The Flag in the Wind
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CAMPAIGNING FOR SCOTLAND
(Owned, Edited and Printed in Scotland since November 1926)
[4 August 2000]

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE - PART 2

Down in Westminster Tony Blair is searching, vainly so far, for the source of the very damaging leaks which are bedevilling his administration. He must be looking with envy on the SNP; our enmities are very much in the open, and names and opinions are being splashed across acres of the press. While last week, Alex Neil had to distance himself from Jim Sillars’ vitriolic attack on Alex Salmond, this week a supporter of John Swinney just happened to buy an internet domain name Alex Neil, and was surprised to find all the queries coming to John Swinney’s site. No doubt John Swinney’s remarks to his helper would be vitriolic also.

In the matter of the presentation of John Swinney’s candidature, one newspaper, which shall as usual remain nameless, was very critical because John did not launch with a great fanfare, and a modern version of Bruce’s address to the troops at Bannockburn. No doubt if John had done this, the same newspaper would have castigated him for pretentiousness!

It would also help to sell more newspapers if the leadership contest could provoke a left-right split, and it is appropriate to recall that in the late Seventies and early Eighties those who were on the so-called left then were gradualists and devolutionists. The situation has moved on; we now have devolution and the Party has to deal with this fact. Recrimination, and saying that we should never have been involved is pointless; we know that the whole devolution plan is designed to stymie the SNP, as it was in 1979. However we had 11 Mps in 1974, and we could only muster 6 in 1997; the Parliament in Edinburgh is at least an advance and we should be taking it over and running it to Independence.

What epitaph would we like to give to our unionist enemies? How about "Hoist with their own petard".

THEY’RE NOT GRATEFUL TO GORDON

Poor Gordon Brown; our esteemed Chancellor of the Exchequer first had his good news giveaway overshadowed by another Downing Street leak, and then had his own constituents say they did not believe him. Life is tough at the top.

However, let us get our facts right; the money being "given away" does not belong to Mr Brown, it belongs to us. Having stuck to Tory spending plans, something the Tories would not have done, the impression we all have is that the Government is in a panic. How much cleverer it would have been to release the purse strings before the clamour of the poor and the under privileged became too strident, and also before talk of a General Election and a slashed majority for Labour.

For the record, an opinion poll conducted by ICM in Dunfermline East, Mr Brown’s Parliamentary seat showed that 72% of those asked did not believe that the Government was going to spend extra billions on public services; the same poll showed that 63% felt the same in Alan Milburn’s Constituency (He’s the Health Secretary) and 65% in Tony Blair’s constituency. The poll was commissioned by the Conservative Party.

By their deeds shall all men know them.

HE’S FUELLING US ALL

As to where Gordon Brown’s been getting all the money, how about petrol? Every Government spokesman talks down the impact of petrol prices, and their part in this charade. They tell us it is due to the global price of oil going up; as this country is an oil producer and France Austria and Ireland are not why are our prices so much higher than theirs?

Fergus Ewing MSP, Shadow Tourism Minister has been doing some comparisons;

Commenting on the recent Dump the Pump Campaign, Brian Wilson, soon not to be Deputy Secretary of State for Scotland, said he was a motorist. too, and he did not like having to pay such a high price for petrol; perhaps he was being a bit ingenuous. As a Member of Parliament he will be paid a mileage allowance for use of his car on constituency business, and we would think that the mileage allowance would have increased to take account of the rise in fuel prices; this has not happened to community nurses whose allowance has remained the same since 1993.

We also wonder if Mr Wilson, being a Scottish Office Minister, has access to an official car?

JACK’S ALL RIGHT

And speaking of official cars, what are we to make of our Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Mr Jack Straw? There he was, late for a meeting with Tony Blair, probably sitting comfortably blethering away on his mobile phone as his car sped along the M5 motorway at 103 mph. Naturally, Mr Straw was not driving; in common with our Chancellor, Mr Straw will not know the price of petrol. He was being driven by a Special Branch driver, and was a touch embarrassed when the motorway police pulled them over.

A puzzlement, is it not? The driver, an on duty policeman, under instructions from the Home Secretary, boss of all English and Welsh policemen, who tells him to get a move on. At the end of the day, the driver was not prosecuted; probably if he had been, he would have appealed to the Home Secretary.

NOMURA THAT NOW

As trailed last week, the Millennium Dome has been sold. It has been bought by the Japanese bank, Nomura, for £105 million. Apparently, there was a counter bid from a company called Legacy for £155 million, but the Government thinks it got a better bargain from Nomura, at £50 million less. The Tories are kicking up a row and have asked the National Audit Office to investigate; strange, as the Nomura head honcho here is Guy Hands, best man at William Hague’s wedding. Is there a leak, and do the Tories know something they are not making public yet?

One thing we do know about Nomura, or two or three; they are currently being sued by an ex employee who was told to strip down and give clients massages, in meetings. In 1997 the Japanese authorities suspended them from trading in a scandal involving the bribing of politicians, and they ran into trouble in Australia by trying to rig the stock market. Their main claim to fame here is that Michael Portillo sold them the Army’s married quarters for around £100 million below their market price. Army families caught up in this mess finished up living in squalor; the National Audit Office was severely critical of the Government.

It looks as if New Labour is again following a Tory example.

WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE

There is now a Competitions Act which makes it legal for companies outwith Scotland to bid to supply water services to Scottish industries. It would not seem that they would be able to pump water from England or France, but it could be a kind of back door privatisation of the water industry. We keep being told how poor our water service system is due to the neglect over the eighteen Tory years, and that prices will have to rise to update the infrastructure; the situation in England and Wales where they did have full scale privatisation led to profiteering, fat salaries and big dividends for shareholders. This scenario could also take place in Scotland. Richard Lochead, MSP, was at a conference on water last week and there are real fears for the water industry.

The water regulator in England (Should we call him the Tap Man) has scuppered a bid by Kelda (Which owns Yorkshire Water) to transfer its water assets to a mutual company; they wanted to sell sewage works and pipelines to a customer owned company to be run on a not for profit basis. In plain English this would mean that public ownership of the assets would be resumed, for a price, and that Kelda would continue to operate the service. In other words the days of making a killing out of this has gone so we want rid of the risk.

Another company, called Hyder, which owns Welsh water, is also in the news because they want to do the same; however two other firms are making a bid for Hyder, Western Utilities, an American company, and guess what, the ubiquitous Nomura! You can lay odds that if there is a way of making a few extra yen from this industry Nomura know it; they are also in competition with George Soros to buy the Inland Revenue and Customs Offices.

THERE’S NO FOOL LIKE AN OLD FOOL

It has dawned on the Tories that the population of this country is becoming older; Wee Willie Hague set the ball rolling when he offered pensioners £10 a week on their pension in May this year. No politician is prepared to talk about restoring the link between wages and pensions which was taken away by the Tories, and which now amounts to a difference of some £50 a week! Mrs Thatcher, for it was she, was also responsible for encouraging people to buy their council houses, and then have to sell them to pay for long term care.

The current Tory Government (In all but name) is also not prepared to implement the recommendations of the Sutherland Committee who said that old people should not have to sell their homes if they needed long term care; they mutter something about medical costs, which will be a fleabite, nursing homes don’t make their money on the medical care.

Two other points spring to mind when we are talking about pensioners; if a pensioner goes into hospital, after a relatively short time his or her pension is docked; we wonder if that happened to Donald Dewar when he went into hospital, but if you are working and taken into hospital most companies won’t dock your wages. The other point was made by one David Rollo in a letter to the papers last week ; he pointed out that it costs about £28000 a year to keep a prisoner in jail, and how many convicted drug dealers have lost their homes? David thinks this is a case for the European Court of Human Rights.

One final point for politicians when they think about the Grey Vote --THEY VOTE!

AND OTHER NEGLECTED SPECIES

You are sitting comfortably relaxed, feet up, and ready to watch TV or just scan the paper, when the phone rings. When you answer, it’s not a friend, or a relative, although they try to sound as if they are, but someone trying to sell you something. This irritates, aggravates, and quite often leads to a rude response, but I for one am beginning to see this differently. The likelihood is that the person is calling from a call centre, is in the only job they can get, and is pressurised to get positive results; they will also be monitored as to how many calls they make, how many key strokes on their computer, how often they go to the toilet, and other breaks.

The call centres are becoming, if not already there, the sweat shops of the 21st century; there are 40000 people in Scotland employed in them, and this is regarded as the call centre capital of the world, not something we should be proud of. Apparently about 50% of the call centres have union recognition, and the STUC is trying to encourage more participation The STUC is in talks with the Call Centre Association, which represents the industry, to try and put in standard minimum working conditions; more power to their elbow.

So when my phone rings, I am now polite, and pleasant; this does not necessarily apply to political canvassers.

CONGRATULATIONS

Having been severely critical of our Chancellor, Gordon Brown, it is odd to be congratulating him on his marriage; this took place this week and he married his long time girl friend, who just happens to be in Public Relations.

Perhaps if Gordon had married earlier there would still be a married person’s allowance.