It's better for the government that Stewart Stevenson has resigned, even if a lot of people out there - including me - thought it ridiculous to blame one man for the weather. The resignation letter said he had gone because of the failure to communicate with motorists, but we all know he's really gone because of his failure to communicate on Newsnight. As Iain MacWhirter said this morning on Newsweek Scotland, Stevenson just wasn't an "I feel your pain" sort of person. You can read his resignation letter and First Minister's acceptance here
The opposition will crow about getting a scalp - but may live to regret that. The resignation offers Alex Salmond the opportunity to replace an older, unmedia-friendly man with a bright young woman. Two candidates come to mind. Shirley-Anne Somerville and Angela Constance.
Somerville, who I believe is a new mother, is a politics and economics graduate who has worked in media relations for various organisations including the Royal College of Nursing. She's a member of Holyrood's Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee and co-convenor of the cross party group on climate change, both of which fall into Stevenson's brief. (She has already commented on the resignation here) And she has done a great job of exposing the debacle of the Edinburgh trams. I cannot imagine her being caught out on Newsnight, where she is already a regular and confident performer. She is a member of Friends of the Earth and could get on swimmingly with the small Green Group in parliament, who, according to TwoDoctors, didn't find Stevenson particularly chummy. Somerville also has an interest in gender issues such as domestic violence and equal opportunities, which will help in terms of the female vote.
Angela Constance is also a young mother who worked as a social worker in the state hospital of Carstairs before entering politics. A Livingston councillor before she was elected to Holyrood in 2007, she has less parliamentary experience than Somerville but is highly regarded. She is a member of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee and lists her hobbies as jogging and running marathons. Either woman would be a breath of fresh air and give the team a better gender balance. One of the SNP's trump cards over the Labour opposition is the high quality of its front bench, something acknowledged by media commentators. Stevenson's difficulties offered the opposition an opportunity to undermine this widely held view. Now he's gone and a weak link has disappeared with him. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
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 Scottish parliament debate on the Tartan Tax was dispiriting to watch. Far from seeking clarification in the interests of the people they serve, the opposition parties all indulged in point scoring about an issue they didn't actually care about. Far from "allowing the Scottish tax powers to lapse", it seems that the SNP in 2007 inherited a system which was inoperable, at least according to what HMRC told them at the time. I think the word used was "mothballed". But rather than address this rather important new fact, the opposition ploughed on with pre-prepared spontaneous hysteria.
It is pretty obvious from John Swinney's statement that there was a long and protracted row between his officials and those at HMRC over the latter's demands that the Scottish government should pay for a portion of the upgrade of the tax authority's IT systems. The convention normally is that when a Whitehall department makes a change that affects devolved administrations, it is the Whitehall department who pays for it. There are important issues here. To concede to HMRC demands would have set a dangerous precedent. For example can HMRC think-of-a-number any time they like in relation to Scotland? What will they charge to implement Calman, which is based on income tax collected in Scotland (not, of course the important stuff like corporation tax, whisky and oil revenue). So the London Treasury continues to rob us blind and then charge us whatever they like. If Scotland moved to full economic powers with taxes still collected by HMRC, would they hold us over a barrel again? The Revenue is clunky, confused and tangled - and will fight to control every twisted tentacle of its operation.
Perhaps the opposition parties believe you do business by gifting your opponent a gun to hold to your head. After all, that's how Labour and Liberal Democrat gave us a parliament building which over-ran its original cost by several hundred million. The contract was open ended. Same goes for the Edinburgh trams, another Labour/ Lib Dem pet project. Nor did Labour, Liberal Democrat and Tory have any problem handing public contracts to PFI consortiums who will charge us from here to eternity for schools and hospitals. Good Housekeeping is not their strong point.
The other completely duplicitous aspect of opposition argument today was the accusation that Swinney had somehow conspired to strip the parliament of its miniscule tax power and then stage a cover-up. What on earth would the nationalists have to gain from this? What could their motive possibly be? As the opposition well know there was no ulterior motive. Going public would have been a winner for the SNP politically. But Swinney is not in the business of picking fights and breaching confidential negotiations for political gain. Even when the row culminated in a £7m demand by London this year, Swinney felt it would have been discourteous to speak out on the disagreement, clearly hoping it could be resolved. This says a lot about the man and how he operates. He earned the nickname Honest John for a reason. It's something his opponents today could learn from. Calling him a liar is totally unacceptable and will be seen as such. Swinney's budget statement contained a formal phrase about the SVR. So did the budget statements of Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling and the Comprehensive Spending Review of George Osborne. All mentioned the tartan tax as an option. If Swinney was "lying" so were they, as they too knew about the HMRC position. They were all telling the truth because the tax power still exists, it has not lapsed. London is refusing us the machinery to exercise that power (if we wanted, which we don't).
The Scottish Secretary Michael Moore proved himself a far less honourable man than Swinney when he delibrately triggered this row with his "open letter". Ostensibly, his job is to represent Scotland in Westminster - something he has done singularly badly as he is about to present a Scotland Bill that will cut our budget by another £900m a year. But this pretendy part of the job is a figleaf anyway. Moore's raison d'etre is to undermine the Scottish government at every turn, no matter the level of duplicity involved. Moore is trying to distract attention from the cost and flaws of Calman. On several occasions Tavish Scott has tried to spin tartan tax row into an attack on fiscal autonomy eg "the SNP, which bangs on about giving more powers to this parliament, give away the one it already has etc etc..." Given that fiscal autonomy is about taking full control of the economic levers in a way that benefits the people of Scotland, there is no comparison. The tartan tax is so small, that some estimate the cost of implementing it would cancel out any money it raised.
This week the Liberal Democrats had an even more pressing embarrassment than Calman to cope with - the student demonstrations against tuition fees in England. Tavish Scott fulminated away about SVR as students in London were prevented by massed police lines from demonstrating outside the Liberal Democrat head quarters. (Didn't hear much LibDem talk of civil liberties then, eh?)
This was one occasion to be pleased that the BBC national news led with an England-only issue. Nick Clegg's hypocrisy was the big UK story of the day. They even demonstrated on his home turf of Sheffield where at the General Election, students had queued outside polling stations for hours to back him. Then came Reporting Scotland whose viewers must have wondered what on earth was going on in their own parliament. All this sound and fury about nothing more significant than an obsolete, tax...which Labour and The Tories never wanted the Scots to have in the first place.
Any viewer who persevered may have been more struck by Swinney's edited highlight - he didn't want to hand £7m of Scotland's money to HMRC, an organisation whose incompetence had lead to tens of thousands of people paying the wrong amounts of tax. Sounds reasonable to me...and millions of others I imagine.
For a detailed narrative on how the tartan tax story has been distorted day-to-day please go to Moridura
Alan Trench at Devolution Matters has just filed an excellent explanation about how The Treasury deals with devolved governments inadequately. Trench is an academic and politically non aligned. He is incredibly knowledgable about the detail of how government works and this piece is invaluable.
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.
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.
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...
There will be a few raised eyebrows at the news that the campaign photographer used by UK Prime Minister David Cameron is to join the civil servants' payroll. At times of austerity should the state pay for more intimate-yet-flattering pics of Dave and his lovely family? (The government insist the photographer will work across all Whitehall departments).
My view on this might surprise readers. Given that all governments employ politicised advisors [SpAds], often to present policy in the media, I cannot see why this appointment should be any more controversial. We live in a visual culture in which the image often gets more attention than the written word. An official photographer with special access also plays a role in laying down a historical record. Nobody thought twice about informal pictures of Barack Obama and his family as they prepared for inauguration day. In fact, the Whitehouse has its own flickr photostream. These days it seems to show endless pictures of a troubled President on the telephone...
An embedded snapper will never show the whole picture. An unposed picture can be more misleading that the old fashioned formal handouts. It was selected by PR people. The photographer may have been directed. We are unlikely ever to see Sam Cam or the Obamas having a row. These images have the power to manipulate us. They do have worth, but we must remember the circumstances and power-relationships behind their creation.
This is why it remains so important for press photographers to do their jobs, even if that occasionally risks intrusion. One of the best political pictures of the last two decades was taken in a public space by a snapper surrounded by newspaper colleagues who failed to get the same shot. He glanced up at a gauze curtain in time to to see - and capture - a tearful Margaret Thatcher take her last look from the Downing Street window the day she left office. I once worked with the photographer on a less glamorous job. He was freelance, and told me the Number 10 picture earned more money than every other shot he took that year. Despite its impact at the time, I have been unable to find a link to it. The internet means we have an infinity of images at our disposal. But how many are memorable?
Interesting posts over at Moridura, contrasting the demonising of Glasgow granny Margaret Jaconelli with the sympathetic media treatment given to more middle class householders battling Donald Trump. Jaconelli, who you will remember is facing forcible eviction to make way for the Commonwealth Games, won't accept the 30k Glasgow City Council have offered in compensation for the loss of her home and the general disruption to her life. I actually disagree with Moridura regarding the Aberdeenshire residents - as do an number of his posters who feel that a precious area of Scotland is being privatised. I initially felt the environmentalist opponents were a tiny and unrepresentative minority - the North East community welcomed Trump's plans. Now I am less sure. Is the development still as popular? I don't think anyone should be forcibly deprived of their home for a private development. However this will not happen and Donald Trump himself recognises that.
I do, however, agree that there is a double standard in the way both stories are covered. Moridura points out that many parcels of land have changed hands for considerable sums in the past - particularly where Labour councils and developers are concerned. Can I add a little detail? Willie Haughey, the major Labour donor, made £700,000 from a sale of land in Rutherglen, it was reported earlier this year. It was not the first lucrative public sector deal he has pulled off.
How unsporting of Nicola Sturgeon to raise the issue of fiscal powers for Scotland on Question Time. During a discussion about the comprehensive spending review, she tried to explain this crucial aspect of her party's solution to cuts in Scotland. Her point was ruled out of order by David Dimbleby who more or less told her to be quiet. "This is for a UK audience!" said Dimbleby imperiously. That didn't stop the rest of the panel - all flown up from London - piling in with jibes about Ireland, Iceland and Scottish independence that Nicola was refused the chance to address, in Glasgow. It became even more extraordinary a few moments later when, during a discussion about the use of torture, Dimbleby himself raised the unrelated issue of Megrahi's release from prison, and asked the panellists - except Nicola - whether the Scottish government made the wong decision. She did get to make her point, briefly, but not at the invitation of the chairman. It was eye-boggling to behold.
Why does the BBC make a big deal of holding Question Time in Scotland, invite the Deputy First Minister of the SNP lead Scottish government along, then (selectively) ban Scottish issues? A question about the economy ignored the recent Scottish growth figures which were very different from the quoted UK percentage. Large amounts of time were spent discussing the effect of housing benefit changes on central London and whether Mayor Boris used inappropriate language. Simon Schama made a historian's joke about the Battle of Hastings. This programme was a perfect illustration of how the corporation don't get Scotland. It's worse than that. They seem to be pursuing their own campaign to deny Scottish difference, speaking instead to an imaginary and uniform country called Ukania. The terms of the discussion were clearly laid out - ie only talk about the "UK in Europe" or "Britain's position on torture" or "the UK economy" etc etc. The BBC seem unwilling to acknowledge that in Scotland, all these subjects are set in a different context. At one point last night, a member of the panel mentioned the aircraft carriers being built on the Clyde, how useless they were, how the contract was fixed etc. The Glasgow audience - and Nicola Sturgeon as MSP for Govan - may have had a different perspective. But it was impermissible.
You can put money on the fact that the BBC will use the location of last night's broadcast to demonstrate their commitment to Scotland. How misleading and dishonest. Question Time ignored the big story this week on the emergency legislation in Holyrood to bring police detention procedures into line with European Human Rights law after a Supreme Court ruling. If something similar had happened in respect to English legal procedures, can you imagine Question Time ignoring it on the grounds that it wasn't relevant to that part of the UK covered by Scots Law? Every week Scotland sits through Question Time discussions that are irrelevant because they pertain to English health and education. Couldn't south Britain do the same on the rare occasions when Question Time comes from North of the Border?
Clearly not. I long ago came to the conclusion that it is impossible to make a network news/political programme that "speaks to the whole of the UK" but also gives proper weight to matters of import in Scotland. These two aims contradict each other because ninety per cent of the population of the UK live in England.
I have no wish to take Question Time off our screens, it's a programme I enjoy, as does most of the viewing public, who relish the chance to see politicans battle with each other and "ordinary people". It works well because it's properly funded. And here lies the problem. If the BBC was truly interested in representing the interests of all its license fee payers, high end programming like Question Time would also be made for a Scottish audience in Scotland. The BBC currently offer a wide variety of political and news content in their television channels and radio stations which address different social classes and age groups. They vary in tone from the youth targeted Radio One Newsbeat, to the populist but informative (if you live in England) news bulletins at Six and Ten to the more highbrow Newsnight. Add on the Daily Politics and the vastly different approaches of Radios Four, Five and Two and you really do have something for everyone...in England. This is not an attack on our neighbour. It's just a matter of arithmetic. Most people in the UK live in England and have no real interest in discussing the curriculum for excellence, the merits of fiscal responsibility or the integrity of Scots Law in the age of the Supreme Court. Indeed, why should they care?
Even a small proportion of resources devoted to the the panoply of UK coverage listed above would make a big difference if focused on Scotland. This is not a question of entertainment, it's about enhancing our democracy. Scotland only gets to see a Question Time style line up of politicians during election campaigns. They never hear such a panel justify themselves alongside others in public life, like our successful businessmen, thinkers, writers and social entrepreneurs. Certainly never on prime time television and with the kind of slick, expensive production values that we come to expect from network shows. How good would it be to hear such a mixed panel discuss Holyrood matters next to questions about the EU budget and President Obama's mid term problems? Scotland just has to make-do. This imbalance further contributes to the erosion of national esteem. It suggests Scottish affairs are just kid-on stuff. Pretendy programmes. Pretendy parliament. Pretendy aspirations. Cringe, cringe. So our young people who set their sights high learn that their ambitions can only be achieved furth of inconsequential Scotland.
Is it deliberate? One doesn't like to indulge in conspiracy theories, but given that the BBC is committed to "bring the nation together" you have to ask whether placing Scotland in the third division is strategic. Certainly the panicky manner in which Dimbleby slapped down Sturgeon last night suggested a firm "no Scotch stuff" line was laid down in advance. Great efforts have been made in recent years to increase the amount of network programming made in Scotland - but this too must meet the needs of a UK wide audience. That is where more of Scotland's proportion of the license fee is going. It should instead be funding material that will enhance our understanding of ourselves, modern Scottish society and increase participation in public life.
There does seem to be a more strident Britishness abroad, an engineered cohesion if you like. I recall editions of Question Time many years ago when, on the rare occasions they visited Scotland, did address issues of relevance to this country - explaining them to English viewers if necessary. What has changed? Perhaps the success of the nationalists in winning power has put the British back into the BBC. But how, exactly, does that sit with the broadcaster's duty to impartiality?
It's fast becoming a social media cliche, but the Random List still pulls in the page-hitters. My last one on the Papal Visit was well read, and the biog bullet points proved strangely popular. In that spirit I give you Day Two of the SNP Conference in Perth. It's a particularly attractive blogging option because (a) there's a lot of material to get through and this is a fun way to summarise the best bits, and (b) The time is now 2am.
Viral video. The new SNP viral video features a young rock band - Jakil - playing a version of the old Canned Heat number Let's Work Together. It shows Scots from all walks of life doing just that. Someone suggested I might wish to share it on my social media networks "if you like it". I do, and so here it is. I'm particularly looking forward to the classic soul version featuring my hero Al Green....
Smouldering John Swinney no, really.... I don't want to damage his reputation for frugal moderaton, but John Swinney's speech was - whisper it - somewhat passionate. At the end he suggested that Scotland could no longer afford to remain in the UK Union. We have been in surplus for four years while UK was in deficit. You can read the whole speech here.http://www.snp.org/node/17386
I always thought the Fair Maid of Perth was invented by Sir Walter Scott to add romantic interest to an extremely complicated plot line in his novel. But I see that her house is being restored right opposite the multi-storey car park I am using. Historical dramatisation is all the rage again so who cares if Sir Walter took a few liberties with the fair maid? Cultural tourists don't..
While waiting for coffee I meet the leading soprano Alicia Hayes, who has just started working for Bruce Crawford MSP, the parliamentary business manager. Alicia has sung with opera companies all over the world, often playing the romantic lead. She's staying closer to home on account of her baby daughter these days, we will surely see her on the political stage before too long.
I meet Liberal Democrat Andy Myles, a facebook friend who's fair scunnered with some of the compromises made by his party leaders in coalition at Westminster. He's here in his professional capacity as a lobbyist for Scottish Environment Link which represents dozens of individual groups. I am particularly interested in the human ecology of the countryside - eg preserving its people as well as flora and fauna. Turns out he is very keen on repopulating the highlands and breaking up sporting estates. He offers examples of mixed use tenure. Environmentalists encourage cattle being wintered outside when possible, especially in woodland. Would love to taste some of the beef that spends months grazing in pine forests around Abernethy. Is it aromatic?
Lunchtime fringe meeting. But which one? The SNP conference has grown considerably in recent years with lots of groups like the charity mentioned above keen to influence policy makers. One of the downsides is that a lot of interesting fringe meetings are scheduled for the same time. At 12.30 today you could chose to learn more about Victim Support, Scotland's Colleges, the challenges of Foster Care, the difficulties older women have in accessing the right breast cancer care and a Scottish Social Enterprise seminar on how communities can buy their assets. I was tempted by a Reform Scotland/NESTA discussion on reforming public services but went instead for...
Dragons' Den. Sponsored by the Centre for Public Policy Research, Stewart Stevenson the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Minister lead a team of dragons listening to pitches for a new Forth Crossing, upgrading the Glasgow Subway and introducing a smartcard for all public transport. All three had merit. Was particularly impressed with Jonathan Findlay the Labour councillor who chairs SPT, who was brave enough to come before the nationalist audience. He was applauded too. It is surely something of a scandal that the Glasgow Subway (rebuilt in 1970) and the Forth Road Bridge, are major postwar engineering projects that have scandalously failed to pass the test of time. If we must invest billions to replace or renew, let's take a tip from those sustainable Victorians and make our bridges and tunnels last longer than a few decades.
Angus Brendan MacNeil, the MP for the Western Isles and hard-working Barra crofter, has sacrificed the Mod to attend conference. He directs me to this funny exchange from Hansard on the Arc of Prosperity. How many times do you hear that Ireland and Iceland still enjoy standards of living far higher than our own...?
Fantastic fringe meeting on the creative industries with Jim Mather, minister for Enterprise, Andrew Dixon, of Creative Scotland, Jackie MacKenzie, Head of Innovation Programmes Scotland at NESTA and Rob Woodward at STV. One of these meetings that you really wish had been webcast. Andrew Dixon has had a few knocks but I was very heartened by his presentation. He seems genuinely enthused by what he has found here - and keen to grow audiences for artists in Scotland. The more local something is, the more compelling it can be to a global audience. Is the word glocal? He has identified music as a vibrant cultural resource that doesn't get enough attention. Jackie had interesting things to say on education - the divide between art and science, in both school and university, is damaging our competitiveness in computer games. Artistic kids need the maths skills to programme as well, say developers. Breadth is supposed to be the rock on which our educational system stands, so Scotland should be able to find a way around this. On a positive note it's a shame Jim Mather is retiring, though he will be 68 at the close of the next parliament and has many other plans. Until next May we should celebrate having as Enterprise Minister a highly successful entreprenuer who quotes Hugh Macdiarmid And Richard Florida. It doesn't get better really...
Chat to representatives of The Police Federation who say they have more access to government since the SNP took power than under any previous Scottish administration. They are not the first group to say this. I wonder why previous ministers were so remote - did they fear contradicting London policy by accidently promising what they could not deliver?
Media reception in the evening, hosted by Scottish Power. Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is in good humour. She gives the diarists a nice story about her own social networking slip. Recently married, she tried to change her relationship status to reflect this and link to her husband Peter Murrell. Unfortunately the predictive language married her off the party press officer Paul Togneri. It took a few desperate phone calls to undo her cyber-bigamy, without a puzzling broken heart appearing on the profile...
Alex Salmond arrives at conference today (Saturday) fresh from Dehli where he joined Glasgow Provost for the "handover" ceremony fo the Commonwealth Games. The question on everyone's lips is: "Will he bring the hat?"
WHAT can you tell me about Pope Benedict XVI? I ask the primary seven pupils of St Ninian's in Gourock. "He's the first Pope to have an iPod!" they cry in unison. "And he plays Mozart and Bach on it."
The kids from my old school have a better grasp of the papal biography than I did back in the day. Eilidh Hudson knows he speaks eight languages and is learning another - Portuguese. He was forced to join the Hitler Youth at 14. "He never went," says Ryan McGregor, 11. "His cousin with Downs Syndrome was killed by The Nazis."
