Old Fear, Fresh Fear

‘Fresh fears over Scottish independence’ runs the headline in Common Space.

Following it, Vince Cable and Nick Clegg warn, the Tories are putting the Union under strain and Scotland could still opt to leave in the not too distant future.

So Scotland is now a stick for LibDem hands to beat the government with. Well and good. It’s really the EU Brexit stick, of course, but now the Tories are thirled to the in-out referendum, they’re the ones about to bring the Union down about our ears.

As I say, well and good.

But then, the old pre-independence-referendum niggle resurfaces. Fresh fears? For that matter… Fears?  Why does it matter if the Scots decide to throw their lot in with the EU, quit the Union and try to change the system from within? All the old Project Fear put-downs crowd in again. Wouldn’t they be well rid of us, as the put-downs always imply (too wee, too poor, too stupid)?  In any case, this in-out business has more resonance across the rUK. So, fine, take the fight to the government but please don’t wring hands and worry about us Scots.

But it’s not worry, is it? Not for us. Not after all the years of NO monstering and political shoulder-to-shouldering. If there’s any worry, I ask myself, isn’t it because they have something to lose. It can’t be altruism that makes it so. In establishment circles austerity is still the mantra of choice (despite the latest dissention in Labour’s ranks). It’s hardly altruistic.

It brings me back to the question, not what have we got to lose by our foolish pursuit of independence, but what do they have to lose?  That  brings me back to the UK’s spiralling debt (still in a flat spin despite Osbornomics). That brings me back in turn  to oil.

For all the yah-boo-sucks about how Scotland couldn’t stand on its own two feet with today's seriously reduced oil price, the truth is, even at this price, the UK can’t stand on it’s own two feet without it. Scotland is still a net contributor to the UK economy and our money is more needed than ever.

With that in mind, now deconstruct the papery promise they call the Scotland Bill. It’s not punishment, you know. That’s a by-product. Truth to tell, the real establishment goal is to favour anything that means Scotland can only spend or invest more only by putting up taxes. It's not about offering Scotland a fairer deal in the first place.

The same goes for the shelving of renewable subsidies. A successful renewables sector would make Scotland more economically buoyant, less likely to be forced to adopt unpopular tax regimes to its political detriment. Never mind if it has a knock-on effect for the UK economy. That’s an acceptable downside because the big hitters among the energy companies and financiers aren’t into renewables. The returns are in conventional generation or, Osborne's favourite, nuclear.

So, you see, the fears are far from fresh. They're just the same old establishment night-sweat rearing its ugly head again. What’s more telling, the YES analysis hasn’t even been looked at by these former ministers. Or any ministers, for that matter. It’s as if 56 SNP MPs in Westminster are just an aberration, as if the tide must surely ebb on all the Union’s misfortunes, back to same-as-it-ever-was. Their intransigence is a blind belief that politics-as-usual is still the only game. So they go on playing it.

For them, YES is just a blip, hiss on the tape. Never mind all the commentators who say austerity is wrong,  sabre-rattling global conflicts are wrong, flooding the world with refugees while their homes burn behind them is wrong, making money regardless while the climate collapses is wrong. No, the elite and their cronies just breenge on. They’re saving for their future never saving the future. They're putting by for a rainy day, ignoring the kind of rain their present actions will bring down.

They really, really just don’t get it.

The Notional Anthem

Some have said the Scotland effect has infected England. This, they say, has propelled Jeremy Corbyn to win the Labour leadership. Now, though, the media monstering has begun. Corbyn isn’t establishment material and, unlike Scots and the Yes movement, he can’t be written off in media diatribes as a cultural aberration. He must be written off some other way. So, here comes his ‘security threat’,  the 'national anthem disgrace' and a shabby re-run of the Michael Foot 1981 donkey jacket.

The only examination of Corbyn’s policy portfolio will be in the extreme spins with which it'll be savaged. Few in politics (politics-as-usual) or the media will look particularly carefully at it and every opportunity to brief against, exaggerate and blatantly mis-represent will come cascading out.

But, perhaps the biggest danger is from the party itself. Enemies within are usually behind you, stalking an opportunity to take you down. The PLP have plenty dissenters and conniving mis-calling is a practiced art.

And this in itself is a continuing sadness. Labour, in its twisted wisdom, has shied away from standing on its progressive record (minimum wage, winter fuel payments, 500,000 children lifted out of poverty, free nursery places, apprentices doubled, free bus travel for the elderly, the repeal of Section 28*). 

Labour has tried too hard to cast its record in terms of Tory comparisons. It fears making much of anything that would appear too leftish. Little wonder the Red Tory tag has been hung on them.

Corbyn has several circles to square. He must give a voice to left-leaning aspiration, forge a different political style, all in the face of a hostile media and a strident socio-political elite, importantly those in the Labour Party who bought into the establishment dream and refuse to let principle get in the way.

So the calumny. The latest. Corbyn's silence during the national anthem at the Battle of Britain commemoration. His disgrace was widely trumpeted in the media with no mention of his praise for the fallen heroes; no concession of  respect for him, a republican, following his conscience and keeping silent so as not to cause offence.

In the establishment arena of public life, convention is made sacrosanct to the point of absurdity. You can’t be a political dignitary and a republican, it seems. Difference is only permitted within strict bounds.

I’d have been inclined to let all this go for the minor pomposity it is but the accompanying outrage caused me outrage in reverse. This is the suit and tie business. Apparently Corbyn’s suit didn’t quite match and his collar was a bit undone - jaw dropping nonsense at a time when the media comes under fire for commenting on female politicians' dress sense (mostly bad), weight (usually excess) and the like. Interesting that, when it’s a man and one not approved of, such a thing is OK. But then, it's the way the great and the good belittle any deemed unworthy of favour (like mad socialists and women).

It all harks back to Foot’s donkey jacket (which was actually a coat). He was described at the time, by a fellow Labour MP, as looking like ‘an out-of-work navvy’. So now, 34 years later, nothing learned, we’re hearing Corbyn criticised in a similar way. It reveals so much, not the least, how unacceptable it still is to look like a poor or unemployed person. Corbyn, looking too much like an ordinary man, is pilloried because he’s ‘not really one of us’. Pompous twaddle.

And in Scotland, almost Labour-Party-less, what of it? While those of us in the continuing YES movement have issues with Corbyn on the Union and Scottish independence, his position on social justice, austerity and Trident is refreshingly progressive. Of course, we would want to argue with his views on Scotland but I’m firmly with those who feel we must show solidarity. All the better that it would come laced with our difference.

The Corbyn show is about to be mauled by an unrelenting UK media. We’ve ridden that particular tiger already but I hae ma doots if Corbyn and the wider Labour Party left are prepared for it. The MSM onslaught will be devastating. Only a strong alternative and social media in opposition can help maintain the progressive perspective. It might, at the same time, be a forum to educate Corbynists in the niceties  of Scottish politics. Paradoxically, it could be an opportunity to put a new meaning to ‘Better Together’ and show that solidarity and togetherness needn’t exclude independence and civic nationalism.

*List cribbed from Derek Bateman

Another Take on Room 101

Welcome to Bobbies-R-Us

I don’t know for sure but I speculate there’s another factor behind the M9 crash last week and Police Scotland’s handling of it. It relates to a point Lesley Riddoch touched on in the Scotsman today: centralising the Scottish force and, more importantly, the resources it uses to manage operations.

I’m prepared to go along for now with the idea that an overarching body has its place in modern policing. What concerns me though is that the processes it relies on in practice haven’t been fully thought through.

Like Lesley, I’m concerned about the national control centres, effectively call-centres, their structure and procedures. I fear the shift from local control centres brought with it underlying aspects of call-centre operations. Simply grafting on existing call-handling technologies to meet police requirements leaves ample scope for communication failures like the tragedy we’ve just witnessed.

I work in the call-handling business and, in its early days, had some involvement with its development. I understand the principles call-centres are based on. I also understand, first hand, how far from them actual practice has drifted. In the case of Police Scotland, of course, it’s in all our interests to be as close to the ideal and as far from anything that compromises best practice.

In the call-centre world, the basic tools are technological. Computer equipment and infrastructure are vitally important. On top of that, software tools are used to actually deal with calls and process them into other active systems.

In commerce, software links customers, their histories buying goods and services with data about goods or services themselves and with detailed case management. In my experience, even when development costs hundreds of millions of pounds, software solutions will be adaptations of existing solutions, modified and integrated with each other and what is already there.

For the police service, I worry their call-handling has been adapted like this and plugged into older control centre resources, leaving operational gaps. If, as I’ve found, system capabilities can be underused because of such gaps then communication becomes an inefficient mix of old methods and new, far worse, in the end, than the inadequacies of either used alone.

For example, a core call-handling system I’ve used has a method of linking all contacts and call handlers with each other so information can be electronically transferred to individuals and groups. It doesn’t interface with other resources (because they were never originally designed to). The result is some information transfers are still done on paper, passed up and down management lines depending on circumstances. Some resources permit notation or flagging but not in a way that transfers it to others where it would be useful. Cross-notation is a matter for the call-handler actively transferring or copying information. Every step like this adds a corresponding risk of information being copied inaccurately or not being copied at all.

Systems like this usually provide coding lists to categorise queries so they are completed quickly and automatically routed. This, though, relies on well thought out categories. In my experience, this is a challenge rarely risen to and codes are inadequate. They seldom describe reality and are too often entered for the closest fit. Vital information is lost through never being identified as vital from the start.

Finally, the call-centre ethos is one which plays up ideas of good communication, effectiveness and accuracy. Sadly, that renders down to an underlying target culture crippled by a need for speed and volume in handling calls. For the police service, it’s vital to effectively clear incoming calls so no-one is left in a potentially disastrous situation but if the pace of clearing calls interferes with clarity the same disastrous situation (as we’ve seen) can be misunderstood or ignored until it’s too late.

In my view, the technology we have is more than adequate for local control centres to operate close to their own operations and provide a seamless connection into the nationwide network. What it takes is a rethink of the worst aspects of centralised thinking most call-centres use. The original concept and some of those who were at its heart back in the nineties was one based on notions of self-regulating teams with the technology and software developed to facilitate their actions and keep them securely connected to the whole.

For me that speaks of localised call centres working with a real knowledge of their patch, organising and developing in that context with the technology to work together and with other parts of the wider network. It then becomes an intelligent and responsive system rather than one driven by an impetus to clear calls in hope that nothing goes missing along the way.

Hireling Traitor's Wages

…wrought now by a coward few,

For hireling traitor's wages…*

Let's just talk about treachery for a minute. Now that Scottish Labour have descended into the pits of stupidity and compiled clypegate.

Here we have a document, so amateurish in its construction as to defy belief that it was put together by a serious political party with any serious purpose.

I'll actually begin by saying, on first reading it, I found a handful of folk publishing tweets using language that would sound commonplace in an energetic pub discussion. Not the language of political discourse, I grant you, but the cut and thrust of rowdy, slightly pissed rantings later on of a Saturday. In fact, I'd expect the Labour Party's founders in smoke-filled rooms and public meetings back in the day would have given as good as they got in similar terms and called it 'part of the struggle'.

Now, I don't tweet (canny hack it) but I Facebook and blog and some of the terms of endearment I've seen bandied isn't to my taste. But, hey, I'm used to conversations with a few expletives. The clypegate revelations are little different in tone, milder, if I'm honest. I've heard much worse on the tweety tongues of the other side. Vile cyber-bollocks, maybe, but I'm thick-skinned. Scottish Labour are not, it would seem. Or else they're disingenuous and, in the footballing manner, taking the sympathy dive.

But treachery. That struck me. Reading the document and the highlighted terms picked out for all to gasp at I found the word 'traitor' seemed most prevalent. Now against so much abuse I wondered at how come that's the word to get singled out.

So I looked up traitor and found this definition:



Note this definition (first to appear on a Google search, by the way) extends the term to betrayal of a friend, cause or principle. Of course, it has a patriotic nuance, much favoured by jingoists and nationalists of many flavours (Brit-nat not the least). It's susceptible to this interpretation in many of the clypegate tweets but I think you can equally read political betrayal into many of them.

I say this because Labour collectively or as individuals can be called 'traitors' for the simple reason of the political betrayal of their own principles, their working class cause and, in this instance, all of these in the social and geographic context of Scotland. To strip that away and just wave the 'see the vicious nationalists' flag is thoroughly cheap. A mere political trick, one belonging firmly in the politics of the past that still grinds away in Westminster.

So, I come simply to conclude Scottish Labour and, because they're inseparable from their southern masters, the entire Labour Party are traitors. Forget the patriot spin, because that's the Tory, right-wing mantra. Labour have betrayed their working class roots, they've sacrificed their principles and no longer even bother to put up any opposition in Westminster.

In Scotland, as I've said here before, the antecedents of the labour movement, Hardie, MacLean, Aldred, Shinwell, must be birling in their graves. Too many following them have worn Labour colours to find their way to the comfortable benches of power and taken the Queen's shuln for their trouble. They bought into the establishment. Their betrayal, in that regard, is not only of Scotland but of the entire UK nation of working people, of the people whose interests lie at the heart of the Labour cause. They are now abandoned. By the above definition, this is treachery and those who are responsible are traitors.

The use of these terms, traitor, quisling, and the like isn't an insult, it's a description of an insult: the actions of the Labour party itself. They have made themselves quislings by colluding with their opponents, the Tories and Liberal Democrats, in the referendum. 'Quisling, as you'll note is included in the dictionary definition above (and others), as synonymous with 'traitor' extending the meaning beyond specific military conflicts into general political behaviour. I might as well further describe them as 'Benedict Arnolds', from the actions of the American defector who betrayed his own side in favour of the British in1780.



I'll go further and extend my own insult to Labour in the manner of the Norwegians at the time of Vidkun Quisling. They referred to him as Vidkjent Usling (well-known wretch). Scottish Labour, in particular, will remain weel-kent vratches in my book until they wake up to reality. They really must now try to understand the anger coming at them. Much of it is in poor taste but fighting to correct the expression without exploring the anger itself is pure self-delusion. I like to think the SNP and the Yes movement actually understand why some express their anger and fear about independence so vigorously and so crudely. I don't get any feeling that Labour see any value in pursuing such an enquiry. It's time they did. Then they might move on to formulate some policy and principle for the future.

Without it they'll simply flounder. Asinine stunts like the clypegate scribble will only dig them deeper in the mire.

* Robert Burns - A Parcel of Rogues

The Last Milisecond

Well, thanks, Mr Miliband. It’s pretty clear you’ve written Scotland off. We knew already you’d not enter a coalition or confidence and supply deal with the SNP. You very forcefully made the point though when pressed you didn’t rule out coincidental vote-by-vote support. You’d present a Queen’s Speech in the hope (or expectation) you get the support to push it through.

Behind what did seem like a tough-it-out push-back (backtracked when faced with the interpretation that Labour would rather have the Tories in power than deal in any way with the SNP) there was a more telling point. The differences between the parties mentioned were Trident and austerity. On the latter the message was clear. Labour fundamentally disagrees with the SNP on austerity.

Economists, Paul Krugman, for example, (see the Austerity Delusion in the Guardian) are already saying the harsh deficit reduction strategy has fallen our of political fashion. It’s bad for growth and prolongs stagnation in the economy. An anti-austerity position is a legitimate fiscal approach. Labour clearly remain thirled to the same old challenged economic doctrine. As party of the left, working people and the poor (supposedly), I’d expect them to seize on alternatives to austerity and pursue them. But no. They’re as intransigent as the Tories. Either because their ideologies have, in fact, merged or because they’re just too dogmantic to change.

So Ed Miliband has, cut himself and Labour loose from Scotland. His firm stance is actually two things in one: a pitch to English voters who have been media-ed into fear of an SNP agenda and an attempt to scare any Scottish Labour defectors that an SNP vote won’t deliver Labour nationally. The first may work to an extent, although I’ve seen tweets and posts showing English Labour voters saying, on the strength of last night, not any more. On the second, I still don’t think Labour get it.

Scots want a distinct Scottish voice in Westminster, not about independence, but about Scotland in the UK. Labour betrayed its constituency here in how it stood beside the Tories over independence. The task now should have been to win back trust but their campaign simply continued the fear rhetoric, never let up about the referendum and attached an ‘SNP bad’ tag line on everything to the exclusion of  clear policy.

I wondered, what would it have taken for Labour to have found a mature political way to deal with the SNP’s rise? I fantasised, maybe a simple recognition that there’s common ground on some issues. On fundamental political principles there surely is. Why not simply acknowledge the key differences, the red lines if you like? Trident on the SNP side, the mechanics of debt reduction and fiscal autonomy on the other: mature parties accepting their areas for accommodation while pursuing a socially-just, shared agenda.

I could hear lines like: we can work with the SNP. We differ on some issues but I’d want to persuade them to modify their approach for the sake of progress. Or on independence. If we work together, we’d like to think, we can show the SNP how our strong voices in the Union might achieve what we all want. We’d try to demonstrate independence isn’t a necessity…

No such words from Labour. Yet how hard could it be to modify the mantra? From the SNP, I hear much more openness, an openness which is treated with derision. It seems you can’t leave room to accommodate future developments, to negotiate and adjust to the partnerships they demand. Maybe that’s the difference. Labour and the Tories, all the main Westminster parties don’t understand co-operative politics. They don’t seem how to be clearly and firmly different but to choose to work with others nevertheless. That was misunderstood in the referendum debate and is misunderstood now.

As a relief from watching Ed being tough and reading tweet and counter-tweet on what it all meant, I caught up on Sally Magnusson interviewing Jim Murphy. This what I teased out there.

Murphy reiterated Labour’s unwillingness to work with the SNP and how that could allow the Tories to remaining in power. When pressed he said, ‘of course we’d work with the SNP. But it would be from the back benches in opposition.’

I could only gape. In the event, when the Tories’ Queen’s Speech comes before Parliament, would Labour back it?  I mean, when the SNP vote against it, shouldn’t Labour do likewise so the Tories can’t command a majority. A second election would follow, or else another party (such as Labour) or another group of parties would bid to form a government with a working majority.

To even hint Labour and SNP in opposition mightn’t vote together on this must mean Labour have contemplated voting with the Tories or abstaining en masse.

Either that or is there a secret coalition of austerity parties in the wings. Imagine that: a Labour-Tory coalition. Trouble is it’s not as unthinkable as it used to be. The seas would all run dry first. But then, if there’s a tsunami coming… You know what that means.