Better Nation

Scotland 2.0, or why the nation needs a new operating system.

May 28

Posted by Dom in Culture, Democracy, Economy, Energy, Environment, Science, Society | 2 Comments

Today a guest post from Lee Bunce, a Green with a keen interest and academic expertise in the relationships between information, democracy and technology.

Scotland is uniquely placed to take advantage of the new technologies that together will shape the future of our planet. It is both geographically and technically well-positioned to place itself at the forefront of renewable energy and information technology. But to make the most of these new technologies it most avoid repeating old mistakes. Rather than handing the benefits, and profits, over to a handful of corporations Scotland should direct its efforts towards its communities.

Scotland’s renewable potential is well understood. It has some best resources in wind, wave and other renewable energy sources of any country in the world. Perhaps less appreciated is Scotland’s potential to be a leader in technology. Scotland’s ICT industry already directly employs around 40,000 people (according to ScotlandIS ), compared to 11,200 in its whisky industry for example, and its games industry in particular is thriving. Government support combined with access to a highly skilled workforce, as well as geographical advantages such as proximity to both the rest of Europe and America, and indeed its renewable energy sources, could help make Scotland a world leader in the field in much the same way that Iceland is to the north.

Development of these industries has so far been carried out along traditional corporate lines. Scotland has hugely ambitious targets for renewable energy, aiming for 100% of Scotland’s electricity to be produced by renewables by 2020 . The majority of this energy will be produced by large scale top-down onshore wind projects, which largely means a continuation of the trend whereby the ‘Big Six’ energy companies provide around 99% of UK energy. The Scottish government meanwhile envisages that around 500MW of this renewable capacity will be community owned, or just around 3% . It’s a start, but nowhere near ambitious enough. In Germany around 65% of its turbines and solar panels are community owned, and Scotland could aim even higher.

Community owned renewable energy comes with a number of benefits. It creates local jobs, keeps money circulating within local economies and builds community cohesion. Projects that are community owned are also more likely to be supported by the communities they serve, which is important at a time when resistance to wind-farms is prevalent. By taking a more ambitious approach to community energy, Scotland reap these benefits on an enormous scale.

Likewise, the way in which information technology works sometimes holds back innovation and progress due to commercial monopolisation. Technology is primarily about knowledge, in particular using knowledge for the benefit of society. Again, development in technology has so far followed the traditional route followed by the rest of the UK, whereby this knowledge economy is built on classic conceptions of private enterprise which commodify knowledge using stringent intellectual property legislation that restricts the use of knowledge and information to those who can afford to pay for it. Again, Scotland could benefit by adopting a more community based approach.

Community here means something different of course. It might mean online communities developing free and open source software that is available to all, or building useful applications based on free and open data. It might even mean communities of artists and musicians using information technologies to make their work freely available under ‘copyleft’ licences, or scientists sharing data and collaborating online. The benefits of adopting this ‘open’ philosophy could be substantial. Relaxing intellectually property laws could stimulate a boom in innovation in technology and beyond as ideas are able to freely spread and developers are able to build on the ideas that came before them.

Supporting free software and open data does not mean being anti-business, as is often claimed. It just means being rejecting business models that do not benefit society in favour of other models that do. Taking free software specifically, this might mean that instead of making a profit by selling expensive licenses to use software while keeping the source code hidden programmers can make money by offering their expertise as a service, providing support or bespoke modifications. The result is that the technological benefits can be spread far and wide (the classic example of this is the GNU/Linux operating system, though there are countless others).

Both these approaches towards new technologies, energy and IT, mean doing something quite different to the economic default. They mean discarding policies and practices that benefit the few in favour of quite radical new ideas that can benefit the many. Given that the future of these technologies and industries will likely shape the future of Scotland, and indeed the planet, any method of distributing benefits as widely as possible deserve to be taken very seriously.

Lee is one of the two founding editors of the Edinburgh green journalism project POSTmag. The text published here is available for reproduction under a creative commons licence with attribution to the author.

Tags: independence, Lee Bunce, renewables, technology, the future

Two bald men fighting over a comb

May 16

Posted by James in Constitution, Energy | 5 Comments

Scotland has endured forty years of debate about North Sea oil – who owns it, how much is there, what is it worth, can we afford to burn it, can we afford not to, and so on. It’s been a totemic issue for the SNP, with their early successes in the 1970s built in no small part on the slogan “It’s Scotland’s Oil“. Some on the fringes even believe the marine border between Scotland and the rUK was changed prior to devolution to diminish the proportion that would indeed be Scottish in the event of independence (pro-tip: negotiations over independence won’t be trumped by a Westminster statutory instrument).

More recently, though, there’s been a flurry of excitement from the nationalist side about the reserves that remain and the value of them to a future independent Scotland. There are three problems with this.

First, the argument on increased value is based primarily on a massive (and entirely plausible) projected increase in the cost of oil. The stuff is, after all, finite and globally the more readily accessible portion of it has indeed been used. However, not only do all those revenues not just accrue to Scotland, given we don’t have a nationalised oil industry, as a nation we also use a substantial amount of it. As Chris Skrebowski of the Energy Institute put it in 2008:

Alex Salmond’s predictions are simply wrong. Even with optimistic assumptions about future North Sea oil production, and even if Scotland was allocated all of that production, an independent Scotland would be likely to be a net importer of oil by 2015 or 2016. By that stage, given the global decline in output which has already begun, we will have to buy oil on the open market for two or three times the current price. It’s completely fraudulent to suggest that Scotland can just live off its oil wealth now.

The extent to which high prices benefit us while we remain a net exporter can be debated (i.e. how much of the benefit accrues to the Treasury or a future Scottish exchequer), but as soon as we’re a net importer high prices only hurt us.

Second, although Chris’s dates there may be a bit pessimistic, the trends on output are clear. I asked a friend in the oil industry for the 1980-2020 output figures, and the graph to the left shows them for both oil and gas in kboe/day (red is oil, green is gas). The projected rise and fall again between 2012 and 2020 is down to a few factors, notably a couple of new developments plus the closure of Schiehallion during 2014 and 2015 while they replace their FPSO, effectively postponing production there for two years.

The baseline for that graph is zero, too. You’ll hear a lot over the next few years about a boom as oil output goes up from 888kb/d last year to a projected 1,429kb/d in 2016. But it’s just a blip.

The bottom line is this – the glory days of North Sea oil are over, and there is no prospect of anything like the 1999 peak in output being repeated. Last year’s figure is less than a third of that peak, and the long-term trend is down.

The third problem is this. We can’t afford to burn it all, because of a little thing called climate change which the unGreen parties are broadly ignoring, and any valuation of the reserves that assumes we can afford to burn it risks another bubble and crash.

Scotland can afford to be independent, and we are energy-rich, but our true lasting assets are the wind, the wave and the tides, not the dinosaur wine. Arguments with Westminster about who should own the latter are an embarrassing distraction. Even the climate change sceptics should realise that the raw economics make it time to plan for a post-oil economy, to invest in public transport not endless new motorways, to turn planning around so local communities come before commuting, and to switch to supporting low-carbon industries.

Bearding the Tavish in his den

May 11

Posted by James in Constitution | 1 Comment

Last night a debate took place on Shetland. In one corner for The Rumble In The Northern Isles was Tavish Scott, constituency MSP since Holyrood was established, former Minister for Motorways, and a man so supposedly central to the political life of Shetland that when he suggests the Isles might not stay in an independent Scotland, it gets reported as if the rocks themselves had spoken.

On the other side, my friend Ross Greer,18, with experience in the Scottish Youth Parliament, of working hard on some committees of the Scottish Greens, and junior fixer at Yes Scotland. Barely out of nappies when Tavish first campaigned for Parliament.

One might assume it would go like that time I watched Michael Forsyth crush a young Lib Dem for tripping up over his words.

Surely Tavish would sway the waverers with the force of his arguments, his authority, his personality?

But apparently not. Fortunately, a count was taken before and after. At the start, four supported independence, ten opposed, six unsure. By the end, Ross’s side had won round five of the waverers, and Tavish just one: nine in favour and eleven against.

So, no knockout blow. And to be fair, Ross had support from an SNP activist too, so Tavish was outnumbered. Not a majority for independence in the end, either, and tiny numbers, of course, but could this be a straw in the wind as to what happens when a non-nationalist case for independence is made?

Because that’s what Ross appears to have done. Put Tavish on the ropes with rock hard information about Westminster’s practical and policy failings and kept him there with passion for the opportunities an independent Scotland would bring for those who want a fairer and greener country. Read and enjoy the whole thing here on Shetland News.

Oh, and don’t tell Ross I posted this. He’ll be furious with me for not managing expectations downward. #pro

Questions for Better Together

May 9

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution | 7 Comments

A guest today from Keir Liddle on those infamous 500 questions, as lovingly parodied on Twitter. He read them all, which might save you a lot of time. Thanks Keir!

The state of discourse in Scottish politics is often remarked on poorly. From the bright beginnings of the politics of consensus at Holyrood it was relatively free from the tribalism and point scoring that haunts Westminster spectacles such as Prime Minister’s Questions. Sadly, attitudes have changed, and, as parties contest votes each dearly believes is theirs by right, tribalism and point scoring has become the order of the day.

Though this criticism, as far as I know, does not generally extend to formal critiques of the rhetoric used. With that in mind I thought I would have a wee swatch at the Better Together campaign’s latest offering: “500 Questions”.

Around 2,700 odd words later – and with a general failure to meet my high minded intentions – the sheer weight of the 500 questions, though there are actually quite a lot fewer, caused me to collapse in a frustrated singularity of thwarted academic ambition. So you see before you my second attempt.

I specifically want to look at Better Together’s 500 questions through the lens of the Cooperative Principle. Plundered from the mind of Paul Grice (the philosopher, not Parliament’s Chief Executive) and used in the social sciences generally and linguistics specifically, this principle describes how people interact with one another. It is composed of four maxims (Grice’s Maxims), as follows:

Maxim of Quality: Be Truthful
Do not say what you believe to be false.
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Maxim of Quantity : Quantity of Information
Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Maxim of Relation: Relevance
Be relevant.

Maxim of Manner: Be Clear
Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
Be orderly.

These maxims vary culturally but luckily we inhabit a culture where they, for the most part, are adhered to. Right off the bat you can probably guess that the maxim of quantity is going to be relevant to the 500 Questions document. Asking such a volume of questions in one go breaches this maxim, and, as such, hints that the purpose of the Better Together document may not actually be to seek answers but rather to inexpertly attempt to sow doubt about the case for independence.

Put simply, it is nigh on impossible to take in the sheer volume of information offered in the 500 Questions leaflet. It took me a Herculean effort to parse and process them all earlier today and I had to give up reading the document on at least three separate occasions due to reading fatigue. In this sense arguably the document also breaches the maxim of manner in respect to its prolixity (or if I am to obey the maxim of manner – its tedious length). This fatigue is made worse given much of the information is needless repetition or the breaking down of questions in to unnecessary sub-questions.

So I now put it to Better Together that any pretence that this was a genuine attempt at gathering information or seeking answers for the Scottish electorate was naught but a thinly veiled ruse (and one that plays to the long term electoral strategy of the Labour Party in Scotland by casting doubt on Salmond and the SNP to boot).

There are a couple of questions that assume answers to questions asked previously in the 500 Questions document. A notable example are the questions relating to embassies:

“How many embassies and consuls would and independent Scotland have around the globe?”
The next two questions continue this theme: interestingly though, they note that their question has been answered and has been answered to the best of the current ability of the Scottish Government. This would seem to indicate that the question did not need asked in the first place:

“The Deputy First Minister has said than an independent Scotland would have 100 embassies and consuls compared with 2070 the UK currently has. In what countries would an independent Scotland set up embassies and consuls?”
“How long would it take before those 100 embassies and consuls of an independent Scotland were operational?”

Another point worthy of note is that in this example, and indeed in many, many more littered throughout the document, the two separate questions here could easily have been compounded into one single question. This would have saved Better Together some space and allowed them to ask many more of the burning questions they have about independence (unless of course they don’t actually have any and were getting a bit desperate to hit 500). The most egregious examples of Better Together “getting their money’s worth” from a question are undoubtedly when they ask what will happen with the Scottish military and the Post Office.

In considering the Post Office, Better Together abandon the pretence that their repeated or component questions are separate questions altogether, except in their numbering scheme, by asking:
356. Will a separate Scotland have a Universal Service Obligation (USO) which guarantees:
357. At least one delivery of letters every Monday to Saturday to every address in the UK?
358. At least one collection of letters every Monday to Saturday from every access point in the UK that is used to receive letters and postal packets for onward transmission?
359. Postal services at an affordable, uniform tariff across the UK?
360. A registered items service at an affordable public tariff?
361. An insured items service at an affordable public tariff?
362. A free-of-charge postal service to blind or partially sighted people?
363. And free carriage of legislative petitions and addresses?

Even the least eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that this is one multipoint question, at best, and numbering 356 as a question in its own right, or indeed all that follow from it, as separate questions is either bad proof-reading, terrible grammar or downright dishonesty to reach that magic number 500.

The defence, security and foreign affairs section appears to contain 44 questions, but in reality it contains far fewer: for example, questions 30 to 35 are basically all subtle variations on question 29:

“An independent Scotland would no longer be protected by the British Armed Forces, would new Scottish Armed forces units be created?”

The following five questions are simply variations on this theme asking exactly which new units would be created (a similar trick is attempted towards the end of the document referring to military intelligence and other specialist services). It’s fair enough to labour the point, I suppose, but it does make you wonder what questions Better Together deemed less important than asking the same question six times in a row?

The questions following that appear to want the Yes Campaign or Scottish Government (you get the impression that the two are being treated as one and the same as is Unionist tradition) to produce in detail its entire defence budget and deployment plans. Now that only sounds reasonable if you fail to consider that this budget and the subsequent deployment plans are largely contingent on the result of negotiations between a newly formed independent Scotland and the rUK.

As such I would suggest that this question, and again many, many more like it in the document, break the maxim of relevance. Not because it is irrelevant to ask these questions but because they are being asked to the wrong people, or at best they are not being directed at all the right people.

To answer this question on defence (and indeed most if not all of the following questions: 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 44, 48, 51, 95, 96, 138, 98, 99, 112, 113, 116, 137, 138, 139, 430, 437, 438, 440, 441, 468, 469, 470, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477 – this list is likely not to be comprehensive) the Yes Campaign need to know the likely results of negotiations following a yes vote. The only way to determine that is to enter into pre-negotiation with Westminster over these issues. This is something polls seem to indicate the Scottish people would welcome but understandably it doesn’t appear to be a risk Westminster wants to take. Regardless, it poses an interesting question for Better Together:

“Will Better Together lobby for UK Ministers to sit down with Scottish Ministers and negotiate their position on the issues referenced by the questions above and answer their questions?”

There are a number of questions which indicate that Better Together seems to think such discussions or pre-negotiations should already have taken place, most notably in the pensions section where they, a political campaign backed by both the parties of government at Westminster, ask what discussions have already taken place. However there are many more questions that ask the Yes Campaign, the Scottish Government or the SNP to detail what their stance is on the membership of many and various international and European organisations and this prompts me to ask:

“Do Better Together now support allowing the Scottish Government to approach Europe and seek answers on these issues?”

Would Better together lobby the Westminster government to seek answers on the Scottish Government’s behalf should the EU be unwilling to negotiate? Taking the document at face value, and assuming that Grice’s maxims have been followed, the answer to all of the above three questions (I am being far more charitable to any Better Together readers than they were to anyone who downloaded and read theirs!) must assuredly be “Yes”. Which is a bold move and an interesting gamble, but one that does appear to capture the mood of the Scottish electorate.

As such I think all sides should not just consider this to be a poor piece of ill-thought out spin, a desperate, tiresome and tedious exercise in continuing a massively negative campaign because they couldn’t think of 500 reasons to stay in the union, but rather consider this to be Better Together “grasping the thistle” and demanding answers, not just of the SNP, Scottish government and Yes campaign, but of Westminster, of Europe and of many international organisations.

A bit of a gamble for them, all told. But good on them for this genuine attempt to get Holyrood and Westminster around the same table and to work out just exactly what we will be voting for next year.

(PS. For those in Gretna worried about an international border interfering with their weekly shop – the 79 apparently stops outside the Tesco in Annan and takes about 29 minutes. Failing that it seems to be less than a half hour drive to the superstore in Dumfries)

It’s all relative

May 8

Posted by Guest Blog in Economy, Holyrood | 18 Comments

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!

How 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.

Work as if you live in the early days of a