FLAGS IN
THE WIND
Well,
the Scottish Parliament is on holiday, the Tories are making a mess of
electing a new leader, and so the press is looking around for something to
titillate the palate, which might prove moderately interesting to
their readers; ergo, half a page about the Saltire! There has been a fair
debate recently, sparked off by Dr Winnie Ewing’s protest about the
Union Flag being on the platform in the Scottish Parliament during the
visit and address of the Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. While all
concerned seemed to be poohpoohing (if that is how you spell it) the
significance of flags, the very fact that it is creating the debate
enhances the significance of flags; if flags do not matter, why bother?
According to the report, the Department of
Culture, Media and Sport gives guidance that the Saltire should only be
flown on St Andrew’s Day, 30th November for all Unionist readers (and
for the rest of us, but we know it!); however quite a number of local
authorities are choosing to fly the Saltire all year round. Scottish
Borders Council have started to fly it from their headquarters in Newton
St Boswell; they feel that as theirs is the first council headquarters as
you enter Scotland it is appropriate to tell people they have arrived in
Scotland by flying the Saltire. Other councils also flying the Saltire
are, Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Highland, Aberdeenshire, Angus,
Clackmannanshire and Perth & Kinross; I remember my initial surprise
that Police Headquarters in Dingwall flew the Saltire, but now it is
commonplace, as it should be.
There
are different policies on the Saltire; in Aberdeenshire, Dundee and Perth
& Kinross they also fly the Union Flag (apparently it is only
correctly styled the Union Jack if it is flown at the front of a ship,
from the jack, and it must be a navy ship). Angus Council flies it once,
on Remembrance Day, Clackmannanshire does not fly it at all, and Edinburgh
and Glasgow fly the Saltire all year round, but the Union Flag on royal,
ceremonial and official occasions. North Lanarkshire flies the Union Flag
16 times and the Saltire once; Shetland, Stirling, West Dunbartonshire and
Falkirk all fly the Saltire once a year. We do not know what happens in
South Lanarkshire, but it was their former council leader, Tom McCabe, now
the Minister for Parliament who started the stushie by having the Union
Flag put up for (?) Mr Ahern.
A
CORRECTION PERHAPS ?
Well, I wrote something last week which
now appears to be inaccurate; I say it appears to be, because at the time
of writing the sneaky rats had not made public their view; I wrote
that a bill had been passed to outlaw warrant sales, an achievement which
was pushed through by the Parliament against the wishes of the Executive.
This was correct, but the Scottish Executive working group has now
unveiled proposals for a new way of dealing with domestic debt collection;
the last of the procedures is as follows: "The final sanction of
action against debtor’s goods (by compulsory sale order) would require a
special application to the courts and the creditor would have to show that
other alternatives were not available." So the bill to outlaw warrant
sales will be amended to allow - warrant sales!
What
is bizarre about this situation is that the committee, chaired by Angus
MacKay, the Finance Minister, sees no incongruity! The Liberal Democrats
welcomed the proposals as "the most comprehensive and liberal system
of debt collection in Europe"; well they acquiesced in the abolition
of tuition fees which were merely deferred, and claimed victory for
themselves on that, so one should not be too surprised. For the SNP, Alex
Neil, MSP, a co-sponsor of the Abolition of Poindings and Warrant Sales
Act 2000 said "I welcome many of the recommendations in the report
published today by the Working Group on a Replacement for Poinding and
Warrant Sale. Any moves that will lead to a more humane method of
recovering debt can only assist the most vulnerable people in society.
These proposed changes are a victory for the will of the Parliament which
defied Ministers last year by pressing ahead with the Act to abolish
poindings and warrant sales.
"I am concerned however that
the backdoor remains open to the reintroduction of poindings and warrant
sales - despite the Act that was passed last year - and the Lab/Lib
government must be aware that all hell will break loose if any attempts
are made to do this on the back of this report." Christine Grahame,
MSP, added "Any arrangements which will assist people to pay their
debts in a managed way can only be welcomed. But in 21st century Scotland
warrant sales and poindings are not a viable option for debt recovery and
the will of Parliament that these methods are to be abolished must be
obeyed."
We await with interest this report being
presented for a vote by the Parliament.
THE EMPTY
CHAMBER
The
Scottish Executive must be very grateful that the visit of the Catalonian
President, Mr Jordi Pujol, took place during the Parliamentary recess,
judging by his publicised remarks when he was asked what advice he would
give to the new devolved Scotland. He said "Obviously, it is
important for Scotland as it is for us, to resolve the financial problems.
"Because perhaps it can happen that we
have many political possibilities, much symbolic recognition, but if we
have not enough finances or money we cannot implement or apply these
powers.
"That’s very dangerous
because people when they have achieved devolution after so many years,
believe that now their country will work better and their problems will be
resolved." He said it was necessary to have not only a theoretical
political power but the very tangible power to finance it. We could not
have put it better ourselves.
John
Swinney MSP, SNP Leader, said of these remarks "President Pujol’s
comments add significant weight to this key debate about the powers at the
disposal of the people of Scotland. There is a growing concensus in
Scotland with three quarters of Scots agreeing that our Parliament should
control Scotland’s money." The really interesting point here is
that a President of a devolved region, Catalonia, puts his finger on the
issue right away. The First Minister, Henry McLeish, could only respond
with a noisebite that the SNP were talking about fiscal autonomy because
we did not want to talk about independence. No, no, Henry, fiscal autonomy
is full control of the purse, we also want full control of the policies,
but we’ll take whatever we can get, whenever we can get it, but we will
not stop until we have the lot! The "settled will" of the
Scottish people has castors on it - it keeps moving.
THE SNP
AND NATO
Interesting to see that membership or
not of NATO will be discussed at the SNP’s Annual Conference in Dundee
this year. I am grateful to one of the Scots Independent’s other
columnists Ian O Bayne, for reminding me of the history of this issue.
Until 1981, the SNP was in favour of non-nuclear membership of NATO, as
per the Norwegian example, but at the Aberdeen Conference in 1981, the
influence of the left wing 79 Group led to this pro-NATO policy being
abandoned; as Ian pointed out in a letter to the Scotsman "This
decision in the intervening 20 years, has produced no detectable political
advantage whatsoever, except perhaps to the party’s unionist
opponents."
As the world changes, well there is no
longer an Iron Curtain, and former satellites of the USSR are clamouring
to join the European Community, and NATO, so it is no doubt time to
examine our relationships with the rest of the world; however, any
Nationalist knows that the nuclear option is not on. What will be
interesting will be to see if any of the previous 79 Group members, or
their fellow travellers, are still around, or is the NATO issue
yesterday’s principle.
AND
SPEAKING OF AMERICA
It
is now official; George Bush lost the US Presidential Election. Remember
all the capuffle about Florida, and how Bush won Florida by 537 votes,
and this was enough to give him the White House? Now read on; a page from
a contract between the state of Florida and a company called Database
Technologies has shown that 56000 voters, 54% of them African American,
were wrongly labelled as convicted criminals and targeted for purge from
the electoral rolls. The state hired the company for "manual
verification by telephone calls" that people scrubbed from the rolls
were in fact convicted felons; Florida state officials can now confirm
that 95% of those removed, nearly all Democrats, were innocent. The
company, now called Choice Point of Atlanta, did not make thousands of
telephone calls; it made almost none. Their response was that it was
ordered by the state to produce more names than were actually verified as
convicted felons; they managed to produce enough so that the Governor Jeb
Bush’s brother got the Presidency. You couldn’t make this up.
TAYSIDE
HEALTH MISTRUST
The
audit committee of the Scottish Parliament have produced a damning report
on Tayside Health Board and the Tayside University Hospital NHS Trust;
under the chairmanship of Andrew Welsh, SNP, Angus, the committee
found failings in corporate governance and communication as well as in
working relationships between all the health bodies on Tayside. The
situation, described as one of the worst financial scenarios in Scotland,
has produced a £10 million overspend and an accumulated deficit of £20
million. It had to do with the reorganisation of the NHS on Tayside in
1999, which saw the trusts reduced from four to two; the MSPs discovered a
total loss of financial control and the mismanagement of millions of
pounds of public money.
Four people are named and shamed in the
report; Geoff Scaife, chief executive of the NHS in Scotland at the time,
whose comment when the first deficit of £9 million was uncovered was
"just one of the many noises in the system, concerning the tightness
of finances in the health service." Tim Brett, the chief executive of
Tayside Health Board was severely criticised, as was Paul White, former
chief executive of Tayside University Hospitals NHS Trust, and Sir William
Stewart, former chairman of the trust and of the Dundee Teaching Hospitals
Trust.
Mr Scaife is now Birmingham Health
Authority’s chief executive, Mr Brett is still in post at Tayside, Mr
White is now chief executive at St Bartholomew’ Hospital in London
(Bart’s) and Sir William Stewart who resigned as chairman of the Tayside
hospital trust last year, is in London; it does not look as if anyone got
fired.
So, there was a bunch of highly paid
incompetents running the Tayside Health Trusts, and between them they
managed to spend £20 million that they did not have; of course it was
taxpayers’ money, or is taxpayers’ money, or will be taxpayers’
money? The normal situation in a business, which is what the Tory
government tried to make the Trusts, is that you have money coming in,
sales, if you like, and from this you pay all the bills; if you don’t
have enough money coming in then either you don’t pay the bills or you
ask the bank for a loan. If you carry on paying bills with no
money........ So you had all these highly paid numpties spending non
existent money, and nobody appears to have known about it? And they have
all gone on to better things, where their incompetence will be further
rewarded by bigger paypackets. And note this well; the squanderers are all
managers, not doctors, nurses, medical orderlies, ambulancemen, porters,
cooks and cleaners, no, nobody at the sharp end, but people paid to manage
- the privatisation factor.
THE
SINKING FLAGSHIP
Last
year, Tony Blair opened the NHS Flagship hospital in Carlisle, which was
to be the state of the art first public hospital built with private money,
the way ahead, a bright and
beautiful future with contented doctors, smiling nurses and well cared for
patients in crisp clean surroundings; such was the rhetoric and the hype,
so how has it been, a year on? Well, it does not look as if anything is
quite as was planned; for a start it was 90 beds short of what it
replaced, so there are not enough beds, and also because there is no space
for storage the hospital is renting the former hospital building to store
medical records and x-rays. There is a large atrium with plenty of shops
to let, but no air conditioning in the hospital, the wards are so small
that the doors couldn’t open without banging into beds so the doors had
to be removed; the cleaning and sterilising equipment is cheap and shoddy
and keeps breaking down, but there are no engineers to maintain
them, to save on costs! All in all, a pretty disastrous catalogue of
failure, and christened by the staff "Railtrack on the Wards";
morale is at rock bottom, and this is the first of 68 hospitals to be
built.
But let us not forget the bright side,
always a silver lining; the share price of Amec, who collects the £11
million a year for renting out their flea infested flagship, is soaring as
investors know a good thing when they see it.
And there is another nice little earner
going in this PFI wonderland; when a developer borrows the money to do a
PFI job, he charges all the interest at a suitably inflated rate to the
NHS. After the building is up and running the developer then renegotiates
the loan, as there is no risk (if there ever was) and they get a handsome
rebate which they keep. So far, Dartford and Gravesham Hospital in Kent
has yielded £20 million to the developers, Bridgend Prison in South Wales
has yielded £5 million, five prisons run by Premier Prisons (a
partnership between Wackenhurst in America and Serco) have racked up £7
million. I used to say that when you shake hands with a property
developer, count your fingers; what is happening here is that all this
money, windfalls as they style them is coming from the public purse -
which is us.
So there is something to think about;
manage a Hospital Trust incompetently and walk away to better things;
build a crap hospital and live fat on the rent; put in an inflated price,
do some financial rejigging and let the taxpayer keep on paying at the old
rate. And all the time the public services are crumbling, the staff are
overstretched, and health , education and prison services are at breaking
point. The Victorians may have been hypocrites in many ways, but they are
mere bit players compared with this lot.
FOOT IN
THE MOUTH NOTES
Time for a little light relief, as I get
worked up at posturing, waste and hypocrisy.
There are proposals afoot to ban smoking in
public houses, as this is harmful. (I am a non smoker)
The next proposal must be to ban alcohol in
public houses, as there is more trouble due to alcohol than any other
drug. (I am not a non drinker.)
I saw a complaint from someone that they
were getting unsolicited junk mail from someone in London, but asking them
to send money to Switzerland.
The address the junk mail came from in
London was operated by the Royal Mail; obviously happy enough to go along
with anybody’s scam as long as the price was right.
And speaking of the Royal male, I was
pleased to see that Prince Charles was severely critical of the proposed
new Parliament building; apparently he called it an eyesore.
At last, the building has got
something going for it.
And also on the subject of the new
Parliament building; a Liberal MSP is calling for an extension spur to the
Parliament, and a new railway station there.
Obviously looking for the gravy train.
A leading light in the Tory Party has
called for the legalisation of cannabis.
It will not help their electoral prospects
but they’ll feel better about them.
Professor Ross Harper, a lawyer and friend
of Donald Dewar, has defended the £3 million the late First Minister left
in his will, and praised him for his honesty in not setting up a trust to
avoid death duties.
Having read a wee bit about these things I
would suspect an outbreak of indolence rather than honesty; things can get
awfy complicated.
Robin
Cook, Leader of the House of Commons, opened the debate on a pay rise for
MPs; recommending that they vote for an increase of £4000 per year, Mr
Cook said "I do not think we impress the public if we set to low a
value on our own worth." Now I know why chicken tikka massala is
Britain’s national dish, as Mr Cook had informed us on a previous
occasion.
What is chicken tikka massala anyway?
American are still prepared to pay Baroness
Thatcher £35000 a night to speak to them.
We agree; we would pay Baroness Thatcher £35000
a night to speak to the Americans, rather than to us. (Sorry.)
Her Majesty the Queen saved us £3 million
last year by saving on travel costs.
Unfortunately all the tickets were returns.
The
Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, has complained to Mr Blair because
his government was not consulted about knighthoods given to two Canadian
citizens; he wrote "I am writing to you to express in the strongest
terms the objections of the Government of Canada and my personal
objections to the way in which your government has dealt with the question
of honours bestowed on Canadian citizens in the Queens Birthday Honours
List."
Maybe Mr Blair still thinks Canada is
devolved; after all he is an English MP. We look forward to him seeking
approval from the Scottish Government (for Scots that is, not Canadians.)
