Archive for category Holyrood

What is The Question?

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As I prepare for the final exam of my degree I can hear the voices of  my high school English and Modern Studies teachers echoing through my head from the distant past: “remember to answer the question”. Physics and Computing were a bit more straightforward to approach and my chances at Higher Maths had been slightly scuppered by my teacher deciding to go off and manage Berwick Rangers. Alongside not really getting to grips with it, having scraped a 2 in Standard Grade. Mostly the latter if I’m entirely honest. Anyway.

Which isn’t to say they were demanding a simple “yes” or “no”, one of the skills of those kind of exams is to figure out what the question is really asking. In those cases it’s normally prompting at a quick explanation of the issues and then some argument about them. Seems pretty straightforward from a relaxed perspective but, hyped up on a mix of Irn Bru, Roxette and the prospect of getting out of small town Midlothian for the bright lights dark clubs of Glasgow and University figuring out what the question meant in the few minutes available wasn’t always the easier task.

For the referendum, of course, we know the question ahead of time: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

The answers are more Standard Grade multi-guess, we can pick Yes or No and that’s it. No hour to write a justification, just one of two boxes.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth considering what the question is actually asking though. You can choose to interpret it a number of ways.

You could, for instance, choose to to interpret it as asking if it means you prefer David Cameron or Alex Salmond to lead the country. I’m not sure that stands up but it’s how the SNP part of Yes sometimes presents itself.

You could also choose to interpret it as asking if you’d prefer Patrick Harvie and Alison Johnstone to either Alex Salmond or David Cameron as the Green part of Yes sometimes presents itself. That stands up even less.

Then there’s interpreting the question as asking if you’d rather the sky fell in and we were given nothing but sackcloth to wear. Not that likely really.

Me? I think the question should be interpreted as asking “Will independence maximise the political freedom of Scottish people in determining their own future?”

Even then that’s a more complicated question than it appears. On an initial glance it’s tempting to answer Yes because smaller political units mean more freedom. Don’t they? Well.. no. Not always. Otherwise what’s the point of government at all? Some times pooling sovereignty with others increases the number of things you can do, provided you get collective agreement to do them. This is something which arguments for withdrawing from the Union but not the European Union implicitly accept, as does the proposal for a currency union post-independence.

There’s obviously some freedoms to be gained from independence, but there would be trade offs as well. The question is really about the balance between those two.

To rephrase the question as a more open ended “please discuss”, it could be framed as “what policy decisions would be opened up and which closed off  by independence?”

That’s a question I’d like to see answers to from both sides. I’ve given it some thought and I think I know what the answers are but you never know, I could be wrong.

Higher education can’t be fixed at 19

St AndrewsThe Scotsman’s front page declares “Tuition fee axe ‘still favouring the rich’“, a classic instance of the headline not being stood up by the story. To be fair, the headline online is the much more accurate “Scottish universities remain elitist“.

The supporting piece, by Sheila Riddell from Edinburgh University, argues that the proportion of working-class students at Scotland’s ancient universities has declined from 21% in 2003 to 19% now.

Attributing this change to the abolition of tuition fees, as the frothing front-page headline at least seeks to do, is evidentially problematic to say the least, given that rebranded tuition fees were scrapped in 2008, precisely halfway through that decade.

Simultaneously, and more compellingly, the Guardian reports on survey data from England which looked at precisely the most important group: 11-16 year-olds in state schools.

Amongst those who say they’re unlikely to go to university, 41% say they’re not bright enough (something which, it should be noted, never seems to deter the privately-educated and will certainly not be true for many in that group) but 57% cite the cost as the deterrent. The headline on this? The diametrically opposed “University fees biggest barrier to wider access, research finds“.

It is difficult to draw hard and fast conclusions from this data because there’s no control, no parallel Scotland which didn’t abolish tuition fees in 2008, no parallel England where the Lib Dems kept their promises (that one’s even harder to imagine).

Only 19% of students at the ancient universities are from working class backgrounds this year, sure, which is very poor: but what proportion would have been if every student had to pay £9000 per year?

Leaving aside my ideological preference for education to be based on academic merit rather than ability to pay, though, it still seems likely that tuition fees will be less off-putting to those for whom money is no object. It also remains the case that tuition is of course only one cost associated with higher education, which is why previous generations of students (notably including those Labour, Tory and Lib Dem politicians who introduced or hiked tuition fees) had the benefit of a system of grants, now largely gone. As Riddell notes, the SNP administration to its credit is also introducing (reintroducing?) funding in bursaries and loans of up to £7250 for students from poorer backgrounds from the autumn of this year. That will surely help.

However, the problems with unequal intake don’t start when school leavers are considering applying to university. The inequalities in our education system start right at the beginning, and are anchored in a secondary system divided between the private and the state-run. Means-tested grants, ending fees: these are good measures, but they are merely tinkering. Unless we start phasing out private schools (or otherwise bringing the state sector up to their standards), we will continue to see grossly unequal intakes to universities.

It’s not just idealism at work here: the current arrangement is also bad capitalism. The interests of business as well as society would be better served by the brightest making it to university, irrespective of their parents’ background. It’s not time for fees to come back and entrench the divide. It’s time for radical change to an educational system that continues to confirm entrenched privilege, generation after generation, through school, into university, and on throughout life.

Disclaimer: I went to a private school and to St Andrews (above) and am therefore part of the problem.

It’s all relative

A guest post today from Labour MSP Ken Macintosh, who shadows John Swinney at Holyrood. Ken’s blogged for us before, and been blogged about too. Thanks Ken!

Ken MacintoshHow do you turn a deficit into a surplus? According to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, simply start calling it a “relative surplus”. John Swinney revealed his distorted logic in Parliament recently during a debate on Scotland’s public finances. It was a debate supposedly designed to demonstrate the financial strength of Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, but in the event the SNP inadvertently illuminated some of the contradictions at the heart of the Yes campaign and left John Swinney in contortions.

The SNP assert that Scotland is £4.4bn “better off” than the rest of the UK. This figure is then translated by Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon et al as £824 for every Scot, money that apparently could be spent, saved or invested, in fact remarkably it is claimed, all three at once.

The trouble with this set of assertions is that they conveniently ignore the fact that the £4.4bn does not refer to a surplus or an extra amount of money, but to a deficit. Scotland is spending more than it earns and the deficit for the UK is even greater. The “relative surplus” as John Swinney euphemistically describes it, is the difference between the two deficits, i.e. a larger deficit. At best the SNP’s claim should be something like ‘our overdraft is not quite as bad as your overdraft’.

The first observation to make is that not having such a big deficit as the UK does not give £824 to every Scot, nor does it give us money to spend, nor to save nor to invest. You would expect the country’s Financial Secretary to know this, but it would appear not. During the debate Mr Swinney talked about a cumulative relative surplus over several years and then about potentially using this to pay down borrowings. Does he not understand that to “access” this non-existent surplus, Scotland would have to increase its deficit, in other words, we’d have to increase our borrowings.

But perhaps the more important point is that the “relative” state of our finances is about to change. Within three years it is the rest of the UK which will have the smaller deficit. How do I know this? Because John Swinney himself shared this information with a select few senior SNP colleagues in his leaked cabinet paper.

Quoting verbatim from Mr Swinney’s report: “Including a geographical share of North Sea revenues, both Scotland and the UK are expected to run a net fiscal deficit in each of the years to 2016-17. Before 2016-17, Scotland is projected to have a smaller deficit, as a share of GDP, than the UK. However, in 2016-17, OBR forecasts suggest that Scotland would have a marginally larger net fiscal deficit than the UK.”

It is at this point my exasperation turns from frustration to mistrust. It is one thing to have a he says/she says political disagreement, it is quite another for the Scottish Cabinet Secretary to be telling us all one thing in public while secretly briefing his political colleagues on the truth in private.

Last month Mr Swinney told assembled SNP delegates; “Scotland has strong foundations, perhaps some of the strongest from which any country has sought its independence,” whilst telling the SNP cabinet “downward revisions have resulted in a deterioration in the outlook for Scotland’s public finances”. He stated from the conference platform without a blush “in all the debate about Scotland’s financial future, one point is very clear, the real risk to Scotland comes from staying part of the United Kingdom,” whilst briefing the select few “At present HM Treasury and DWP absorb the risk … in future we will assume responsibility for managing such pressure. This will imply more volatility in overall spending than at present.”

Now I remain optimistic that when it comes to the referendum, most people will see through such deliberate attempts at misinformation, but what happens to Scotland in the mean time? How can anyone have confidence in a Cabinet Secretary who is so clearly not being straight with us about the public finances? If every issue from oil revenues to what we do about the bedroom tax is used as an opportunity to make the case for independence, how on earth can we have an honest discussion of what can be done now, to help Scottish households now, using the powers we have now?

What I find so disappointing is that some in the SNP at least recognise the truth about the economic difficulties we are facing but rather than deviate from the accepted independence script they tie themselves in linguistic knots. No one can change an absolute deficit into a relative surplus by words alone, and if the SNP think they can give us the relative truth rather than the honest information, they will absolutely lose our respect and our trust.

The Aberdeen Donside by-election

Brian Adam MSPThe sad death of Brian Adam MSP just under a fortnight ago means the first Holyrood by-election of this session, and only the sixth since the Parliament was established. Only in the first of those, the 2000 contest for Ayr, did a seat change hands.

This is a particularly crucial vote for Holyrood’s numbers, given that the SNP have lost five of the 69 they elected in 2011, one to the PO’s chair, two on principle, one to a complete absence of principle, and now, regrettably, Brian. If they fail to retain this seat they will theoretically be a minority administration again.

The 2011 result in Aberdeen Donside was hardly close, though – Brian had a majority of more than 7,000 and a margin of more than 25% over his Labour challenger, Barney Crockett, now leader of Aberdeen Council.

Labour held the predecessor seat in 1999, narrowly lost it to Brian in 2003 (he served in the first session as a regional MSP), and lost it by 15% to him in 2007. So the trend-lines here seem clear. The 2011 result was as follows:

Party Candidate Votes +/– % +/–
SNP Brian Adam * 14709 +2544 55.4 +10.6
Labour Barney Crockett 7615 -999 28.5 -3.2
Conservative Ross Thomson 2166 +139 8.1 +0.6
Liberal Democrat Millie McLeod 1606 -2734 6.0 -10.0
Independent David Henderson # 317 +317 1.2 +1.2
National Front Christopher Willett # 213 +213 0.8 +0.8
Majority 7175 Turnout 26707 Swing +6.9% SNP hold

And it’s certainly no more than a two-horse race, assuming it’s that, with the Tories and Lib Dems scoring less than 10% each in 2011. It’s also the worst part of the North-east for the Greens, should the local branch choose to stand – we polled just 2.5% on the list in this seat that year. If I were Labour I would be inclined to throw the kitchen sink at this campaign – the symbolic power of depriving the SNP of their majority would be hard to over-estimate, unlikely as that result would be.

In terms of candidates, the totally unsubstantiated rumour I’m hearing from the area is that Mark McDonald MSP, the final SNP member elected from the North-east regional list, may choose to do what Richard Lochhead and Mary Scanlon did in 2006 – resign a list seat to fight for a constituency, perhaps against Cllr Willie Young for Labour.

If Mark were to stand, and if he were to win as would be expected, the actual new face at Holyrood would be Christian Allard, sixth from the SNP’s 2011 regional list. Curiously, Mr Allard is the last candidate on that list not yet at Holyrood, given the SNP’s extraordinary success in the North-east, so any subsequent vacancy on their list before 2016 would then go unfilled.

Anyway, RIP Brian. I knew him pretty well from his 2007-2011 role (which from a Green perspective was mostly deputising for Bruce Crawford when the SNP needed Green votes in the Chamber), and he was tireless, totally committed to the cause, and always warm even when he was being blunt. He loved elections, too. Let’s hope this is a good one, much as it’d be better if it wasn’t happening at all.

A return for WMOTW

It’s been ages since anyone here cast an eye over the motions lodged at Holyrood, looking for saints and sinners, but the list remains a rich trove of absurdity and partisanship, alongside thoughtfulness and principle. Starting with the virtuous, Alison McInnes bravely flies the flag for the kind of equality that makes much of the media froth at the mouth, and Jim Eadie, in the runner-up slot, gets into the nitty-gritty with the notorious Edinburgh Royal Infirmary PFI project:

SpidermanMotion of the week – Alison McInnes: Let Toys Be Toys, for Girls and Boys
That the Parliament notes the current change.org petition, led by Let Toys Be Toys, which calls on retailers to stop promoting toys as only for girls or only for boys; supports Let Toys Be Toys’ mission statement that toys are designed for fun, learning, stoking imagination and encouraging creativity and that children should feel free to play with whatever toys most interest them; believes that the traditional marketing of toys specifically for girls or boys serves only to reinforce unwelcome gender stereotypes that have no place in a modern society, and calls on retailers to stop sorting toys by gender and instead just let toys be toys, for girls and boys.

At the other end, although this may seem churlish to Constable Callison, if Holyrood were to mark the retirement of every public sector stalwart with a motion MSPs would have time for nothing else. Graeme Dey therefore holds off both Mike MacKenzie, for patting his bosses on the back, and himself, for a spurious survey about how happy folk in Angus are. No really.

Worst motion of the week – Graeme Dey: 30 Years of Police Service 
That the Parliament congratulates the Angus police officer, Constable Mark Callison, on his retirement following 30 years of service to local communities; acknowledges the varied nature of his career with Tayside Police, most recently serving as community liaison officer in Carnoustie where it understands that he delivered a variety of education programmes in local primary and secondary schools and previously serving as an air observer during Tayside Police’s air support unit helicopter trial in 1999 and working alongside police air crews to provide aerial support during the G8 conference at Gleneagles in 2005; understands that Carnoustie Community Council will be holding a special reception to recognise what it sees as his great contribution to the town ahead of his official last day on 12 June 2013, and wishes Constable Callison every success in his future endeavours.

Better Nation wishes Constable Callison well, and wishes MSPs would take the motions process just a touch more seriously.