Abolition of Bridge Tolls Bill

The Abolition of Bridge Tolls (Scotland) Bill has been introduced to Parliament.

The legislation will enable the Scottish Government to abolish tolls on the Forth and Tay road bridges. Tuesday 4^th September 2007.

Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson said:

"I am delighted that the Scottish Government's first Bill has been published today. If passed, all road bridges in Scotland will be free thus ending years of injustice for the communities of Fife, Tayside and the Lothians. We believe that it is unfair and unacceptable that the two road bridges into and out of Fife are the only remaining toll bridges in Scotland

"The proposal of a bill has received support in parliament, and more importantly, from the general public. We hope to remove tolls at the earliest opportunity, subject to due Parliamentary process."

The primary objective of this Bill is the removal of the remaining tolls from the Forth and Tay Road Bridges as soon as practicable.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/bills/index.htm

Voting Scandal

More information has now come to light after an investigation by the BBC into the fiasco that was the vote counting at the Scottish election in May; it had been assumed that the vast amount of rejected votes, around 140,000 ( the figure varies) had been seen and accepted by Returning Officers. This now turns out to be untrue; according to the latest report, the computers rejected thousands of ballot papers without them ever being seen by the human eye.

The vote on 3^rd May was utilising three different systems; for Holyrood the ballot paper contained the list vote and the first past the post vote, and for Scottish local government, the single transferable vote in multi member constituencies was used. This latter meant that voters had to label their preferences 1, 2 ,3, and 4 if it was a 4 member ward; this was deemed to be the most confusing of the processes, but in fact it only had the normal percentage of rejected ballots, thus showing that the electorate was not stupid.

In all previous elections, spoiled or rejected ballot papers were scrutinised by the Returning Officers plus agents for all the political parties, who reached agreement on each vote; this time rejected ballots should have appeared on a computer screen but a large proportion of them did not, but nobody knew this at the time. With all the delays going on that night this was not picked up. Also it would seem that large numbers of people did not receive their postal votes, a fact that emerged later

We are now seeing fingers being pointed all round, the well known political version of “a big boy did it and ran away”, as the Scottish Office blames the Returning Officers, and the Returning Officers are reciprocating, while the company who were responsible for the computer system say that their testing of the system was robust. In many ways it was like launching a new car; it can be tested to distraction in the factory and on the road, but it is only when it gets into the hands of normal human beings that flaws appear.

Neither Scottish Office Minister David Cairns, nor the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander, agreed to be interviewed by the BBC. It has to be noted that Westminster was in charge of the Holyrood voting, while the Scottish Executive was in charge of local government elections; both sets of elections were under the control of Labour Ministers. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has great faith in Douglas Alexander; he has put him in charge of Labour’s election campaign, whenever that might be.

Executive decision

From this week, Monday 3^rd September 2007, to be precise, the Scottish Executive will be known as the Scottish Government. This was first used by Henry McLeish when he was First Minister, but there was such a horrified outcry from Labour MPs that he desisted.

The Scottish Government logo However, the current First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, does not have to ask anyone in London what the Scottish Government should be called, so he has just done it. The term Scottish Executive was confusing, and many people thought it referred to the Civil Service; Alex Salmond himself thought it sounded like a briefcase. The appropriate buildings have been re-named and the cost of the name change is expected to be around £100,000; fortunately we do not require a logo, as we already have the Saltire. Stationery will change as it is re-ordered.

Those who carped at the cost, mainly the Labour and Liberal members who do not want to be in a Government anyway, conveniently forgot that they paid £40,000 for the logo designed for the G8 in Gleneagles in 2005, and their all knowing members in London paid out £400,000 of our money for the London Olympics logo. The Scottish Government response was that they had already saved £50 million by acting like a government.

Acting like a Tube

In my last Flag I referred to the collapse of the London Tube project, Metronet, one of the much vaunted PFI (Private Finance Initiative) which became a PPP (Public Private Partnership) in which the Treasury had agreed to carry 95% of the costs if the scheme went bust, which it duly did. (One of the great “benefits” of PPP is that the investors take the risk – Aye right.)

Word reaching me from the indefagitable Andrew J T Kerr, is that the National Audit Office is to investigate the collapse of the £17 billion contract; this is in response to a complaint by the Tory shadow transport secretary. At the time of the signing of the contract the Transport Secretary was Alistair Darling, who also doubled as Secretary of State for Scotland; both posts were subsequently taken over by Douglas Alexander, whose fiasco was the Scottish elections in May this year – see above. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was opposed to the privatisation, but was ignored. And, echoes of the cash for honours scam, the Treasury official who put forward the scheme, Shriti Vadera, was given a peerage and a ministerial job by Mr Brown this year.

More than a touch of schadenfreude in that the Tories are now the ones complaining; they came up with the PFI wheeze to fatten the wallets of their financial pals. This was the attitude of Labour until they came into power, when they re-named the scheme PPP and found a new set of pals. Anyone who imagines that borrowing money on the market and having to make a profit will make for better and cheaper schemes is living in cloud cuckoo land – or Westminster. The other ostensible reason, to keep money out of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement, is now about to bite the dust as well.

Edinburgh Council Stramash

The 1 o'clock gun, as seen from Edinburgh Castle I suppose that the mess up in Edinburgh Council is due mainly to inexperience; the proposal to close a total number of nursery, primary and secondary schools inherited from the previous administration needed a bit more political savvy.

The previous administration must be laughing all the way to the polling station; they deferred the announcement until after the election as they were afraid of losing votes, which they lost anyway. Then they were able to grandstand as the defenders of their constituents against a decision that they themselves did not have the bottle to implement. Personally, I am glad that the SNP group did think again, as we are going to reduce class sizes so the same number of pupils will occupy more classrooms, and the influx of Polish workers means more children to be educated.

Better to bite the bullet now, and be accused of giving in to pressure, rather than persist in a wrong policy, but it does make for a shaky coalition; well, who said it was going to be easy?

Well – shut ma mouth!

What an astounding headline in this week’s Sunday Herald – if a Referendum were to be held now, only 35% would vote for Independence, 50% would vote against it and 15% were not sure! I do not dispute this, nor does the SNP; we know this, which is why Alex Salmond will hold the Referendum three and a bit years hence. The people need to see what a Scottish National Party government can do, so that they can gain the confidence sapped away by generations of London condescension.

Alex Salmond It is like fighting a war; you do not seek to fight battles against materially superior forces on the ground and at the time they have chosen; good generals pick the timing and the ground when they can. Circumstances do not always allow this, but it is wise to plan accordingly. What I do find surprising is the almost visceral fear that the Unionist parties have about a Referendum; if they are so convinced that Independence will be rejected, why are they afraid to even discuss one? Of course, we would not put the planning in the hands of the likes of Douglas Alexander – so it would be run efficiently- and we will pick the wording, but only when it suits.

Parliamentary Questions

I have this week started to receive the answers to Parliamentary Written Questions, a facility long accorded to the Unionist press, and these are a revelation – of sorts.

Step forward Des McNulty, Labour MSP for Clydebank and Milngavie; he has been asking questions ad nauseam about transport and environmental issues, too much to go into detail. However, most of the questions relate, as they must, to when his own party were in office, and one might wonder why he did not ask them of his friends? Despite being a bright cookie ( no, that is not sarcasm) Mr McNulty seemed to be overlooked, and only occupied ministerial office briefly, about four months as the deputy Minister for Justice; now he is Labour’s spokesman on Transport and the Environment, and is trying to find out what his pals have been doing for the last 8 years. Such a pity that quite often the Minister concerned, usually Stewart Stevenson, refers him to the official records – ie “Go and look it up yourself” – in polite civil service terminology of course. I was minded to think that Mr McNulty was trying to increase employment in the civil service, or just trying to increase parliamentary costs. Alas and alack, I just found him trying.

Not exciting but effective

I went to the Parliament on Wednesday this week to witness the first SNP programme for government; after the Time for Reflection, Bruce Crawford MSP, Minister for Parliamentary Business, introduced the business for the day. This was disputed by a Liberal MSP, Iain Smith, who said that not enough time had been allocated to the occasion. In the exchanges that followed, Bruce Crawford pointed out that the timetable had been agreed by the Parliamentary Business Bureau (I think that is the title) which included representatives from all the political parties, and David McLetchie for the Tories said what was the point of the Bureau spending time on planning which could then be cancelled out on a whim. The issue had to be put to a vote, and at first the voting system did not work properly (and, no I do not think Douglas Alexander was in the vicinity) so it had to be re-run. The result was 60 votes to proceed, 54 against, with one abstention, rather a high sign of opposition to the new government, and a sad reflection of the pettiness of the Unionist faction; as it was, the ploy only succeeded in leaving less time for questions on the programme.

debating Chamber, Scottish Parliament There were no new policies or plans introduced, which seemed to infuriate the Unionists; they are unhappy people, if nothing new is produced they shout the equivalent of the “same old rubbish”, but if there was anything new they would yell about “no previous consultation!” What was put forward was non contentious bills to which there was broad agreement , and once they are passed and working satisfactorily, then it will be time to persuade the other parties to support more adventurous acts.

Incidentally, I was pleased to note that one bear trap was avoided; “In the area of rural schools , it remains our position that there should be a legislative presumption against closure – and after the necessary consultation it is our intention to bring forward proposals to safeguard rural schools and the communities of which they are part.” Very glad that the SNP Group on Edinburgh Council backtracked on closing schools, or that would have been thrown in our face!

We are in the situation of minority government, and no amount of ritual huffing and puffing from the Unionists can alter that fact; on Wednesday we put forward the Bill to Abolish Tolls on the Forth and Tay Road bridges, the Rape and Sexual Offences Bill, the Public Health Bill, the Judiciary (Scotland) Bill, the Interest (Scotland) Bill, the Local Healthcare (Scotland) bill, the Graduate Endowment(Abolition) (Scotland) bill, the Flooding Bill, the Creative Scotland Bill and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Bill. The Budget Bill will be introduced to come into force in January 2008, once we know how much of our own money London will give us to spend.

Questions to the First Minister did not cause any problems, and in this context Alex Salmond said he was looking forward to the Westminster General Election, and also reminded the other parties that if the reasonable measures the SNP were proposing were voted down by the other parties, he would be very happy to fight another Scottish Election. There was certainly the new Alex Salmond on display, evidenced by the fact that when Annabelle Goldie castigated him for not adhering to the Tory promises in their manifesto, he did not mention that the Tories had not won the election, but treated her kindly.

A brisk and constructive session from the SNP, but as far as the Unionists were concerned, I thought of the Arab saying: “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.”

The day-long summit culminated in three reports from the students to the Cabinet Secretary who said that she had met a number of University Principals over the last few months but that it was equally important to listen to the students themselves.

Voting Scandal

Executive decision

The Working Life of Linda Fabiani MSP

Westminster Elections

Fieldwork dates: 31st July – 7th August 2007, Sample size: 1012

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