The GUU debate - This House believes in an independent Scotland

Last night, STV, to their credit, provided a live feed from the Glasgow University Union debate on the motion that This House believes in an independent Scotland. Unfortunately, I missed John Nicolson's and Frank McKirgan’s opening speeches for the motion and Kevin Sneader opening for the opposition. (The sound quality of the STV feed was OK but the video was appallingly poor. Quite why it should be so hard to transmit an adequate image across – in my case - miles or so, when we can transmit perfect images across the globe is not clear to me. Still …)

The motion was defeated, and that says nothing about the likelihood of Scotland achieving its independence, any more than the notorious Oxford Union debate motion of 1933, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country", passed by 275 votes to 153, said about Britain going to war in 1939.

The general atmosphere of the debate was that of a self-congratulatory, complacent establishment elite, well lubricated by the national beverage, having a re-union with auld acquaintances, kilted, sporraned, privileged and utterly remote from the brutal realities of life for many Scots in 2011.

The underlying atmosphere, however, was a very different one, that of a complacent elite who had done very nicely, thank you, out of the United Kingdom, uneasily aware that they were fast becoming irrelevant to their country -if indeed they regarded that as Scotland - and that they were on the wrong side of history.

This was pointed up by the composition of the teams. The team for the motion included a journalist, two lawyers and a politician, and the opposing team  a vice-president of Proctor & Gamble, two directors of management consulting firms and the MD of a venture capital company: three out of four of the opposing team were not resident in Scotland and not eligible to vote in the referendum.

I would like to give more time to analysis of this debate, not because it in any way predicts the outcome of the referendum – nor would it had the vote gone the other way – but because it was very revealing as to core elements of the unionist argument, and the kinds of people who are advancing it. Unfortunately, I cannot do this in full because of the speakers I missed. I hope for a repeat  of the recording, or a transcript being made available.

But I will offer my impressions, based on what I did hear.

One of the opposition speakers, Gordon Peterson, former rugby internationalist and now ‘innovation consultant’, after announcing that his wife and mother were in the audience, then opened with an anecdote of a pre-marital sexual adventure with a transexual that involved “heavy pechin’” and closed with a reference to a wet dream. However hilarious this kind of content might be at all-male rugby dinners and ‘innovation consulting’ engagements, it seemed to me not only inappropriate for a mixed audience, one containing his wife and mother, but also deeply irrelevant to the debate. But it seemed to go down well enough with the GUU audience. Perhaps standards have changed …

But let me come to a more significant point. Austin Lally, the second speaker opposing the motion made the following remarkable statement as his core argument for retaining the Scotland in the UK.

“Scotland has a purpose in this world that transcends her borders … If we choose to leave the UK, we will leave behind a conservative, Atlanticist, eurosceptic, intolerant, permanently conservative rump, which will change the balance of power in England, which will change the balance of power in Europe, which will be a bad force in the world. My argument is that Scotland can lead the UK, the UK can lead in Europe, and we can make the world a better place, and fairer place, in line with our destiny.”

Austn Lally, advancing this extraordinary argument was clearly of a Labour persuasion. Leaving aside the fact that it is probably deeply insulting to the people of England, Wales and  Northern Ireland, it in fact contains the central reasons why Scotland should get out of the 1707 Union as fast as possible.

A few figures -

Out of 650 seat in Westminster, Scotland has 59 – just over 9%. The 2013 review proposes 600 seats, of which Scotland will have 52 – just under 8.7%

It doesn’t take an Einsteinian grasp of mathematics to assess just what influence that represents if the UK had a truly representative democracy, with proportional representation. But we don’t, thanks to the Tories and a significant block of Labour MPs and Lords, including our very own Lord Reid, who mounted a virulent campaign to protect the first past the post system. (Of course, this same group installed a form of proportional representation for Holyrood that would neuter the SNP. Didnae work, did it?)

As a result of this, we had a Labour Government dominated by Scots for 13 years, whose contribution making the world “a better and fairer place, in line with our destiny” was to increase the gap between rich and poor, increase child poverty and launch two destructive wars – one illegal – and wreak death and destruction on innocent men, women and children of two other countries, while killing a significant number of British soldiers in the process. So much for the morality of Labour, which may be summed up in two words – Blair and Iraq. As for the morality of Westminster, the expenses scandal that rocked the nation revealed a greedy, amoral, unscrupulous political class feathering their own nests, one in which criminal Scottish MPs and Lords featured.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the latest YouGov poll is summed up in a Scotland on Sunday headline today as English move away from being British. They have every reason to – being British - i.e. being part of the corrupt conspiracy undemocratic of wealth and power called the UK - has delivered them into the hands of unrepresentative Scottish carpetbaggers called the Labour Party for 13 years, and now an unhappy and incompetent Coalition of rich and privileged men and women who are busy destroying the jobs and the fragile economic base of the most vulnerable, while protecting the rich and their own narrow circle of friends and financial backers.

Professor Murray Pittock, closing for the proposers of the motion – the pro-independence team – summed up the debate perfectly. He observed that in the 28 years since he had first stood at the lectern in such debates, nothing in the arguments of those opposing the independence of their country had changed. “Then the argument were about devolution: now they are about independence – and they are the same arguments the same objections. The same tittle tattle of fear, bad jokes, insults and shouting …”

That about summed it up. I hope this will be re-broadcast – Scotland should hear it and judge.

Scottish Labour leadership candidates–The Politics Show

There they are, ducks in a row – Johann Lamont MSP, Ken Macintosh MSP and Tom Harris MP.

What do they stand for? Well, they're all for fairness and equality - aren't we all - but they're against the independence of the country they want to represent, Scotland.

And by definition, they're

in favour of retaining nuclear weapons and WMDs in Scottish waters

against Scotland having an independent voice in the EU

against Scotland having a seat at the UN

against Scotland having its own foreign policy and its own defence forces

against Scotland having the right to decide when its servicemen and women are sent to die in foreign wars.

Do we really need to know more than this?

A CONTRAST TO THE ABOVE

Margaret Curran exposes the vacuum at the heart of Team Scotland

The sound of a lonely wind blowing through the vacuum of Labour's policies - no idea what they stand for, forgotten what they used to stand for ...

Scottish Labour – they’ve learned nothing, forgotten nothing. But they’ve rediscovered a place called Scotland, after a long amnesia.

And Team Scotland will save the people of Scotland from the government they’ve elected twice, the second time with a massive, decisive majority – the SNP, and their wicked leader, Alex Salmond, and separation – Labour can’t bring itself to say independence. Of course, they’ll do all the saving from England – Westminster to be precise.

And what does Labour now stand for? Well, democracy, motherhood – well, all that stuff … They feel no need to spell it out.

But they have one shining, eternal principle, one that they’ll die for, metaphorically speaking – the right of England to rule the Scots!

We understand at last, Margaret – that’s why you and Cathy buggered off down the high road to England, well away from the grinding realities of the daily lives of your constituents. And it’s much nicer in the Palace of Westminster, with all the delights of London on a fat salary and expenses, although since Michael – sorry, Lord Martin went, they’re not quite what they were.

Aye, right …

Defining Scotland’s independence

Before defining independence, let’s define dependence …

To depend is to be controlled by, or have an outcome or outcomes determined by something or somebody else.

To be dependant, a person or group of  people are reliant on another, especially for financial support, and be subordinate in some way to another.

Dependence is the state of being dependent and reliant on something or somebody else, and dependency is anything subordinate or controlled by another.

Scotland is currently all of the above, with some reduction of the the state of dependence resulting from The Scotland Act of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. This partial reduction in dependency is called devolution – statutory granting of certain powers by the central state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to Scotland, which up to 1707 was a kingdom and independent state.

This devolution of powers is de jure unitary and the enabling legislation can be amended or revoked entirely by the central government - Westminster - by another act of the UK Parliament. Scotland has therefore a limited, and conceivably temporary reduction of its dependence.

Independence is the fact or process of independence – it is the state of not being dependent, or the process of ending a state of dependency.

Independence is the natural state of free individuals and free peoples, and the history of the human race on our planet has been in large part a history of struggle to achieve that independence or recover an independence lost to another.

But individuals always recognised their vulnerability in a hostile world, and that brought a recognition of the values of cooperation with others and the reality of a state of interdependence. Accepting therefore the necessity of a measure of dependency to achieve true independence was inevitable, providing the individual could opt out at any time, sacrificing the benefits of interdependency for personal freedom and accepting the vulnerability that came with that freedom.

Such early interdependent groups were always significantly influenced by two things – family and location. The bonds of kinship and the emergence of stable communities - when a nomadic lifestyle was supplanted by one based on agriculture - allied to geographical features and natural boundaries of territory led inevitably to the idea of a country and nation.

Scotland is a country and a nation, but it is not presently a state. Independence - and only full independence – will make it a state again. As the independent state of Scotland, it will still be interdependent, and that interdependence will be expressed through agreements on trade, commerce, culture and defence. Scotland will be part of the communities that we share these islands with, the English, Welsh and Irish peoples, of the European Community as a member state, of the Scandinavian communities as their near neighbours, and with the global community of nations through a seat in the United Nations.

But Scotland’s relationship with others will be by free and voluntary agreement as a sovereign nation state, and the agreements regulating its interdependence with others will be determined by negotiation and sealed by agreements and treaties that will last until Scotland decides that they no longer serve the interests of its people.

Such a relationship was intended by the Act of Union of 1707. That Union, initially of two free and sovereign kingdoms, has ceased to serve any purpose it may have had in its highly controversial and bitterly contested beginnings.

It will be ended when the Scottish people decide that they wish to be free of it, and they will make that historic choice soon, after full democratic debate, in a single referendum expressing their democratic will.

Any attempt to distort and misrepresent facts by biased and inaccurate media coverage, or attempts to frustrate that democratic will by the profoundly undemocratic forces of the British Establishment, or attempt to gerrymander the results or distort and pervert the process by the Westminster government will be recognised as such by the Scottish people, and they will respond appropriately within the law of Scotland, the spirit of international law and principles of liberty and equality.

 

MY POSITION AS A VOTER AND A SCOT

The only principles I need to guide me in my choice are these -

Independence is the fact or process of independence – it is the state of not being dependent, or the process of ending a state of dependency.

Independence is the natural state of free individuals and free peoples

I want a nuclear-free Scotland – free of nuclear weapons and bases

I want a Scotland with full fiscal and tax raising powers

I want a Scotland with full control of its foreign policy, defence capability and the decision to commit its defence forces

I am prepared to trust my elected government to negotiate all matters relating to these objectives. I expect them to consult with the Scottish people on detailed measures only to the degree that it does not prematurely show their negotiating hand or constrain the necessary flexibility that all negotiators must have.

I do not require a second referendum to ratify the agreement reached on the detailed terms of the independence agreement, providing none of the deal breakers above are compromised.

I reject totally the rights of any other country or nation to vote in that referendum, or to claim a right of veto over it, or its results in any shape or form.

I am one voter and one voice, and I can only hope that a majority of those eligible to vote in a Scottish referendum will share my position. I will abide by the democratic decision of that referendum, providing it is conducted legally and properly in accordance with principles of Scots law, UK law where relevant under the Act of Union, and the principles of international and European law.

I will live with a result I don’t like providing these conditions are met, but I reserve my human right and my rights as a free Scot to reject any outcome where these conditions are not met.

Westminster lectures the people on decline in morality

THE RIOTS

This is the political system that tells the people their morality and values are deficient, and blames the young, their parents, teachers - everyone but themselves ...

The English riots - weekend thoughts …

The riots have subsided, but the danger has not. The Government, who should be relaxing with a post coital cigarette, blowing smoke rings after their heroic efforts to save the nation, are instead engaged in an unseemly spat with the Metropolitan police, who are accusing the Cameron/Clegg Gang of blowing smoke in the faces of the people by claiming that they had saved the nation from the rampaging, Blackberry-inspired mob and police incompetence.

Little sense has been talked on the media, with elderly historians like David Starkey (last night on Newsnight) displaying their complete failure to understand the present, whatever their understanding of the past may be, Kelvin McKenzie spluttering his tabloid rage and indignation in a studio discussion, and John ‘The Baron’ Prescott in equally pop-eyed, incoherent populist mode on the Question Time Special (whatever it was, this edition certainly wasn’t special!), railing against the Government and the Establishment as though he hasn’t been part of it for far too long for most of us.

Such logic and calm analysis as there has been has come almost exclusively from the young, especially the articulate young people who actually live in places from which the violence has sprung, and these young voices were able to effortlessly demolish the wet-lipped, uncomprehending incoherent, and  blustering  outpourings of the Starkeys, McKenzies and Prescotts. These young commentators maintained their effortless cool and their logical thrust in the face of their elders-but-most-certainly-not-betters, and they made a fair showing of trying to conceal their amused contempt for the more ludicrous demonstrations of how out of touch they were with street realities.

In fact, one of the most-wet lipped (mainly the lower lip) tirades of the week came from Michael Gove, who was born to be an old fogey and has already perfected the style. Directed against Harriet Harman, who could have been vulnerable to properly directed arguments, Gove’s rant was totally ineffective, but delightfully amusing, as he came close to spontaneous combustion in the studio.

THE MEDIA

This has been a strange week for the broadcast media. In terms of instant visual coverage of events, they were in their element, and excelled themselves. As far as political analysis went, they resorted to clichéd interviewing styles and clichéd questions, and their selection of commentators consisted in the main of rounding up the usual suspects to deliver their confident banalities.

When they did get a least some of the right voices on their programmes, the presenters were often poor at directing and controlling the debate. Such real people as they did find seem to have been the result of accident, rather than design. When they did stumble across reality, in fairness, they recognised it and made the most of it, but to the point of repetitiveness on occasion.

The politicians whose greed, lack of vision and lack of humanity had led to the riots, predictably seized upon selected instances and individuals to bend them to their pathetic narrative of excuse and blame.

Print media, as it does in the face of such rapidly unfolding events, ran desperately behind the story, and mainly failed in what is their new primary role of providing the kind of detailed examination of facts and sober, cold-light-of-day commentary. Instead, they tried to ape the television coverage, and failed miserably.

Neither television nor the print media showed any evidence that they really understood the nature and implications of the new media.

Our politicians and pundits certainly don’t understand it, in spite of their cack-handed efforts at using Twitter, Facebook, etc.

We had a former senior police officer, Brian Paddick, asking why the police had not been “on Twitter and Blackberries” in advance of the riots. He seemed unaware of how these two manifestations of the new media actually worked. It would require something on the scale of GCHQ to monitor them, not to mention a radical change in the law, and the monitoring would be nullified by instantaneous modification of behaviour by the young. Young people find it difficult to contain their amusement and contempt for this kind of nonsense from those in authority.

There are only two choices that I can see open to governments, intelligence services and the state apparatus in the face of the new media -

either accept that we now live in a world of totally open communication, much of it rubbish, much of it inaccurate, some of it pernicious and dangerous, and deal with the criminal aspects and egregious abuses while recognising and accepting that everybody will know - or think they know - everything at all times and on all issues

or

adopt the repressive control and censorship of all free communications, technology and media that characterises totalitarian regimes across the globe, including those regimes that we condemn, and have committed our armed forces to destroy.

Hackergate - Delegation and abdication

Yesterday’s select committee enquiries revealed rather more than most media commentators seemed to think, and that perhaps says a lot about the nature of press and media comment in the UK today.

There were many fulsome tributes paid to the reputation and integrity of those on the receiving end of the interrogation, especially the senior police officers, tributes that came mainly from themselves. I use the word fulsome in its correct meaning as excessive, cloying or insincere, not in the sense used by our semi-literate journalists and media pundits. I must invoke Shakespeare yet again: Hamlet asks his mother the Queen how she likes the play, to which Gertrude replies “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”, using protest in the contemporary sense of affirm or profess.

My experience of true integrity in my life is that no man or woman of integrity ever asserts their own integrity - they demonstrate it by their actions and leave it to others to judge it.

The other fascinating aspect of the two enquiries was the way in which those being interrogated chose to interpret their managerial roles, especially in relation to decision-making, delegation and the acceptance of assurances. Without exception, they appeared to adopt instinctively -and perhaps unwittingly - what I call analogously, and with no suggestion whatsoever of criminality, some of the Mafia Godfather principles of management.

The Seven Godfather Principles of management are designed as a firewall against accountability or responsibility for personal actions to an external authority. They are not, of course, the actual operating practices or principles of Mafia Dons and capi de regime - they are designed for external perception and consumption only. They are -

THE 7 PRINCIPLES

1. I believe implicitly everything I am told by my subordinates and professional advisers, and never feel any requirement to check, cross check or verify the veracity of what I am told.

2. I delegate responsibility absolutely and completely, and any failure by the person to whom I delegate is entirely down to them, not to me.

3. I never monitor employee performance or compliance with policy or procedural directives, but I punish failure instantly when it is pointed out to me by third parties, or events leave me no choice but to recognise it. I am never, ever reluctant to blame others for failure.

4. I ensure, by whatever means possible, that I am never told anything that in any way could call my decision-making into question at a later date, or make me accountable or responsible for the actions of a subordinate.

5. When receiving advice to aid my decision-making, I require a single recommended course of action for me to take, even if the adviser has identified a range of options. I dislike intensely having to choose between a range of options, because such a choice would make me responsible, instead of the adviser.

6. I always recognise as mine decisions that produce successful outcomes. I never recognise as mine decisions that produce unsuccessful outcomes - they were, effectively, the decisions of my advisers, which I accepted because I had no choice but to do so, because I trusted the adviser absolutely and uncritically.

7. My memory is strangely and bafflingly selective - I have total recall, usually backed up by detailed documentation and contemporaneous notes, of anything that supports my decisions and my integrity, but I am frequently unable to recall matters that could call my decisions or integrity into question, I never take contemporaneous notes on such matters, and documents relating to them unaccountably disappear.

-------

Since none of those appearing before the committee were criminals, and indeed, were people of the highest probity, reputation and integrity - we have their unequivocal word for it - we must accept that the apparent adoption of some of the above principles - inferred from their answers to questions - actually  did reflect their true management behaviour and operating principles, or at least that of some of them.

But this leads me, at least, to the inevitable conclusion that, if they actually did operate in this way, they would have be grossly incompetent and unfit for the high offices they occupy, since the Godfather Principles set out above are a denial of all modern management standards of competence and accountability.

I am therefore faced with the paradox that, if I am to retain faith on the police and in the Press, neither explanation satisfies me.

Even more worrying is that David Cameron and his government appears to either want us to believe that they are operating under such principles, or worse still, actually are …

Since most journalists and media commentators are direct professional contributors, and with few exceptions, have never managed large-scale operations, we can expect little insight from them on such arcane matters - as they used to say in the auld Glesca, “they couldnae run a menage …”

I await today’s Parliamentary debate with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.

My message to John McAllion (Where Now for Scottish Labour?) on Bella Caledonia

John McAllion - Where Now for Scottish Labour

I was a committed Labour voter for 50 years, John - Glasgow east end, bred-in-the-bone Labour. The core values we held were an internationalist outlook - the global brotherhood of humanity - concern for the poorest and most vulnerable in society, a profound distaste for militarism, rank and privilege and undemocratic institutions, and Aneurin notwithstanding, an anti-nuclear stance.

I watched Labour abandon everyone of these core values over half a century, culminating in the horror of Iraq. And I came to see that what was rotten in the state of Labour was what was rotten in the state of the UK.

You used the phrase "the Labour Party itself has never been fully at ease with the devolution of political power away from its spiritual home in the Palace of Westminster". I would take issue only with the term spiritual home - there was nothing spiritual about it - it was a cynical obsession with the Westminster village as the pinnacle of its power base, with Scotland as the taken-for-granted underpinning of that power base.

Scottish Labour is irretrievably lost, together with its values, its humanity and its Scottishness. I know the visceral shift that has taken place among my friends and colleagues, old and new, ranging from the solid gold Glasgow working class to the professional and managerial classes. That shift involved real pain, the residual feeling of a betrayal of old, albeit misplaced loyalties. These people will never return to Labour, anymore than the brutally dispossessed ordinary people of Dalmarnock will ever return to the party of their oppressor, Glasgow Labour-controlled council.

I will never return to Labour. You should make the quantum leap, John - it's not a dyke but a giant leap across an intimidating chasm, but you can do it. You must do it.

A message from one battered old Scot to Westminster - don't try to pre-empt our referendum timescale!

From PC pics May 12, 2011

Alex Salmond on Calman–and Mundell has trouble with the numbers–again …

Alex Salmond offers a careful, considered critique of the Calman tax proposals, their weaknesses and speaks of his wish to find a way to improve them. This is a statesman – and an economist – speaking, with the interests of Scotland and the Scottish people at heart.

David Mundell, under Gordon Brewer's questioning, waffles frantically about Calman, and displays an almost total inability to come to grips with the numbers and hard facts. Instead, he relies on political generalities and attacks on the SNP.

This is Moore's man in the Scottish Office. He had high hopes of being Scottish Secretary under a Cameron Government (as the Scottish Tories' sole MP, there was little choice!) but the coalition, plus perhaps a little local difficulty with his election expenses (those pesky numbers again, David!) put paid to that.

He had to watch two young LibDems fill the post he had coveted - first Danny Alexander and now Michael Moore.

Not that numeracy - or anything much else - is required of a Scottish Secretary - only blind loyalty to the Union and the willingness to be Westminster's man in Scotland instead of Scotland's man in Westminster.

Colonial governors never did require much between their ears, only the ability to salute the Union Jack.

The last three incumbents of this ignoble role - Murphy, Alexander and now Moore - have filled the role in the way required by their UK bosses. Scots expects nothing from the office of Scottish Secretary, and nothing is what they get, except regular protestations of loyalty to the Union.

.