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CAMPAIGNING FOR SCOTLAND
(Owned, Edited and Printed in Scotland since November 1926)
Compiled by Jim Lynch
[Issue 47 - 27 April 2001]

A ROD FOR THEIR OWN BACKS

Reviewing the events of the last week anent the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Tourist Board, now known as visitscotland, I cannot help but feel "You couldn’t make this up." A couple of weeks ago the SNP had produced a proposal to reduce Vat on tourism to aid businesses during the foot and mouth outbreak; this was permissible under EU rules, but the initiative was rubbished by George Foulkes (Who he? Helen Liddell’s little helper) as a " panic" proposal and " ill thought out." Kenny MacAskill, SNP enterprise spokesman, claimed the Scottish Executive’s response to the tourism crisis had been "lacklustre and inept", and this might have been the end of the ritual trading of insults; however....... Last week the appointment of a new tourist supremo was announced; Rod Lynch (no relation) is the Chief Executive of Olympic Airways Greece, and has a very good track record , previously working with British Airways, Air Europe, the BBC and Forte Hotels.

Apparently Mr Lynch was not the first choice for the post, and another candidate had turned down the job because the £80000 salary was too low. His appointment was announced, by Ms Wendy Alexander, Enterprise Minister, always eager for any kudos going, and then the flak started to fly; first, he could not take up the post until June, and next week he was due to fly to America on a combined holiday/business trip. (Arghh!) There was some bickering in the New Labour coterie, as maybe they should not have announced the appointment so soon, as his holiday plans were a hostage to fortune, but again that was surmountable, as he would require to give notice anyway.

Mr Lynch’s appointment was warmly welcomed by the tourism industry, as they perceived him to be a man who knew what he was doing, with a track record of turning things round. However, there was more to come; it emerged that he was also Chief Executive of another company, and would continue to hold that position, granted only spending three days a month on it. The bickering turned into tantrums; they had appointed the man, and were going to pay him £145000 a year (What happened to the £80000 limit?) and here he was only going to be a part-timer!!! It was also the case that he held an air cargo licence for the other company which would have meant a conflict of interests.

So he was asked if he was giving up his other job, and said no; there seems to be some confusion over who knew what and when, and perhaps the firm of headhunters who were paid £100000 to find suitable candidates, might like to make a statement. As it is, the job offer has been withdrawn, Mr Lynch is consulting his solicitors, and whole affair is one of crass ineptitude, with feelings of sadness and betrayal in the tourist industry. When the voters see the Scottish Executive get themselves in such a farcical situation, they will blame the Parliament, and not the vicious back stabbing Labour Party, and that could be the idea. We think this story will run, and run, or as one newspaper put it, there will be another shambles along in a minute.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

So how did the Scottish Tourist Board and the Scottish Executive get themselves into this mess in the first place? Well, the year before last the number of tourists coming to Scotland dropped by 11%; according to our masters it had nothing to do with high fuel prices or the strength of the pound. The board commissioned a report by Pricewaterhousecoopers, management consultants, who recommended 

that the agency change its name to visitscotland; by sheer coincidence, a new Enterprise Minister, Ms Wendy Alexander, was appointed at about the same time. The newly named regime decided to fire the Chief Executive, Tom Buncle, and re employ him as a Marketing Director, at the same salary! This is not a figment of the imagination! Strangely, the board had also paid Mr Buncle a performance bonus for the year in question, so he must have been deemed to have done something right.

In any event, Mr Buncle declined the post of Marketing Director, and went his merry way, and the Chairman of the Board, Lord Jimmy Gordon, founder of Radio Clyde, former Labour parliamentary candidate, and close friend of the late Donald Dewar, decided to go before he was pushed. A firm of recruitment consultants, Heidrick and Struggles, was asked to find a new chief executive, and have been paid an estimated £100000 for so doing; Peter Lederer, General Manager of Gleneagles Hotel, was appointed Chairman of the Board of visitscotland. 

Mr Buncle went in late October or early November last year, as noted at the same time as Wee Wendy first poked her nose in, and it has taken all concerned six months to come up with a successor; plenty of time for all concerned to do their homework.

THE KING SITS IN DUNFERMLINE TOUN

And so to the continuing saga of that other New Labour/tourism fiasco, the Caledonian Trilogy; and is it not strange that the same participants are involved? Well, some of them, anyway, as perhaps if Mr Rod Lynch had been in place the disgraceful dumping of the film would not have happened. To recap - the film, Caledonian Trilogy, was made as a joint venture by the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament, to be distributed across America during Tartan Week to boost our tourist industry, struggling with the effects of foot and mouth. The film was highly acclaimed, and was shown at a reception given by the American Scottish Foundation on 4th April 2001; in the words of one of our American friends "There were about 60 or 70 people there and it received a rousing ovation (and a few tearful eyes.) Sir Sean liked the video, and requested that it be shown to the 100 or so press people who covered his press conference on Friday April 6, 2001. It was well received there as well."

Just about this time, there came the claim that it would cost too much money to distribute it to all the TV stations who would want it (A couple of thousand pounds for a video that had already cost £30000) and then the canard that the singing of "Dixie" was racist.

Whatever, the video was killed off, and strenuous efforts are being made to find out the who and the why; the efforts are being made by the Scots Independent Newspaper, because New Labour know who and why. The editor of the Scots Independent, Kenneth Fee, has already been burning up the telephone line to the British Embassy in Washington, and the official spokesman categorically denies that it had anything to do with the Foreign Office. We think that about 200 copies of the film have "Gone AWOL" in America, but nobody is prepared to admit any liability.

We , of course, can speculate as to why and who; we believe that the film showed Scotland and the Scots in a very good light, and that this is offensive to the Unionist New Labour Party. The last thing that they want is for Scots to have a bit of pride in their heritage and their country, and this in the run up to the General Election is bad news; quite how they expect this to translate from America to here is another matter, but when the most powerful country in the world has a large body of people (20 million like to say they are of Scots descent) you can see the spin off. Another reason could be that now that Tartan Day is an annual event in America and getting bigger all the time, in 2003 it will fall at the beginning of the election campaign for the Scottish Parliament, and they do not want Scotland having a high profile at that stage; some New Labour people think ahead.

As to the who, well, the headline to this article should give a clue; in America was Ms Wendy Alexander, our Enterprise Minister, the close friend and confidante of the MP for Dunfermline East (which ironically does not take in the toun of Dunfermline!), the Chancellor , Gordon Brown. Wendy is in charge of Labour’s General Election campaign, and the name of the game is talk up the Tories, frighten the children, and stop these Scots getting above themselves; come to think of it, all this cack handedness being shown by New Labour is perhaps a ploy to make us believe we could not govern ourselves. It could be that the fingerprints of the Treasury are all over this debacle.

For a fuller account of this affair, read this month’s Scots Independent, due for publication this weekend.

BATHGATE NO MORE

The above phrase from the Proclaimer’s hit song of the Seventies, "Letter To America" has resurfaced as the town is shattered at the closure of Motorola and the loss of 3100 jobs; tears and recriminations, and who did what when and why do not alter the unpalatable fact that 3100 households now face great difficulties in finding any sort of a job. The reason is the downturn in demand for mobile phones, and cutbacks in production, with Motorola deciding that Scotland is surplus to requirements.

It is also being said that it is easier to sack the Scots than other Europeans, as our employment laws, initiated by the Tories and continued by the New Tories are not as stringent as those those on the Continent; what is crying out for change is that Scottish Enterprise should be concentrating on investing money in indigenous Scottish industry, and not on paying out grants to foreign companies to come where it is cheapest, and then decamp to a cheaper location.

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, did intervene, but to no avail, and our own Enterprise Minister, Ms Wendy Alexander, visited Motorola in Chicago during Tartan Week this year; Ms Alexander has also called for grants of £17.5 million to be repaid by Motorola, or £5600 for every employee, but they won’t see it. The same lady is probably perversely pleased at the Motorola issue, because it takes the focus away from the visitscotland mess!

I am conscious that this is the fourth item in a row in which the name of Ms Alexander has cropped up, and it is coincidence that she is involved in all these debacles; Ms Alexander is reported to be very intelligent and energetic, and interventionist ,so why is it I am reminded of a friend, speaking to a well-known poet at Hugh McDiarmid’s funeral, who said to him, "Ye ken, for sic a clever fellow, ye’re helluva stupid."

HAND ME DOWN AN EXPERT

I am convinced that somewhere, either at the Mound or at the Scottish Office, there is a big cupboard filled with shelves and shelves of "Experts", all ready to be taken out, dusted down, and sent to the appropriate problem area. So how does one become one of these "Experts" and what do they do in the meantime, practise crisis management at public expense? The latest team of experts is to go in to the Scottish Qualifications Authority to "plug skills gaps", and Irene McGugan MSP , Shadow Education Minister, is concerned that this is only happening within a week or two of the examinations starting. She said "The priority is of course to get things right, and ensure that Scotland’s young people receive the service from the SQA to which they are entitled. It is essential that the chaos of last year is not repeated.

"But it is very late in the day for the Government still to be putting together arrangements for effective delivery. The recommendations from the three enquiries into the debacle have been available for months, and the question has to be why moves to strengthen weaknesses and fill gaps in the SQA have not been taken by the Minister before now."

She thought it was extremely worrying that the SQA still did not have the necessary skills within their organisation, because it indicated that the underlying problems had not been solved, and sending in a Government "flying squad" at this late stage was not reassuring.

First Minister, Henry McLeish, has given cast iron assurances that all will be well with this year’s examinations and even said that his head would be "on the block", whatever that might mean; what it does not mean is that if there is another shambles he will resign. His swift removal of Sam Galbraith, and the presentation of the poisoned chalice to Jack McConnell in his first Cabinet was a shrewd move; at one stroke he got rid of a non-resigning embarrassment, and he gave his leadership rival an offer he couldn’t refuse (Not being Wendy). If the SQA comes right, and Mr McConnell is a very able chap, whether you like him or not, then he alone will bask in the glory, but if it goes wrong, as the signs indicate, then he will be badly damaged. It reminds me of the management expression during my working days "We do not have problems, we have opportunities.", to which my response was "I wish somebody else had my opportunities." Mr McConnell may be feeling the same, or he may be drafting in the "off the shelf experts" as belt and braces, an action Sam Galbraith did not take.

WANTED HENRY McTHIEF!

Dear, dear, John Swinney, how could you be so unkind and cutting about our genial First Minister (Irony - never appreciated in the Labour Party) by accusing him of stealing SNP Policies; we all know that it is true that he has stolen 10 policies, but is not imitation the sincerest form of flattery? ( In the North East, John, your attitude would be described as "coorse"! ) However, as Mr McLeish knows, politics is a rough old game, and at least when the SNP attacks him he knows where it is coming from; the most vicious attacks mounted on the First Minister are coming from within his own party, and its tame press poodle. The latest intervention, from a Mrs Helen Liddell (former personal assistant to the late Robert Maxwell, well known thief) is directed against Mr McLeish, telling him to stop his Cabinet fighting with each other; this is rich, to say the least of it, because the main reason for the squabbling is that Westminster MPs, including herself, and the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, are interfering in the affairs of the Scottish Executive, not wanting to let go of any authority they have.

Maybe it is time for the SNP to stop attacking Henry McLeish, and to give him some support; he is not getting it from his own side. I am reminded again of the young MP on his first visit to Westminster, looking across the Chamber and saying excitedly "And there’s the enemy!", only to be told by his mentor "No, no, son, that’s the Opposition; the enemy is behind you." 

GET OUT OF GAOL FREE

This week has seen something unprecedented, a strike by prison officers; they are not allowed to strike, the legislation was put through in 1994, and in fact by going on strike they could be sent to gaol, so the situation must have been desperate. The Scottish Prison Service, known hereafter as SPS, had changed the terms and conditions, and prison officers were expected to work 13 hour shifts, without a meal break; in addition to this, there are plans for further privatisation of the prison service, with the emphasis as always on money. The chief executive of the SPS slashed the prison budget by £13 million last year.

Last month, prison officers had to use riot gear to put down a disturbance at Kilmarnock, Scotland’s only private prison, which has a very high turnover of prison staff, low wages and low morale; SPS have always refused to give costs for Kilmarnock, pleading commercial confidentiality, but a leaked report showed that the cost per prisoner is £26000 in Kilmarnock, £21000 at Barlinnie and £23000 at Edinburgh. We do not know how many prisoners are in Kilmarnock , but let us say 500; 500 prisoners at £5000 each comes to £2.5 million a year. No wonder they want commercial confidentiality !

The primary purpose of a prison is to lock criminals up, for the safety of the general public, and the prison service is also supposed to be concerned with rehabilitation; if all that matters is the cost, and rehabilitation is not to be attempted why does the Scottish Executive not say so? It seems that the Executive is saying one thing and doing another, paying lip service to prison officers and police, but always keeping an eye on the bottom line; the police, for instance, do not believe their numbers have increased, despite the avowals of the Justice Minister, Mr Jim Wallace.

The aforementioned private prison company, Premier Prison Services, a subsidiary of the American firm Wackenhut, is also the favourite to get the job of running a detention centre for asylum seekers at the former Dungavel prison, near Strathaven; this should be a public service, but New Labour yet again are going for privatisation, which will be cheap and nasty. How long before the European Commission for Human Rights will have to step in is a moot point. 

And one final comment on the prison officers’ strike, the first in their history (61 years); our caring sharing Scottish Executive knew about it when they read about it in the papers. There’s trust for you.

THE BARNETT SQUEEZE

Every time I come across the Barnett Formula, I am reminded of the Schleswig-Holstein question; only three people knew the answer. One had died, one had forgotten and one had gone mad. Barnett is a bit like that; it was introduced by Joel (now Lord) Barnett to equalise spending between Scotland and England, based on the fact that because Scotland is very sparsely populated in comparison with England we incur far greater costs per head of population than in England. Take roads, for example; we have one third of the land mass of the United Kingdom, but only 8.8% of the population, so naturally public spending per head on roads would be very much higher. That is a very simplistic way of putting things, and no doubt any competent economist could knock holes in it, but it is a London plan, and all figures quoted are for "identifiable expenditure" which excludes defence, for one example, and our argument has always been "Let us raise our own money and we’ll spend it as we require."

I have never had a satisfactory answer from a Unionist to the following conundrum: take first that we are not subsidised. We can pay our way, and with a surplus left over for investing in the future, as per the plan put forward by SNP Shadow Finance Minister, Andrew Wilson, so that is no bar to Independence. Now, the Unionists maintain we are subsidised, but they have never satisfactorily explained how after 300 years in a union with England, with vast reserves of energy, with ample water (too much at present) and with the capacity to feed ourselves, how come we are still needing to be looked after? The answer is of course, that the Unionists, with their eyes firmly fixed on the Home Counties, have grossly mismanaged Scotland, and in fact they are the ones being subsidised.

To put all this in perspective, during the 18 years of Tory mismanagement, the concentration was on getting rid of all uneconomic industries, selling all they could lay their hands on; if Scotland was a drag they would have dumped us long ago. 

FOOT IN THE MOUTH NOTES

I was looking in a shop window of one of the English clothing chains, called Urban, just last Saturday.

I am still trying to fathom out why they thought that a Union Jack T Shirt would be a seller in Dundee.

The Political Parties Election and Referendum Act 2000, came into force on 16 February 2001; in this companies are not allowed to give political donations to UK registered parties and other EU political organisations without shareholder approval. In addition, shareholders must agree to EU political expenditure, regardless of the amount.

When will the law be changed to make political dues from union membership something that members can opt to do, rather than as at present opting not to do; this means the Labour Party take money by default. Sauce for the goose.......

This week saw St George’s Day on Monday 23 April virtually ignored by the English, more of whom knew that it was Shakespeare’s birthday.

People in glass houses...... St Andrew’s Day in Scotland, and Robert Burns’ birthday are both ignored; note to the uninformed, St Andrew’s Day is 30th November, and Robert Burns’ birthday is 25th January.

The paddle steamer Waverley is back on the Clyde after a £4 million refit, and crowds turned out at Tighnabruaich to see it, and were stunned when it sailed on by.

Clydeport has realigned the marker buoys in the Clyde narrows, and the channel is now too narrow for the steamer, and it had to avoid the Kyles of Bute for the first time in living memory.

Despite all the talk about getting rid of quangos, there 303 of them in Scotland.

Time they got the bullet - middle aged joke.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are ordering the Labour Party not to campaign on their record in the forthcoming General Election, as they fear a referendum on all the things they have not done. Instead, the focus is on who can you trust to improve things.

As we well know, words speak louder than actions.

A Teletext Poll a couple of weeks ago showed that 41% of respondents were going to vote SNP at the General Election, compared with 34% going to vote Labour.

No, we don’t believe it either; it showed the Tories on 36% - in Scotland!

Dorothy Grace Elder, SNP List MSP for Glasgow, has supported petitioners who want the Stone of Destiny moved from Edinburgh Castle to Perth Museum and Art Gallery; she said "At Edinburgh Castle, the Stone is only an addition to a vast treasure trove of goodies."

At a news conference the previous week, Kenny MacAskill, SNP List MSP for Lothians said that the losses to tourism in Edinburgh exceeded the rescue package for the whole of Scotland. Stand clear everybody!

SCOTTISH FOOD, TRADITIONS AND CUSTOMS

Perhaps the most popular grace used in Scotland is The Selkirk Grace ( also known as The Covenater's Grace ) attributed to our National Bard, Robert Burns. The name of the grace has no connection with the Border town of Selkirk, featured in last weeks column, but arises from a visit paid by Robert Burns to the Earl of Selkirk in 1794. During a tour of Galloway, Burns and his friend, John Syme, stayed for a few days with the Earl of Selkirk at St Mary's Isle, Kirkcudbright , the Selkirk's family home. The visit was a huge success with Burns in grand form, impressing his host and the other guests with his erudite wit and stimulating conversation. When asked to say the blessing before dinner he recited an old Scots grace, which he slightly changed. Thereafter it became known as The Selkirk Grace and has become the standard grace at Burns Suppers.

See our Scottish Food, Traditions and Customs in our Features section

DATES IN HISTORY

SING A SANG AT LEAST
(compiled by Peter D Wright)

"That I for poor auld Scotland's sake
Some useful plan or book could make
Or sing a sang at least ........"

- Robert Burns

See the SING A SANG AT LEAST in our features section

A KIST O FERLIES
A Keek at the Guid Scots Tung
By Peter D Wright
(Note: All words underlined in this section are RealAudio links)

See Scots Language in our Features Section
for other poems, stories, sayings and words in the Scots language

THE MONTHLY PRIZE CROSSWORD

Each month the Scots Independent Newspaper offers a prize crossword and we're now offering this online in the Flag in the Wind as well.   Should you complete the crossword by the deadline you can fax it over to the SI and the first correct one opened on the closing date will win a £10.00 book token.

SI Prize Crossword No. 16
[Click here to bring up the crossword]