Can you believe this?

I subscribe to several US magazines. One of them is the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Because it is a small outfit they don't accept credit cards so I had to ask my bank to issue a dollar draft for my renewal. I got a phone call from the bank today asking me why I needed a dollar draft. Doesn't the word "journal" give a clue? We're talking about $69 (£37) here and yet this warranted a call from London to Edinburgh. Apparently it's all to do with money laundering laws. We're talking about a few pounds, and haven't the authorities heard about credit cards? Get used to those chains.

Unbiased

Over on Iain Dale's site he mentions a BBC report about the forthcoming Internet TV station, 18 Doughty Street.

According to the BBC the new station will be:

“… a sort of British version of Fox News, which is Rupert Murdoch’s news channel in the United States. Fox is attacked for being politically partisan and that of course is not allowed here.”

"Not allowed here"!

I had to pour myself a wee dram.

Gordon Brown to emigrate to the US before Tony?

Oh please, say it's so!

Michael Fry

In yesterday's Sunday Times, the Scottish conservative historian Michael Fry wrote about his conversion to the cause of Scottish independence. Mr Fry has kindly agreed to answer some questions posed by Freedom and Whisky.

1. I read that in researching your new book you ended up by becoming a nationalist. Would you elaborate on that and tell us what in particular has brought about this unexpected change in your views? Have you been contemplating this change for a long time?

Like most conservatives I don’t find nationalism, as such, to be alien territory. In fact it is part of the conservatives’ stock-in-trade in all countries of the world - with the sole exception of Scotland, where the Tory party has got itself into the untenable position of being an anti-patriotic party. Its resulting electoral record speaks for itself, and is little recommendation for other conservative parties to follow its path. I myself have been by no means unsympathetic to devolution, but hoped that it might be the means of combining two patriotisms, Scottish and British. That consideration has, however, been in my mind swept aside by the sheer awfulness of the Scottish Parliament, combining pork-barrel politics with political correctness. The conviction has been growing on me for several years that something more thoroughgoing has to be done to the government of Scotland for the situation to improve. What my studies of the Union have taught me is that the choice between Union and independence is not simple and clear-cut, not in 1707 and not now. It is a matter of weighing up the situation and the possible ways of changing it. An ambiguous preference for Union in 1707 turned out to be of great benefit to Scotland in the end; an ambiguous preference for independence seems to me the more likely to have the same effect now.

2. You have rejected joining the SNP because their policies are anti-liberal. Do you think that there is any likelihood of a radical realignment in Scottish politics? I’m thinking of some kind of merger between the “liberal” forces in the SNP and those Scottish Conservatives who are frustrated by the current state of their party. Might we even see a low-tax, small government party in Scotland while England dithers under Mr Cameron?

I don’t think a realignment of parties in the present Scottish Parliament likely. They are all still frozen in the postures of the period before 1999. That, precisely, is one reason for favouring independence. It would at once bring home to the Scottish people the choices they face, some of them rather stark – the economic ones in particular. Only in these circumstances are liberal policies for Scotland likely to look realistic – indeed they would, in my view, be the sole way out of the fiscal crisis that would face the new Scottish state. In those conditions we might expect Tories to revert to the ideal of small government and enter into alliance with those latent forces in the SNP, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, which look with dismay on a bloated and wasteful public sector.

3. Many English journalists, both in print and in the blogosphere, see Scotland as an economic basket case. It seems to me that the Scottish GDP per-capita isn’t too far from the UK or European average and that our problem is too much government spending and control rather than a fundamental weakness in our ability to produce. Do you agree?

I do agree. Scotland is an average region of the UK and of the EU. It can improve its position only by the means which independence makes possible, rather than by the lobbying of a central government sited elsewhere.

4. Many of the aforementioned English journalists are now calling for Scottish independence. Do you think that they would be quite so keen should it become apparent that England/England and Wales/England, Wales plus NI would have a reduced status in the EU and the UN?

The situation of countries reducing in size is unusual. But the proposed reduction is only of one-twelfth, since Scotland makes up just over 8 per cent of the UK population. In the European Parliament this might require a small adjustment, but nothing drastic, and in the other European institutions the continuing UK would, even without Scotland, still be a major country. As for the UN, the UK holds its position, for instance on the Security Council, by virtue of the founding charter: I doubt if anyone would want to amend that, or would succeed if they tried. In any case I think the reduced UK would soon make up for its slight loss of population: London is booming (whereas Scotland is stagnant).

5. Sticking with Northern Ireland: In the event of Scottish independence, do you envisage the NI unionists moving towards a rapprochement with the Republic?

NI politics have a dynamic of their own, little affected by whatever happens in Scotland. I doubt if, in particular, unionist attitudes to the Republic would be shifted by Scottish independence.

6. To what extent are you concerned that prominent Scottish companies – the Royal Bank, Standard Life etc. – might flee southwards if independence looked likely? What could be done to counter any such plans?

These companies can flee any time they like, with or without the Union. The reasons they stay in Scotland are many, but some sort of sense of patriotic tradition is probably one of them. I expect that to continue, but it would be shaken if an independent Scotland adopted policies hostile to business. That is one more reason why it should adopt policies friendly to business. Scottish companies will then stay, and foreign companies will come.

7. I’m now thinking of my own situation. Like many born here I have English connections. My late father was English and one of my two sisters was born in England. Most of my adult life was spent in London. How can you reassure the many people like me who may be concerned about a splitting of family connections?

The UK was an imperial power and, even without that, always had to become a worldwide trading nation, otherwise it would not have been able to feed itself. So the foreign connections have been strong and continuous for two or three centuries, and they have included a steady stream of emigration. As a result I should think almost everyone, in Scotland above all, has relations, close or remote, in other countries. My own family has sprigs from California to Hong Kong, and in fact is Irish Protestant in origin. We all, or at least many of us, keep in touch over two or three generations, after which the connections tend to fade a bit. Still, they have survived the independence of Ireland, despite the almost complete disappearance of the family from its original homeland. It would greatly surprise me if the citizens of an independent Scotland would want to break their own bonds of this kind, or would in any way need to.

8. I now turn to foreign affairs. Assuming the Scottish people wished to remain in the EU, would the Union accept us? Would the rest of the UK (perhaps just England & Wales) be deemed to be the continuing UK?

The prevailing opinion in Brussels, as I understand it, is that the continuing UK would inherit membership of the EU on the present basis. Scotland would not be treated as a successor country, and so would have to renegotiate its membership. In principle this appears to present no great problem, since the SNP (assuming it formed the first government of an independent Scotland) is committed to membership. But there could well be some thorny problems, such as the Common Fisheries Policy. In any event, the exact position is unclear because no similar case has yet arisen.

9. What should happen to the nuclear weapons based on Clydeside?

I think the nuclear base would have to close, if that is what an independent government should decide. Nobody is interested in making Scotland a nuclear power. At the same time I hope that this, along with many other matters of detail, would be a matter for amicable agreement between Scotland and the UK.

10. What should an independent Scotland do to alleviate poverty and welfare dependency in Glasgow and its surroundings?

The nation’s watchword should be self-reliance. The aim must be a liberal democracy with limited government sustained by the capitalist system.

Scottish politics: the times they are a changing

The Sunday Herald reports that Mike Russell's new book has caused a bit of a stooshie in his own party:

SNP leader Alex Salmond threatened one of his rivals that he would not be a candidate for the next Holyrood election unless he withdrew parts of his “very dangerous” book.

The Banff and Buchan MP told Michael Russell his new book – which made searing criticisms of Salmond and his policies – was incompatible with standing for the Nationalists.

He sent his colleague handwritten notes, which the Sunday Herald has obtained, highlighting sections of the book he objected to.

Russell, the former MSP who fought Salmond for the leadership in 2005, then salvaged his candidacy by making humiliating changes to his book

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. At least some folk in the SNP realise that an independent Scotland would need to ditch a massive amount of the country's socialist culture.

Much more surprising is this piece in the Scottish edition of the Sunday Times:

Michael Fry says the union no longer works and the Tories don't either.

Studying the Union is bad for your unionism. I can say this with confidence after researching the subject for the past four years so that I could write a book to mark its 300th anniversary on May 1.

I have chased up original material from Perth to Paris, London to Los Angeles. And, at the end of it, have come out a nationalist — quite a journey for someone who was a Conservative candidate for the British and the Scottish parliaments.

Mr Fry is now a floating voter:

That said, I am not rushing off to join the SNP. In terms of belief in liberal democracy, a limited state and capitalist system, I find the nationalists almost as deficient as the Tories, or indeed as any other party in Scotland. SNP policies would be disastrous. They would quickly ruin Scotland if they came in on that programme.

There's more about this elsewhere in the Times and more will follow in this blog...

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... to the Scottish Blogging Roundup. Click here.

Independence Demonstration

A march was held in Edinburgh this afternoon:

Demonstration 30th September 2006 Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

Some of the marchers haven't heard that Ireland is now capitalist:

Demonstration 30th September 2006 Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

Like this guy:

Demonstration 30th September 2006 Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

Licenseewatch

There's been a rather embarrassing event in the world of Inverness pubs:

A CAMPAIGN to ban unruly customers from Inverness bars has been undermined after its chairman became one of the first people to be nominated for exclusion.

Members of the Inverness Pubwatch scheme will be asked at their next meeting to ban Debbie Dryburgh from city centre pubs following an alleged incident at Johnny Foxes in Bank Street.

Oh dear.

Prickly

I notice that Grasping the Thistle has its own website.

This is the new book that I wrote about on Monday and which is causing a bit of a ruction within the SNP.

Thank God for the Council Tax

Without it, how would we survive? How would citizens of Edinburgh live if we didn't have councillors replanning the city like this?

Some of the changes which the city council proposes would simply replace "&" with a forward slash, so, for example, "Colinton & Fairmilehead" would become "Colinton/Fairmilehead".

I'm tempted to say: &/%*@^§!

But that would be rude.

Unintended consequences

Reality strikes again:

The upshot could be legal battles between young employees and their employers, or barriers being put up in the hiring of staff under 21.

This is exactly what's to be expected whenever the state tries to stop people "discriminating". In a free society there's always work for the competent and reliable.

Capitalism: is it for the birds?

It's one of those stories that almost make the political class worthwhile:

The Scotsman revealed yesterday that the Scottish Parliament had agreed to pay a private contractor £250 to transfer a baby pigeon 100 miles away to Ayrshire - if the company decided the bird needed to be rescued from the ledge at the parliament in Edinburgh where it is nesting.

Even the Lib Dems are talking sense:

It's a flying rat, for goodness sake.

But back to the story. According to the Pigeon Control Advisory Service (I did not make that up):

"I cannot believe they would pay £250 to transfer it to Hessilhead. We would have done it for free but this is what happens when you go to a commercial pest control company."

So, I thought, this PiCAS outfit is just another bunch on lefty haters of capitalism that isn't tainted by the dreaded cash nexus.

Except it ain't so. From their own website:

With the exception of the United Kingdom where PiCAS operates on a commercial basis, PiCAS offers a not for profit service to its client base worldwide, charging only travel expenses where a site visit or survey is required.

In other words, commercial companies are undesirable in the great world of pigeon control, but commercial "advisory services" are just fine. Bah!

(By the way, how much would it cost to transfer 129 MSPs to Ayrshire Rockall?)

We are the people...

This is from The England Project:

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !! First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding three on a bike was always great fun.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate bread pudding, white bread and real butter and drank lemonade with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because…

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go karts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels satellite, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given pellet guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

School sports teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!

PS -The big type is because your eyes are shot at your age

Independence

SNP politician Mike Russell has called for a gradual approach to independence. That seems a sensible idea for his party.

MIKE Russell, one of the SNP's senior figures, has risked an angry backlash from party activists by proposing a gradual approach to independence - taking a series of small steps rather than securing everything with one big referendum victory.

Mr Russell has suggested the concept of a "New Union" with England which would see Westminster retain control over foreign affairs and defence, leaving Scotland with every other domestic policy agenda, including finance.

I'd stop at that point, but of course Mr Russell would want to move beyond the "New Union".

Note the backlash in the comments. For example:

Mike's ideas on the union aren't the really bad bits. Did anyone else see the stuff on privatisation of the health service, water boards, etc? He's been drinking the Thatcherite Kool Aid, that's what.

I must have been asleep - I missed the privatisation of the NHS.

Hey, Hey We're the Monkees!

Belatedly, I give you this unsurprising news of life at Holyrood.

What about us?

The Social Democrats have lost the Swedish election.

Good. But note this:

The election was closely watched by governments of other EU countries facing the need of welfare reform because of ageing populations and creaking pension and healthcare systems.

And will would-be governments be watching? Here's Alex Salmond when he took over the SNP leadership for the second time:

"We intend to lead a government of purpose and direction so that we can offer the people of this nation the opportunity to move forward to independence, democracy and equality."

He said the party would develop a new economic policy and a new vision of social democracy for Scotland.

Will Mr Salmond now be advocating welfare reform? And will some of Scotland's all-too-many socialist politicians in the other parties be looking at Sweden with a degree of trepidation? The governmental system over here creaks at least as much as that of Sweden.

Socialist finance

Yet another fallout from the Tommy Sheridan business:

Police in Shetland are investigating a transfer of funds from the Scottish Socialist Party to Tommy Sheridan's new party, Solidarity.

Should the police be bothering with this? Both parties were founded on the principle that no-one's money is safe.

Top blogs

They are listed here (PDF file). Iain puts me on the conservative list.

Freedom and Whisky - Still Going Strong

I came across this statue in Kilmarnock earlier today. The chap on the left is Johnnie Walker. Hopefully there's no need to tell readers of this blog who he was.

On the right you can read this message:

WHO ARE YOU. VULCAN GOD OF LABOUR. WHO IS HE. MERCURY AS WALKER DISTILLER IN THIS TOWN. INDUSTRY IS A COMPACT BETWEEN LABOUR AND CAPITAL

Kilmarnock - 16th September 2006 Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

Kilmarnock - 16th September 2006 Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

Old news

How many times do we have to read this?

MSPs were told yesterday there remains a risk that Scottish Enterprise will not meet its budgetary targets for the coming financial year.

Don't we get this story every year? The solution is simple: abolish Scottish "Enterprise" and use the money to scrap local business taxes.

Paisley

While enjoying my post-work pint this evening I noticed an ad in the Scotsman for a post-graduate course at the University of Paisley:

Students will gain an appreciation of the processes involved in an individual becoming a problem alcohol or drug user

Er, can't the students just walk around Paisley?

And there's more:

Students will be able to rehearse intervention methods.

I trust that the U of P has arranged suitable cover with one of Scotland's life assurance companies.

8% is for wimps

Neil Craig has a new blog. Have a look at the 9% Growth party:

Let no politician from any other party tell you that just because they have only been able to grow Scotland at 1.5%, 9% is not an entirely possible goal. Ireland managed an average of 7% over many years & a peak of 10.5%, China has averaged 10, Russia & the Baltic states have averaged 8% & world average growth is now calculated at 5% annually. We can get as far above the world average as we have been below it.

Another new Scottish blog is Musings of a Reactionary Snob.

Not forgotten

Leuchars - September 2006
Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

What, no Conservatives!

As the Sunday Herald explains, the Labour shenanigans have a Scottish dimension. And I don't mean that both Blair and Brown come from these parts. We have elections coming up for the Scottish parliament next May and everyone accepts that the result will be affected by the outcome of the Labour struggle.

But note the absence of any mention of the Conservative party. Down at Westminster all the talk is of how any Labour leader can beat the Tories. Up here, they're not even worth mentioning.