along with Paul Evans. Slugger O'Toole is a blog that manages to engages all sides of the debate in Northern Ireland, which is quite an achievement - and something we have not managed to replicate in Scotland to date. Much of the discussion was about this - whether we could have a Scottish hashtag that would link disparate online content - like a permanent scotlandspeaks, the twitter campaign that tried to get Scotland's voice heard during the last general election. At the PI Camp, there was a lot of enthusiasm for establishing so-called "aggregated sites" . It seems to me that this desire to create online communities is already happening naturally. Like minded bloggers are grouping together on aggregated sites such Bella Caledonia and Better Nation. Two sites, Scottish Review and newsnetscotland take this further and strive to create online sites that hope to compete with the mainstream.  Kenneth Roy at Scottish Review  has broken stories. Or these sites highlight news overlooked elsewhere - such as newsnet's campaign on the anti Scottish episode of Any Questions. A couple of weeks later I was invited on the Newsweek on Radio Scotland to discuss the rise of anti-Scottish outbursts.  

As I pointed out in the PI Camp plenary session, many bloggers in Scotland have gone online in frustration at the mainstream media failure to engage positively with the independence debate. At least a third of Scots favour full independence and more than half, according to polls, think real economic power for the Holyrood will help Scotland out of recession.  Despite this, and the Campaign for Fiscal Responsibility attracting many high profile names, our public discourse continues to frame the debate in UK terms, seldom challenging the block grant system or exploring alternatives.  

Bloggers challenge this manufactured consensus. But as a mainstream journalist who now blogs as well, I worry that online activists only reach others with similar views. Established broadcast and print media offer entertainment, fashion, sport, business, breaking news that attracts a wide spectrum of people including, crucially, voters who have yet to make up their minds.  And while many of my independista facebook friends would claim that the MSM is completely without merit, it is material generated by these newspapers and broadcasters that they share and comment on. Often this is original material that you need professional journalists to create. The Scotsman, for example, has devoted a lot of resource to exposing the tram debacle in Edinburgh. Newsnight Scotland was the first outlet to think of interviewing Professor Joe Stiglitz and asking specifically about oil in a Scottish context. And Newsweek, the Radio Scotland Saturday morning show, ran a long interview with Professor Andy Hughes Hallett explaining how Scotland was subsiding England. The reason we know about Stephen Purcell et al, and the scandal about Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, is because my previous paper, The Sunday Times Scotland, put a lot of resources into exposing Labour clientism in greater Glasgow.

Now, of course, the Sunday Times Scotland has been effectively closed down. Other newspapers struggle to keep afloat. Circulations continue to shrink with alarming speed. Investigative journalism, in particular, requires resources. Scotland does not have an philanthropic organisation such as the American propublica which funds public interest reporting. When activists complain about newspapers simply "reprinting political press releases", as can happen, it is often a matter of resources as much as prejudice. A hard pressed reporter with an FOI handed to him on a plate, especially if it's "exclusive" and makes for a strong headline, will likely take it to his or her newsdesk. Real, self generated stories take much longer. They require you to speak to lots of people in the first place, really get to know the subject and spend hours on research. They might also require you to ditch the story given to you by a political contact when you realise that the facts just don't stack up...

Bloggers unhappy with the perceived bias of the mainstream media shouldn't crow too loudly about the troubles of print though. We desperately need more quality public discourse in this country. Can we afford to lose the space we do have? Where are the online spaces that attract Scots who are not necessarily political junkies?   Some of the self described young geeks I spoke to at the PI camp yesterday confessed they got a lot of their news from the BBC website and The Guardian - but they also complained that they couldn't get coverage for their own digital projects in the shrinking Scottish media...a vicious circle. If we get more news from UK wide sources, do we risk becoming Scotlandshire, North UKania...?

I don't think this will happen, phew! I left the PI Camp today feeling pretty optimistic about the future of blogging and political social media in Scotland. Ideally the rise of aggregated sites would be backed by investment to allow them to break more original stories and attract readers from outwith the politically consumed classes - Huffington Post is a good model. It set out to create an online liberal voice for the US but used entertainment to help drive traffic. Even without this largesse, I predict the blogosphere in Scotland will increase its influence, a view shared by the majority of those at yesterday's event. The thing about all media, old and new, is that it is interdependent. Currently, the agenda of newspapers feeds into radio and television. If the circulation of newspapers continues to decline, bloggers and online aggregated sites will become more powerful influencers. The evidence? A man from the BBC checking out the PI Camp, keen to meet as many bloggers as possible. I already get invited onto the radio occasionally as a result of Go Lassie Go.  Social media helps too. The simple act of sharing a story creates a buzz that cannot be ignored. Content producers will take note. 

At the PI Camp, Peter Geoghegan was very informative on how independent online commentary already shapes the agenda in Ireland, where  economists have taken to the blogosphere to explain the financial crisis. In Scotland, we have a good recent example of blogpower re the Dimbleby debacle. The Question Time from Glasgow which excluded Scottish discussions caused immediate anger that was articulated first through the blogosphere by myself,  Gerry Hassan, Scot Goes Pop and Alex Massie among others. I predict that such incidents will become more common. The traditional media are beginning to understand the power of the blogosphere, and cannot ignore what it is telling them.The rise of aggregated sites will accelerate this. If such sites could attract enough investment to fund some original journalism...well who knows where it might go...