The Flag in the Wind
A weekly online newspaper bringing you information on the political scene in Scotland: part of the monthly Scots Independent.

Home | About Us | Subscriptions | Archives | SNP | Ad Rates | Features | Adverts | Events | Links

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 87 - 1st February 2002]

Taking these words, it is extremely difficult to understand how Andersen, the watchdog for the shareholders, could connive at the concealment of debts in offshore companies, and the shredding of the evidence, unless the American system is markedly different; no wonder the man in charge of the Enron audit pleaded the Fifth Amendment, which as I recall is that he refused to answer on the grounds that his answer might incriminate him.

The fallout from the scandal is having an impact in the Disunited Kingdom; Arthur Andersen were the auditors for the De Lorean car company which collapsed in 1981, costing us taxpayers a cool £200 million. (No I don’t know what that would amount to at today’s price, but an awfy heap.) The Tories sued Andersen for negligence and virtually blacklisted them from any government work; come 1997, and they were back on the government gravy train. They deserved it; they had supplied staff free of charge to the Labour government-in-waiting, held a course to advise prospective Labour ministers to be effective (before they were elected) and gave private advice to the Treasury on the windfall tax. How very altruistic; they were also the receivers for the Maxwell empire, which seems appropriate.

Andersen were auditors/consultants for the Millennium Dome, Railtrack, the London Underground PFI, BNFL (the nuclear power stations) and NATS, the National Air Traffic privatisation; they are the only company to have produced an "independent" report strongly supporting PFI; they are consultants for a large number of PFI projects. (To put this into perspective, last year the five big auditing companies earned £315 million for audits, and £833 million for consulting.)

Enron itself has donated some £37000 to the Labour Party, and in return they were able to get a moratorium on gas fired power stations lifted; thirteen have now been built in Britain, two of them by Enron. It would be untrue to say that only Labour is involved; as in America, where they give to both Republicans and Democrats, they boast that they have given roughly the same amount to the Tories. To bring matters even closer to home, Mrs Helen Liddell, now Secretary of State for Scotland (we think) had five meetings with Enron when she was the energy minister; poor Helen, she still smarts at her previous employment with Robert Maxwell, and here she was colloguing with other crooks, but officially. Now that the ordure has hit the fan, we can be sure that all contacts with Enron, and Arthur Andersen, will be subject to audit.

BACKSCRATCH, BACKSCRATCH

His Bill is opposed by the executive, and by the civil service, who have always had a strong say in these appointments, and is designed to put a stop to, or at least put the hems on, the culture of cronyism endemic in Scotland. While there was condemnation from Labour, the Liberals were half hearted as to whether or not they supported the Bill; they would like to oppose cronyism, but also they like the facade of the sharing of power, so who knows which way they will jump - or how high. However, the First Minister was paying attention, and he has produced a halfway house to stymie the Bill; a team of 12 independent assessors will vet any quango appointments. So hooray, but not quite; out of the twelve, six have been politically active in the Labour Party in recent years, so we have the ludicrous situation of the cronies vetting the cronies! As far as the Liberals are concerned, the Minister for Environment, Ross Finnie, announced the new board members for Scottish Water just before Christmas, without informing any of the environmental committee members, so he is happy enough with the current system; he had already announced the management appointments during the summer recess, so no consultation there, either.

Cronyism is of course endemic in Britain as a whole, but just more visible in Scotland, particularly now that there is a Parliament to focus on these things; the Blessed Tony manages to get his pals sent to the House of Lords. Lord Haskins, founder of Northern Foods, gave Labour £5000 a year from 1992 onwards, and £14000 in 1997; he became a Lord in 1998. Lord David Sainsbury gave £2 million in 1996, and a further £1 million in 1997, when he became a Lord; Lord Hamlyn gave £3.1 million in 1990 and £500000 in 1996, and became a Lord in 1998.

A correspondent from The Independent (no relation) was at a meeting of the committee which now appoints the peoples peers, if that isn’t an oxymoron; the chairman is one Lord Stevenson. He was asked if he had been surprised at Sir Herman Ousley getting a peerage. "Well, no, it was on my recommendation," Lord Stevenson said. "It was open, meritocratic, and the priorities were observed every step of the way." He spluttered a bit when it was pointed out that it was Sir Herman who had made Mr Stevenson Lord Stevenson the previous year. We now wonder, idly, if the 12 Apostles can appoint themselves to other quangos? Watch this space.

BACKSTAB, BACKSTAB

It was only after reflection that I remembered Alex saying that Henry was not a crook, and that Question Time was not the forum to be discussing the issue; what may have been seen as patronising to Henry’s adviser was his final comment "I don’t know what you are paying your advisers, Henry, but it’s too much." Certainly, Henry McLeish should not have appeared on Question Time, and it was this, more than anything else, which ensured his resignation. When you read Mr MacMahon’s account of the last days of Henry’s reign, you could be convinced that if only Peter MacMahon had been the First Minister then all would have been well; his first column in the Scotsman is giving advice to John Swinney.

I read that at a meeting in Glasgow, the Tory leader, David McLetchie, was referred to as the leader of the Opposition in the Scottish Parliament, a title which is actually John Swinney’s; when Mr McLetchie rose to speak he said "I may not be the official leader of the Opposition, but I am the effective leader". Somehow, that strikes me as a put up job, and Mr McLetchie bases his claim on the brutal hounding of Henry McLeish, which resulted in Mr McLeish’s colleagues forming a phalanx around him as he left the Parliament to make sure that Mr McLetchie did not shake his hand, as the hypocrite would have done. Mr McLetchie is obviously of the vicious school of politics, and is very short sighted politically, as a wounded Henry was a better bet than a new vigorous First Minister. However, the smug smile on Mr McLetchie’s face would no doubt be wiped off by the System Three opinion poll which showed that the SSP and the Greens would get more votes than the Tories. Some effectiveness.

Back to the main issue, which is the public account of the last days of Henry McLeish as First Minister. His special adviser published it, for the relevant 30 pieces of silver, and Henry McLeish went up in my estimation, his special adviser went down, as did Mr McLetchie, if that was possible. Mr McLeish was a good man, with some good ideas, and perhaps his way of expressing them was contrary to the Labour culture; certainly, the way he pushed free care for the elderly was not according to their rules, although in keeping with their conscience, and the Parliament supported it. If he was still First Minister, Scotland would be going for a solo bid for Euro 2008, and not fobbed off by the spurious "cost factor" used to disguise a political decision. As it is, and we knew this all along, he was sabotaged by some of his Cabinet, Wendy Alexander in particular, who seems to be labelled as a very bright talent, but whose sole achievement seems to have been splitting the country over Section 28, or 2A, as it should rightfully be called. If her tantrums continue, it means that she is a failure as a politician because she cannot manage people, so she should go back to management consultancy, probably with Arthur Andersen.

One other footnote to the Henry McLeish saga; apparently a Labour Party Branch in his constituency has voted for him to be deselected for the next election, by a majority of two to one. There were only three people at the meeting; obviously mass membership.

BACTERIA, BACTERIA

According to the story, a tour of the Infirmary disclosed "piles of soiled bags, discarded operating theatre material and bundles of dirty linen heaped beside the ambulance bay, rubbish lying around, filthy staff toilets and sacks of refuse jamming open the door of the estates department, which is responsible for maintenance." The tour did not go into any patient areas, and the contractor sent in a team to blitz the place; all this was in the place away from the public eye, and although no mention was made of the wards it is undeniably true that the cleaning standards of the contractors are non existent.

The name of the contractor is Sodexho, and it rang a bell with me; I looked it up on the Internet, and came up with their website, in French, as they are a French company, but despite the Auld Alliance, I was unable to read it. They were in the news last year because they were the company supplying vouchers to asylum seekers, and making millions from this, and they have also won the contracts to run women’s prisons in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and Ashford, Middlesex. The company has no experience of running women’s prisons, apart from one in Australia, which the authorities took away from them. They also tried to have the minimum wage abolished in the refugees’ detention centre they are going to run at Harmondsworth, near Heathrow; they were going to pay refugees 34p per hour . And well you might ask "What is a company like this doing the cleaning at a Glasgow Hospital?" Privatisation gone mad, and if you are interested in their other pursuits look at www.eyeonsodexho.org a site run by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union; as the name implies, it is an eye opener.

The new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary opened its doors this week to a fan fare of trumpets, or something; it is one of the paradoxes of life. People live longer, need more care, so we build smaller hospitals with less beds. The situation with the Health Service seems much worse in Glasgow, where senior consultants at North Glasgow University Hospitals NHS Trust have delivered a damning vote of no confidence in the Trust’s management. Incidentally, what a mouthful of a name, no wonder you get acronyms; if the above Trust ever gets around to its own anthem they have the first verse there already in the name; it’s hardly user, never mind patient friendly. What is of concern is that we are seeing and hearing of all sorts of problems with the Health Service, bad management, poor accommodation, hygiene, hospital food, inaccessibility of new hospitals, shortage of nurses, shortage of doctors etc, etc etc, but the people who are making the decisions and the plans for where the health service should be going are the same people who are making a mess of it at the moment!

And where are the politicians in this situation? Well, the Tories are prating on about shrinking the state and cutting taxes; as Andrew Rawnsley of the Observer put it "Somehow or other, he (In Dire Straits)* will spend less while hugely improving health and education. Just like that. This would be a brilliant trick if he could pull it off, but it is a miracle that eluded his party when it had 18 years in power." Labour seem incapable of making any impact; we have elderly people blocking beds in hospital as there are no care homes to go to, over 3000 at the last count, and the private care homes are up in arms as they are being paid less by local government (mainly Labour) than they spend per patient in their own care homes, so they won’t take any more patients. All this because Lady Thatcher believed there was no such thing as society, and then encouraged people to buy their own homes so that they could sell them to pay for care because the state would no longer provide for them in their old age; those who never attained prosperity, and those who couldn’t care less will be kept. Those who tried to provide will be bankrupted, despite having paid taxes all their days.

One of my hopes when Labour came to power in 1997 was that they would be the saviours of the National Health Service; in Scotland we now have 250 staff nurses less than in 1997, and the spending on agency nurses doubled last year to £44 million. Nicola Sturgeon MSP has accused the Scottish Executive of "smoke and mirrors", but they must have produced some encouraging (for them) figures which I haven’t seen, as they’re blowing about something ; since Labour came to power in 1997 the number of hospital speciality nursing and midwifery staff has plummeted by 740; since 1999 it has fallen by 300. The number of unqualified (in training) staff has fallen by 834 since 1997 and 304 since 1999. Agency nurses are properly trained NHS nurses, now working for private companies, supplied on demand, and costing double your NHS nurses; I seem to recall that in London agencies were charging £78 per hour, but I’m sure that is not what goes in the agency nurse’s pocket. There is a real problem, but the failed management do not have an answer. If you go back to the start of this article, you might get an inkling as to why morale is so low; the Thatcher philosophy is still alive and well, in Labour controlled Glasgow.

* The Tory Leader, Ian Duncan Smith, prefers to be known as IDS; Winnie Ewing says it stands for "In Dire Straits", a suitable appellation for the Tory Party.

FOOT IN THE MOUTH NOTES

Billy’s reply was "If we knew the answer to that, we would sweep Scotland tomorrow." Nothing changes.

According to the Farmer’s Diary in the Herald, 44% of the greenhouse gases produced in New Zealand come from their 44 million sheep and 8 million cattle; changing what the sheep eat could reduce this by 15%, and help them achieve the Kyoto agreed targets on emissions.

Or kill a sheep for Kyoto.

Personal computer and laptops worth £217000 have been stolen from the Pensions Department since 1997; the Department of the Environment lost £110000 worth, but the Serious Fraud Office only lost £1700.

Obviously not even worth stealing from.

By the end of this week, the government in London will have passed more Sewel Motions than the Scottish Parliament will have passed Acts of Parliament; a Sewel Motion is one that affects Scotland, and is passed at Westminster, and rubber-stamped by the Scottish Executive without a vote or discussion.

And the First Minister, Jack McConnell, wants to open a London office; looks as if he already has one.

They’ll probably be sent to look for the money that the Taliban leaders plundered from the Afghanistan banks; Mohammed Omar himself was reported to have departed with £70 million, no doubt in the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful.

Scottish Power is now supplying electricity to Northern Ireland via a £150 million undersea cable; the electricity is available because of surplus generating capacity at Longannet and Cockenzie, coal fired power stations.

With a wind turbine farm also proposed for the Western Isles, it looks as if Scotland is going to be an exporter of power; England’s colonial suppliers.

                SYNOPSIS

MEP WELCOMES "SUCCESS" OF EURO LAUNCH

The launch of the Euro has been an astonishing success, according to SNP Euro-MP Neil MacCormick. He says the new currency notes and coins have come into use smoothly and the chaos and disruption predicted by eurosceptics has simply not occurred. In a speech at the Crichton University Campus in Dumfries this evening, the SNP MEP accused New Labour of "pussy-footing" for five years over euro membership. "The decision to enter the Euro will be a great moment for Scotland in terms of the future of our economy," he said. "It will also have a huge political effect. For it will destroy one of the psychological barriers to independence. It will remove the feeling that we are dependent for our money on the Bank of England, and the fear that independence and a separate currency covering only five million people would disrupt our highly important financial services sector."

MOVE JOBS TO WHERE THE OIL IS, SAYS RICHARD LOCHHEAD

The North-east's offshore industry is still overseen by the "bowler hat brigade" in Whitehall, according to a North-east MSP. New figures show most civil servants in the Oil and Gas Directorate remain more than 500 miles south in London, with only a minority in Europe's oil capital. SNP MSP Richard Lochhead hit out after new figures showed that the number of DTI Oil and Gas Directorate jobs in London still outnumbers the number of posts in Aberdeen. So he is planning to step up the long-running campaign to bring the entire directorate to the North-east. The latest figures show that under half of the directorate - 47% are now Aberdeen based and 53% in London. Mr Lochhead claims the figures are a reflection of the "Whitehall mentality" which dominates the DTI. The MSP added: "Even though the oil and gas is nowhere near London, the mandarins still won't give up their cosy offices because they see Aberdeen as provincial." But he said civil servants had to realise that Whitehall was "no longer the seat of Empire".

SNP LEADER PAYS TRIBUTE TO HOLOCAUST VICTIMS

The leader of the Scottish National today paid tribute to the victims of the Holocaust and said they must never be forgotten. John Swinney joined ministers, civic leaders and representatives from religious and minority groups for the Scottish ceremony for Holocaust Memorial Day. Speaking after the service at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, the North Tayside MSP said: "The passage of time can never be allowed to diminish the horror of the Holocaust." Mr Swinney said it was important to use the lessons of the past to help shape the future. "Holocaust Memorial Day is a commemoration of the terrible loss of life," he said. "But it is also about encouraging people of all ages to reflect on these tragic events and to think about the value of human life. All of us lucky enough to live in Scotland should cherish the multi-cultural and multi-faith aspect of our country. Each and every one of is have a responsibility to promote and defend that ideal."

GOVERNMENT's "SHAMEFUL NEGLECT" OF BURNS UNDER FIRE

The Scottish Executive is under fire this weekend for failing to use national bard Robert Burns to promote Scotland overseas. It emerged this week that not one of the UK's top 28 Embassies were doing anything to promote Burns night. SNP leader John Swinney said both Burns night and St Andrews Day should be used as Scotland's hook to catch potential visitors and investors. Speaking at a Burns Supper in Paisley last night, he said: "These dates are an opportunity to market and promote Scotland in every shape and facet. The Irish have shown the way with St Patrick's day, however, our political representatives with not one but two chances have failed in both." The SNP MSP believes Scotland cannot afford to neglect these opportunities to promote our nation abroad. "It should not be too much to expect those who are meant to be representing our country abroad to recognise this fact, and to recognise the duty they have to represent and promote Scotland." Meanwhile SNP MSP Margo MacDonald has argued Burns night is "good for the national soul". Writing in the Sunday Post, she describes the event as a "peculiarly Scottish invention" comprising "scholarship, music, risque jokes, heart-stoppingly poignant poetry and old-fashioned food".

See the Si's Burns Supper

TEACHERS' PAY DEAL FACING COLLAPSE

The historic McCrone deal on teachers' pay and conditions is in danger of collapse because of lack of funding from the Scottish executive, it was claimed yesterday. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) called on the executive to make an immediate payment of 7 million pounds to prevent the agreement unravelling, and warned the total underfunding could top 40 million pounds. The call came after a COSLA report Funding of Teachers' Pay found there was a shortfall in the funding of a number of elements of McCrone, particularly in rural areas. Teaching unions and opposition politicians also warned that the agreement was in danger of collapse, claiming that unless more money was found teachers would have been "conned". Mike Russell, the SNP's education spokesman, said: "This confirms the reality of the situation. We have a much-needed settlement, but the resources which were promised by Jack McConnell the day the agreement was signed have not been made available. If that continues to be the case and the deal starts to unravel then all of Scotland's teachers will have been conned."

ROW ERUPTS OVER PARLIAMENT OFFICE CONTRACT

A political row broke out today after it emerged that a senior financial watchdog had agreed to carry out inquiries into a controversial Scottish Parliament building contract. Auditor General for Scotland Robert Black has asked for more information about the 7 million pound agreement entered into between Holyrood and Flour City UK to provide cladding for the MSPs' office block. The firm went into receivership last year, by which time the Parliament had already spent 2 million pounds on the contract. SNP MSP Fergus Ewing called on Audit Scotland to investigate and it emerged today that Mr Black had asked his officials to carry out preliminary inquiries before deciding whether an investigation was needed. Mr Ewing, the MSP for Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber, said he was pleased at the decision. "My concern is that around 2 million pounds may be added to the costs of the Holyrood project in consequence of a number of glaring errors made in relation to the Flour City fiasco," he said. "The message from the Scottish taxpayer will be that any shortfall must be made up by any individual or company who is found to have been responsible for the errors which were made."

OUTRAGE AS SCOTTISH EXAM PASSES ARE NOT RECOGNISED

North Tayside's MSP John Swinney and MP Pete Wishart were outraged after it was revealed that a young constituent's Scottish qualifications were not recognised in England. They spoke out after bright Kirriemuir student Anne McKenzie (21) was told her Highers and Standard Grades meant nothing south of the border. The pair promised to raise the case in Edinburgh and London after taking up the case. Anne, who boasts six Highers and seven Standard Grades, found out the qualifications were worthless-at least as far as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority for England is concerned-when she queried extra exams she had to sit at Milton Keynes College. North Tayside MSP Mr Swinney said he will raise the matter with Lifelong Learning Minister Wendy Alexander in the Scottish Parliament. The constituency's MP Pete Wishart intends raising parliamentary questions about the case at Westminster and says he will take it to the door of Estelle Morris, education and skills secretary. He said: "The Scottish Qualifications Authority must also look at this. I think it is unbelievable that Scottish students should be disadvantaged in this way. I am determined to find out why the SQA is not given the same stature as English, Welsh, Irish and even Norwegian authorities."