Rightly, some MSPs are speaking out:
Mr Park said: “These sums are absolutely astonishing. Most public-sector employees are being told that salary increases will be pegged at 1% but it appears there are different rules for those at the top.Fair enough, but who exactly is this John Park? He is a Labour MSP!“It is time the Scottish Government told these people to start living in the real world.”
Calling for a government to start living in the real world!
Truly, you couldn't make it up.
The Scotsman revealed yesterday that Mr Darling was preparing to launch a thinly-veiled attack on former prime minister Gordon Brown, saying Labour lost the General Election because it ignored the deficit.Actually, despite being given several opportunities I didn't reckon that Darling was very critical of Brown at all.
The Donald Dewar Lecture was chaired by BBC Scotland's Brian Taylor who introduced Darling as a friend. Now, Taylor's a good chap and is probably a friend of most of our leading politicians. But "BBC Scotland journalist a friend of Scottish Labour politician" - not exactly the revelation of the week...
Darling was convinced that he'd done a good job and I accept that he was probably more competent than any alternative Labour chancellor, including his predecessor. But I heard no evidence of any real understanding of the nature of the economic crisis.
We heard some of the usual Labour tricks. Cutting government expenditure was "taking money out of the economy". I hoped in vain for Taylor to pick up on that Brownism. But, to be fair, it took David Cameron weeks to catch on to that one. Darling talked about Labour's plan to halve the deficit in five years. How many others in the audience realised that such a policy would mean that total debt would still be rising? As indeed it is under the current government.
Clearly there are no Austrian School economists in the Treasury, as Darling told us that no one saw the crisis coming. Actually, I think he quietly corrected that to "almost no one." Perhaps he saw this constituent lurking in the back corner...
Darling told us that the banks had made many mistakes. Often, they didn't know what sort of assets they were buying. He's right there of course. But he was wrong in saying that the British banks had avoided the subprime mess that hit the US ones. Northern Rock was invested in subprime mortgages and the big British banks bought the bulk pre-packaged portfolios of subprime from the American banks.
The most worrying thing was the total lack of any questioning as to why the banks were able to act so recklessly. The idea that the fundamentals of the very monetary system itself are wrong has clearly never entered Mr Darling's head. But he's not alone in that. We'll keep on going through these financial crises until we learn the lesson.
Mr Urquhart has had an interesting life.
As a young man he lived in Aberdeen and was keen on ballroom dancing. In September 1939 he was conscripted into the Gordon Highlanders. They sent him to Singapore where the officers assured everyone that they were safe from the Japanese. Urquhart won a medal for ballroom dancing but was told by a fellow dancer who was in the Signals Corp that the Japanese were indeed a threat to the Lion City. And so it tuned out...
Urquhart was captured and made to march through Singapore seeing the severed heads of thousands of Chinese stuck on bamboo poles.
He was sent to work on the Burma railway. He helped build the Bridge over the River Kwai and cheered when it collapsed under the weight of the first train. The poor workmanship was deliberate. Punishment was meted out by the Korean guards. The Japanese punished the Koreans. The film was crap.
Eventually Urquhart was sent to Japan on a prison ship. Many prisoners died in the over-heated hold just as others had done on the way to the Burma railway. But the prison ship was torpedoed by a US Navy vessel - they had no idea that prisoners were on board. For a while he drifted on a cork life raft alongside a Japanese officer in full regalia.
Eventually a fishing boat rescued Urquhart. He was taken to the mainland to work in the fields outside a major Japanese city. One day Urquhart saw a lone US bomber flying overhead. Suddenly there was a flash of light and a hot wind. The Japanese guards started to run away. The city was Nagasaki...
The survivors were rescued but made to sign affidavits keeping secret the existence of the atomic bomb. But Urquhart "signed with his left hand"!
Arriving in the US, the survivors got a hero's welcome. At Southampton it was a one-way ticket to Aberdeen. Some things don't change.
At the end of the session Urquhart was asked about "this ballroom dancing thing". He still dances four times a week. Why? "It keeps us old folks from causing trouble out on the streets."
And here he is:
Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us, is a quietly passionate account of how our modern mindsets and practices are much closer to those of the ancient Greeks and Romans than we might realise.
An enjoyable session. Mrs F&W had already started the book and I expect to read it soon.
Time ran out before I could ask my planned question: "Your ex-boss, Mrs Thatcher, was both a scientist and a war leader. Would she have been more at home in ancient Greece or ancient Rome?"
Here's an extract:
When Thatcher came to power in 1979 some 67 per cent of Scottish homes were rented, nearly all of them from the state, while 33 per cent of Scottish homes were owned. By 1997 the figures were reversed and the rented sector had a new and growing private sector from buy-to-let owners.The only thing I'd disagree with is that the houses were "given".The change was not just about creating the property owning democracy as a buttress against socialism, it was about enriching peoples' lives by giving them an asset against which they could borrow, an asset that could act as a pension fund and provide an inheritance that could help families accumulate and retain their wealth.
Blaming everything on "Thatcher" is a copout used by almost all Scottish politicians. It's a great pity that the SNP government seems to be quite unconcerned with financial reality. Ring fencing NHS expenditure is madness and bodes ill should Ms Sturgeon becomes the next SNP leader. But it's not just her, is it? Is there no one in the SNP who has an ounce of business or financial sense? Surely John Swinney cares about how he'll be seen by history.
Experts yesterday accused the Government of punishing the responsible behaviour of savers as it battles its own deficit.I had an enjoyable run-in with a socialist worker activist in Princes Street a week ago. He asked me to sign a petition against the "Tory Cuts". I said that unfortunately there weren't any such cuts. He said that the cuts were 25% per year. I countered by saying that he should have said 25% over four years but that was outweighed by continuing additional spending elsewhere. The debt is still rising, albeit at a reduced rate than under ZNL. He refused to believe me.Andrew Hagger, of personal finance website Moneynet.co.uk said: “It’s another door slammed in the face of savers.
“Consumers who have been increasingly relying on the one sure fire way of protecting their nest egg from inflation will be dismayed that the government has without any warning, pulled the rug from under their feet.”
And now National Savings are stopping the sale of index-linked savings. Fortunately I switched some cash into them a couple of weeks ago from a deposit account that now pays 0.5% pa. Inflation's coming folks.
I know that the article on charity "chuggers" is meant to be taken with a pinch of salt, but really!
How about this:
those charity muggers who stop you in the street and ask you to sign away your life savings to causes, all of which are invariably worthy.All of them?
It looks like Mr Dalgarno is just another useful idiot who can't be bothered to work out a consistent moral and economic philosophy. And there's plenty more like him.
Here is the important story:
A STRIKE ballot of airport staff over pay and conditions has raised the prospect of more flight disruption in the Capital.Here is the non story:The Unite union will ballot 6000 members next Friday for strike action at BAA's six UK airports, including Edinburgh.
EDINBURGH Airport's controversial drop-off charge is a "desperate" attempt to raise extra cash amid signs that passenger growth forecasts are set to flop, an aviation expert claimed today.Now, I happen to agree with Richard Havers in saying that the airport's forecasts are probably too optimistic:
"They predicted far too rosy a future and now it's not happening they are desperately to claw some money back."But what's extraordinary is the huge fuss that's broken out over the airport's plan to charge £1 for dropping off passengers outside the terminal building. This story has been all over the local media for a week or more and has generated a vast outcry, the likes of which I haven't seen for quite a while. Come on now: just how often does the typical Edinburgh resident drop off a passenger at the airport? It seems to me that what we're seeing is another outbreak of agoraphobia - fear of markets.
Why is it that the only people who seem to observe the Edinburgh Trades Holiday are those who don't actually trade?
Here's the explanation:
“These changes are about ensuring we can respond faster and more effectively to the opportunities to transform Scotland’s economy. By reducing the number of directors and removing internal management layers, we can speed up decision- making, react more quickly to what our customers are telling us and deliver projects and support that are focused on the big issues facing Scottish companies.”Here's an idea. Why not get rid of the whole of Scottish Enterprise?
Have a look at their Business Plan. This organisation is costing us £276.9 million in the current financial year. I see that total expenditure is classified as "TOTAL CASH INVESTMENT". In other words they are describing all expenditure as investment. That alone disqualifies this organisation from serious consideration. Scottish Enterprise should be abolished immediately and the savings used to cut business taxation.
I came across this today:
Romans regarded Greeks as essentially frivolous, people who talked too much and who were too clever by half. They were duplicitous, and quite unreliable with money, especially their own public funds.
Coincidentally, I happened to be in Glasgow earlier in the day and saw this:
Lots of other photos here.
Back in the nineteen seventies the Detroit bus station wasn't the most welcoming of places at 7am. I guess it would be slightly more worrying nowadays:
"neighborhoods literally falling apart"—through streets that look like "a hurricane has recently swept through, destroying nearly everything on its path." Thousands of houses have been abandoned—in many areas 50-60% of the houses are in foreclosure. Some blocks have only a few homes left standing. A thousand people a month are leaving what has been called " America ’s fastest dying city."Reading this, I immediately thought of Glasgow. Not so bad as Detroit perhaps, but getting there.
Sadly the writer of the piece on Detroit gets it completely wrong:
The productive forces in society—natural resources, technology, the creativity and knowledge of the people—are all held back and constrained, by the private and exploitative nature of capitalism. They are fettered by the need of capital to constantly produce for profit—not to meet the needs of the people.Doesn't that sound just like the politicians and pundits who have impoverished Glasgow? The writer doesn't seem to realise that it was capitalism that built Detroit into America's premier industrial city. And it was capitalism that led to Glasgow being world champion in shipbuilding and locomotive manufacturing. If the politicians of Detroit and Glasgow wish their cities to be world-beaters again it behoves them to create the necessary conditions. Not subsidies and socialism but low taxes and free markets. As that great fan of Adam Smith once said: "There is No Alternative."This basic rule of capitalism—that the whole point of production is to make profit—means that people are treated as things to be used or tossed aside. It means the system considers thousands of Black people, especially the youth, as just so much surplus that can’t be profitably employed. It means the system, through its armed enforcers, must come down with even more repression against this socially combustible and potentially rebellious section of society. And it means poisonous ideological assaults that justify such attacks and blame the people for the oppressive situation the system has put them in.
Detroit is a painful and clear example of how we need a whole new way, a whole new system, a whole new society. And we need revolution to bring this into being.
Scotland's public finances are in a healthy position, with the country generating more income than it spends even in a period of recession, official statistics published today show. This is the fourth year in a row that Scotland has generated a current budget surplus, compared to a UK-wide deficit over the same period.I'd like to have a closer look at the assumptions made here but I wouldn't be too surprised to find that the report is more-or-less correct. I've always believed that the Southeast of England gains tremendously from the jobs and money generated there by the UK's uniquely centralised state and once that's taken into account the finances of Scotland become considerably better than they are often portrayed.The latest Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report for 2008-09 includes a share of the UK Government's Financial Sector Interventions to support the banking sector.
Even with that spending factored in, Scotland's financial position in 2008-09 was a current budget surplus of £1.3 billion, or 0.9 per cent of GDP, including a geographical share of North Sea revenues. At the same time, the UK was in current budget deficit of £48.9 billion, or 3.4 per cent of GDP, including 100 per cent of North Sea revenues.
That's not to say that Scotland doesn't need a smaller state. Of course it does. And as a libertarian I want to see at least 90% of government expenditure eliminated. High state spending is not a good thing in itself. And the main aim must be to eliminate the welfare dependency that's so harmful to places like Glasgow.
Sadly that's not exactly the SNP view:
This year’s general election showed up a serious ideological difference between the SNP and the other major parties. We were the only ones who went into it opposing the agenda of swingeing cuts in public spending.The SNP lost my vote at the general election because of their love of high taxation and nanny-statism. An independent Scotland should aim to be richer than Switzerland. Big government won't deliver that.
Scotland’s unemployment count will increase to 225,000 and more than 30,000 public sector jobs will go in the next parliament, according to a respected economic forecast.And we Scots are supposedly most at risk:The Ernst & Young Item Club predicts a double-whammy for the economy will flow from the banking crisis and the deep Government spending cuts needed to cure the hangover
As the Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition reins in spending to tackle the UK’s £166bn deficit, cuts mean public sector job losses are inevitable, and Scotland’s large public sector makes it particularly vulnerable.The real problem with the Scottish economy is the vast size of our public (sic) sector. High public sector wages and pensions make life very difficult for our wealth-creators. Why would any young person entering the job market join a private company with all the risks involved when big brother offers much better terms? And why even think of starting one's own business in these circumstances?
We need to decimate Scotland's public sector. And next week deal with the other 90% ...
Can we expect some much-needed international aid?
Lennox, who has attacked the scheme as civic vandalism, declared on her website: "Concrete wins out. Something told me that this was already a done deal – no surprises really."I'm not that familiar with Aberdeen and have only visited the city three or four times. Generally, I've assumed that what motivates many of the objectors to Sir Ian's proposed gift is a distaste for capitalism and I think I'm correct.
Nevertheless, the plans I've seen in the papers did indeed demonstrate "civic vandalism" as claimed by Ms Lennox. What I saw would be out of place in our worst council estates, never mind in the centre of Scotland's third city.
But what about this:
Sixteen months ago, when Sir Ian first announced his philanthropic £50 million donation towards the project, he said his aim was to transform the five-acre site into a square that would be a combination of a grand Italian piazza and a miniature version of New York's Central Park.So now it turns out that Sir Ian wouldn't be funding a concrete disaster after all:He said: "I actually used the words a 'mini Central Park.' It was never setting out to be concreted. But the initial diagrams and designs produced showed a big concrete base.
"There has been this continuous myth that this is a big flat concrete square that is going to possibly involve retail and shops. It has never ever been that."
John Stewart, the leader of the city council, who led the move to back Sir Ian's proposals at Wednesday's marathon meeting of the authority, admitted he had been "appalled" by the early concept drawings for the project. They had created a "rod for the back" of those supporting the visionary scheme.Sir Ian Wood became very rich by providing world-class services to the oil industry. I doubt that any of his presentations to clients were misleading. If they had been he wouldn't have been so successful. And yet when he tries to donate £50 million to his hometown the PR goes haywire. I suspect that the local politicians and bureaucracy are at fault here for not showing the locals just what was planned with Sir Ian's money. Let's hope that Aberdeen gets its Central Park, preferably with Italian food, wine and weather...
At the last Holyrood election I supported the SNP, partly as a tactical vote to remove the Labour incumbents. On the same day I did cast my vote for the Tory candidate for the Edinburgh City Council. I voted SNP in the recent Euro election.
I am fairly sympathetic to the idea of Scottish independence. A vigorous dose of fiscal reality would do wonders for Scotland. But ideally I would prefer implementation of the Freedom and Whisky plan of 2003:
Withdraw from the EUOn Thursday morning I discussed my options with Mrs F&W:Devolve all powers - except defence and foreign affairs - to the various national parliaments
Each parliament to be fiscally independent with contributions being made to the federal government in proportion to population
The federal government should be situated on the Isle of Man, which is not in any of the home countries but is equidistant from all four of them
The Irish Republic should be invited to unite with the North and rejoin the UK with Dublin taking its rightful place in the Anglosphere alongside Cardiff, Edinburgh and London
(1) Vote Conservative even though they appear to be a bunch of wimps, unable to propose a proper classical liberal economic plan and distinctly wobbly on civil liberties.
(2) Vote SNP on the grounds that the UK cannot be saved and that an independent Scotland could possibly emerge satisfactorily from the wreckage.
I was still undecided when I got to the polling station. Next door was a cafe and I went in to have a further think. A copy of the Daily Mirror was on the table and needless to say it was full of reasons for voting Labour. At that point I was filled with dread and decided to look after number one. I didn't want Mr Darling to steal any more of my money. Despite what I wrote the other day, I held my nose, went in and voted Tory.
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Mark Lazarowicz (Labour) and Iain McGill (Conservative):
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Iain McGill was the most convincing candidate but it was interesting to hear Willie Black - a very lucid but totally wrong old-fashioned George Galloway style of socialist. Mark Lazarowicz looked a tad uneasy when Willie was in full flow.
Some gossip: Labour (not LibDem) to win North & Leith and the Conservatives (not LibDem) to win South. Darling to hold Southwest. Postal votes very low. Make of that what you will...
Here are some of the things he's been doing to persuade us to elect him as our MP:
Fighting hard against proposals to reduce respite careYes, it's our Conservative candidate, Jason Rust.
Fighting hard for the armed forces
Opposing budget cuts at Edinburgh University
Saving Oxgangs Post Office
Retaining the number 18 bus
Campaigning for better youth facilities
Campaigning for better community services
Supporting a soldier's fight with the city council
Supporting pensioners
Supporting the NHS
Now some of these may be worthy causes but what have they got to do with being Member of Parliament for Edinburgh Southwest? Many of these concerns are the business of Holyrood or even the City of Edinburgh Council. Actually, most of them are properly the concerns of civil society and not any business of the political class whatsoever.
And here's the thing: Mr Rust's main opponent is none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling.
So what does our Conservative have to say about the economy? To be fair, in his second leaflet Mr Rust does mention Tory opposition to the planned NI increases and he wants to cut government waste. Good. But then he wants to "protect" the NHS budget. Ah, the NHS: the envy of the world. LOL.
Mr Rust also wants interest rates to be low. But interest rates are a measure of a society's time preference. They aren't something to be decided by governments, but by people acting in the free market.
I have a horrible feeling that Labour's Mr Darling may well know more about economics than does our Tory hopeful.
Not that I'm going to vote Labour of course!
