Wings Over Scotland

We’re just beginning to see how the future of the UK will look under austerity. The full horror of the cuts may not be due to bite until later in 2013, but already we can see where and how they’re likely to affect the UK population. Among the most controversial of these measures (so far) are the proposed regional levels for pay and welfare.

The regional pay proposals would see public workers paid less the further from the south-east of England they work (although devolved services in Scotland would be spared this), while the regional welfare payments would see a person on benefits paid less if they live in a poor area of the UK.

At present, government jobs are split into pay bands, with those on a certain band in one occupation earning roughly the equivalent of another public sector worker on the same band in another occupation.  There’s room for manoeuvre within the bands, but not much. These banding brackets are agreed through national pay negotiations by unions, ensuring that staff are treated fairly and consistently regardless of where they work. However, the creation of regional pay proposals puts an end to that idea.

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We noted at the autumn 2012 reopening of Parliament that Scottish Labour were again attacking the SNP for being “obsessed” with the independence referendum at the expense of other matters of more direct concern to the people of Scotland. At that week’s FMQs, Johann Lamont also bitterly criticised Alex Salmond on the grounds of secrecy, with particular regard to future EU membership.

The implication, of course, is that were Labour in control of Holyrood they would be powering ahead with a dynamic programme of openly-declared policies. Now seems as good a time as any for a recap of what Scottish Labour’s positions currently are.

Known policies are highlighted in bold.

[UPDATED: 21st July 2013]

– on the constitution: “Vote for the status quo and we’ll change things at some undetermined point in the future, in some unspecified way or ways (even though we just spent several years on the Calman Commission/Scotland Bill, supposedly coming up with a settled and lasting position on devolution).”

– on a replacement form of local taxation: “We’ll get back to you on that.“

– on the existing Council Tax: “We will either freeze, increase or cut Council Tax”

– on higher education funding: “We haven’t made a decision yet.“

– on fighting sectarianism: “We refuse to participate in the discussion.“

– on alcohol pricing: “We’re for doing something, but not this.“

– on gay marriage: “The time is right to consult on options.“

– on raising train fares above inflation: “We are both for and against this.“

– on maintaining/upgrading nuclear weapons: “the Labour Party has pledged its support for a ballistic [nuclear] missile-armed submarine platform based on continuous-at-sea deterrence.”

– on building a new generation of nuclear power stations: “We haven’t ruled new nuclear power in, but neither have we ruled it out.“

– on use of Scotland Bill taxation powers from 2016: “If you have got tax powers, you have to make a decision as to whether you would use them.“

– on maintaining universal benefits like prescriptions, personal care and bus travel for the elderly: “Once we have decided as a country what kind of public services we aspire to, then we must have an honest debate about affordability.“

If anyone has any more up-to-date information on these or any other Scottish Labour positions, please do send it in. In that event, you may wish to CC Johann Lamont.

Just the facts.

RECORD IN COMPETITIVE MATCHES

Berti Vogts P13 W5 D4 L4
George Burley P8 W3 D1 L4
Craig Levein P10 W3 D4 L3

PERCENTAGE OF GAMES WON

Berti Vogts 38.5
George Burley 37.5
Craig Levein 30

PERCENTAGE OF POINTS WON

Berti Vogts 48.8
George Burley 42
Craig Levein 43.3

Berti Vogts was building a young team from scratch after the veteran side of Craig Brown disintegrated, and still got us to the [EDIT: Euro 2004] playoffs. He was sacked after 13 competitive games. George Burley was being constantly undermined from within by his own players, from above by the SFA and from outside by the media. He was sacked after just eight competitive games.

Craig Levein has more players from the top divisions in England and Scotland at his disposal than any Scotland manager of the last decade. He has now led the team through 10 competitive games, and won significantly fewer of them (against worse opposition) than either Vogts or Burley. He has comprehensively lost the faith of the Scotland support. If we are to maintain even the slightest hope of qualification for World Cup 2014, his time is up. He must go, and he must go now.

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We’ve never in our entire lives wanted Scotland to do anything other than win a football match. Tonight, that might change. The dismal but all-too-predictable performance against Serbia on Saturday was another soul-crushing 90 minutes under Craig Levein. His tactic of playing every game looking for a 1-0 win on the counter-attack, despite having a defence almost totally incapable of keeping a clean sheet, was thrown into sharp relief last night as Andy Murray – once a notoriously passive and defensive tennis player who regularly failed at the last (or second-to-last) hurdle – finally completed his transformation into an attacking powerhouse capable of going toe-to-toe with the likes of the brutally talented Novak Djokovic and winning.

From Levein’s pronouncements since the feeble 0-0 draw with Djokovic’s Serbian countrymen at the weekend, the Scotland coach shows no signs of learning the lesson of Murray’s magnificent victory, and seems perversely determined to stick to a losing formula as much out of sheer stubborn petulance as anything else.

Starting the qualifying group with two home points from six would leave Scotland with a mountain to climb, but with eight games to come it wouldn’t be a completely insurmountable one. The catch, however, is that it WOULD by any sane analysis be an impossible task with Levein as manager.

If he plays this defensively at home – and incredibly, it’s by no means inconceivable that he’ll once again line up in a few hours in 4-1-4-1 formation with Kenny Miller alone up front – it’s safe to say our chances of securing the away wins we’d need to stand a chance would be nil. And more to the point, even four points from six are unlikely to be enough with the best teams in the group still to come, if we keep playing this way.

Scotland fans who don’t want the next two years to be over before they’ve begun now face a gruesome reality. Victory over Macedonia would secure Levein’s position for the forseeable future, which would almost certainly doom the qualification attempt to failure. Two more dropped points, on the other hand, might just be enough to see him sacked. The national side currently has a more talented group of players available than at any time in the last decade, and is stronger in attack than in defence for perhaps the first time in 20 years. A more positive manager might well still be able to save the campaign, even from such an inauspicious start.

But tonight’s game is the last point at which that will be true. The next round of matches sees us away to Wales and Belgium, and if Levein is allowed to oversee the dropping of any more points there then the situation will be utterly irretrievable. In this blog’s view, Scotland’s only hope of qualifying for World Cup 2014 is to draw tonight. (A defeat would be a catastrophe too far for any manager to recover.)

So do we pray for victory over 90 minutes no matter what, or take the long-term view? This blog, for more than just footballing reasons, finds itself – albeit uncomfortably, reluctantly and painfully – in the latter camp. What do you think? The poll’s at the top of the grey column just to the right of these words.

We haven’t had any football-related posts in weeks, but this is an emergency. Many in the independence movement are hoping that 2014 will be the sort of year for them that 2012 has been for advocates of the UK. With the Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup taking place in Scotland and the World Cup in Rio, a lot of people are hoping for an upsurge in patriotism which might just carry the referendum vote over the line.

But more than two years out, one man might wreck it all before it even gets started.

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"…don't you ever / Lower yourself, forgetting all your standards"

🙁

The CBI Director-General, John Cridland, came north this week to tell Scotland we shouldn’t be independent. He has every right to do so. But what he has no right to do is use half-truths as the basis for his scaremongering.

I hear that Mr Cridland told the CBI Annual Dinner in Glasgow on Thursday night that the “immediate effects [of independence] would be profound, and in the short term costly. When Slovakia separated from the Czech Republic, it cost the country four per cent of its GDP in the following year.” But what Mr Cridland won’t tell us is what happened next.

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We’re thrilled to welcome to the blog the YesScotland campaign’s estimable post-graduate European law expert Stephen Noon, with some intriguing stats.

The International Monetary Fund has just published its latest statistics for the relative wealth per head of different countries. And, for Iceland, Ireland, Norway and the UK, they paint a fascinating picture.

The figures are based on “purchasing power parity”, which allows us to make a fair comparison between the different countries, and they show that Norway, Ireland and Iceland are all wealthier per head than the UK. Indeed, at no point in the financial crisis did any of the countries dip below the UK in this IMF wealth league table.

If we take a look at 2010, when the full impact of the crisis was being felt, the wealth per head for each country, in current international dollars, was:

Norway     $52,165
Ireland      $39,492
Iceland     $36,535
UK           $35,344

The UK was $1,192 behind the ‘poorest’ of the three, Iceland, at this point. If we fast-forward to the current year, 2012, the IMF estimates are:

Norway     $54,479
Ireland      $40,443
Iceland     $39,083
UK           $36,605

This year, the average UK citizen is now forecast by the IMF to be $2,478 poorer than his equivalent in ‘insolvent’ Iceland. And putting the IMF’s crystal ball to full use, let’s take a look at referendum year, 2014. What will be the relative strengths of the four nations by then? Won’t being a powerhouse big country have propelled the United Kingdom above lowly Iceland at least?

Norway    $57,217
Ireland     $44,283
Iceland    $41,647
UK          $38,935

It seems not. In 2014, the UK won’t even reach the level of GDP per capita that Iceland enjoyed in 2012. The wealth gap between the two countries will have increased, once again, to $2,712 per person.

Similarly, for Ireland, 2010 saw the Irish $4,148 ahead of the UK in wealth per head, and according to the IMF that Irish advantage will increase to $5,348 in 2014.

And finally, Norway’s $16,821 advantage per person in 2010 is forecast to become $18,727 by 2012 – in other words, just short of 50% wealthier than the UK.

It’s not quite what you’d expect from listening to the rhetoric of the anti-independence parties. Perhaps they should actually go to Iceland, or Ireland or Norway – small, independent nations which, it seems, now form an arc of faster recovery.

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A version of this post appeared previously on SNmr.

As penance for our sins, yesterday we went for a bit of a wade through the Better Together campaign’s official Facebook page, where we played a fun game of “watching dissenting comments vanish” for a while. As we browsed, though, we particularly enjoyed the upbeat entry for August 21st:

And the entry just two days later showed the campaign was as good as its word.

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The official website of UK Labour carries a page devoted to Willie Bain MP, the elected representative for Glasgow North-East. It contains a mission statement including the stirring sentence below:

“Politicians have to keep in touch with the people who elect them, and that’s why I’m working hard in the constituency too. I will never claim lavish expenses and never milk the system.“

(Our emphasis.) This week, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority published its official account of MPs’ expenses for the year 2011-12. Out of 650 MPs, Willie Bain was the 5th-highest claimer, racking up an incredible bill of £180,923.70 to the taxpayer on top of his £65,738 salary.

(If the current Parliament runs to its full length and these figures are typical, then the services of Willie Bain will have cost the UK public £1,233,305 over the term.)

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Never slow to jump on a bandwagon, Wings Over Scotland would like to announce, after endless media speculation, a long-awaited rearrangement of our popular and much-used links column. We like to keep our blogroll relatively lean (with at most 20, 10 and 5 links per section), because when you link indiscriminately to everyone you might as well just have a single button that leads to Google. We also sigh when we see blogs linking to long-dead sites that haven’t been updated in months or years, or even ones that have been outright deleted. Quality, not quantity, is our benchmark.

Brand-new faces include National Collective (Scottish Politics) and Political Betting (UK Politics). Despite misgivings about the character of their proprietors in both cases, both are valuable and admirable resources. Our other debutant is Mark Steel, whose concise and biting satirical columns in the Independent rarely reference Scotland (and so find themselves in UK Politics), but are unmissable reading all the same for those troubled by the thought that the neoliberal consensus has consumed England entirely.

Returning from exile is Scotland’s finest newspaper journalist Iain Macwhirter (Scottish Politics), after a long period of silence saw his personal blog excised from the list. Lesley Riddoch has fallen by the wayside to make room, not due to any decrease in the merits of her postings but to a marked drop in their frequency, as well as the fact that they can almost all be read in the Scotsman anyway. (For similar ubiquitousness reasons, Gerry Hassan steps aside for the Jimmy Reid Foundation.) We prepare ourselves wearily for the imminent assault on our gender-balance shortcomings.

Meanwhile, in the customary shock promotion, an outbreak of considered and intelligent commentary sees Kevin McKenna elevated, for a probationary period, from Zany Comedy Relief to the Scottish Politics section. (We hope this recategorisation might also persuade Mr McKenna to desist from the “comedy” pieces he occasionally attempts. They are not, and let’s put this delicately, his strongest suit.)

Filling his place in the ranks of the Nutjob Squad is inevitably the increasingly-tragic figure of Ian Smart, for whose ability to function in society by the time the referendum comes round we seriously fear at the current rate of deterioration in his sanity.

We’re still actively seeking sites of considered and worthwhile Scottish debate from a Labour perspective – including Unionist ones – which might reach the same heights as the Tory-leaning Alex Massie in the Spectator (whose features, even when we fundamentally and vehemently disagree with their ideology and content, are almost always thoughtful and well-sourced), but the substantial percentage of previously-unrepresented Labour voters who do back the Yes campaign are now represented by Labour Voters For Independence (Scottish Politics). We’ve chosen their more active Facebook page over the actual website.

If you know of a regularly-updated site – of any political persuasion or none – of serious analysis and comment with regard to Scottish politics, that we’re not currently featuring and should be, let us know.