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CAMPAIGNING FOR SCOTLAND
(Owned, Edited and Printed in Scotland since November 1926)
Promoting all that is best in Scottish Nationalism and all that is best in Scotland.

Compiled by Jim Lynch
[Issue 64 - 24th August 2001]

THE BALLET CLYDE

My experience of ballet is non-existent; I have never been to a ballet, or even watched one on TV. My only ballet experience occurred, believe it or not, when I was delivering the Scots Independent Newspaper; a member of our SNP branch was very much involved in ballet, and had guests in when I called. I was invited in, very hospitably, and listened to a fairly erudite discussion on ballet, ballerinas, and the male equivalent thereof; as a modest contribution to the general gaiety I advanced the opinion that Rudolph Nuryvev who appeared to be a most reprehensible character was like that because he had such a tremendous talent, and as such could not be expected to be like the rest of us. At this, I was given the ballet equivalent of "ma heid in ma hands", not by the hostess, but by one of her guests who knew the aforesaid Rudolph, and I then lapsed into humbled silence until I was able to escape. See Scots Independent readers, see Edinburgh Festival, see culture!

My reasoning for all this comment is that last week, ballet hit the headlines in a big way; not in douce Edinburgh and the even doucer Scotsman newspaper, but in the Glasgow Herald, as pages were devoted to a crisis in Scottish Ballet. We were treated to a front page headline, inside information inside, an editorial, and later in the week a further attack by the sacked artistic director, and readers’ letters. The root of the problem seems to be as ever, money, with claims that Scottish Opera is getting millions, and Scottish Ballet is being starved of cash, as the Scottish Arts Council wants it closed down; and now there’s a degree of confusion, as they neglected to renew the work permit of the artistic director, and he is now threatened with deportation, or six months in chokey. All a bit strange, as he is an American, but has been in Britain since 1963 and has an English wife; he should ask Mohammed Al Fayed for advice, as he doesn't have a passport either, and they won’t even let him land his helicopter on Harrod’s roof. And neither of them refugees!

As I said last week, there’s not a lot happening, and maybe this was the Herald counterblast to the Edinburgh Festival.

PRETENTIOUS PRIVILEGE

Language has also been in the news this last week or so; not Scots language, nor the Gaelic language, and not even foul language without which no TV programme would be complete. This time the stushie has been about the English language; David Blunkett, the English Home Secretary, wants all refugees to learn English, presumably starting with the cast of Eastenders, and it seems that literacy is lower even than in 1912. I should add that this view is based on research carried out by Professor Loreto Todd of the University of Ulster, and he has discovered that 15% of young people between 15-21 are poor spellers compared to only 2% in 1912. In defence of today’s generation, David Eaglesham, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association, said it was untrue that children today are poorly educated . He pointed out that in 1912 the vast majority of children would have been living in poverty and learning in bleak classrooms, and certainly would not have had the computer skills and ability to express themselves in a creative and artistic way. Perhaps he was misquoted, as computers did not exist until comparatively recently, but we still have 30% of children living in poverty, which is not an ennobling and rewarding way of life, as he seems to infer.

A new book was published last week, the Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English, and it lists the 20 most pretentious words and phrases; I plead guilty, as I used one of the words the other week, and in fact I use it fairly often. However, I would think that a word is only pretentious if it is used incorrectly, and can easily be substituted by a simpler and more easily understood word. The word I used, and will continue to use, is hegemony, and according to the learned professor it means "the unjust domination of one group over another"; I would think that the professor has had no experience of the Labour Party in Scotland.

DOUBLE JEOPARDY

The Tory leadership contest is coming to a close; the ballet is over, and the ballot papers are out. They have been sent to 300000 members, which is a blessing, as twenty years ago there would have been 3 million to be confused; how are the mighty fallen. Mr Clarke has already muddied the waters and blurred the Border; in his final manifesto he said "We will have to consider what is needed to bring stability to relations between England and Scotland, such as dealing with the budgetary unfairness between England and Scotland, and the West Lothian Question. England deserves better". On Tuesday 21st August 2001, he told Derek Bateman in an interview on Radio Scotland that he had said no such thing! I say unto you, such a barefaced liar is a worthy leader of the Tory Party.

And what of his opponent, Iain Duncan Smith, described by some as "William Hague without the sense of humour"? He is doubly unfortunate; still reeling from receiving the wholehearted support of William Hague, he has now been given the unqualified backing of Baroness Thatcher. Mr Smith is a Scotsman, of sorts; what do they have against us?

All the Tory campaign seems to be about is EUROPE, with Mr Clarke hedging his bets and promising to be conveniently elsewhere when Westminster votes on the Nice Treaty, a privilege most of the Labour Party would also like; it should be remembered that it was a Tory government under Edward Heath which took Britain into the Common Market, as it was then, in 1973, Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act in 1985, and Norman Lamont and Francis Maude signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. I suppose that the excuse for the last two would be that they were the only British Government at the time. The Nice Treaty is about the enlargement of the Community to include Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovenia; Ireland has already had a referendum on the enlargement, and the people rejected it.

The Tories all have to vote by 11th September, and it looks as if Mr Smith has the edge at the moment, as the bookies have him at 4-6 to win, but it is still anybody’s guess; the Tory Party loved, and still love, Margaret Thatcher, an attitude we in Scotland found, and still find inexplicable, and nearly all the Tory votes are in England. This time the 18 Tory MSPs will have a vote; they did not have a vote on the choice to go before the Tory Party faithful, as they were not Members of the Real Parliament. This shows how out of touch the Tories are.

We have no preference as to whom their leader should be, but we keep remembering the wise words of one of our distinguished columnists, James Halliday "So long as mankind is addicted to avarice and greed, there will be a following for the Tory Party"; I don’t know if I have the words exactly right, but you get the meaning.

PUBLIC CASH MACHINES

We refer of course, to the Labour Party in Scotland, and no doubt in England, but the poor denizens of that fair land have no SNP or Plaid Cymru to present an alternative. A few weeks back we commented on the ongoing saga in West Dunbartonshire; the Labour Group leader had been conducting a vendetta against the deputy chief executive, which resulted in the dismissal of the latter. He took the case to an employment tribunal, which awarded him £50000 (public money) and severely criticised the Labour Group leader; in a subsequent vote of no confidence on the Group Leader, four of his Labour colleagues voted with the opposition. The Group Leader took umbrage, refused to resign, and reported the four to the Labour National Executive Committee; in true democratic fashion, the NEC suspended the four councillors for six months. Strangely, this was not confirmed by letter, but the Group Leader defiantly continued as leader of West Dunbartonshire District Council. Now the four suspended Labour councillors have resigned from the Labour Party; Labour no longer has a majority on the Council, and the council’s chief executive has to call a special meeting to elect a new Council Leader. The resigned councillors say they have no problem with the Labour Party, but with the Group Leader and his dictatorial style. From the above, it would seem that the Labour Party does have a problem.

The Group Leader must be looking with envy at the Scottish Executive, who are even more adept at flinging around the taxpayers’ cash; the First Minister has just appointed a new head of press at the Scottish Executive. The salary, a mere trifling £53000 a year is for leading a team appointed to provide information about the Executive’s policies; it does not specify to whom this information is to be communicated, perhaps the Executive itself, who sometimes do not seem to know what they are doing, but more likely to the general public.

The latest appointment is not to promote the policies of the Labour Party, but the policies of the Executive, but you would be hard put to get a credit card between the two roles, and we would be paying for the credit card too. The special advisers, a totally different breed, we are told, now number thirteen (unlucky for some) and cost a cool £758000 a year, and the press officers total forty (shades of Ali Baba) and they cost £1,244,000; well actually they cost more as the figures given are only for thirty nine. They have now been joined by one Gerry O’Brien, who until April was director of communications for the Tory Party, and his salary is not included; apparently Mr O’Brien was never a member of the Tory Party and was only in the post for the money. We see no irony in this appointment, as he was no doubt employed for his skill in promulgating Tory policies and is quite happy to continue to do so.

And down at sunny Westminster, the business of spin and gloss was given a further boost by Mr Blair’s decision to sack Dame Helena Shovelton as head of the Audit Commission. How will this boost the spin? Well, Dame Helena, with whom we were only acquainted due to the Lottery shambles, had uttered some criticism of the Government, particularly the dispersal of asylum seekers, and criticism is anathema! Oh dear, is that a pretentious word, maybe I should have just used heresy.

ANOTHER KIND OF WEB

Away from the spidery spinners, but remaining with the press, there seems to be a gleeful campaign directed against one Andrew Neil, publisher of the Scotsman and Sunday Business, who keeps telling everyone how the sales of the Scotsman are always increasing, although the newsagents haven’t noticed.

Mr Neil, in conjunction with Jane Procter, ex editor of the Tatler, had set up PEOPLENEWS.COM; it was an online celebrity gossip site, and it was an easily navigable website, and the idea was for it to break exclusives which the tabloids would follow up. It seems to have been fairly attractive, and it was scheduled to break even by the end of this year. Everything in the garden was rosy, then at the end of July it went into liquidation. The main problem was that the original backers, Ant Factory, had signed up to more than a million pounds worth of technology contracts, and this crippled them financially; any prospect of a sale was coloured by the cost of the contracts.

Coincidentally, at around the same time, Scotsman Publications announced a major cut in its web presence, and about ten of its staff will be made redundant. Apparently Scotsman.com was only generating about half of the income it required to break even; many other newspaper groups are also scaling down their web operations.

According to the Observer, which broke the PEOPLENEWS story, another internet firm, the Reading Room, read the article while on a flight to Australia, and when they landed, phoned and offered to buy it. The Observer was offering to help Mr Neil sell of the rest of what they called his "struggling empire", and looking for him to take them to lunch; alas and alack, the Reading Room is not sure they have a place for Mr Neil, despite his obvious talents.

We know why we do not care for Mr Neil, an arch Unionist, devoted Thatcherite (she herself was too far to the left for him) and severe critic of our fledgling Parliament, but we do not know why the rest of the press dislike him. (Pretentious word again - they hate him.) However, it is interesting that two sites within his web are having problems.

BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE

When I went to Rome on holiday last year, I had been asked by our webmaster, Alastair McIntyre, if I could get a picture of the Tomb of Bonnie Prince Charlie. I was standing in St Peter’s, along with a crowd of people from Leith, when I asked our courier if he knew where it was; his response was "Turn around." We were standing beside it; no one in the company knew anything about it, and it would have been so easy to miss a piece of Scottish history in the Vatican. Needless to say, I did not have my camera, but one of the others obligingly took the picture; I didn’t see him again until last week, so here’s the picture. The words are from James Halliday, lecturer in Scottish and American History, columnist in the Scots Independent, and a former Leader of the SNP.

The tomb of Charles Edward - Bonnie Prince Charlie - in St Peter’s in Rome.

The tomb’s inscription also records the names of his father, James Francis Edward, son of James II "of Great Britain", and of his brother Henry, Duke of York. Henry took Holy Orders and became a Cardinal, known as Cardinal York. As a celibate priest, he had renounced all prospect of leaving any legitimate heir; the main Stuart line died with him. He was given a pension from the British Crown in his later years.

In the last few weeks, we have commented on the overspending on Tayside Health Board budget, an accumulated deficit of £20 million, Lothian Primary Care a deficit of £8 million, and Lothian University Hospital Trust heading for a deficit of £5.2 million. We now have Grampian University Hospitals NHS Trust heading for a deficit of £8 million.

We have to remind ourselves that we now have a Labour Government (of sorts) and one of the reasons the Conservatives were thrown out of office was that they were seen as anti National Health Service. However, Labour have now completed one full term (by their standards), and their continued neglect of the NHS was highlighted at the recent General Election; we now have Lothian in trouble, Tayside in trouble and Grampian in trouble . They have all overspent their budgets, and yet none of them have achieved any reduction of waiting lists, and as far as can be ascertained are still working under the Tory management structure which was supposed to make them efficient businesses, so it looks as if the whole idea was rubbish in the first place.

In addition to all that, there is a shortage of nurses, and doctors in both general practice and hospitals, and despite all the hype by Labour, the recruitment is not happening at the level required; we know it takes a long time to train doctors and nurses, but it is beginning to seem as if Labour have been in for a long time. When Mr Blair got an "in your face" experience of hospital waiting lists at the Election, he didn’t like it one bit; he was lucky that was all he got. Nurses are heading for other countries at the rate of 5500 a year (for Britain) and their are more foreign nurses coming here than ever before. Somehow we have to get away from losing trained nurses to more affluent countries, and taking in trained nurses from countries which need them more than we do.

The government think they are doing their bit to help the nursing crisis; the plan, as in Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle, the new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride, is to make hospitals smaller - so they need less nurses. This attitude, like the internal market idiocy put in by the real Tories, is currently leading to ward closures and cancelled operations due to a lack of both nurses and beds; the dispute about payment for care of the elderly is only making matters worse as the elderly have to stay in hospitals as there is no place else for them to go. Clever stuff.

FOOT IN THE MOUTH NOTES

The Labour Government used it to build the Millennium Dome, which is still costing £100,000 per week, although empty.

Investors in Lastminute.com are considering legal action against Morgan Stanley after one of their employees recommended the share when they were in charge of the flotation; the shares floated at £3.80, hit £4.88 and are now 36.5p.

A lot of people gambled on dot coms which had never made a profit; look for people starting to sue real bookies when their horse loses.

Balfour Beatty’s pre tax profits rose last year by 17% to £41 million; one of their biggest customers was, and still is, Railtrack, for whom they do maintenance.

I seem to recall that the problem with Railtrack was that maintenance was not being done; they blamed their contractors.

The new Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has now dumped Robin Cook’s "ethical foreign policy", saying it was a hostage to fortune and damaged Britain’s influence.

While we would hesitate to describe Mr Cook as ethical, we think he at least tried; Mr Straw, in his previous capacity as Home Secretary was both callous and incompetent.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency is charged with tackling pollution and improving the state of Scotland’s waterways; one of the jobs they have not been able to do is visit all the salmon farms, due to a lack of resources.

They have just spent half a million pounds altering their logo in minimal terms and restructuring their public relations department; this will make it easier to explain why they are not visiting salmon farms.

Tommy Sheridan, the Scottish Socialist Party, is furious that Strathclyde Police videotaped the protestors at the Govanhill Baths in Glasgow.

If he had been given advance warning he would have been there in his best jeans.

DR JAMES LEES

Under Features there is an obituary of Dr James Lees, a former Vice Chairman of the Scottish National Party, and a Director of the Scots Independent Newspaper. (Scots Independent August 2001).

SYNOPSIS

HEALTH MINISTER CAUGHT SHUFFLING HEALTH CASH AGAIN

The launch of a multi-million pound package aimed at recruiting more staff to Scotland's GP practices and health centres has been dismissed for "not adding up to very much". Under the plans, 30 million pounds will be pumped into the country's primary care sector over the next three years. Nicola Sturgeon, shadow health minister, said the package promised just one pound per patient this year and two pounds per patient in each of the next two years. And she said that even then, it was not new money. "The new money announced for health in June this year amounted to 30 million pounds once the costs of free personal care had been taken into account," she said. Ms Sturgeon claimed the money came from elsewhere in the health budget and declared: "The minister should be honest about that and tell us what plans have been scrapped to fund today's announcement." And she claimed today's announcement failed to acknowledge a staffing crisis in the nursing profession, in which the dropout rate for nursing students had risen to a record 25%.

SNP IN PROTEST OVER 24,000 POUND JOB

The New Labour leaders of a Lothian council have come under fire amid claims they are using taxpayer's cash to pay someone to do their homework. The SNP have reacted with fury after it emerged West Lothian Council is to pay a 24,000 pound salary to a researcher who will work exclusively for the ruling political party. The 32-member authority is understood to have made an offer of the job to one applicant. Frank Anderson, deputy leader of the SNP group, said: "There is simply no need for it. We already pay hundreds of council officers quite hefty salaries to do this work. What this appears to be is an appointment to help the Labour group in the run-up to the next election. If that is so then they should pay for it themselves."

SNP PLEA FOR SCOTLAND TO FIGHT OWN CASE OVER FISH EXPORTS

Richard Lochhead has called on the Scottish Executive to go-it-alone to press Russia to accept imports of herring and mackerel from Scotland. The shadow fisheries minister said this was crucial rather than waiting for the UK to meet Russian criteria on the UK's foot-and-mouth outbreak. Mr Lochhead also said that the issue needed to be treated with urgency, which didn't seem to be happening at Whitehall level. Russia has imposed a ban on fish imports from the UK - apart from Shetland - because of foot-and-mouth. Mr Lochhead underlined that the Scottish pelagic sector cannot cope with the loss of the Russian market for this year. "The government seems happy to leave discussions to Foreign Office officials in Moscow which simply isn't good enough. Scottish Executive ministers should make it their job to fight the corner of our pelagic sector and reach an agreement in the way that Shetland did," he said.

McLEISH PRESSES AHEAD WITH PRIVATISATION

Large parts of Scotland's public services could be privatised, under proposals outlined today by First Minister Henry McLeish. In a speech empty of any main policy announcement, delivered to an audience at Glasgow University, Mr McLeish warned that the interests of consumers would be put before those of producers - New Labour code for privatisation. SNP leader John Swinney claimed the speech amounted to a declaration of more privatisation for large areas of Scotland's public services. "The First Minister said he wants to put the interests of consumers ahead of producers but what he has done is put the interests of private financiers ahead of patients," said the SNP leader. "It is unbelievable that Mr McLeish should praise the private finance initiative, which is a Tory-inspired, costly scheme which diverts money away from front-line services." Mr Swinney said it was now clear those public services were suffering because Scotland's share of UK health and education budgets was being cut. He added: "The answer is not New Labour's privatisation agenda, but for the Scottish Parliament to be given full financial powers to stop this spending squeeze and deliver properly funded public services."

PETITION PROTEST OVER EDUCATION CUTS

Worried parents in the Scottish Borders are launching a petition to highlight the continuing problem with the council's education budget. Scottish Borders Council has voted to impose more than £1.5m in cuts in the education budget because of a total overspend of almost £4m. The measures include a freeze on recruitment in some areas, a reduction in grants and bursaries, changes in school transport arrangements and a reduction in repairs and maintenance. Christine Grahame, SNP MSP for South of Scotland, said there were three clear questions the petition was asking the Scottish Parliament to address. She said: "It is asking first for an inquiry into how Borders Council overspent £3.9m. It is asking for those who caused this to happen to be brought to account. And thirdly, it is asking for the Education Committee to assess the impact on education in the Scottish Borders, and in particular on those with special educational needs." The petition will be presented to the Scottish Parliament later this year and the organisers hope to gather thousands of signatures across the region.

"CAN'T WE BE TRUSTED WITH OUR OWN MONEY?"

"To tax or not to tax? That, in Scottish politics, is always the question," observes Andrew Wilson. In his column in the Sunday Mail today, the SNP MSP argues it is high time that we had a far more honest and active debate on tax in Scotland. "At present Scots pay a fortune to the London Treasury in taxes. London keeps some for all the things Westminster does, then they decide what to spend in England on services like health and education. Only then do they decide the Scottish budget - and it's an ever-declining share of what is spent in similar areas in England. It's a mad system and it is utterly unsustainable." Mr Wilson goes on to set out why Scotland should control all its own money, resources and taxes. Most Scots, he says, want the Scottish Parliament to control all of Scotland's money. "I trust the people of Scotland with their own money. The question for Labour is, do they?"

CONCERN OVER SCHOOL RENOVATIONS

Fears are growing that major refurbishment work in Glasgow schools will mean that classrooms are unfit for teaching when the new term starts. Teachers had said the start of the new term should be postponed in at least nine city secondary schools. The largest teachers' union, the EIS, said that contractors have failed to complete refurbishment work started this summer under a public-private partnership (PPP) funded programme. The 29 secondary schools in Glasgow are due to re-open tomorrow following the summer break, but the ambitious £220m city-wide refurbishment programme is running late. Michael Russell, shadow education minister, has called on the government to intervene to "restore normal education" in Glasgow. He said: "It comes as little surprise that this project has run into considerable difficulty given its dependence upon inefficient and untried privatised schemes for school refurbishment. Mr Russell believes the government should exercise its statutory duty to ensure that education is provided.

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SCOTTISH FOOD, TRADITIONS AND CUSTOMS
(if you have any suggestions on what you'd like us to include email peter@scotsindependent.org)

Before Dundee reinvented itself as the "City of Discovery", it had been known to generations of Scottish schoolchildren as the home of the Three J's - Jute, Jam and Journalism.

 

Journalism is still to the fore. D C Thomson, publishers of dozens of comics (such as The Dandy and The Beano), magazines and the only wholly-owned Scottish daily newspapers, still have their headquarters in the city. No true Dundonian (as The Flag's Jim Lynch and Marilyn Wright would testify) could start their day without reading Dundee's own Courier! But the Jute industry, which dominated Dundee employment from the 19th century, is now  no more. You can visit the Verdant Works to discover how King Jute used to be manufactured. The Jam industry, particularly the famous Dundee marmalade, has also gone the way of Jute.

 

The start of the world famous Keiller's marmalade from Dundee began by chance in 1700. The story goes that a humble Dundee grocer, the young James Keiller, took advantage of a Spanish ship taking refuge from a winter storm in Dundee harbour carrying a large cargo of Seville oranges. These he bought in large quantity, very cheaply, but found that owing to their bitterness he was unable to sell them! His ingenious wife, Janet, not wishing to waste the fruit, used the oranges, instead of her normal quinces, to make some pots of preserve. They proved to be so popular that the Dundee public demanded more and the Keiller's from then on ensured a regular order for Seville oranges. Several generations later, in 1797, another Mrs Keiller and her son James finally felt confident enough to build the world's first marmalade factory.

 

Like the original Mrs Keiller you too can make and enjoy the marmalade that Dundee, so proudly, gave to the world.

 

Dundee Marmalade

 

Ingredients : 2 lb Seville or bitter oranges; 2 lemons; 4 pt water; 4 lb preserving sugar (Makes about 4 lb)

 

Wash the oranges and lemons and put, whole, into a large saucepan or preserving pan, add the water, and put the lid on. Bring to the boil and simmer for one and half hours so that you can easily pierce the fruit. When they are ready, take them out and leave them on a big dish to cool. With a sharp knife, slice them into the thickness you like, and remove any pips. Add these pips to the juice, boil for ten minutes, then strain. Add the sliced fruit to the juice and bring to the boil; then add the sugar. Stir over a gentle heat until it is disolved, then boil up rapidly, without stirring, for about half an hour, or until setting point (approximately 220 deg F.) is attained. A small spoonful put on to a cold saucer will 'wrinkle' up when the dish is tilted - if the marmalade is cooked enough. Pour into warmed jars, and cover at once.

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

DATES IN HISTORY

25 August  683
Death of St Ebba, Abbess of Coldingham and of St Abbs.

 

26 August 1901
Donibristle Mining Disaster in Fife, part of Mossmorran peat bog near Cowdenbeath collapsed on sixteen miners 360 feet underground. Four miners were lost, as was a four-strong rescue party. All the bodies were recovered between September and December.

 

30 August 1991
Liz McColgan, Dundee, ran away from the field at the Tokyo World Athletics Championships to win the 10,000 metres final by more than 20 secs.

See Dates in History in our Features Section

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