Ghoul's Draw!

In a previous employment, many moons ago, some of my colleagues of a ghoulish inclination set up an office 'Ghoul's Draw'. For those of you of normal human feelings, this was a sweepstake in which participants selected a celebrity and put a certain amount of cash into the pot. Whichever celebrity died first won the pot for the selecting member of staff.

Not particularly edifying, I know, but possibly slightly less boak-inducing than the sight of senior politicians from the UK and US falling over themselves to claim first dibs on the right to demand the death of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi in Greenock Jail, and condemning the Scottish Government for employing the law to release a man to die at home.

Leaving aside the somewhat knotty problem of guilt or innocence, it makes me grue to listen to all this 'violent agreement' - especially knowing that it has little or nothing to do with politicians concerns for the feelings of Pan Am flight 103 - but is concerned with claiming party political advantage in forthcoming elections, and being able to blame BP, or Tony Blair, or Gordon Brown, or (especially) Kenny MacAskill - even if our US cousins will hardly have heard of him. Even our First Minister, on (UK) Newsnight was so keen to have a go at David Miliband's entry into the debate, that he invented a reference to him in their preceding report! (Perhaps he had been shown the corresponding Newsnicht report that did mention him). You were in the right, Alex - you didn't need that.

I recall, at the time of Mr MacAskill's decision, thinking that - while he had made some errors in how he acted - his basic decision was one I supported, and I was deeply disappointed in the attitudes of opposition parties (of all shades) who attempted to make political capital. I also thought - and still think that the decision reflected well on Scotland - and the hostility expressed by some (especially American) commentators, reflected poorly on them.

During the General Election campaign - and despite the assertion by at least one London commentator* that the poor showing of the SNP was down precisely, to this compassionate release decision - it certainly did NOT feature as any kind of a major issue here. I had the impression, that whatever individuals' views on release, there was acceptance that it was a difficult decision, arrived at after full investigation.

It seems clear - whatever veils David Cameron wishes to pull across Barack Obama's eyes - that the decision was legal, decent, and taken after proper advice, and without lobbying either directly or indirectly. Gordon Brown was publicly clear that it was a decision for the Scottish Government, and had he expressed a view (one way or the other) it would have been (rightly) seen as interference.

Its a pity that his successor is so keen to heap blame on that government, that he is willing to exploit the dead and dying to do so.

*David Runciman, in the London Review of Books - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n10/david-runciman/is-this-the-end-of-the-uk 

The return of the Baron!

Last night I watched some of Question Time from Edinburgh - I am not a fan of this format, so only watched some of it. However it was intriguing to note - amongst the weel kent faces chosen to represent most parties - Shadow SofS for Int Development; Deputy First Minister; Sec of State for Scotland - who the Tories had representing them. The unelected and (for a considerable while) unheard of, Baron Forsyth of Drumlean - yes it was Michael Forsyth!!

A distinctly odd choice to represent a party that is discussing how it can rid itself of its ‘unelectable in Scotland’ tag, Forsyth was Thatcher’s Gauleiter in Scotland - her defender of the Poll Tax, and PFI. He was ennobled when they lost the 97 election and went into a sort of Conservative purdah - not active or commenting on politics during Hague, Howard or Duncan Smith’s leaderships. Yet here he is, commenting on behalf of the Tories again! What can it mean?

Do the Tories a) want to remind everyone in Scotland of the Thatcher years? b) Think an ‘elder statesman’ gives their position gravitas? or c) Think everyone in Scotland will have forgotten his history? Was he perhaps parachuted in over the heads of the Scottish party (and David Mundell)?  And what of Forsyth himself? It was widely understood at the time of his defeat, that he had let it be known he would not be active politically again. His reappearance raises questions about that - did the Tories deliberately cut him adrift, and is he now back in favour?

In any case his revival can only hole the Tory myth about  ‘a new party’, well below the water line. To accept the kind of political ‘new brutalism’ that Forsyth espouses, as the public line from your party means that the New Tories can only be a retread of the Thatcherites and don’t mind that being known, (and incidentally that Forsyth thinks so too!).

They, however, have very little left to lose in Scotland. The same cannot be said of their ConDem partners - represented last night by Michael Moore (no not the good one!). Quite frankly he looked the most uncomfortable, and the barracking that his repetition of the LibDem excuse for cuts (honest, it was worse than we thought) got, suggests that Tavish Scott and other Scottish LD MSPs are right to be looking nervously over their shoulders at 2011.

A brief mention of Ed Byrne is in order too. Why is it that the very sensible position, that public spending cuts are not only not essential, but in fact damaging at this time, was left to a comedian to make? The fact that he made the point very well, does not hide the paucity of the debate from mainstream politicians. ‘The main problem with the Labour government was that it was too like the Tories.’ Too right, Ed - too right.

'Courageous' Herald backing for IoD!

Here is a letter I submitted to the Herald in response to their over-the-top promotion of the IoD/IER Pensions Commission report today. I suspect  that (if published at all) it will be heavily edited to take out crits of their editorial decisions. So here it is in full.

That the Institute of Directors is claiming that public sector pensions are ‘unaffordable’, is hardly news - they have been attacking public service pensioners ever since they destroyed decent pensions for their own workforces, while hanging onto their own gold-plated pensions. 

That they have combined with the right wing Institute for Economic Affairs to form a ‘commission’ in order to have another vehicle to propagate these attacks is - at best - a minor item of news.

That the misinformation this then produces is deemed worthy of a front page lead, an analysis piece and an editorial suggests serious editorial misjudgement. 

Many adjectives could be used to describe the report from this ‘commission’ - ‘one-sided’, ‘hypocritical’, ‘biased’ might all be considered. ‘Independent’ however, is so far from reality as to make one question who has produced the description.

That The Herald - previously a paper that prided itself on its fairness - has been a willingly accomplice in all this, makes me deeply worried for the future of news reporting.

At a time when concern amongst all pensioners is high, this kind of misreporting is hugely unfair to the many public sector workers and pensioners (with pensions averaging less than £5k per annum) who rely on your paper for balanced information.

It doesn’t seem that the sudden leap of previous editor-in-chief, Donald Martin to the Sunday Post, has not changed the overall ‘anti-public-sector’ line of The Herald. I am not clear whether new e-i-c, Jonathan Russell has yet arrived from the Record/Sunday Mail, but it appears that Tim Blott does not want too much change.

Given the traditionally high level of Herald readership amongst white-collar public sector staff, a decision to have triple-pronged attacks on their much valued pensions in their paper could be seen as ‘courageous’ - in the Sir Humphrey sense of the word!!

Disappointing and ill-informed attack

It is extremely disappointing to have a well-respected columnist such as Iain MacWhirter descend to the depths previously occupied by business-funded campaigns such as the Tax Dodgers Alliance, Reform, and the CBI, and attacking public sector workers.

In calling for public sector pay freezes, pension and job cuts in his recent column in the Herald (Weds 1 July 2010 - http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/comment/iain-macwhirter/there-are-far-better-targets-for-cuts-than-front-line-services-1.1038541), he lines himself directly behind the business (and ConDem) view of the economy that he has previously sought to distance himself from.

It is even more disappointing as more research would have at least challenged the myths that he is now repeating.

Myth 1) We have to cut public spending to balance the books. 

The affordability of our public services as we come out of recession is a matter of political choice, not some economic inevitability. Effective progressive taxation of those in our society who can afford it, and of the businesses that largely caused the recession with their inexcusable gambling would take clear steps towards balancing the books - while ensuring that the payment for the recession was borne by those who caused or benefited from the crisis, not those who are already suffering because of it.

In addition the potential contribution to a reduction of the deficit, of a resumption of economic growth - of which there were some signs - is ignored by the Cleggameron (and by Iain). Maybe this is because their emergency attack on public spending is the most obvious way to ensure that private sector growth is stifled at birth, and that we re-enter the recession we are seeking to pull away from.

Myth 2) ‘Front-line’ services can somehow be saved by cutting ‘administration’. 

The ‘back-room’ is essential to ensuring the ‘front-line’ can actually deliver. How many police officers will have to be withdrawn from ‘front-line’ policing to do the jobs of essential police support staff who have been sacrificed on the altar of fiscal responsibility? Why does Iain wish social workers to be in offices filling in forms previously done by redundant administrators rather than out dealing with families who need support?

Oh  - while Iain didn’t mention it, can we also knock on the head ‘savings from shared services’? In fact any financial advantages that may accrue from such developments don’t come along for five or six years after they are started - and in the beginning they usually require increased spending as new systems, structures and buildings are bought, tried and implemented.

Iain has obviously not bothered, either, to research the level of administration in our NHS before repeating the attacks of the CBI et al. It is a little publicised fact that the NHS actually does rather well in international comparisons that involve measuring administration costs. Recently the Commonwealth Fund ranked the UK NHS no 1 for efficiency and 2 overall (the US health system came 7th).

Myth 3) Public sector pay and pensions are ‘gold-plated’ and unaffordable.

While not defending the pay levels of some senior executives and clinicians - and in particular not the alien ‘bonus culture’ introduced into the public sector by Cleggameron’s antecedent - Margaret Thatcher (and shamefully maintained by new Labour), two points should have been clear:

a) these levels and bonuses have largely been justified by politicians in order that they can ‘compete’ for senior staff with the private sector. It remains true that the level of pay for jobs of equivalent responsibility are still much higher in the private sector. And of course the bonus culture in our finance sector is alive and well, despite its past failures.

b) to judge public sector pay from the level of that of the best paid Chief Exec’s salary is to look through the wrong end of the microscope. Most public sector staff are not highly paid or pensioned. Even Cleggameron suggests a pay freeze should not affect the lowest paid, and the need for a ‘living wage’ campaign in (and outwith) our public services tells its own story. Most public sector workers get a pension of under £5,000 a year - hardly gold-plated. And the horror stories about the ‘black holes’ in such pension schemes are almost always based on the bizarre scenario that everyone will retire at once - something that even the ConDem plans for the public sector do not envisage.

Of course responsible public servants want to ensure that money is not wasted in delivering the essential services they do - that is why Local Government in Scotland reported  £258 m of savings in 2008-9 and has reinvested them in the services we need. 

Also it is true that particular areas of spending will be judged ‘wasteful’ or not, depending on one’s political viewpoint, and it might be profitable to start a debate on some of these. Can I start  by throwing into the mix;  scrapping Trident replacement, ID cards and abolishing PFI/PPP and the Scottish Futures Trust? Lets give the new government at least one cheer for one of those. 

‘Nothing should be ruled out’ indeed, but it is a pity that Iain does rule out using public spending to support those suffering because of irresponsible financial speculation, and driving growth back into the economy. It is apparently inevitable that we remain in the failed economy of speculation where those who depend on public services, and those who deliver them have to suffer further so that bankers can maintain their bonuses.