The state or the market?

Apparently, most people are quite relaxed about Alan Duncan's self-outing

A snap poll for Sky News found that a majority of those who responded (54 per cent) did not believe that Mr Duncan’s sexuality should be an issue.

So why is this a public issue? It's because the public sector (including getting elected) is one in which winner takes all. If a majority in Rutland and Melton doesn't approve of Duncan's lifestyle, he's out of a job.

The private sector allows a choice. If you don't like your boss/shopkeeper/mate-in-the-pub being a Friend of Blair/Tory/gay, you can go elsewhere. The state doesn't offer that freedom. It's all the difference in the world.

The Scotsman - Business - Exodus of Scottish landowners feared

Fields of Dreams

It is not surprising that the Scottish Executive's attack on land ownership is having the inevitable effect.

Who is right and who is left?

Jimmy Reid is the court intellectual of the Scottish left.

In his column in today's Scotsman, he writes:

What about the broad swathe of social democratic opinion infuriated by the Thatcherite policies of New Labour? Here, the SNP should be the beneficiary; it isn’t. It should be seen as a left of centre alternative to New Labour. It isn’t. SNP leaders should have identified with local government workers protesting at scandalously low wages. They didn’t. They were arguing about whether to bring out a weekly newspaper during the next election campaign. Why?

This is vintage Jimmy. But over on The Herald, John MacLeod takes a different view:

Meanwhile, we might seize the Scottish imagination with a credible opposition: an alternative to the careerist, self-serving love-in of Labour and the Liberal Democrats, whose soft-left privileges the system might be built to perpetuate.

Change will come, at length, when the Nationalists grow up, stop posturing, get over the eighties, dethrone the idol of a meddlesome, state-fashioned, oil-funded Utopia, and start building serious politics with the Conservative party.

That's more like it. The Tories and the SNP traditionally don't see eye to eye but together they could blast the Labour/Illiberal Democrat junta out of the water.

.....and an apology to Tony Blair

The events of February 2019 will mean that you will enjoy your recently increased tax-funded pension for only 9 months. To think that we thought you were ripping us off. Note, however, that your next door neighbour will enjoy his for three years. Figures, doesn't it?

An open letter to Standard Life, Norwich Union etc

Given that the earth will be wiped out on 1st February 2019, your pension liabilities are now much smaller than previously thought. Justice demands that annuity rates be raised immediately to reflect this unexpected boost to your balance sheets.

The Scottish airports saga

As with anything involving Edinburgh and Glasgow, the question of which city will get any new airport development is generating more heat than light. This posting from the Edinburgh airport newsgroup is a good summation of the pro-Edinburgh case. Both airports lie to the west of their respective cities. As the writer says, Glasgow airport is on the wrong side of the city to properly serve central Scotland as a whole. Edinburgh is close to main motorway and rail links which can easily be upgraded to serve a larger airport. It is not necessary for a country's airport to be sited at its largest city. After the war, Frankfurt became Germany's main airport despite being smaller than Munich or Hamburg. It is however much more centrally located than the two larger rivals. A message here for Scotland, perhaps?

The politics of folk music

Gary North has written a fascinating article on the Lew Rockwell site. The title: Join the Union, and Other Quaint Recommendations

According to North:

So, attendees at Celtic festivals (in the USA) are mainly successful Scots in business and the professions, who come to hear songs about lower-class losers and their lost causes, and middle-class Irish, who come to hear songs about how tough things were before the Brits were booted out. They celebrate, side by side, by drinking a lot of Guinness (British).

Commenting on singer Brian McNeill, North says:

When a movement relies on state-funded urban folk singers to carry its message to the masses, and when the masses are upper-middle-class people at a music concert, that movement has moved into the dustbin of history. It's right down there with Bonnie Prince Charlie's revolt against King George II. McNeill knows that the Bonnie Prince's rebellion was a lost cause for losers, but he hasn't figured out that Arthur Scargill's cause is just as lost.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Some years ago, I was walking down Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco when I was approached by a street person. "You're Ted Turner, aren't you? Can you give me a dollar?", he said. I explained in a proper British accent that I wasn't Ted - after all, I didn't have Hanoi Jane with me. He wasn't convinced, it was getting dark, I gave him a dollar. Sadly, it now appears that Ted has lost 89% of his wealth. I hope that the street person spent my buck on drink and didn't invest in CNN, the Commie News Network.

You couldn't make it up

The Spectator demolishes political correctness. I particularly like their new acronym : WOGS - Workers On Government Service.

The return of real education

It looks as though some teachers are beginning to realise what they have been doing wrong for so long. About time too.

More illiberalism from the "Liberal" Democrats

I wonder if Jim Wallace has studied what the results of this kind of policy have been in the United States. Legislating about what people do to their own bodies is not what liberalism should be about and it stops the police from dealing with crimes which have actual victims.

The return of reality

So, all those years of studying the Austrian School of Economics are now being vindicated. The events in the world's stock markets are no surprise to some of us. I met and photographed Hayek and once drove Murray Rothbard to a meeting at the home of John Blundell, now head of the Institute of Ecomomic Affairs. I suspect that the political classes will make all the usual errors when what is needed is a radical reduction of state power and spending and, above all, a return to a real monetary system not based on paper.

Edinburgh or Glasgow

It looks as if the government will have to decide which airport will become dominant in Central Scotland. This will be a difficult one for Transport Secretary Alistair Darling. He is the MP for Edinburgh Central and people here are very keen on our airport's expansion. But can he pick Edinburgh without being accused of favouritism or even electoral self-interest? On the other hand, his constituency may well disappear in the proposed parliamentary reorganisation. He would then need the goodwill of the Labour party establishment to find a new safe seat. Labour's support in Scotland is stongest in Glasgow! Edinburgh airport is more centrally located for Scotland as a whole and the economy here is booming and population is growing rapidly. Glasgow is still the larger city but not as successful as Edinburgh. I suspect that no decision will be taken before the Scottish elections next May.

A good idea

By 14th August, the bosses of large US companies have to confirm in writing that their accounts are correct and face the consequences if they are not. Why not get George Bush to certify that the government's own accounts are OK says the New York Post. An excellent idea. Of course, he won't because he knows perfectly well that government accounting makes Enron and WorldCom look like minor errors in the petty cash.

Here is an opportunity for the Tories. Challenge Tony Blair as Chief Executive and Gordon Brown as Finance Director to certify the accuracy of the UK government's accounting procedures. Why shouldn't the two of them be asked to repay half their salaries and pension benefits if the books have been cooked? They wouldn't run away from such a challenge, would they?

The politician giveth but first he taketh away

Now it is alleged that Scotland's former first minister, Henry McLeish, has repaid the £38,500 which he wrongly obtained from the taxpayers as "expenses" by getting the same taxpayers to give him another £30,000 which he had previously promised not to take!

The Barnett Formula.....

.....is designed to bring "gradual convergence in spending levels between Scotland and England." Former Tory Scottish Secretary, Ian Lang, says here that:

Scotland should have a fuller role in the overall economic decision-making process in the UK and in the Chancellor's annual budget decisions.

But the economy is not a devolved matter. It is dealt with at the UK level - as it happens at the moment by a Scottish Chancellor. If Mr. Lang wants a specifically Scottish input on economic matters, he should be calling for full fiscal freedom - that is for all taxes paid by Scots to be levied and collected by the Scottish parliament with suitable sums being sent to London for defence and any other non-devolved matters. Only then will Scottish politicians be made to act responsibly.

He still doesn't get it

Gavin Esler is a regular contributor to the Scotsman. I don't think he's ever written anything I agree with. He's wrong here too.

The anger mounts

These two letters are, I believe, just the beginning. Most people now see politicians as self-serving good-for-nothings. Will they still claim to represent us when election turnouts drop below 50%?

Happy hour!

It looks as if the control freaks who want to regulate pubs even more may have had their comeuppance. For once, the law may be on our side!

Another mugging

Yesterday, it was local council workers. Today, it's MPs. It looks like the entire public sector is rushing to upgrade their pensions before the public gets too angry. Well, lots of us are angry now. Apparently, Iain Duncan Smith said that he wouldn't take the additional pension because it "would send the wrong signal." Never mind "signals"; why not just say that the increase is wrong?

Here we go again

So Gordon Brown piles regulation after regulation on business, creates a nightmare welfare state described as "the last throw in the politics of central control" and increases taxation on pension funds by £5 billion per year. No surprise, then, that the stock market is in free fall. Companies understandably respond by closing defined-benefit pension schemes - the alternative for many would be bankruptcy. People with personal pensions find that their funds are declining along with annuity rates. There's no such problem for the fat cats in local government. They will keep their final salary, early retirement, inflation linked pensions - financed by the rest of us. Recent declines in their pension funds will be made up by council-tax payers. This is outrageous. As the Scotsman editorial rightly says:

If local authority workers want parity in wages, they may have to accept parity in pensions.

Why are the oppositon parties not raising hell about this?

We have ways of making you smile!

I recently saw the Lord Provost of Edinburgh in my local pub. He was grinning broadly and living it up like, well, a politician. Sadly, it now seems that his smile may be illegal!

The debate continues.....

between Bruce Crichton and John Rogerson.

The people speak

The latest ITV opinion poll asked people if they supported Jack Straw's plan to share sovereignty of Gibraltar with Spain. The result:

Yes 5%

No 95%