OLIVER AWARD FOR HARRY REID
 

I attended one of my favourite annual lunches last Saturday 31 May in Stirling.
 
It was the annual Oliver Brown Award for a person who has been judged to advance the cause of Scotland over the past twelve months.

This year the award went to Harry Reid, former editor of The Herald newspaper.  In The Herald, Harry still writes a weekly column, which I always enjoy because of his independence of thought.
 
He started by saying that he was going to annoy the audience – for a very short time.   And he certainly raised some eyebrows – for a few seconds at least – when he praised hammer-of-the-Scots journalist Andrew Neil for being a good and brave editor of the London-based Sunday Times in the 1980s.
 
Harry went on to say that it was therefore so sad to see the line that Andrew Neil had taken as editor of the Scotsman newspaper in the 1990s, when he had seemed to adopt a personal crusade to undermine Scottish self-confidence and make the Scots feel bad about themselves.
 
Harry Reid himself seems to have begun to believe in the arguments for Scottish independence about ten years ago.  Interestingly, it was the very attitude of Andrew Neil that had helped to move his own thoughts along the independence road.  The late great Douglas Henderson had also been a key influence.
 
 

NO CHANCE FOR BRITISHNESS

I’m just back from holiday in Egypt where the English contingent in our group far outnumbered the Scots.

What really struck me was the fact that that none of them ever mentioned the word Britain at all.  Whenever they spoke of home, it was England that was mentioned, never Britain.
 
Speaking of the current politician situation, things were not going well back in England, never Britain.
 
And the poor old pound sterling was passed over in total silence – all the talk was of how much you get for ‘English pounds’ or ‘English money’.
 
Gordon Brown has an uphill struggle for his Britishness campaign.
 

NUCLEAR DECOMMISSIONING
 

In 2003 the cost of decommissioning Britain’s nuclear power stations was put at £61 billion.  

The latest estimate - ‘guesstimate’ may be a better term – is £73 billion.
 
And according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s Director Jim Morse: ‘It’s a high probability that in the short term it (the cost) will undoubtedly go up.’
 
 

LOCAL INCOME TAX AND THE WITHHELD BENEFIT
 

So chancellor Alastair Darling seems set on withholding what has come to be called the ‘council tax benefit’.
 
But why is it called ‘council tax’ benefit?  Is it just not simply a benefit agreed between Westminster and the Scottish Parliament to help poorer members of society who are struggling to pay their charges for local services?  Should it not be re-named a necessary ‘benefit to set against local charges’?
 
Do people suddenly cease to be poor because tax money is raised by one means and not another, even if the local income tax is broadly speaking a fairer tax overall?
 

And as all this comes within the remit of the Scottish government, does this bullying from Westminster not go against the devolution settlement?