The Flag in the Wind
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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 90 - 22nd February 2002]

THE FLAG OUT IN THE COLD

I wonder if the British Olympic Association at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City consulted their Scottish members before ruling our top skier’s hair colour as political? The skier in question, Alain Baxter from Aviemore, had dyed his hair as a Saltire, and the British Olympic Committee had decided that this was a political statement, and that if he did not change it he could be disqualified by the International Olympic Committee, and expelled from the Games.

Earlier in the games, Alain’s cousin, snowboarder Lesley McKenna, was required to remove a Scottish flag from her attire before competing in the half-pipe (no I don’t know what that is.) According to reports, neither of them was making a conscious political statement, but were just proud to be Scottish; we are not sure if the removal of the Saltire from the snowboarder was at the request of the International Committee, or the British one. However, we do know that there has been concern in London circles since devolution that these uppity Scots might wish to compete in the Olympics in their own right, and certainly as far as the Winter Olympics are concerned, there can’t be too many skiers in the Home Counties.

A spokesman for the arch unionists, the Tories, one Brian Monteith, a Member of the Scottish Parliament (which he opposed) said that the Committee were quite right, and that Scots would not be happy if the English athletes went about with St George’s crosses in their hair; aside from the fact that St George was given the Kirkcaldy heist from the Calendar of Saints some years ago, I can see no objection to that. It is not wrong to express pride in one's nation, whatever that nation. Perhaps it was the British Olympic Committee making a political statement.

Alain Baxter has now dyed his hair, all one colour, blue, to comply; Mr Monteith may regard that as a political statement, but as a true blue Tory, will not protest. John Swinney, SNP leader, is writing to both Olympic Associations to protest at the insult to Scotland’s Flag, and noting that in the Summer Olympics in Barcelona in 1992, the Catalan Flag flew beside the Spanish Flag; that was not deemed political. However, the episode does illustrate the potency of flags.

There came to mind the quotation from the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier:

"Shoot if you must, this old grey head,
But spare your country’s flag" she said."

Postscript: FIVE Scots made history last night (21 Feb 2002) when they won Great Britain’s first gold medal at a Winter Olympics since Torvill and Dean in 1984. Read about this on Electric Scotland.

THE INDIAN GIVER

One of the most astonishing facts to come out in the last few weeks is that the Labour Party is about £10 million in the red (or pale pink with this lot) and that there will be a levy of 2% on MPs’ salaries to make up the deficit. Yes we know there was a General Election last year and Labour spent a lot of money, but most of it was ours, straight from the public purse. In March last year, when an April election was imminent, the "Government" spent £31 million on advertising; to put this into perspective, the next biggest spender was Proctor & Gamble, the soap sellers, but they only spent £12 million in the same month advertising their kind of soap. Last year the government spent a total of £142.6 million on advertising, an increase of 39%, while the private sector’s spending went down by 10%; advertising by other European governments is so small that it is hardly worth recording.

However they have mismanaged it, New Labour are broke (they’re very good at pointing the finger at other parties in this respect.) In their dash for cash, they have made deals with some very unsavoury bedfellows indeed, and the latest episode involving the Mittal Steel Company is a case in point; Mr Blair wrote to the Prime Minister of Romania recommending that he sell the nationalised Romanian steel industry to Mr Mittal’s company. Mr Blair said this was something he would do for any British businessman, but Mr Mittal was not a British businessman; he is an Indian billionaire, who employs less than 100 people in Britain and his company is registered in the Dutch Antilles. He purchased Irish Steel in a similar deal in 1996 and it went into liquidation with debts of more than £40 million; the Irish government and the European Coal and Steel Commission (our money) had to pick up the redundancy costs for over 400 workers. In addition he gave over 600000 dollars to a campaign to put a 40% tariff on to all steel imports into the United States, a campaign directly against Britain’s interests, but very much in Mr Mittal’s interests; and he got a very preferential loan of £70 million from the European Community to help buy Romanian Steel (our money again) on Britain’s recommendation.

Mr Mittal has not committed any crime, but he must be very pleased that his *"Indian gift" to New Labour of £125000 just before the last election, was so rewarding. We do not believe the Blessed Tony committed any crime either, and he claimed to be unaware of all we have just written. This reminds me of the comment made to Henry McLeish by Alex Salmond on the BBC Question Time which led to Mr McLeish’s resignation, "I don’t know what you’re paying your advisers, Henry, but it’s too much." Mr Blair is not a crook, but he is dazzled by wealth, and strangely enough for a barrister, he doesn’t seem to realise that the waters of high finance contain shoals of sharks.

* An Indian gift is one made in the expectation it will be reciprocated.

NATS IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

If we can just mention three of the wonderful privatisations, which are now stock market dogs, British Airways, British Telecoms and Railtrack; when Labour was in opposition the sell off of National Air Traffic Services was proposed by the Tories and this met with a furious reaction from Labour. The cry at the time was "Our air is not for sale", and we were led to believe that the House of Commons would be littered with the dead bodies of New Labour MPs; so now it has been sold off and nary an undertaker in sight.

The big deal with all PFI (private finance initiative) now called PPP (public private partnerships) was the Government claim that the private companies would take all the risk, so they were entitled to the vast profits they would make. In the case of Railtrack, a lot of money was made by investors, as the company never made a profit but paid dividends to shareholders in a roundabout way from the public purse, and the agonised scream from investors when the gravy train stopped was a joy to hear, as long as you didn’t have any money in it; you risk the money, take the profit, but if there is a loss, well, that’s the market so beloved of the Tories and New Labour.

At the time of the sell off of National Air Traffic Services (NATS) the Civil Aviation Authority warned that the part-privatised company would be too fragile to withstand a traumatic air event; their views were ignored, and Abbey National, Barclays, the Halifax and the good old Bank of America put up the money (The last was happy to participate as it is shovelling in the dough from the Skye Bridge.) Fill your boots, as the saying goes. Then came 11 September 2001, a downturn in air traffic, and problems, problems, problems; so the aforesaid lot have been given compensation of £30 million to keep the industry going! So what happened to the private sector taking the risk? Or is this just another chimera? The private sector will only take a risk if there isn’t one; they are there to reap profits, and if there are losses they must come out of the public purse, which is our pockets. The whole business is just one big swindle; commercial companies are in business to make money, and governments are charged with delivering services. Services do not demand a monetary return, so how government allows itself to be conned I’ll never know. This is not a diatribe against the private sector; I spent virtually all my life working in the private sector for good commercial companies, and if you don’t make a profit you don’t survive, but this is ripping off generations to come by political ineptitude allied to Thatcherite greed.

And now the Government are going to carry on with the same plan for the London Underground; wait until the disruption starts there and the centre of the universe gets really upset.

FOX POPULI

The bill was a Private Member’s Bill, put forward by Lord Watson, and while I have no great love for fox hunters, (as Oscar Wilde put it "The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable") or foxes, like many others I resent the amount of Parliamentary time and energy devoted to a relatively minor issue at a time when over 30% of Scottish children live in poverty.

The bill, after 107 amendments were considered, was passed by 83 votes to 36, with 5 members abstaining; the SNP votes were 23 for the bill, 6 against and 4 abstentions. One member was absent and George Reid as Deputy Presiding Officer, did not vote. Only one Tory voted for the bill, John Young a list MSP for Glasgow, and no Labour members voted against it, despite this being a "free" vote. One Labour member, John Home Robertson, abstained, but he’s a millionaire, so financially independent, and only three Liberals voted for the bill, a wee bit strange, them usually being goody two shoes; the Justice Minister, Jim Wallace, Liberal, voted against the bill, as did Agriculture Minister Ross Finnie, also a Liberal. They said they were unsure if the bill achieved its purpose which was to end cruelty, and the foxhunters latched on to this as showing the bill was deeply flawed, and unworkable; well they would, wouldn’t they?

Certainly, there seem to be many doubts as to whether the bill is good law, or not, and it looks as if the consideration of so many amendments in a short time was not particularly clever, but then many of them were designed as wrecking amendments anyway. Whichever way you look at it, this is another piece of legislation, every bit as controversial as the Section 28 (or 2A to give it its proper name) which we can be glad to see the back of. Now that foxhunting on horseback is illegal, John Peel’s" view halloo which would awaken the dead or the fox from his lair in the morning", will only be heard South of the Border, but foxes will continue to be shot, trapped or poisoned in Scotland, as despite the cuddly Basil Brush image, they are still vermin - boom boom!

NO MEAN CITY

I passed a comment last week that I had nothing against Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, other than that he was a Labour MP for Glasgow, and that city was a shambles; now a study "Poverty - the Facts" published by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has revealed that the three poorest constituencies in the UK, Shettleston, Springburn and Maryhill are in Glasgow. And what do these constituencies have in common? They are all rock solid Labour seats, both in Westminster and Scottish Parliament terms; this is Labour at its best, champions of the poor and dispossessed, and doing their utmost to keep them that way.

Springburn is the Westminster seat of Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, who lives in Bishopbriggs, an affluent middle class suburb, and has his constituency office at home, a matter which Jacqui Lait of the Tories told the press about, and then backed off when asked about it (Jacqui Lait is a Scot representing an English Tory seat); Paul Martin, son of Michael, is the MSP for Springburn. We do not know whether he still lives at home, or where his constituency office is. The MP for Maryhill is Ann McKechin, a solicitor, just elected in 2001; prior to that it was Maria Fyfe, and we do not know where she lived, but her predecessor was Jim Craigen, and he lived, and still lives in Edinburgh; the MSP is Patricia Ferguson, who was a Deputy Presiding Officer until Jack McConnell put her in his Cabinet. In Shettleston the MP is David Marshall, chiefly noted lately because his daughter was Jack McConnell’s constituency secretary (the one who burned the books), and the MSP is Frank McAveety, who had been leader of Glasgow City Council.

So, a lot of important and influential people, holding the reins of power, at Westminster, in Edinburgh and in Glasgow itself, and presiding over the worst poverty in Britain. There is no doubt that Glasgow has been grossly mismanaged over the years, and it has been the Labour Party who have been responsible; there is a perception that it is a bottomless pit, which takes money which is never seen again. A recent example of this is the East Pollokshields Multicultural Centre, which was given £200000 (yes, two hundred thousand pounds) a year for the past four years; it has failed to keep audited accounts for at least two of these years, and according to reports they did not even keep a cash book. No fraud has been suggested, but Glasgow’s internal audit team has not completed its inquiries; the treasurer was the secretary of the Govan Labour Party, but he has now become the chairman at the centre, taking over from the previous chairman, a Labour councillor. (I had a brief moment there when I thought I was writing about the Third Age in Glenrothes and Fife Council and the Labour Party, but that was last week.) This time the money was paid by Glasgow Council, who then claimed it from the Scottish Executive, but again it is public money, paid over and unaccounted for; so far they have had £800000 (eight hundred thousand pounds).

And while all this spare cash is being handed out, one fifth of the children being taken for treatment to Glasgow hospitals are found to be malnourished, the number of children excluded from schools has risen by 4% since 1999, and on 29 Jun last year, the Scottish prison population reached an all time high of 6388; Labour is thriving on other people’s misfortunes, because nobody else is, and Glasgow is a running sore.

FOOT IN THE MOUTH NOTES

We all have selective amnesia from time to time.

An article in the Scotsman referring to Olga Korbut, former Olympic gold medallist, being arrested for shoplifting, headed "Hero’s Fall From Grace."

Always thought female heroes were heroines, but you just can’t get feature writers these days. (No by-line either!)

Yes, you’ve got it in one; the first time the barge came through it hit the parapet. Och weel, only another half million to sort it (the bridge, not the boat.)

Panic in Labour ranks, as the new Westminster boundaries meant that the Chancellor’s seat in Dunfermline East would disappear! Situation saved as old friend steps aside. Well, Dr Lewis Moonie MP, will not contest Kirkcaldy, so Gordon Brown can have that seat; how noble.

Dr Moonie, a Government minister, is going to contest Central Fife, and will have to fight their MP, John MacDougall, for the selection; greater love hath no man than he who lays down someone else’s constituency for a friend.

As Secretary of State for Defence (Tory) he transferred the refitting of nuclear submarines from Rosyth, Fife, to Devonport on the South coast of England "purely for cost reasons"; the project is now some £400 million over budget and they haven’t refitted any submarines yet. Very shrewd business that!

Scottish and Southern Energy has secured a contract to supply green electricity (from our hydro electric schemes) to the Republic of Ireland, who are very keen on green; at the same time the Republic has lost a dispute with London over the new nuclear MOX plant at Sellafield, which the Irish say will give them radioactive pollution.

Scotland cleans, and London cleans up.

The case has been referred back to the new Parliamentary Commissioner, as in 1998 the formal rental value of the premises by the Lothians joint valuation board was £7200.

SYNOPSIS

SCOTS BACK TAX FOR HEALTH SERVICE

More people in Scotland than in the rest of the UK believe in raising taxes to fund the National Health Service, according to a BBC poll. The poll for the BBC's NHS Day found that 84% of people in Scotland said they would pay more to improve the NHS, compared with 69% elsewhere. Across the UK, the poll suggested that the key concern was free personal care for the elderly south of the border. The poll findings were put to the Prime Minister in a special NHS Day programme on BBC One earlier this evening. SNP shadow health minister Nicola Sturgeon told Newsnight Scotland that she welcomed an admission by the Prime Minister that "all was not well" in the health service. She said: "There was one thing that Tony Blair said that I absolutely agreed with and that was that the fundamental problem in the health service is under-capacity. That's the problem in Scotland too. For example, we've lost - since Labour came to power - 600 acute beds. The basic problem is that the health service has become too small." She challenged health minister Malcolm Chisholm to "stop sanctioning bed reductions".

SENIOR POLITICIANS BACK CALL FOR ELGIN BYPASS

The campaign for an Elgin bypass gathered pace at the weekend as the SNP sent four senior politicians to the town to highlight the issue. SNP frontbencher Andrew Wilson met Moray's MP and MSP and deputy Highlands minister Duncan Hamilton to see the bottle neck on the vital A96 route for himself. Mr Wilson said: "It strikes me as obvious that this major route from Aberdeen to Inverness, through the largest town in Scotland without a bypass, is not what it should be. This area has the largest exports per head of population in Scotland and needs the transport infrastructure to maintain that position. We must keep up the pressure on the Executive to have this section of the A96 upgraded." Mrs Ewing said that Elgin was becoming the main bottleneck on the route between Aberdeen and Inverness. She said: "This is not a new issue. I am sure everyone in Moray knows about the problem we have here and the campaign to have the whole of the A96 dualled. We have done well in getting the Fochabers and Mosstodloch bypass but Elgin needs one too." Mr Robertson, her counterpart at Westminster, added: "I am really glad that senior politicians from outside Moray also agree that a bypass for Elgin needs to be a serious priority. It is unfortunate that the Labour-led Scottish Executive has failed to deliver any progress on this issue, which is why it is important for this campaign to succeed."

McCONNELL REJECTS TAX POWER AS EX-MINISTER SAYS HE LACKS VISION

First Minister Jack McConnell today ruled out using the Scottish Parliament's tax raising powers to make the public pay for improvements. Speaking on STV's Seven Days, the First Minister was also asked to comment on criticism by one of his most senior Labour colleagues for failing to articulate a vision for Scotland. In a lecture at this week's Scottish Labour conference, former health minister Susan Deacon will say the time has now come for the First Minister to "translate rhetoric into reality". Her intervention, which comes three months after McConnell promised to "do fewer things and to do them better", reflects widespread concern among Labour MSPs that he has so far failed to explain what Scottish Labour is about. SNP leader John Swinney reacted by pledging that the next fourteen months would be "a year to raise the ambitions of Scots". Mr Swinney criticised the Executive's record on cutting waiting lists, on addressing sub-standard school buildings, tackling crime and managing the economy. Mr Swinney said his aspirations for Scotland were "underpinned first of all by ambition" and there was "a gulf in ambition" between the SNP and New Labour. He added: "When Labour came to power nearly one in three Scottish children lived in poverty. After more than four years of a Labour government nearly one in three Scottish children are still living in poverty. To Jack McConnell's shame, a new report is set to name the three most deprived areas in the United Kingdom - and they are all in Glasgow. What does this say about Labour's record when a United Nations rating system, taking account of life expectancy, unemployment, incomes and rates of illiteracy, puts our biggest city at the bottom of the heap," he asked.

YOUNGEST MSP TO STAND DOWN

The Scottish Parliament's youngest member has said he will not be seeking re-election next year. SNP MSP Duncan Hamilton will quit the parliament at the next election to pursue a career in law. But the 28-year-old Highlands & Islands list MSP, who received an LLB from the University of Edinburgh and was a Kennedy scholar at Harvard, Massachusetts, indicated he might seek a return to parliamentary life in the future. "Being elected as the youngest member of the first Scottish Parliament in 300 years was a great privilege, and something that I have enjoyed hugely," he said. "Being elected at the age of 25 was a wonderful experience and one that I will never regret. But I also believe that the best parliamentarians have real life experience outside elected politics, and that this is now the right time for me to fulfil my other ambitions. My enthusiasm for the SNP and the goal of Scottish Independence remains absolute and it is my desire to continue making a contribution to Scotland's cause - hopefully again in the future as an elected representative." SNP leader John Swinney described Mr Hamilton as a "first class" MSP for the Highlands and Islands, as well as a close friend and colleague. He added: "He is also a young man and I understand his decision to develop an alternative career at this stage in his life. I know from my own career the value of outside experience in building and developing a rounded perspective.

FURTHER EMBARRASSMENT AS LABOUR LEAVE UK WITHOUT VOICE

The government faced further embarrassment yesterday, after it emerged that Britain has been left scrambling for a place on a group charged with drawing up a blueprint for the future of Europe. Last week it was confirmed the SNP will be the only Scottish representatives on the 100-strong Convention on the Future of Europe, after the Scottish Executive failed to secure a place for Scotland. SNP MEP Neil MacCormick will represent the European Parliament and Keith Brown, leader of SNP-controlled Clackmannan council, who is a member of the EU's committee of the regions, will represent that institution. Now Whitehall faces the prospect of being excluded when the convention discusses the crucial issues of the Nice Treaty and the handing-back of powers to the 15 member states. The Council of Ministers announced at the Laeken summit last December the creation of the convention, chaired by Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president. Under the plans, the convention will meet for one year, starting on 28 February, to draw up the way forward for the main institutions of the EU, and review the power to given to small self-governing nations such as Scotland. However the UK has failed to secure any representation on the presidium, a 12-strong body which will draw up the papers for the convention to discuss. Ten places on the presidium have already been filled, with two going to France, two to Spain and one each to Italy, Denmark, Greece, Belgium, Germany and Portugal. Britain will now have to wait for a ballot of the national parliamentary representatives on the convention, to discover whether it will have one of the two remaining places round the table. Professor MacCormick said: "Labour has made a total mess of this. The UK is now left scrambling for a place round the presidium table. This shambles won't distract us from our job of arguing for an outcome that will be good for Scotland. Having two SNP voices part of this debate will be to the benefit of Scotland."

LABOUR PROVOST AT CENTRE OF OVERSEAS TRIPS ROW

The controversy over Aberdeen Lord Provost Margaret Smith taking a companion on official overseas trips will be reignited next week when a report on the issue goes before councillors. Opposition councillors have been seeking a rule-change after it emerged the council had spent 34,000 pounds over two years enabling a friend of Miss Smith, Lesley Baird, to accompany her on trips abroad. Reacting to the report, Auchmill SNP councillor Kevin Stewart, who previously set down a motion calling for the matter to be debated, said: "As has been proven in the report, every other local authority in Scotland requires approval by their executive, committee, or full council before any partner's trip is authorised. I do not see why Aberdeen should be different and I am firmly of the belief that a committee of the council should decide whether or not a Lord Provost can take a partner on a trip abroad. I think that it is only right that councillors should authorise this as we are talking about the spending of public money and I believe that the citizens of this city would expect us to undertake such scrutiny."

CALL FOR CHANGE IN LAW GOVERNING FREE TRANSPORT

A Scottish Parliament committee is to be asked to look at changing the law concerning free school transport. The public petitions committee this week agreed to ask the education, culture and sport committee to investigate changing the Education Act. It follows two petitions from parents in Banff and Livingston voicing concerns about the way legislation is applied. Parents in Aberdeenshire have been waging a campaign ever since the council changed the eligibility rules. Now primary pupils who live within two miles of school and secondary youngsters within three miles are not entitled to free transport in the area. The Scottish Parliament's public petitions committee yesterday considered answers it had received from Aberdeenshire and West Lothian Councils and the Scottish Executive. Stewart Stevenson, SNP MSP for Banff and Buchan, said information provided by the Parliament was at odds with the information provided by Aberdeenshire Council. "Aberdeenshire are being driven by financial considerations rather than considerations of safety," he said. Mr Stevenson added that at some point MSPs should be looking to change the Education Act so that safety of school transport was the focus rather than finances, particularly in rural areas with relatively poor transport infrastructure.