Socialism rebutted

Regular Scotsman correspondents, John Webb and Bruce Crichton, again demolish the socialists' arguments.

Nuts about Brazil...

... is a most apposite title for this article. Chrissy Iley writes about visiting Brazil:

It’s the perfect moment for it. The place is still exotic without being alienating or frightening and, with a new government led by Lula da Silva, it’s poised on the brink of a new era - it’s becoming more international and cosmopolitan. Brazil will soon be keeping up the same beat as the rest of the world. So get there now.

"Exotic without being alienating or frightening" and "poised on the brink of a new era", she thinks. Well, here's what President-elect da Silva said:

In order to achieve yesterday’s result, it was of fundamental importance that the Workers’ Party, a party of the left, should have understood the need of allying itself with other political parties. The PL (Liberal Party), the PcdoB (Communist Party of Brazil), the PMN (National Mobilization Party) and the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) lent their inestimable support in the first ballot. They were joined in the second ballot by the PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party), the PPS (Popular Socialist Party), the PDT (Democratic Labour Party), the PV (Green Party), the PTB (Brazilian Labour Party), the PHS (Humanist Solidarity Party), the PSDC (Christian Social Democracy Party), and the PGT (General Workers’ Party).

Workers, communists, "mobilizers", more communists, socialists, more socialists, labourites, greens, more labourites, humanists, social democrats and more workers! And I'd bet that the "liberals" are nothing of the sort. What a tragedy for Brazil - "keeping up the same beat" as all too much of the rest of the world.

Let's celebrate

Tomorrow is St Andrew's Day. The Scotsman diary tells us that:

ANYONE in doubt as to how to celebrate St Andrew’s Day tomorrow should take their lead from La Bamba Mexican restaurant in Aberdeen, which is planning to substitute beef with red-hot chilli. Haggis, neeps and tatties are being jettisoned to create such culinary delights as Blaw Yer Mooth Off Burritos, Nae mild Nachos, Tartan Army Tortillas, and Mary Quesidillas of Scots. "Our chilli haggis dishes will add spice to the St Andrew’s Day fiesta," explains La Bamba’s managing director, Stephen Dillon.

Sounds like a hot time in auld Aberdeen tomorrow. It's too far for a night out so I'll stick to something more traditionally Scottish. Something more in line with the name of this website is quite capable of "blawing yer mooth off".

Scottish Politician of the Year...

...is Malcolm Chisholm, the Health Minister. Like Jamieson, Chisholm is another unreconstructed left-winger but I have to confess that he was a more impressive speaker than the other ministers I heard during my visit to the Scottish Parliament yesterday.

Should she resign?

Education Minister Cathie Jamieson doesn't seem to support her own government's policy:

The left-of-centre Labour MSP refrained from endorsing publicly the Scottish Executive's collectively-agreed description of the fire strike as "unacceptable"

In yesterday's Scotsman, Peter MacMahon wrote:

On Tuesday evening and again yesterday morning, Cathy Jamieson, his minister for education and party deputy, was fielded by the Executive to answer questions in the wake of Dr Simpson’s resignation. Asked if she agreed with the First Minister’s assertion that the firefighters’ strike was "unacceptable", Ms Jamieson resolutely refused to do so.

It is clear from her performance that Ms Jamieson, who has an impeccable left-wing pedigree within the Labour Party, thinks no such thing. As a veteran of the campaign to retain Labour’s Clause Four, which committed the party to sub-Marxist nationalisation, and a long-standing activist within the anti-Blairite Grassroots Alliance, Ms Jamieson was only being true to her beliefs. It very likely that she believes in giving the firefighters a 40 per cent pay rise.

I don't always agree with Peter MacMahon ( a former Labour spin doctor), but here he is absolutely correct:

She is a minister in the Scottish government that is at one with its UK counterpart in condemning the strike; is dealing with the consequences of providing fire cover using Green Goddesses and troops; and is determined there should be no pay rise above 4 per cent without significant changes in working practices. By refusing to condemn the strike, Ms Jamieson is therefore in a position that makes it difficult for her to remain a minister. Plainly, she does not fully support Executive policy. By refusing to condemn the strike, Ms Jamieson is therefore in a position that makes it difficult for her to remain a minister. Plainly, she does not fully support Executive policy.

Jack McConnell should sack her. The trouble is that he is running out of untarnished backbenchers to promote.

A day out

I visited the Scottish Parliament for the first time this afternoon. On arrival, I noticed that all of the members' seats were occupied by a group of schoolchildren and I commented to the security guy that the MSPs were getting younger. He replied that it was because of "all the pills they had been taking"! He also agreed that the schoolchildren were probably more sensible than the politicians. Sadly, the children moved to the visitors' gallery and the "real" legislators arrived.

First Minister's question time was fun. Jack McConnell looked smaller than I had imagined and seemed nervous when challenged about the NHS. The Presiding Officer (speaker), Sir David Steel, told the Scottish Nationalists that they were making too much noise when McConnell was speaking but I heard them afterwards saying that Labour do the same when the SNP have the floor.

The Scottish Parliament has a semi-circular seating arrangement rather than the supposedly more confrontational Westminster face-to-face layout. The inter-party shouting and rivalry seemed just the same to me. I shall have to visit the tax-consumers more often.

No more "productivity" please.

The letter from John Stewart calls for fewer MSPs. Fair enough. But I don't like his idea of increasing MSPs' "working" hours. It's bad enough having to pay politicians' salaries without encouraging them to be more "productive". Pay them if we must, but no more legislation please.

Here today, gone tomorrow?

The self-deposed minister, Dr Simpson, was regularly to be seen on televised broadcasts of the Scottish Parliament. He was always there smiling immediately behind and to the left of Jack McConnell at First Minister's question time. I expect that NuLab will spin him off-screen by McConnell's next presentation on Thursday.

Wind farms

There is an ongoing debate in Scotland about whether wind farms discourage tourists from visiting the countryside.

But there is controversy:

A "flawed" survey of 180 tourists by VisitScotland suggests that half of Scotland's visitors think wind farms would be a blot on the landscape, while a quarter of those questioned said they would avoid areas where wind farms were built.

Chris Tomlinson, BWEA head of planning, said: "Unfortunately, this study is flawed given that the methodology has been tailored towards achieving a negative response to wind farms. Only 180 people were interviewed and the sample was self-selected.

I am a keen landscape photographer (a good site here) and I must say that the wind farms that I have seen make an interesting addition to the scenery. Of course, they wouldn't be necessary if the greens weren't so anti-nuclear.

The election looms

The general election for the Scottish parliament is just five months away. Today, a Labour minister has been forced out following his remarks about the firefighters' strike. The Edinburgh Evening News makes a good point:

With the Confederation of British Industry this week making clear that business’ honey-moon with Mr Blair and his party is over, the future could scarcely be bleaker.

Except that in Scotland it is. If the strike drags on into the new year, Labour faces a disaster in May’s Scottish Parliament elections.

I heard the the SNP leader on the radio a few minutes ago. He sounded very cheerful.

Minister resigns

I have just heard that Dr Richard Simpson, Scotland's Deputy Justice Minister, has resigned. Dr Simpson, who was in charge of Scotland's fire service, had got himself into trouble over remarks he allegedly made about striking firefighters:

The minister responsible for the fire service in Scotland has resigned after claims he described striking firefighters as "fascist bastards".

Note that:

It was reported that he said: "We must not give into the bastards. These people aren't socialists, they're protectionists, they're fascists - the kind of people who supported Mussolini."

It is sad to think that a man with a doctorate fails to realise that fascists are socialists and that socialists are protectionists.

I suspect that Dr Simpson will be merely the first political victim of the firefighters' strike.

Bonjour. Je suis le professeur.

This school has what seems to be an excellent idea:

At Walker Road, pupils don't have 'French lessons'. Instead, French-born teachers Sylvie Grigas and Philippe Couineaux teach the normal curriculum entirely in French.

Of course the children may pay more attention to glamorous French teachers than to local ones.

A Scottish welcome

Contrary to what some may think, English people generally settle well in Scotland:

'The idea that there are little groups of English people being persecuted in Scotland doesn't seem to hold at all. '

It seems as though English people in Scotland see problems in the same places as do Scots:

English composer Dave Heath moved to Scotland with his partner, Angela Tunstall, in 1993 to work with the BT Scottish Ensemble. They eventually settled in Edinburgh with their children in 1997. Any anti-English sentiment Heath has experienced has tended to be within the press -- and primarily related to football

I remember many, many people up here saying during the World Cup that they had no problem with the English team or the English fans but couldn't stand the English media.

"It's Not For Girls"...

... it says on the Yorkie Bar that my wife bought for me today. Wrapped in blue, it carries a drawing of a woman with a red diagonal line over her and the words "Not Available In Pink" on the reverse. Surely an example of "hate speech"? Shouldn't the Chocolate Equality Commission be on the case? Well, this site examines the issues. Some of the great British public remain relaxed:

The advert for Yorkie chocolate is in no way offensive to women, most chocolate products are aimed at women and Yorkie is more likely to be bought by men and so is aimed at them - gently poking in the process and suggesting that women to FIND THE PRODUCT DESIRABLE but humourously challenging them to buy it - that is A JOKE.

Why do the Scots get upset?

In Business AM today it was reported that Magnus Linklater, a Times columnist and former Scotsman editor, gave a talk in Glasgow last night. He told his audience about a Times editorial conference. Apparently, one of the editorial hotshots could name the entire Israeli cabinet but didn't know who was the First Minister of Scotland. The US equivalent would be a Washington Post editor being similarly informed about Israel but not knowing that Jeb Bush was governor of Florida.

The Scottish Nationalists don't need to try. The English media does the job for them.

Comments

You can now comment on Freedom and Whisky postings.

Telling it like it is

The pupils of St Ninians Primary School in Stirling asked members of the Scottish Parliament to use more Scots words. Yesterday, MSPs agreed to help. The winner in meeting the challenge is clear:

Fergus Ewing (SNP) then rose to his feet to announce: "The word I choose to highlight is ‘bluffelheid’."

And would this wonderful word be useful for politicians? A "bluffelheid", Mr Ewing told us, is:

defined as "a person who has a very large head but a very small brain".

The presumption of innocence is being whittled away by our government. I suggest that all politicians must be assumed to be "bluffelheids" until they can prove to the contrary.

Does the South-east sudsidise the rest of the UK?

Well, Mike Denham writing in the Spectator thinks so:

Economically, this area is ahead of every other region. It has 35 per cent of the country’s population, but produces 42 per cent of its output. Average productivity per head is a whopping 35 per cent higher than elsewhere. If the rest of the country could match this, Britain would be the most productive of all the major European economies.

I'm not sure it's as simple as that. The UK is probably the most centralised of all modern countries. Even after devolution, 87% of our taxes are levied at the national level. In the US it's 18%. In the rest of Europe taxes are levied roughly half by the national governments and half locally. Where the taxes are collected goes economic and political power. I remember reading some years ago that Washington DC had the highest per-capita wages in the US and that most of them were dependent in some way on the federal government. That's in a country levying a mere 18% of taxation at the centre.

A very large part of London's economy is there precisely because it is the capital city of a country whose government spends some 40% of our GDP and whose London-resident ministers channel almost all of that expenditure through the London-based civil service. This in turn means that London hosts the national press (English, not British actually), the BBC, commercial TV, media-associated industries like advertising and PR, the political parties, almost all lobbyists, charities, trades unions and professional organisations. This centralisation of decision makers and influencers in turn makes London the natural location for the head offices of companies whose operations are spread throughout Britain. All of this is why the South-east dominates our economy and why it is impossible to solve the imbalances in housing and transport.

If we want to see a more economically balanced Britain we can either reduce government expenditure to, say, 10% of GDP, or we can spread government more evenly throughout the country. I support the first option. I suspect that neither will be implemented.

Fiscal Independence

This topic just won't go away:

Professor Donald MacRae, chief economist of Lloyds TSB Scotland, told an audience at the University of Abertay Dundee, that reserved fiscal powers are limiting the potential of Scotland’s economy, and that the country is falling well behind its competitors in terms of business growth

Members of the Scottish Parliament can't be expected to exercise proper responsibility unless they raise their own revenue:

Fiscal devolution brings fiscal responsibility and accountability - tax and spend becomes truly tax and spend, not just spend.

I was rather surprised to see that Scotsman columnist Bill Jamieson sees merit in fiscal devolution:

MacRae is at pains not to do down the Scottish economy as a hopeless and irredeemable failure. But he rightly identifies the core problem: the structural asymmetry that has left the Scottish parliament as a spending and tax revenue disbursement machine with none of the real choice-making and discipline that comes with having to raise the money to be spent. Scotland’s MSPs have no real concern for the health and wealth of Scotland’s economy, since their powers are limited to dividing up the Westminster block grant.

Absolutely. Let's make our politicians really responsible for their actions.

Glasgow Airport

There is an interesting article today in BusinessAM (registration and payment required). Glasgow’s harbour operator, Clydeport PLC, is being taken over by Peel Holdings, a company that already runs Liverpool Airport. It seems that Peel Holdings are considering the acquisition of Glasgow Airport should it ever be offered for sale by owners BAA.

Many are of the opinion that BAA’s ownership of both Glasgow and Edinburgh airports is harmful to the Scottish economy. I agree. We need some competition between the two airports assuming that the politicians never agree to allow the construction of a new airport equidistant from the two cities.

Blame it on capitalism

Mary Kenny writes in The Spectator about the decline in Britain's morals:

There is, in British society at present, a most disastrous retreat from bourgeois culture, as the reports of Theodore Dalrymple in this magazine so alarmingly illustrate

Fair enough. Dalrymple is one of the best observers of our social scene.

But what's this, Mary:

Capitalism has produced an uncouth strain of people who have no idea how to behave, think only of their own gratification, shriek foul-mouthed abuse at anyone who frustrates their whims for two seconds, and have never been properly told off for their appalling conduct.

The "disastrous retreat from bourgeois culture" has been caused by socialism, not capitalism. Government owned courts refuse to punish criminality, government owned schools relentlessly dumb-down British children and government welfare allows the underclass to live without showing respect to others. Capitalism is the friend of bourgeois culture, not its enemy.

Firefighters

A month ago I wrote about the cost of the employers' (that's us) contribution to firefighters' pensions. According to the Daily Mail, the employers' contribution was 22% on top of basic pay. Today the Glasgow Herald says that the contribution is 25%. The various government and union websites that I searched mention only employees' pension deductions and not the additional sums paid by the taxpayers. That makes the total current package £26,904 (not the much quoted average "pay" of £21,431) and the total being demanded £37,500 (not £30,000 which would be the basic pay). I suspect that the majority of private sector workers get NO pension contributions on top of their basic pay. Those that do are seeing the value of their pensions being whittled away as a result of red tape and taxation hitting the underlying investments.

I would like to see journalists quoting total "package" values when writing about people's wages in future.

The customer's always right...

...unless he's too wet! An Edinburgh schoolboy tried to take a bus home. But:

Tommy Lindsay was on his way home from his after-school drama club in the pouring rain when he tried to board a number 3 Lothian bus.

But the youngster says the driver stopped him, insisting he was too wet to get on, and then pulled away, leaving the soaking schoolboy facing a half-hour walk home alone in the dark.

Perhaps I don't need to point out that Lothian Buses is a "public" and not a private organisation. The typical government response:

The spokesman would make no comment on whether or not it was company policy to refuse entry to a bus because a person was too wet.

I have a comment. Privatise them. Now.

Scary

I found this pro-North Korean story on the web today. Maybe it's wishful thinking on the part of the author but it's certainly scary:

North Korea has 500-1000 missiles that can reach any target in South Korea, Japan, Okinawa and Guam. It is not likely that North Korea has enough nuclear warheads for all of its missiles, but it does have more than enough biochemical warheads for its missiles. The 'experts' say that North Korean missiles are 'wobbly' and inaccurate. Missiles tipped with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are not meant to take out military targets that require pinpoint accuracy, but they are terror weapons for extended civilian targets - cities, water reservoirs, power grids, and so on.

North Korea has a small fleet of ICBMs - estimated to be a dozen or so. Some of these may reach the US homeland with WMD warheads. Even a single WMD warhead exploding in the United States will cause a pandemonium and major economic disruptions. North Korea's ICBMs are more for political objectives than military. The real punch will come from North Korea's medium and short-range missiles launched from 'fishing' boats on the US homeland from its coastal waters.

Unlike in the Korean War of 1950-53, when Japan escaped unscathed, the next war will see Japanese cities in ruins and its economy devastated. Japanese cities are well within the range of North Korea's 500+ mid-range missiles and North Korea's special forces.