The Marriage Smith (I Doubt It…)

Well, we had all the marriage analogies in the run-up, didn’t we? Remember, dividing up the CD collection? Walk away from the relationship (i.e. the Union) and you walk away from everything we owned together (i.e. the pound, defence, life as we know it). They were very fond of the break-up blues, weren’t they?

Then we had the threats. You’re nothing without us. We made you everything you are today. Without our guiding hand you’ll go back to your useless old self. You’ll never manage without us.

Then the lovebombing, let’s call it pleading. We were so good together. We still love you. We achieved great things, don’t throw all that away!

Until, finally. We know you want to be more in control of your life. Just stay. We’ll sit down and agree all the things you can do on your own that you couldn’t do before. Just agree to stay and we won’t have to divvy anything. We’ll make sure you have all the freedom you want. But still together!

I know, I know. It’s not about you; it’s about us. We never understood how much we’d hurt you, how much you’d yearned. We’ll change. Honest. Just say we’ll be together and then we’ll talk. There’s a dear…

And now? That was a vow? I thought a vow was, in marriage terms, a declaration of commitment by both parties, usually with some kind of celebrant and usually to a set of rules. You know the deal: do you Wes Minster take Cally Donia to be your lawfully wedded… ? Now I come to think of it where were the political equivalents of ‘forsaking all others’, ‘to have and to hold’, ‘all my worldly goods’. Oh, well maybe that last bit is what the whole thing is really about.

Then the pleading, loved-up sentiment, threats and downright, made-up horror stories all just faded away. It dawned on me, Gordon Brown’s performance was all a bit like the best man patching up a wedding spat, making promises the groom can’t keep. He was a bit pissed. Didn’t mean to spend the honeymoon money in a casino. 

Now they’re all at it, like well-meaning (but useless) friends trying to a sell a reconciliation. He’ll let you keep your half of the CDs in your room. You’ll get to use the car on Fridays. And he’ll look after the money, so just hand over your wages and he’ll make sure you’ve got plenty money for shoes.

But then, when you both sit down to talk about the future, suddenly, the room is full of people. Your other half has brought in a lawyer, several friends plus the minister and the guy from the local supermarket for good measure. None of them are going to agree. Least of all with you. This, you think, is a stitch-up.

Oh, and don’t forget your families. Yours, it turned out, had been mostly in favour of giving it another go. Not by a huge margin, let it be said, because quite a lot of them had been saying all along, enough’s enough. Get the hell out. Now! His family, on the other hand, was always for staying together. Some of them, though, are now suggesting, don’t give away too much. Others are saying, don’t give her anything at all. You never asked us. A few are even saying, get shot of her, get rid of the bitch!

Seems to me that’s where we’re up to with Lord Smith and his commission. It’s the worst reconciliation imaginable. There we were, on a knife-edge. Maybe’s aye, maybe’s naw. We cave in and decide to stick with it. Then this is what we get, a bloody counselor, employed by our other half plus other worthies, not many of our choosing except for a couple of token pals on to make up the numbers, make it look fair.

And the upshot? Instead of promises kept, we’ll get a lawyer’s charter. Lots of new privileges that won’t amount to a hill of beans. You can go dancing any time you like. But you’ll have to pay for your own taxis. You can spend as much on slap but it’ll come out of your pay. You can keep what you earn, by the way, but I’ll be in charge of the family silver including your father’s war medals and I keep anything we dig up in the garden. And I’ll take care of the mortgage, and the bank, and the foreign holidays. Don’t forget the burglar alarm. And the shotgun collection, we’ll keep that in your room but only I can use it. Oh, and if the neighbours ask us round, leave the talking to me. And if you want to ask anyone to ours, check with me first. Don’t want you inviting all the riff-raff in, do we?

Better together? Sod that for a game o sodjers. It’s enough tae gar ye greet. It’s enough to mak ye want yer independence.

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Another political fantasy. Well, they started it, with all their marriage imagery and the lovebombing. I’ve just taken it too far. For effect of course. And if there’s a grain of truth in the proceedings… well there ye go…

Also, I cast Scotland as the woman here mainly because the other half’s attitude is chauvinistic. Typical Tory, Red, Yellow or Blue, in my view. It’s how we’ve been treated all along, like a dimwit, necessarily cast as the unequal partner. I hope the rise of the woman’s voice in YES circles shouts against these establishment attitudes especially loud.

Indeed, if the female persona is good enough for Bella Caledonia, it’s good enough for us all. Mother Glasgow. Mother Scotland. It’s got a deep Celtic ring to it. That’s why, as others have mentioned, we don’t do patriotism here. It’s too macho. Cheesy at best, arrogant and aggressive at worst. No. No. No. Let’s celebrate our Matriotism. 

TTIP and ISDS – Acronyms from Hell

The airwaves are full of it. The NHS: under threat, heroes of every political colour riding to its rescue…

“We’ll spend £2.5 Billion!”

“Streamline frontline services!”

“Safe in our hands!”

The argument ensues in a “mine’s bigger than yours” kind of way. The mainstream UK parties are squabbling among themselves to convince us each is better for the NHS than the others.

None of them, but none, have said a word about TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the USA. TTIP will open the door, among other things, to handing healthcare corporations in the US the right to bid to provide services in the NHS here in the UK.

I’ve heard references to it from the SNP, the Greens and other progressives in Scotland*. It came about as we argued for a Scotland where protection for health was enshrined in statute. The Big Three, the Westminster Triumvirate, for all their rhetoric say nothing about it.

This masquerade is consistent with the mentality of the London Bubble. It’s the lopsided agenda of cartel politics where the elected conspire with the city, big business and the media to mould the world into their imagined reality. In it their prattle disguises the awful silence surrounding the secret talks about TTIP they are part of in the EU, talks rolling on underneath the hot air.

Why this silence? Is it because an open debate would seriously polarise public opinion? It would certainly damage all those who glibly promise a benign future for the health service. Conveniently, they can put failures in the future down to austerity, the incompetence of other parties, whatever.

Of course it may just be they are complicit, utterly deceitful, not even ignorant but willfully blind.

I don’t have the answer. I certainly never had one from Labour when I asked about it through the Scottish Labour website before the referendum. The Tories are on record (through Hugh Pym on the BBC ) saying health must be included in the TTIP talks.

Deafening silence, then, in the media. On the internet, on Facebook, petition sites and sundry blogs the pressure is building. The issue is out there. Meanwhile, the deaf, dumb and blind kids in Westminster go on distracting us with their political pinball.

So what’s their game? The Tories I can almost understand. Their big business—small government dogma would support such a thing and hang democracy. A small sacrifice for an ideal… so long as its sham cousin, give us a mandate, shut up and let us rule, can keep on papering the cracks.

I wonder at the Lib-Dems. They maintained a gloss of their former (if wishy-washy) fairness. They always did hand-on-your-heart, for-your-own-good, honest-joe, politics rather well. And now they’ve learned to fake sincerity, they’re on a winner. Except, the Orange Book is in the ascendancy. Seen through that prism, the cosy coalition makes sense. Orange Book liberalism is the same big business—small government ethos as the Tories follow, the light hand of government that deregulates and sets us all as free as we can afford to be.

And Labour, oh my God, Labour. I despair at the game they play. They will out-Tory the Tories while vaguely leaning to the left. They have sold out their working roots for a suit and a tie and snouts in the trough. They have joined the Establishment while all the working class heroes of their history go spinning in their graves into oblivion.

TTIP, the enormous threat of it, is being negotiated as we speak and they all say nothing. Not why it should be, nor why not. There’s just a vacuum. No attempt to debate it, influence it, or protect services we want protected, or else remove them completely.

In the middle of it all is the insidious ISDS, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement. There’s no discussion of this, whether to include it or not. ISDS gives corporations recourse to law to settle disputes with governments. It means corporations, once they have bid and secured contracts, can sue governments if their profits are later affected by government decisions. Effectively, a democratic mandate to, say, bring a sector back into public ownership could result in litigation. The tribunals in which this is tried are not necessarily in the public domain.

Perhaps most startling of all, this is an EU negotiation. As we approach the 2015 election with David Cameron talking up how he wants to renegotiate the terms of our EU membership, I wonder why he’s not prepared to take TTIP on in that spirit. UK sovereignty has slipped down the agenda suddenly. And Farage, he’s astutely silent on it too. Perhaps UK sovereignty in this matters so little to him as well. Oh, and Vince Cable is the man in Westminster on whose desk this weighty process sits.

So we get to Labour, champions of the NHS. Surely they must raise their voices. No. Ed Miliband has promised £2.5 billion for the NHS if elected. By then it’ll be too late. TTIP could be ratified by the end of 2014, certainly in 2015, before the election. Then the £2.5 billion could be spent lining the pockets of corporate shareholders in the USA. It’s not easily reversible so there would be huge fines and penalties if an attempt is made in the future and I don’t trust Ed and his cohorts to even bother.

Now, you must see why Scotland wanted an acknowledgement of the scale of the threat to the NHS before September the 18^th. None was forthcoming. In the aftermath we hear the threat is real but still the measures to protect the NHS are lost in the rhetorical limbo. The reality of TTIP and ISDS is swept under the carpet, maybe till later…

Except there is no later.

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TTIP-related links

*Scottish Progressives

• Wings over Scotland - The NHS and the TTIP trap
• Bella Caledonia - TTIP and the Scottish NHS

Others

• The Greens - TTIP: Beware what lies beneath | Petition
• 38 Degrees - Petition 
• Stop TTIP - Petition
• War on Want - What is TTIP?
• John Hilary’s Paper on TTIP 
• Wikipedia - TTIP | ISDS
• Hugh Pym, BBC - Tory Position on NHS in TTIP
• Stop TTIP - Petit
• George Monbiot - The British government is leading a gunpowder plot against democracy

Dear Lord Smith… I Want…

An open letter to the Smith Commission. Thought I'd just get this in at the same time as the big hitters.

Just a passing place…

Dear Lord Smith

As a member of the YES Movement, I obviously wanted Scottish independence, for reasons of social justice, a fairer and more equal society, and to have full control of our economy so we could grow Scotland in the directions we choose. The majority preferred NO and I respect that, but the aspirations behind my own position haven't changed.

The promise of new powers, more powers, for Scotland, in my view, meshed with the broader preferences of Scotland as a whole. Devo Max was seen as the most popular choice prior to the setting out of the referendum and its questions; I see it having as broad an appeal now.

Some politicians have recently suggested Devo Max shouldn't be on the table for discussion. I disagree. The tenor of Gordon Brown's intervention in the final days was exactly that more powers would approach full home rule or federalism. I believe that is what most Scots believed it meant, particularly those inclined to NO and it's what an overwhelming majority now want,  spanning YES and NO. Anything short of it will be taken as a promise broken.


The prevailing energy now in Scottish politics is one of powerful popular engagement, an energy which strongly supports a move away from politics as usual. To demonstrate that, a Scottish settlement must achieve greater levels of transparency and popular participation. The Smith Commission, in my view, must address the breadth of new powers, at the same time, building openness and a participatory framework in which these powers will reside.

Having nailed my colours, as it were, let me say what I demand in the settlement, prefacing it with my own, home-rule biased, view as a UK citizen. The principles of the kind of society I want to live in rest on social justice as stated above. That applies to the Union as much as to Scotland. Independence seemed to be a proper model to begin to achieve it. As we now are, I expect the more powers settlement to embrace a goal of assisting this aim, in Scotland within its jurisdiction and in the constituent parts of the UK, as a model or example. I don't expect it to draw us further into the social divisiveness currently evident in the status quo.

More powers, the powers themselves, must include devolved control of all matters. There's little point in having control of a budget without control of how it's raised or set, nor control of the revenues from which it is taken. For that reason, Scotland has to have tax-raising powers and powers of distribution. It has to control all the revenues and that includes taxes on oil, gas and other energy resources. Furthermore, the principle of transparent and participatory governance should inform any tax-sharing arrangements which send a proportion to Westminster. The detail should be clearly published in the public domain.

Where tax revenues are shared and distributed to Westminster, any redistributive mechanisms (like the Barnett formula) should be clearly set out, shared in the public domains and constructed on a basis of clarity and fairness. All variations in the process should be a consultative exercise involving both Scotland and Westminster. The UK Treasury alone should not be the sole arbiter as it is currently with Barnett.

Pensions should also be devolved fully, so Scotland can develop a pension strategy to suit its needs or to protect, enhance and develop its provision. Broadcasting should also be devolved so Scotland can use it's population share of revenues, including the licence fee should that be retained in Scotland, to fund broadcasting. Whether a spend for public service broadcasting is best served by funding a Scottish BBC service or funding a state broadcaster on a different model should be a decision for Scots and Scotland.

Welfare, since we have a very different view of its function, must be fully devolved. I think the view in Scotland appreciates better the need to support our vulnerable and sees the potential for motivation within welfare if structured differently. This view, I believe, resonates across a wider spectrum of political opinion than elsewhere. We should have the power here to guide its evolution.

On other currently reserved powers, I appreciate the need to harmonise more closely on issues of collective interest. I would prefer to be rid of Trident but in the present arrangement see little hope of that in the short term. Immigration might be as vexed a question; foreign affairs, too, although it's very clear the appetite in Scotland for participation in foreign military campaigns is far less and has a completely different ring to it.

Any settlement, however, must embrace participation and representation: participation that reaches to the grass roots and gives people, sovereign in Scotland, a voice; representation that gives our elected representatives a place wherever powers reserved to Westminster are managed and policy discussed.

Specifically, I expect the settlement to offer direct representation in national and international forums up to now attended by Westminster representatives chosen without consideration of the UK's intra-national or regional composition. For example, I'd expect a Scottish share of EU representation (as I would for voices from Northern Ireland, Wales and such English Regions as require it). I'd expect representation in the governance of the Bank of England in the same way. Since we all own it, a proper, proportionate and representative spread of participation is long overdue.

To construct anything less than this would produce a Scottish settlement which gives with one hand only to take back with another. This would be unworkable as well as deceitful. The solution and the arrangements it springs from have to respect, not the margin of majority in the Referendum, nor the considerable numbers who separately voted so decisively for both NO and YES, but for the 3.6 million or so who became engaged and cast their votes. Westminster must recognise the democratic change wrought in Scotland is more than a brief experiment. It is the possibility of new and empowered democracy. As such it should be encouraged and nurtured.

Yours Sincerely

Edwin

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It's not an exhaustive propostion but a plain shopping list isn't being asked for. There are bound to more points and topics. Behind the list and the important matters of full tax powers and autonomy' there is a central question: HOW. Smith and the commission must reflect the democratic potential of Scotland's level of political engagement and embrace a different kind of politics. After all if Clegg and the Lib Dems can come out ginning for the Tories, claiming to be the party of a different kind of politics, surely they will ensure this dimension is part of the new power settlement. Still, they kept that low key while actually shoulder to shoulder with Tory and Labour for, what, three years.

We'll see. In the meantime we should all contribute our views and visions. Make it an outpouring.

Email the Commission at haveyoursay@smith-commission.scot.

• About submissions
• The Smith Commission online
• Tell the Commission - 38 Degrees

The Return of the Guarantor

The Guarantor. I see him, arms akimbo, cape hanging to the heels of his tight fitting boots, a steely look in the eyes beneath the mask. Here rides the superhero who will see The Promise is kept, The Promise, laid before the people of Scottiya in a yellowed parchment signed by the Triumvirate of the Three, and delivered to them by Loose-Jaw the Brown, the high-potentate (ret’d) of the Black Benches.

Loose-Jaw the Brown, the once-mighty, drew up the promise for the Triumvirate to show how true leaders lead. The Triumvirate stood like prophets of Doom heaping visions of the worst possible on the rebellious Yes-Men all to rally the Noe-Men to join with their cause. Their prophecies, for all their awfulness, drowned each other out, loud, dismal, cacophonous.

In truth the Yes-Men, the Aye-Right brigands, believed in a future where all things were possible. The Triumvirate believed the impossible dream of the Yes-Men could never be. Yet their tissue of horror shredded in the wind of a thousand voices as the Yessers cried out, such was their passion.

The Yessers message went far and wide. The people were wild with it. Behind them stood the Notionalists of the Holy Rood, the Greeners and the Left-handed Children of Toil. Their cry was YES to Freedom. The Triumvirate responded, say Noe for More Freedom Later!

So, Loose-Jaw the Brown, made his stand for Noe. This we all promise! We will deliver more promise together than you could hope for apart. Join with us and defeat the Yes-Campers! Do this and we’ll sit down together, all of us and all of you to make a plan for the future.

In the end, the Noes had it. The Triumvirate sat down on the day after the defeat of the Yessers to make a start. But the Benchers of the Triumvirate had not been asked about The Promise. They demanded different things and their uproar was awful. Some wanted all the future for themselves, some the same future as the Yesses and Noes would have by The Promise. In secret some said, God rot them, we’ll give them The Promise and our left hand will steal it back again. Ingrates and whiners. The deserve nothing!

Loose-Jaw the Brown rode North again to the Fifedom of Fief. There he plotted a new way to secure his Promise. He secretly raised a list of names, a list for Scottiyes to sign and demand The Promise be kept. Once 90, 000 names were on it he revealed it for his own. This he mused will do the trick.

And yet the bickering went on. From the South. Nige the Enrager call the Scottiyes a rabble and brooked no deal at all. The Torrids of the Triumvirate worked to change The Promise’s promises. The Lubbers looked on afraid of what they stood to lose by what they thought was victory. They sharpened their little daggers for the day they’d cut to pieces all the Notionalists and Greeners, all the Left-handed of the Holy Rood, in all the cities of Scottiya.

From the Triumvirate rose The Guarantor at last. With his cape and boots, his dinky mask and superpowers, he waved in the air his delicate hand and said, I will bring The Promise to be. I will guarantee it. I, the one they called the Clegg, have come as the Nick of Time.

The brothern and sistern of the Holy Rood stood aghast. They felt their belts for courage but still stood firm. As one they howled into the South-facing night. Aye, right. Ya bass! Aye, right!

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Fantasy following Nick Clegg's emergence as the Guarantor of the Vow, also known as the Pig in the Poke. It's all on the BBC.

We are Devo

With apologies to Devo*. Altered image © Eidetic Memery.
See James Cook's Article on BBC

I’d been listening out all day on the 1^st October for something to mark the start of work on the Vow. Scant mention of it, I’m afraid. Of course maybe there’ll be something by the end of the month. I thought, maybe there’d be a word somewhere in the vast media machine that made so much of Scottish affairs a mere two weeks ago.

Still, it IS business as usual down there, where important things are decided. The conference season is heaving with promise. Ed and Co last week - austerity, ‘save the NHS from the Tories’, reassurance for big business, raising the minimum wage in six years; Dave and Co this week - deficits (when they spring to mind), tax give-aways, ‘how the Health Service will be saved’, terrorism and extremists (rebellious Scots to crush?), foreign wars to prosecute… Oh, and every one gives the nod to us woadies in the heather. The Vow will be honoured. Then silence.

So the media has nothing to report, has it? Apart from William Hague on Radio Four on the morning of the 1^st, adroitly reinforcing the promise: it will be delivered. More powers, more powers.

Never mind that a week ago he confirmed to Andrew Neil that if Scotland receives, say, £5 billion worth of extra tax raising powers, the Barnett formula would be reduced by the same amount. Barnett, incidentally isn’t going to be the part of any legislation because it already exists. And, it’s not in statute anyway. It’s an instrument (if that’s the right word) of the Treasury with which, I suppose, they can continue to torture us, or at least fiddle with to do whatever they like.

At the Tory conference, the BBC showed Dave heaping praise on Ruth Davidson for her sterling Tory efforts. No mention of the content of her actual speech, though. In it she said the Smith Commission should rule out discussion of Devo Max (which would deliver everything to Scotland except foreign affairs and the Armed Forces). Now that’s what I call going back on a promise. Significant new powers! She loves Scotland, apparently. She’d do anything for love, but she won’t do that

Late evening on the 1^st, the BBC also showed a potted history of the Referendum, How the Campaign Was Won. You could see the slant from the start. Still, Lesley Riddoch remarked in the programme, the BBC don’t understand how balance works, they have no sense of ‘equivalence’. Hence their ham-fisted bias toward NO, one that NO exploited. If NO didn’t take part in debates, the BBC would have to omit any YES viewpoint ‘for balance’. Add to that an ingrained institutional leaning toward the status quo and moribund, slack journalism: there you have it.

No conspiracy, just a sloppy one-sided-ness where no-one asked the deeper questions, nor probed, nor got in behind the issues. Everyone can still say, hands on palpitating hearts, oh, we never even knew we were doing it. Like institutional anything, sexism, racism, whatever, it’s a product of closed minds.

So, even in the lightened mood post-ref, this programme still glossed over so many critical points and moved selectively through the story. Some players were barely mentioned. Derek Bateman and Robin MacAlpine, for example, not al all.

In the end, with a sense the story had been told, but abridged like a Reader’s Digest reprint, I liked Alan Little’s summary. I’d already seen his pieces on Britishness in which he linked that to the sense of belonging we had, particularly in working communities, when we had a ‘British’ industry. It was that, he suggested, gave us the feeling we were in a common project, better together.

Thatcher took all that apart. In the decline, Britishness has withered away, leaving a stump of jingoism and the same saccharined sentiment so many pointed to in their stereotype of the Scots. Britishness an amputated emotion; its only remaining sensation is like a phantom limb: long gone but still as real in the mind, itching and hurting, longed for by many.

Alan Little reflected, the Union still has to wake up to the need for something positive to replace it.

All the promises, pledges and vows don’t address that one thing. As time goes on those who remember the days of British Steel, the Coal Board and Shipbuilding learn to live with their loss or else, being older, take their broken dreams to the grave. The younger Scots only saw their pain second hand and don’t have the same sense of belonging, the more so when Westminster rides down the working people who carried Britishness in their hearts. So the young, the working people are waiting to be convinced. Still waiting.

So the 1^st of October came and went. On the morning of the 2^nd I read Pete Wishart’s letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons. So far, on the 16^th, there’s to be an adjournment debate on the promise, a mere half-hour.

“A solemn vow made by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition must surely rank as one of the most important joint statements delivered by the House in recent times. A half hour adjournment debate is, therefore, clearly insufficient to consider all the issues concerning this ‘vow’ to the Scottish people.”

Is this what they call a ‘consultation’? Hardly. Scotland’s back in it’s box where it belongs. Not worth anything except lip service. The arrogance is astounding. It’s a bloody insult.

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*With apologies to Devo, of course. Here's their story. Subversive. Oh, yes.

Are We Not Men? : The DEVO Documentary from Tony Pemberton on Vimeo.