Why Katy looks safe
Racist propaganda
Debating independence
We will remember them
Last week I watched the best football match I’ve seen in years
Stone of Destiny
Back to the future with Labour lies
Playing for Scotland
North Ayrshire Council’s Icelandic investments
The power to end poverty lies in our hands
North Ayrshire needs jobs
Sectarianism - Scotland’s shame
Capitalism has failed
A fair tax
The British flag
Why Scotland fans booed God Save the Queen
Workers are entirely justified in taking strike action
Who cares?
Realities behind the Beijing Olympics
Out-Torying the Tories
The earthquake has hit
Thatcher
Glasgow East Westminster by-election
Not all young people are neds
the3towns.com – one year on
Gordon Brown's first year as prime minister
Royalty and the British establishment
Tinkering with a symptom won't cure the problem
Football loyalty
Not in the public interest
It's been an interesting year
It's independence or the Tories
So much for local government and housing associations being open and accountable
Senior Council officials should be told to shape up or ship out
Wendy, you're doing a great job
Lack of openness presents challenge to democracy
So, rules have to be obeyed?
The biggest ever rip-off of public funds
Our Council
Scotland Week
Scottish – not British
Still not in my name
Political cowards
ICI's Three Towns legacy
Admit you got it wrong and save the wardens
The real Tartan Tories
Closure of Ardrossan pubs show how politics affects us all
Scotland victory over anti-English sentiment
John who?
No competition for North Ayrshire Council's £380m contract

....OPINION......OPINION......OPINION......OPINION......OPINION......OPINION..

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the3towns.com November 29 2008

Why Katy looks safe

Back in June, the3towns.com reported that Robert Crawford, the SNP candidate for the next Westminster Election in North Ayrshire & Arran, had accepted the position of chief operating officer with the South-East of England Development Agency.

At that time, some SNP activists were quoted as being concerned that Mr Crawford could not perform both roles - being located 500 miles from North Ayrshire, running an organisation that sought to secure investment and business generation in the south-east of England, and also fight a political campaign in North Ayrshire & Arran to unseat a Labour MP with a majority of 11,296.

Now, with speculation that prime minister Gordon Brown could call a Westminster Election for June 2009 - to coincide with elections to the European Parliament, and before the current recession hits its lowest point, which is predicted to be sometime in 2010 - concern amongst SNP members over their missing candidate seems to have resurfaced.

It is understandable that local SNP activists are uneasy over a candidate whose job takes him so far from the constituency. Equally, it can be argued that someone with Robert Crawford’s undoubted talents in the fields of enterprise and regeneration, and who seeks to represent the people of North Ayrshire & Arran, should be applying those talents to benefit people here, in local communities, rather than the comparatively more prosperous south-east of England.

However, there is another aspect of Mr Crawford’s candidacy that should be worrying local SNP activists. That is the recognition factor, or in Robert Crawford’s case, the lack of recognition factor.

Across business and enterprise organisations, Robert Crawford is one of the most respected operators in the country, which is why he was headhunted for the role with the South-East of England Development Agency. Mr Crawford is much-respected by people in senior positions within economic regeneration circles, including government figures, both in Edinburgh and London. He is an intelligent and articulate man, whose roots are local, making him an ideal candidate for the SNP campaign to unseat the incumbent MP, Labour’s Katy Clark - but all of those qualities are being negated by Robert Crawford‘s absence from the constituency. It is also the case that, outwith business circles, very few people in North Ayrshire & Arran have ever heard of Mr Crawford. Certainly, in political terms, his recognition factor is little above zero.

While the SNP candidate has been conspicuous by his absence, the Tory challenger for the North Ayrshire & Arran seat has been making a name for himself.

Philip Lardner is, in political terminology, ‘working the constituency’. As the candidate for the party that finished second behind Katy Clark at the last Westminster Election in 2005, Mr Lardner has been putting himself about, providing photo-opportunities and writing letters to the press on issues of local importance, like the future of nuclear energy-generation at Hunterston; and of lesser importance, such as informing everyone of how he caught the ferry to Arran on a particularly stormy day, and offering his thanks to Cal-Mac personnel for getting him there safely.

Of course, Philip Larder has also featured in the newspapers for his view on the former white supremacist Rhodesian leader Ian Smith, whom he described as “a hero”, and for his membership of the right-wing pressure group the Freedom Association, which, under its original name of the National Association for Freedom, supported the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.

You might not want to vote for Mr Lardner, but the chances are you will have heard of him or will have seen his name somewhere. In political terms, the same is unlikely to be the case for Robert Crawford.

Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister and leader of the SNP, has made the bold claim that his party is looking to win 20 seats at the next Westminster Election. Of course, his opponents have been quick to say he is living in cloud cuckoo land if he actually believes what he claims, but such electoral success may not be beyond the achievable for the current party of government here in Scotland.

Having said that, if the 20 seat prediction is to come true, the SNP would have to be looking at taking constituencies like North Ayrshire & Arran, where they were successful in the equivalent Scottish Parliament seats in 2007. Which brings us back to Robert Crawford and his invisible candidacy.

A candidate should lead an election campaign, but he or she is simply the focal point, there should be many other equally vital members of the election team. Each party activist has a role to play in promoting the party agenda and the candidate, which is why Robert Crawford should not be saddled with all the blame for the SNPs lack of activity on the ground in North Ayrshire & Arran.

While Mr Crawford has to spend Monday-to-Friday in the south-east of England, there is nothing to stop local SNP activists from canvassing and leafleting during that time, raising their candidate’s profile and promoting the message of how their party is best placed to represent the people of North Ayrshire & Arran. Failure to do that will simply lead to the party taking whatever share of the vote it can secure based on national media coverage at the time of the election; which won’t be great, given the UK broadcast media’s history of virtually ignoring the SNP in British elections.

Of course, it may well be the case that the SNP candidate’s lack of profile and the party’s lack of activity could stem from the fact that they don’t actually fancy their chances of overturning Katy Clark’s 11,296 majority.

It can also be argued that the Labour Party hasn’t been on the streets in North Ayrshire & Arran since the Scottish Parliament and North Ayrshire Council elections of May 2007. That is true, but Labour has the incumbency factor on its side, and can rely on much of its work being done for it by newspapers like the Daily Record.

Katy Clark has worked diligently since being elected in 2005 and she has been able to distance herself from many of Labour’s more right-wing policy initiatives. It would, therefore, take a massive campaign-push to unseat her from her position as MP for North Ayrshire & Arran.

On the basis of the SNP’s current lack of activity in the constituency, and the rabid right-wing policies of the Tory candidate, it looks like Ms Clark’s position is safe.

Of course, they say a week is a long time in politics, and even if Gordon Brown was to cut and run for a June 2009 election, that still leaves seven months for the other parties to make the Westminster Election interesting for those of us who live in the constituency of North Ayrshire & Arran.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com November 22 2008

Racist propaganda

 As the Editor of the3towns.com, I last week received a letter from the Chairman of a registered political party…..or as I prefer to call them, scum.

The political party has elected councillors in a number of local authorities in England, but that does not mean they should receive any respect. They are still scum.

The political party is the BNP, the British National Party.

The letter I received came with a brochure titled ‘Racism Cuts Both Ways’, which tried to argue that the media in the UK portrayed racism as “a one-way street, where exclusively white perpetrators pick on defenceless ethnic minorities.” It then listed what we are asked to believe are genuine ‘case studies’, where Asian/Muslim men attacked whites and ‘groomed’ teenage white girls for sex. Notice that the supposed perpetrators of these alleged acts were Muslims. Not Afro-Caribbeans, Chinese or any other ethnic minority. The BNP, in its propaganda designed to stir up racial hatred, has latched onto the totally unwarranted belief amongst some sections of society that, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York and the 2005 tube and bus bombs in London, if someone is a Muslim, then they must be a terrorist. It is ironic that the BNP seeks to blame the British media for an anti-white agenda, when it is right-wing English newspapers that have erroneously portrayed Asians as potential terrorists.

Amongst the BNP propaganda is the line that white people in need of a Council house “often have to wait for years, living in cramped conditions or sleeping on friends’ or relatives’ floors because there are not enough houses to go round. But asylum-seekers who have come through a dozen safe countries to get to Soft Touch Britain don’t have any such problems. Whether they have left behind a mud hut or a warlord’s palace, they are all entitled to top quality housing at British taxpayers’ expense.”

Again, latching onto the agenda of right-wing English newspapers, the BNP repeats the lie that asylum seekers are living a life of luxury in the UK. Firstly, asylum seekers, by definition, have to prove they are seeking asylum, having fled violence or persecution in their own country. If they cannot prove the circumstances that drove them to leave their homeland - the British Government operates one of the most stringent asylum systems in the world - then they are sent back, often to face torture or death at the hands of the government or militia from whom they originally fled.

Asylum seekers are not economic migrants, simply seeking a better living standard for their families. They are persecuted people in fear of their lives, desperate to be given shelter. As a democratic and relatively free nation, we have a responsibility to offer that shelter.

As for asylum seekers being “entitled to top quality housing”: I challenge anyone who actually believes that to be the case, go and live in one of the flats in Glasgow’s Sighthill, where asylum seekers are placed. Try it even for a week, then come back and tell me asylum seekers are living in top quality housing. The flats occupied by asylum seekers have, on many occasions, already been condemned, and in other areas are those that the Council cannot get local people to accept.

Again, the point of the BNP’s propaganda is simply to stir up racial hatred.

According to the BNP, the brochure I received is also being sent to every MP, MSP, councillor and national and local media outlet. It seems, therefore, that the party of the fascist right in the UK is not short of a few bob. Which prompts the question, just who is funding these social and intellectual inadequates?

The BNP, the party of semi-literate skinheads, has, over the last few years, attempted to portray itself as more mainstream and presentable, but its policies give the lie to such attempts. Like the Nazis in 1930s Germany, the BNP picks on minorities and attempts to blame them for all the ills that befall the country, a country the fascists believe belongs exclusively to them.

Although they call themselves the British National Party, be under no illusions, they don’t consider Scots to be the equal of the English. Like in apartheid South Africa, even whites are graded for their supposed ‘purity’, and the most pure are the white English. Having said that, there are some Scots who, sadly, are taken-in by the party’s vile propaganda.

In 2004, after the then Labour councillor for Ardrossan North failed to turn up for any Council meetings in over a year, a local authority by-election was held. It was won by the Tories, mainly due to the exceptionally poor quality of the candidate fielded by Labour, but the BNP also put up a candidate - someone called Paul McKenzie, who lived in Ardrossan at the time. They secured 23 votes. Twenty-three people in the North of Ardrossan voted for a racist, fascist political party.

Now, 23 votes is not a lot by any standard (it was 2.1% of all votes cast that day), but the fact that those people apparently shared the view that whites are different and better to the non-white people within our local community is shameful. It also shows how the British (mainly English) print and broadcast media can affect how people vote. After all, there are relatively few non-white faces who, even erroneously, could be blamed for the problems experienced by Ardrossan.

The BNP’s racist message gains ground in areas of England where there are large minority ethnic populations, and where, mistakenly, the white population feels threatened by what they don’t know about their neighbours. On such insecurities is built support for the modern BNP, which claims to offer ‘solutions’ to problems that exist only in its collectively warped mind.

Amongst those of us who hold socialist views, there is a line of argument that we should not share a platform with the racist BNP - so as not to give them the oxygen of publicity. While I can fully understand the logic of that argument, I believe it is better to confront the BNP and expose them for what they are - the dregs of humanity. The BNP, irrespective of whether it dresses itself in a shiny suit or high-leg Docs and jeans, is a racist organisation populated by people who seek to blame others for their own inadequacies.

The letter I received from the BNP concludes “I hope you will read this brochure” - I did - “and use your influence to help society face up to the dangers of anti-majority racism.”

There is no anti-majority racism. The only racism I have seen in political literature in this country has been that directed by the BNP at non-white minorities. As such, I will definitely use what influence I have to expose the dangers to our society of a racist organisation masquerading as a legitimate political party.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com November 15 2008

Debating independence

Last Sunday I briefly came out of political retirement to address the Beith 1320 Speakers Club, and I really enjoyed it. It’s been some time now since I took part in a public discussion on politics and I found that I had actually missed it.

The Beith 1320 Speakers Club, under the chairmanship of John Johnstone - a resident of Beith but originally a Barrmill boy - is now firmly established as one of Scotland’s foremost speaking and debating clubs.

Originally formed as the Beith 1320 SNP Speakers Club, it transformed into a broader-based, non-party affiliated club following the resignation from the SNP of the club chairman and committee members. The resignations came in 2004 and followed some guy calling on then SNP leader John Swinney to stand down and for Alex Salmond to return as National Convener. One of the good things to come from that episode was that the Beith 1320 Speakers Club was able to then offer a public platform to all political parties, and individuals, who support the restoration of Scotland’s independence. Of course, another good point to emerge from the 2004 ‘rebellion’ in SNP ranks was that Swinney was eventually forced to resign, Alex Salmond did return, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I had spoken at the Beith 1320 Club before, while I was an MSP, and I was certainly in good company. Amongst those who have made the journey to address the North Ayrshire public in Beith are: Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Jim Sillars, Alex Neil MSP, Adam Ingram MSP, Tommy Sheridan, Colin Fox, Alyn Smith MEP, Professor Sir Neil MacCormick, Dorothy-Grace Elder, Murray Ritchie and so many others from all pro-independence parties and none. Whisper it, even John Swinney spoke in Beith while he was still leader of the SNP. I seem to remember he shared a platform with the guy who called for him to stand down. That was a good debate. I enjoyed that one too.

The point of the Beith 1320 Speakers Club is to allow a platform for debate on the issues around independence, such as how we get there, how long it might take, and what an independent Scotland will look like.

Not everyone who supports Scottish independence shares the same political ideology. We certainly all wish to see Scotland re-take her independence, but some of us would rather see an independent Scotland elect a socialist government and present the people with the opportunity to move from being subjects of Her Majesty to citizens of a republic. Others who share the desire for independence would be happy to see an independent Scotland retain the Queen as head of state and to see elected a government of the centre-right.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with such a situation. Within the British Unionist political parties there are just as wide differences in ideology; in fact, their differences are probably wider. After all, there are no right-wing fascist parties that support Scottish independence, but there certainly are within the ranks of those who support the British Union.

It is right that supporters of independence debate the issues that divide us as well as unite us. As was discussed at Beith last week, pro-independence parties, and individuals, will have to reach accommodations if we are to deliver on our shared goal, but that doesn’t mean we all have to support the same pro-independence party.

One member of the Beith audience suggested that maybe it would be a good idea if everyone voted SNP, rather than for any of the other pro-independence parties, which could be seen as splitting the vote.

That suggestion would, you might think, be eminently sensible, but there is a problem. Some people who support independence could not bring themselves to vote for the SNP, which currently sits on the political centre ground, with leanings towards the centre-right in terms of financial policies. It is vitally important, therefore, that those votes are not lost to the independence cause, which is where the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity come in. There is even an out-and-out pro-independence party of the right, the Scottish Enterprise Party, so the broad spectrum of political ideologies is covered within the independence movement.

Another member of the audience at last Sunday’s meeting asked if the Labour victory in the Glenrothes Westminster Parliament By-Election meant that support for independence was in decline.

The short answer to that question is ‘no’. In the same way that the SNP victory in the Glasgow East Westminster Parliament By-Election didn’t show that support for the British Union was in decline.

There are a huge number of reasons why individuals vote for certain political parties at certain elections. Some people - a considerable number - actually change who they vote for at different elections, sometimes even on the same day. It is not at all uncommon for people to vote for one political party at Westminster Elections, another at Scottish Parliament Elections, and yet another at Council Elections. Ardrossan showed that factor coming into play at the May 2007 Scottish Parliament and North Ayrshire Council Elections.

The Scottish Office breakdown of the Scottish Parliament vote in Ardrossan showed a tie for first place between Allan Wilson, the Labour Party candidate, and the Independent candidate, whose name escapes me at the moment. The SNP came third at the Scottish Parliament Election in Ardrossan.

However, when we look at the North Ayrshire Council result from the same day, the first candidate to be elected to represent the town was the SNP’s Tony Gurney. People don’t always vote the same way, which is why it is wrong of British Unionist political parties to claim that a vote for them is a vote against independence. We already know that a sizeable percentage of Labour Party members, when questioned, say they would support an independent Scotland.

That is why we won’t know the true level of support for independence until the people are asked a direct question on the subject, with all other political considerations stripped out.

The people of Scotland have never been allowed a say on whether or not they wish to remain within the British Union. Not once since 1707 have British Unionists ever put Scots to the test.

The SNP’s Independence Referendum proposals will finally give the Scottish people the opportunity to say where they stand, and if British Unionist political parties vote down the proposals as they go through the Scottish Parliament, then we can only assume they are scared to hear the verdict of the people of Scotland.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com November 8 2008

We will remember them

“They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

This Sunday, and on November 11 itself, people across the world will take time to remember those who gave their lives in time of war.

Of course, we tend to associate Remembrance Day with the two World Wars, but almost nightly on our television news we are reminded that young men are still laying down their lives in the pursuit of objectives set by politicians safely ensconced far from where the bullets fly and the shells land.

Afghanistan is a war that cannot be won by forces of the ‘coalition of the willing’. Many have tried before to subdue the Afghan tribesmen, with the best result so far achieved being a tactical withdrawal. Even one of the world’s then super-powers, the Soviet Union, eventually withdrew its forces after an unsuccessful attempt to control the country in the ten years between 1979 and 1989. However, in the Soviet Union’s defence, the Afghan tribesmen it faced were being supplied and trained by the world’s other super-power, America. American special forces provided the guns, ammunition and military training to what became the Mudjahaddin and the Taliban, the very forces that now target their guns and missiles on British and American service personnel.

Iraq, quite simply, is an illegal war. Our troops should not have been sent into the country in the first place, and certainly should not still be there five years after the world’s biggest war criminal, George W Bush, stood on the deck of a US aircraft carrier and declared “mission accomplished”.

Bush, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have blood on their hands, the blood of young British and American soldiers and of countless thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. All three politicians should face trial on charges of war crimes, but they won’t. That’s not how we do things in the liberal free democracy that we have been told our troops are defending and, indeed, are bringing to Iraq. In this country, war criminals retire and make millions of pounds as after dinner speakers and as advisors to multi-national corporations, many of whom have fingers in the very big pies that represent the arms industry and the re-building of infrastructure that has been bombed back to the stone age.

From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more names of brave young men have been added to those we will remember at services across the country over the next few days, and the politicians who sent them to their deaths will look very solemn as they lay wreaths to their memory. The politicians may even be genuine in their showing of respect, but it won’t stop them sending more and more young men to the same fate.

A famous slogan was coined during the First World War - ‘A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end.’ The author of the saying is not recorded, but it was used by Socialists to highlight how, in the War to End All Wars, it was ordinary working class men on both sides of the conflict who fought and died at the behest of the imperialist warmongers who formed their respective governments.

Nothing much changes. Whenever we see young soldiers being interviewed on television, it is obvious that many of them joined the army to get a job and a trade - prospects that government policies denied them in civilian life - only to find themselves in far off countries with a gun in their hand.

World War II was different. If there ever can be a just war, then surely fighting to defeat fascism qualifies for that catagory. I believe, however, that World War I was not a just war. World War I was about imperialism. World War I was about the economically strong nations of Europe seeking to expand their might and influence, it was about countries seeking control of markets by building empires, from which the capitalist industry owners could make ever bigger fortunes

I had great uncles who fought on the Western Front during the ‘Great War’. Indeed, most of us will have relations who went into the hell that was supposedly going to be over by Christmas 1914, but which dragged on until an armistice was signed on November 11 1918, by which time there were around 40 million casualties and 20 million military and civilian deaths. So many of our relations who went into that war never came home, and even though it is now 90 years since the war ended, it is entirely fitting that we remember them.

As the councillor for Ardrossan North some years ago, I was proud to lay a wreath at the town’s war memorial during the annual Remembrance Day service. The wreath I laid was on behalf of the Council and was supplied by the local authority. It comprised red poppies, but, personally, I did not wear one. I still don’t wear one.

I prefer to wear a white poppy, which is not in any way intended as an insult to those who gave their lives, far from it. Unfortunately, however, it seems that in recent years the wearing of a white poppy has come under attack, mainly from the jingoistic right-wing British media, who attempt to portray it as socially unacceptable. Only this week the right-wing London Evening Standard reported that the London Fire Brigade had been “forced to apologise” after it sent out invitations to its Remembrance Day service on cards that bore the white poppy.

Why should the London Fire Brigade be forced to apologise? Only someone who completely misunderstands what lies behind the white poppy could think that wearing it - or printing it on an invitation card - is reason to merit an apology.

In fact, the white poppy recognises all the war dead, of all wars, and symbolises the hope for an end to wars, so that the list of those brave people we remember at this weekend’s services and on November 11 does not continue to grow as more young lives are lost.

The white poppy was first produced by the Co-operative Women’s Guild in 1933 and has been worn at armistice and remembrance services ever since. Those who misunderstand its meaning and who object to it being worn, should perhaps bear in mind this comment, issued by a spokesperson for the Royal British Legion, the organisation that produces the red poppy - “What you wear is a matter of choice, the Legion doesn't have a problem whether you wear a red one or a white one, both or none at all. It is up to you.”

Surely what matters is that we remember those who gave their lives, and do everything we can to prevent the current generation - and future generations - from having to make the same sacrifice.

* The opening quotation in this article is taken from the poem 'For the Fallen' by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943). The poem was first published in The Times of September 21, 1914.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com November 1 2008

Last week I watched the best football match I've seen in years

Last week I watched the best football match I’ve seen in years. No, not the Kilmarnock V Celtic League Cup game live on STV. Nor was it the Everton V Manchester United match last weekend. It wasn’t even Chelsea taking on Liverpool at Stamford Bridge, where a single Liverpool goal brought to an end Chelsea’s long unbeaten home record.

The game that had it all - 8 goals, near misses, skilful players, hard tackling, personal feuds, debatable refereeing decisions - was a Three Towns local derby. A team from Ardrossan and a team from Saltcoats played out a great game last Thursday evening, and it wasn’t Winton Rovers and Saltcoats Vics.

The game was a schoolboy match between Ardrossan Academy and St Matthew’s Academy, and both schools can be justly proud of the players that wore their colours.

The final result was Ardrossan Academy 6 St Matthew’s Academy 2, but to this neutral observer that was not the most important aspect of the game. Both teams, boys of 16 years-old, showed skill and commitment that put their professional counterparts to shame. It was bitterly cold and the pitch left a lot to be desired, but neither of these factors stopped 22 young players from getting on with the game and performing to the best of their abilities.

Having said that, it was a very local derby - both teams walked from their respective schools to one of the few remaining football pitches at Laighdykes playing field - and, of course, there was the added West of Scotland element of there being a religious divide between the teams, reflecting the Celtic-Rangers phenomenon of Scotland’s top flight football.

The game brought back memories for me - as a youngster I played in a good few Ardrossan Academy V St Andrew’s Academy matches - most of which were won by my side (Ardrossan Academy), except the time the two of us were drawn against each other in the Scottish Cup. Having done the difficult job of putting out the cup favourites in an earlier round (Holy Cross of Hamilton, which comprised a team of Celtic schoolboy signings), Ardrossan fell to a 1-0 defeat at the hands of St Andrew’s. Believe me, that was a sickener. It must have been, I can still remember it some 32 years later.

Games between the two schools were always that bit special. Notwithstanding the close physical proximity of the two schools, the local town rivalry, and the pseudo Celtic-Rangers connotations, the players of both teams knew each other so well. We had played against each other for our respective primary schools, and then for the Academies through each year. Away from school, we even played together for the same youth teams. So we knew each other and how we played - and we really, really wanted to beat the other team.

That determination had clearly travelled across the years and was in evidence at last week’s game - and for all of those reasons such a heavy defeat will have been very hard to take for the St Matthew’s players.

Having said that, and while Ardrossan Academy were certainly the better team on the day, a final scoreline of 6-2 possibly flattered them just a bit.

Both sides had players of skill who will go on to develop and may even play at a professional level. The flow of passing football throughout the game really was a joy to watch, particularly given the lack of basic skills shown so often by highly-paid professionals in Scotland’s senior sides. Certainly, the teachers who coach the two sides should take great credit from the way their teams played.

One other aspect of the game that stood out as a positive, in contrast to the actions of the professional footballers we see on our televisions every week, was how the players reacted to tough tackles - and there were plenty of those. Not once did a player who had been fouled roll about the pitch in apparent agony. There was reaction, certainly, but that was to be expected after someone had just put their studs into your shin. No-one over-reacted. No-one feigned injury. Not once when players bumped into each other did one of them hit the deck as if they had been taken out by a sniper on the roof of one of the schools. These boys played a hard, tough game, and played it like men, unlike the big Jessies of the professional game who go to ground, roarin and greetin, if an opponent as much as looks at them.

I had gone to watch the match because the son of a friend was playing. My friend is currently working in England and his son has recently returned to playing football after a very serious leg break. Being in England, he can’t keep tabs on how his son is doing, so he asked me to go along. I won’t embarrass the boy by naming him here, but by his performance in Thursday’s game, he certainly seems to be on course to recover the level of play that, prior to his leg break, had scouts from professional sides showing an interest.

It was a really good game. I enjoyed watching it, and I couldn’t say that about most of the senior games I’ve seen in recent years. Both sides wanted to win, but wanted to win by playing attractive, attacking football, which made it entertaining and good to watch. Again, credit is due to the teachers who encouraged their teams to play in that manner, rather than attempting to ’get a result’ by stopping the opposition from playing.

For me, a comment made by a St Matthew’s defender summed up the positive attitude in which the game was played. With just fifteen minutes left, and 4-1 down, he shouted to his team mates, “C’mon boys, just three goals, we can still dae it.”

In fact, those last fifteen minutes were played in semi-darkness, and while there were another three goals scored, two of them were past the St Matthew’s goalkeeper, but both sides played and tried until the final whistle.

On the display I saw last Thursday, if I were to choose between watching Ardrossan Academy play St Matthew’s Academy or Celtic play Rangers, the schools would win, easily.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com October 25 2008

Stone of Destiny

If you haven’t yet seen the film Stone of Destiny, go and see it.

The story told in the film may be romanticised and may not be absolutely historically accurate, but it is entertaining and is based on the factual event of 58 years ago that saw the Stone of Destiny returned to Scotland.

On Christmas Day 1950, four Scottish students broke into Westminster Abbey and ’stole’ the Stone of Destiny, the ancient stone on which Scottish Kings had been crowned, until it was stolen in 1296 by English King Edward I and taken to London. The point of Edward and his invading army taking the stone to England was to show the Scots that they were a nation subservient to the English. Edward’s point was that English Kings could show their domination of Scotland simply by parking their backside on the stone that our own Kings had previously used at their coronations.

In short, the act of taking the Stone of Destiny to England was a slap in the face to Scots. It was done to humiliate Scotland. Taking the stone on which our Kings had been crowned was symbolic of Scotland’s loss of independence and its subjugation by England.

Of course, Scotland later re-established her independence under the leadership first of William Wallace and then Robert the Bruce, but eventually lost it again when sold-out by Scottish ‘noblemen’ in 1707.

In all the time since 1296, and throughout the massive changes that affected both Scotland and England in subsequent centuries, the Stone of Destiny lay beneath the English Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, a sign of Scotland’s subservient position to England.

By 1950, Scotland had been so successfully subsumed into the English-dominated British Union that many Scottish companies and organisations styled themselves as being North British, rather than Scottish. At the same time, however, a grass roots movement had grown that sought to establish home rule for Scotland. A covenant was established, which called for the creation of a devolved Scottish Assembly, and over the period of 1949 and 1950 around 2 million people signed the Scottish Covenant.

It was in those days of increased awareness of Scotland’s diminished position within the British Union that a Glasgow University student, Ian Hamilton, was inspired to carry out a daring raid on the heart of the British establishment in London. A raid that not only would raise awareness of Scotland’s claim to self determination, but would restore to our country one of its most iconic emblems, the Stone of Destiny.

On Christmas Day 1950, armed only with a crowbar, Ian Hamilton, Kay Matheson, Gavin Vernon and Alan Stuart carried out their raid on Westminster Abbey. They successfully prised the stone from its resting place of 700 years but dropped it as it came free from beneath the Coronation Chair.

The stone broke in two, which Hamilton later said actually made it easier to remove from the Abbey. Kay Matheson took the smaller of the two parts and drove to Scotland, while Hamilton, Vernon and Stuart took the larger part by car to a wood on the outskirts of London, where they buried it and then returned to Scotland.

The reaction of the British authorities when the ‘theft’ from the Abbey was discovered included the closure of the border between Scotland and England, but Matheson had already made it home and the three men did not have the stone with them when the crossed back into Scotland.

News of the stone’s repatriation was greeted with delight in Scotland, but was seen by the British/English establishment as a potential spark for a Scottish uprising against London rule.

Eventually, once the heat had died down, Hamilton and his co-conspirators returned to the wood outside London to retrieve the stone, only to find that some Gypsies had set up camp around where they had buried it. However, being no strangers themselves to the desire for freedom, the Gypsies were happy to help dig up the stone and carry it to Hamilton’s car.

The Stone of Destiny was then returned to Scotland, where it was hidden by Scottish patriots.

Ultimately, in the knowledge that they could not hold on to the stone for ever, the patriots placed it within the ruins of Arbroath Abbey, where the declaration of Scotland’s independence was signed in 1320, and notified the police.

Hamilton, Matheson, Vernon and Stuart were arrested but were never prosecuted. The British establishment feared that to put the four students before the courts could have incited the Scottish uprising against British/English rule, which was their biggest fear at that time.

Now, that is how the film about the Stone of Destiny ends, but that is not quite the whole story.

It is a fact that while the stone was in the hands of the Scottish patriots, it was repaired by a master stone mason. The two parts were once again expertly brought together, and when the police picked it up from Arbroath Abbey it was as it had been before its removal from Westminster.

However, claims have been made that the repair was not the only work carried out by the Scottish patriot stone mason. One story has it that the craftsman actually made a copy of the stone, and that the one returned to the English was not the original. That, so the story goes, remains at home, here in Scotland. In fact, one version of the story has the real Stone of Destiny resting within easy walking distance of the Three Towns.

The other story relating to the Stone of Destiny revolves around questions over whether what Edward I stole in 1296 was actually the stone on which Scottish Kings had been crowned.

Legend has it that the monks of Scone, who looked after the stone, were aware of Edward’s intention and swapped the actual Stone of Destiny with another before the English army arrived. If that story is true, then what the English carted off to London was actually nothing more than a sewer cover, and the real Stone of Destiny has never left Scotland.

I would love to think that the Stone of Destiny currently lies at the spot in North Ayrshire I was shown some years ago, but I can’t help smiling when I think that maybe it is the case that generations of British/English monarchs have been crowned while sitting on what was actually little more than a Scottish toilet seat.

Whatever you believe, the film about the Stone of Destiny is worth seeing - and if, like me, you long for the day when Scotland retakes her independence, I bet you have a lump in your throat when Ian Hamilton’s strict father tells his boy, “Son, I’m so very proud of you.”

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com October 18 2008

Back to the future with Labour lies

Already the influence of Peter Mandelson’s return to the Labour Government seems evident. Once again absurd spin takes precedence over fact and reality in Labour’s public pronouncements.

When New Labour was created - and principle was abandoned in what had previously been the People’s Party - Peter Mandelson was credited with the adoption by the new party of the medium of spin. In fact, what New Labour did went far beyond simply putting a good spin on news stories. New Labour created a completely new tactic in news management: instead of putting out news releases that painted the party in the best possible light, New Labour distorted the reality so that what was actually bad news for the party or the country was portrayed as good news. Facts were turned on their heads and were given completely different meanings. Not for nothing was Mandelson branded ’the prince of darkness’ and likened to the 16th Century Italian Niccolo Machiavelli, whose name was synonymous with ruthless politics, deceit and the pursuit of power by any means.

Thanks to Mandelson, and of course Tony Blair, New Labour’s waging of an unprovoked and illegal war against Iraq was transformed into a just and moral crusade to bring democracy to the people of the country. Despite all available evidence, New Labour told us the war wasn’t about gaining access to Iraq’s massive oil reserves. Instead, we were told our troops had to go in because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which could be launched against British interests within 45 minutes.

Facts were turned on their head. Truth became lie and lie became truth.

Virtually everyone now accepts that this country was taken into an illegal war on the basis of lies told by the New Labour Government, and that the Iraq deception is just one example of how the political party created out of the New Labour Project became so associated with spin and deceit. In the eyes of the British public, Tony Blair may have been the frontman for New Labour spin, but the ‘brains’ behind the concept of manipulating truth to suit the party agenda is recognised as Peter Mandelson.

Mandelson was such a stranger to the truth that he twice had to resign from Blair’s cabinet after attempting to spin his way out of a loan scandal and then accusations that he had been involved in fast-tracking a British passport application for a Labour-supporting Indian national. So tainted with the poison of spin and deception is Mandelson that no-one thought he could ever return to government, but desperate times for Gordon Brown necessitated desperate measures, and the prince of darkness has returned.

Ostensibly, Mandelson was brought back by Gordon Brown as a Business Minister, but most people in the know are of the opinion that his real task will be to manage the Labour fightback against the Tories in England and the SNP in Scotland. Incredibly, given his reputation for spin and all its negative connotations, Mandelson was seen by Gordon Brown as just the man for the job of transforming Labour’s public image.

Here in Scotland we have this week seen clear evidence of New Labour’s return to Mandelsonian levels of spin. Once again truth has become lie and lie has become truth in New Labour’s public pronouncements.

All around us lies evidence of the failed capitalist system, and of the British Government’s failure to adequately manage the British economy. It was Gordon Brown, as chancellor of the exchequer, who proclaimed an end to the days of ‘boom and bust’: it was Gordon Brown who praised City of London financial ‘risk takers‘: it was Gordon Brown who encouraged an unprecedented credit boom by allowing a virtually unregulated financial sector: it was Gordon Brown who took the plaudits for Britain’s economic growth, despite the fact it was built on an unsustainable foundation of personal and corporate credit. Gordon Brown’s tenure as chancellor and then prime minister has coincided with the growth of the money-market spiv, and then the biggest ever financial collapse of the country’s banking system, including formerly respected institutions here in Scotland, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland.

The financial disaster we are currently experiencing has been created while Scotland remains part of the British Union. Government failures have been British Unionist Government failures. Financial market failures have been failures within the markets operating in the British Union and other capitalist economies. Yet New Labour’s spin on the subject is that this shows an independent Scotland couldn’t stand on its own two feet. Truth becomes lie and lie becomes truth.

Despite the fact an independent Scotland would, like Norway, have built a multi-billion pound oil fund to cushion the economy from the inevitable down turns that affect the capitalist system, Gordon Brown says Scotland without England would be an economic basket case - that is the same England that is home to the British Unionist financial market place that almost brought down the two big Scottish banks.

In addition, the British Unionist prime minister criticises small, independent European nations, like Ireland, Iceland and Norway, which First Minister Alex Salmond has previously cited as an ‘arc of prosperity’ around Scotland.

The reality is that Iceland severely over-extended itself while operating the same financial model endorsed by Mr Brown’s own British Unionist Government, but Ireland was the first country to react to the international downturn in the markets and immediately safeguarded all deposits made to Irish banks. Mr Brown’s British Unionist Government has offered no such security to British investors in British banks.

As for Norway, while they have borrowed money during the current crises, as has Britain, the country still has a standard of living and a balance of accounts that Mr Brown’s British Unionist Government can only look at with envy.

Of course, if British Unionist Mr Brown really doubts the benefits of independence to small European nations, he could always ask the people of Ireland if they would like to give up their own independence and, instead, return to being part of the British Union. The answer Mr Brown would get would contain two words, the second of which would be ’off’.

Meanwhile, in the world of New Labour spin, Britain is leading the way out of the current crisis and our saviour is Gordon Brown. In reality, however, Britain has been forced to borrow billions of pounds to bail out banks, inflation continues to rise (now 5.2%) meaning people become poorer as prices rise, and unemployment in Scotland grew by 19,000 in the months from June to August.

That is the reality that New Labour spin is trying to hide. Far from Scotland not being able to afford independence, the reality is that we can’t afford much longer as part of the British Union.

It is British Unionist government policies that have created the problems Scotland currently has, and no amount of British Unionist spin will change that fact.

Independence means having control of our own resources and taking decisions for ourselves, in our own interests. That is what Scotland needs, and as the European Union’s biggest producer of oil, can well afford.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com October 18 2008

Playing for Scotland

Be honest, who amongst us, say this time last month, had heard of Chris Iwelumo?

The Coatbridge-born centre forward with Wolverhampton Wanderers had managed to ply his professional football career without grabbing any major headlines. Until, that is, he was given his Scotland international debut in last Saturday’s World Cup qualifier against Norway.

With the game at 0-0 and Scotland desperate for a goal, the big striker was thrown on to see what he could do. Immediately his size and strength created problems for the Norwegian defence, and the big man certainly got the Tartan Army behind him as he showed the kind of commitment to the cause that the fans love to see.

Then he found himself on the end of an inch-perfect cross and just two-feet out from the gaping Norwegian goal. The keeper had been beaten by the cross, it was an open goal, and as every Scotland fan knows - but struggles to understand - Iwelumo managed to miss.

Honestly, it would have been easier to score than to put the ball past the post from such close range.

Hopefully, Chris Iwelumo will get further chances to prove his real ability for Scotland, but that miss will haunt the rest of his career. It was just so bad, it was, very possibly, the worst ever miss by a professional footballer. Yes, it really was that bad.

Fate can be so cruel. Having played his football with smaller teams, like St Mirren, Iwelumo’s move to Wolves saw him strike a vein of consistency and the back of opponents’ nets on a regular basis. He went into Saturday’s game having scored 8 goals in 6 games for his club. Yet, having worked hard at his game and having earned his chance on the big stage, his contribution will be remembered for a howler of a miss.

What made things worse for Scotland fans was that Irvine-born Rangers striker Kris Boyd - a man who does little else on a football pitch but score goals - was left to watch on the substitutes bench as Iwelumo duffed his open goal and Scotland were held to a draw at home by Norway.

There can be little doubt that Kris Boyd would have taken the chance that presented itself to Iwelumo, and as a consequence, Scotland would have won the match and we would all now be a lot more confident about the team reaching the 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa.

The fall-out from last Saturday’s game, and the decision of manager George Burley to play Chris Iwelumo (and Hibernian’s Steven Fletcher) ahead of Kris Boyd, culminated in the Rangers striker indicating that he would not play again for Scotland while Burley remained the manager.

That is a pity, because there is no doubt that Kris Boyd is a goalscorer, and every man and his dug knows that, currently, Scotland is not overly blessed in that department. However, having said that, for any Scottish player to walk out on his national team is a disgrace.

It is an honour to play for Scotland, an honour virtually every Scottish man and boy would love to achieve, but never will. Kris Boyd was given the ability that allowed him to live the dream of every Scotland fan, yet simply because the current manager of the national side chose to play other strikers ahead of him, he has turned his back on his country. That is a slap in the face to every Scotsman who ever dreamed of pulling on the dark blue jersey.

George Burley got his tactics wrong on Saturday, particularly in the first half of the game, and he certainly should have used Boyd as we chased the goal that would have given us victory, but he is the man appointed to get our team to the World Cup Finals, and he has to be allowed to manage without players trying to influence his selection by taking the huff if they aren’t picked.

Following the game against Norway, and Kris Boyd’s decision to quit the Scotland squad, George Burley made clear that the main reasons he selected Iwelumo and Fletcher ahead of Boyd were because both players are making regular starts for their club teams - Boyd is not - and they both showed a desire to play during the squad’s pre-match training sessions - apparently Boyd did not.

The right thing for Boyd to have done would have been to redouble his efforts at Rangers, to prove to club manager Walter Smith that he was indispensable to the Ibrox club, which would have had the knock-on effect of virtually guaranteeing his selection for Scotland. Instead, he didn’t have the heart to fight and chose to walk away. An action that seems to confirm George Burley’s opinion that Boyd lacked the commitment to prove himself worthy of inclusion in the team.

Scotland fans fork out a small fortune to follow the team all over the world, often for very little return - I know, I once spent £50 on a ticket to see Scotland play Costa Rica in the 1990 World Cup Finals (we lost 1-0) - but the Tartan Army will continue to spend their hard-earned money and will continue to be the most vocal and loyal fans in the world because they love Scotland and want to see our team do well. If the fans followed the Kris Boyd code of conduct and walked away after a disappointment, there would have been no-one at Hampden for the past fifty years.

Scotland fans are the best in the world, and to be the best takes dedication, commitment, courage and loyalty to the cause. Maybe when Kris Boyd realises how lucky he is to have the opportunity to play for his country, he might embrace the Tartan Army’s dedication, commitment, courage and loyalty to the cause, and maybe then Scotland fans would have him back.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com October 11 2008

North Ayrshire Council's Icelandic investments

 As I write, our local authority, North Ayrshire Council, is awaiting news of what will happen to the £15 million of our money that it deposited with two Icelandic banks that have now been placed in receivership by the government of Iceland.

There are conflicting accounts on what the Council can expect. Some ‘experts’ believe that the money is safe and will be returned to the local authority within a matter of weeks. This theory appears to be supported by the Westminster Government, which, certainly at this stage, does not seem moved to guarantee deposits made into Icelandic banks by local authorities and other public bodies.

However, other ‘experts’ have a different view, one that argues Councils may not get back everything they deposited. According to one financial advisor, public sector investors in Icelandic banks may only receive back 20p-in-pound of what they stuck away for a rainy day. In North Ayrshire Council’s case, that would mean a £750,000 return on a £15 million investment. That would be a disaster and, surely, would be the very worst case scenario.

Clearly, North Ayrshire Council, like every other local authority, has to budget sensibly and has to put away monies for unforeseen contingencies, which, I think we can assume, is what they did with the £15 million they shipped over to Iceland. It is probably the case that the Icelandic £15 million does not represent the entire ‘rainy day’ nest egg accumulated by the Council, which, of course, would be seen as prudent financial management.

Well, it would if the capitalist system wasn’t corrupt, and if the Council had not invested such a large sum of money with banks that lay outwith the scope and regulation of the UK Financial Services Authority.

Because of the decision the Council took to place such a substantial sum of money in foreign banks, we - and they - now have a period of great uncertainty. In Iceland, the government has moved to safeguard only deposits made by Icelandic citizens, organisations and companies.

Here, in the UK, the Labour Government has stated that individual British investors will see their money safeguarded. Gordon Brown has even used anti-terror legislation to freeze UK-based assets of the Icelandic banks that collapsed in the past week. Councils, charities, police authorities and health boards, however, appear to be a different story.

We can question the wisdom of North Ayrshire Council in placing millions of pounds in foreign banks, but the local authority would be justified in asking why it is that a Labour Government has been prepared to splash billions of pounds to safeguard banks and private sector investors, but is reluctant to offer the same level of help to investors from the public sector.

The banks in which North Ayrshire Council invested had triple A ratings, until they collapsed earlier this week. In financial terms they were seen as a safe bet - but in the world of international capitalism, any bet can go spectacularly wrong.

Capitalism is built on greed and exploitation. The founding principle of the capitalist system is the creation of wealth, but not for everyone. In order for the capitalist system to work, the majority of people have to be exploited. In order for capitalists to make profit, workers - the real wealth creators - have to be paid less than their labour is actually worth. It is a corrupt system.

Over the last few weeks we have seen the whole capitalist system brought to its knees. Even in the greatest exponent of the free market system, America, we have seen the government nationalise banks and financial institutions. The same has happened in the UK. public finance - our money - has been used to bail out the failures of the free market economy, who for years have told us that they do things so much better than the public sector. They don’t, and the last weeks have proved that point once and for all.

The UK bail out of failing banks has seen the Labour Government take stakes in the financial organisations, but has stopped short of outright nationalisation. That is a pity, because nationalisation of the country’s banking system is exactly what we need. Such a move would be in the interests of all the people, not just investors.

Banks that were run in the interests of the people, not in the pursuit of mega-million pound profits, could offer reasonable and government-backed returns on investment for individual savers, companies and public bodies. How much less would the four North Ayrshire schools have cost that were built recently using the PPP funding method if the Council could simply have gone to a state owned bank to secure the capital required? How much better would it have been for North Ayrshire Council Tax-payers if the local authority could have borrowed from the state, at a favourably low rate of interest, and could have repaid the money spread over a period of around 60 years?

Compare that proposition with what actually happened - where the Council entered into a deal with private companies backed by off-shore financial speculators, each of which is taking huge profits from the deal. Our money has gone into the pockets of those like the spivs and speculators that have brought down well-established banks, rather than going into the education of our children, and into producing sound public buildings that will actually still be around, and in good condition, by the time the money used to build them has been repaid.

In our own interests we really need to look beyond the smoke and mirrors of the capitalist financial speculators. We don’t need them. What we do need is banks and financial institutions we can trust. We need to transform our society so that people are put before profit.

Nationalised banks, backed by the state funding that has just bailed out the capitalist spivs, could be the solid foundation needed to really regenerate communities the length and breadth of the country.

If there was a national bank, offering maximum security and favourable returns to investors, what reason would local authorities like North Ayrshire Council have for taking risks by putting huge sums of money into foreign banks?

By putting £15 million into two Icelandic banks, the Council were looking to make money. They were speculating with our money. They were acting like capitalists, rather than the representative body of the people of North Ayrshire.

As I write, we just have to hope they haven’t gambled and lost.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com October 4 2008

The power to end poverty lies in our hands

In the week in which further billions of pounds have been made available to shore-up failed banks and financial institutions - and to bail-out the extremely well paid people responsible for the precarious positions of those banks and institutions - here is the statistic that should shame us all: in North Ayrshire, every fourth child is living in poverty.
Actually, I exaggerated that figure. It isn’t 25% of North Ayrshire children that are living in poverty, it’s only 23%. Does that make you feel better? No, of course it doesn’t - or at least it shouldn’t.

One child living in poverty is one too many. For almost every fourth child in North Ayrshire to be in that position is hard-and-fast evidence that we, as a society, have got our priorities wrong.

This week our prime minister said he would “do whatever it takes” to solve the problem. Not the problem of poverty, of course. Our prime minister and his New Labour Government will do whatever it takes, and spend however much is needed, to bail-out the bankrupt capitalist system. They will do that, and they will do it now. Meanwhile, ending child poverty in this relatively rich country remains an aspiration to be achieved by 2020.

In fact, the New Labour Government’s current commitment is not to end child poverty, but to halve it in the UK by 2010. The Campaign to End Child Poverty is this Saturday (October 4) holding a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square, with the aim of keeping the government to that promise. In other words, the campaign wants to make sure there is no slippage in the government’s promise - a promise that, even if achieved, will still leave thousands of young people in this country living below the poverty line for at least another 12 years.

According to the Campaign to End Child Poverty, unless the UK Labour Government is prepared to set aside £3 billion in its next budget, it will fail to keep its promise to halve child poverty in the UK by 2010. How many billions of pounds has the same Labour Government committed over the last couple of weeks to companies and corporations in the City of London, simply to shore-up the prices of stocks and shares?

Of course, successive Westminster Governments - Tory and Labour - have told us that the capitalist system benefits everyone. The more successful the financial markets, the more profitable is the national economy, and the more wealth there is to trickle down to the ordinary man and woman in the street. That’s the theory, but some of us have been arguing for a very long time that, in practice, that theory doesn’t work - and the events of recent weeks have proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Under this Labour Government, the gap between the rich and the poor in society has widened - the rich have got richer, while the poor have got poorer. As Tommy Sheridan once put it, “The Labour Party has gone from being the party of the millions, to the party of the millionaires.”

I can remember taking part in a parliamentary debate on poverty. Opposition MSPs made speeches that referred to statistics showing more people in Scotland were living in poverty than had been the case a generation ago. In response, Labour ministers in the then Scottish Executive cited figures, which they claimed showed the Government had reduced the number of Scots living in absolute poverty. That was the line of defence the then government parties (Labour and the Lib Dems) sought to use in the debate: they drew a distinction between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ poverty, and claimed success for moving some people from absolute poverty to just relative poverty.

It made me feel sick to hear very well-paid politicians argue that people existing in relative poverty should apparently be grateful to the Labour/Lib Dem Scottish Executive and the Labour Government in London for the fact that their lives had marginally improved, but that they were still living in poverty.

In my contribution to that parliamentary debate, I made the point that if you are poor you know you’re poor, and it doesn’t matter one bit to you whether you are living in relative or absolute poverty - you are still extremely poor and you still struggle to feed your kids.

I steered clear of statistics in my speech, instead I referred to real people and how being poor impacts on them, and I didn’t have to go to Glasgow or any other inner city location to find the poor. They were, and are, all around us here in North Ayrshire.

I spoke about young women in the Three Towns who often didn’t eat, so that there was enough food for their children. I spoke about the impact poverty has on children, from poor diet, to being set apart from their pals because of the clothes they wore; I spoke about schoolchildren not being able to take part in the activities their pals did, because their own parents couldn’t afford the couple of pounds the activities cost. I spoke about the negative impact poverty has on the education of young people: it’s much more difficult to concentrate on your homework if you have to do it in the only room in the house where there is a heater, and where brothers and sisters are playing, and a television is blaring.

These were not stories made up for effect. These were, and are, the reality of local people.

In that parliamentary debate I also told of the kind-faced man in his sixties who, every Monday, met up with a group of young women in one of Ardrossan’s main streets. He then gave the women a lift to the Post Office. Wasn't that good of him?

Well, actually, no it wasn't good of him. The man wasn't giving the women a lift to the Post Office out of the goodness of his heart. He was a money lender. He held the women’s ‘Monday books’ (Social Security benefit payment books) as collateral against the money they had borrowed from him, at exorbitant rates of repayment, and he took them to the Post Office so that he could get their money before they spent it on food or clothes for their children.

That is the reality of poverty in the Three Towns. It is a story not of ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’, but of grinding hardship and unending pressure. Poverty is a trap. Once you are in it, it is extremely difficult to get out of it.

Of course, it would help if we elected politicians who gave a greater priority to providing a better life for all the citizens and all the children of this country, than they do to spending billions of pounds on nuclear weapons of mass destruction, that we will never use, or multi-billions of pounds on bailing out wealthy bankers.

Its all about priorities. If we wanted to, we could eradicate poverty in this country, and indeed in the world, and we could do it relatively quickly. All it would take is for us to elect politicians who put society before capital, and people before profit.

That power is in our hands. At election time, its up to us how we use it.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com September 27 2008

North Ayrshire needs jobs

So, what did Gordon Brown say in his speech to the Labour Party Conference that would impact on us here in the constituency of North Ayrshire & Arran? In short, the answer to that question is, not a lot.

Since the demise of ICI at Ardeer, Shell and the commercial dock in Ardrossan, along with numerous manufacturing companies spread around the district, North Ayrshire has declined to a position where we have persistently high unemployment and some of the worst areas of deprivation in Scotland.

The area’s demise began under the Tory Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, which implemented policies that destroyed traditional heavy industry, and has continued under the Blair and Brown New Labour Governments.

Think back to 1997 when the Major Government was in its death throws. Shiney, happy New Labour told us, in the song by D:ream, that ’things can only get better’. An awful lot of people believed that to be the case, and an awful lot of people have been badly let down.

For those of us in areas like North Ayrshire, things have not got better. If anything, they have continued to worsen.

In the past year or so we have seen the creation of another regeneration company, which, we are told, will lead to the regeneration of the Three Towns, Kilwinning and Irvine. So far, in the Three Towns, we have seen precious few signs of the regeneration the area needs. The Irvine Bay Urban Regeneration Company (IBURC) has embarked on a programme that has seen expensive private housing built on land that formerly was part of the commercial harbour area in Ardrossan. As the3towns.com has previously reported, the new housing is priced way beyond the reach of the average Three Towns’ couple, and that was before the impact of the credit crunch saw mortgages become even harder to secure.

In regeneration terms, it may yet be early days - certainly we have to hope that is the case - because the new expensive, private housing is, so far, the extent of the regeneration company’s efforts. When pressed about what it has done to bring much-needed jobs to the area, IBURC states that it has renovated two shops in Ardrossan’s Princes Street and hopes to expand the nearby yachting marina. It says that, apparently in all seriousness. Two shops, and an aspiration to expand the facility that ultimately killed the commercial port of Ardrossan, formerly one of the area’s biggest employers, and that‘s it. Until IBURC and/or government announces plans for a major job creation programme in North Ayrshire, the current regeneration project will not be taken seriously by local people. As things stand, the regeneration programme being run by IBURC is a cosmetic exercise. It appears that nothing is being done to really regenerate the area.

North Ayrshire needs jobs. Until local people can find secure, well-paid employment, the area will remain depressed and deprived, and no amount of unaffordable private housing will change that fact.

I have long argued that North Ayrshire - and, for that matter, Scotland - needs to get back to creating jobs where, to put it simply, we make things. We need to recreate a manufacturing base. The Tory/New Labour idea that manufacturing jobs could be replaced by service sector employment was always a nonsense. According to Thatcher, Major and their New Labour successors, it didn’t matter that areas like North Ayrshire lost one particular type of work, so long as it was replaced by another.

I can remember in the early 1990s, as a councillor sitting on the Council’s Economic Development Committee, receiving reports that listed jobs lost and jobs created in North Ayrshire. Some months these reports showed more jobs being created than lost, which didn’t accord with what I was seeing in local communities. That being the case, I asked if Council officials could provide a more detailed breakdown of the job figures, for example by sector and gender.

It was only once these more detailed reports began to appear that the true picture emerged of employment trends in North Ayrshire. The jobs being lost were mainly full-time, well-paid manufacturing positions, while the jobs being created were part-time and relatively poorly-paid. There was also a gender split: it was mainly men who were losing their jobs and women who were taking up the part-time, low-paid vacancies.

Since then the situation has worsened. There are now very few full-time, well-paid jobs anywhere in North Ayrshire, either for men or women. The biggest employer, by far, is actually North Ayrshire Council, while the largest private sector employer is British Energy at Hunterston. Other than those two organisations, every other employer is relatively small and employment opportunities are few and far between.

While a Member of the Scottish Parliament, I put forward the proposition that we, as a country, would not be able to return to the days when there were so many manufacturing jobs that people could pick and choose where they worked. However, I offered the opinion that this should not stop us attempting to recreate a strong manufacturing sector.

My idea was that Scotland should choose three or four particular industries in which we could specialise. Education and vocational skills could be targeted towards providing workers in those industries, from craft apprentices, through skilled tradespeople and onto qualified and highly-trained managers. Building a reputation for quality in these areas of industry, it would then be possible for Scotland to export our manufactured products to the world.

One potential area for specialisation that I highlighted at the time was aircraft manufacture. Ayrshire was formerly the home of aircraft manufacture in Scotland, with the Jetstream 31 and 41, and the ATP (Advanced Turbo Prop) all having been built at Prestwick.

The Jetstream was recognised as the best in its class of aircraft, but its manufacturer, British Aerospace Regional Aircraft, could not compete on cost against Bombardier of Quebec and Embraer of Brazil, primarily because those companies received substantial government subsidy. The UK government was barred by European Union subsidy rules from financially backing the Jetstream.

It would require the British Government or a future independent Scottish Government to negotiate a derogation in terms of EU subsidy rules - or preferably for a future independent Scotland to operate from outwith the European Union - but in those circumstances aircraft manufacture could recommence at Prestwick, with great opportunity created for smaller Ayrshire-based manufacturing companies to feed into the production process.

There are other similar areas of manufacturing and production where Scotland could specialise and where high-quality, well paid jobs could be created. All that would be required is the political will.

Unfortunately, no such political will currently exists. Certainly, Gordon Brown offered no hope of any change for areas like North Ayrshire when he addressed the Labour Conference last week.

‘Thing’s can only get better’? Not under New Labour or any other Westminster government they won’t.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com September 20 2008

Sectarianism - Scotland's shame

 Aren’t those wacky, fun-loving Rangers fans just a hoot? What hilarious funsters they are with their witty wee song about the Irish potato famine being over, so the predominantly Roman Catholic supporters of Celtic can ‘go home’ to Ireland, the land of their forefathers.

The song, to the tune of the Beach Boys hit ‘Sloop John B’, goes, ‘Why don’t you go home? Why don’t you go home? The famine’s over, why don’t you go home?’ Hilarious, eh?

In attempting to justify the singing of the song at the most recent Old Firm match, which Rangers won 4-2, a spokesman for the Rangers Supporters Trust was this week quoted saying that it was aimed at “mocking the myths rival fans perpetuate”.

Myths? The word myth can be used simply to refer to a story, but the most commonly understood meaning of the word ’myth’ refers to a story or belief that is probably not true. So let’s look at the ‘myths’ Celtic fans are accused of perpetuating, and to which the Rangers fans refer in their ’famine song’.

It is no myth that Celtic Football Club was formed out of the poor Irish-Catholic immigrant population in the Glasgow of the 1880s. It is also no myth that many members of that immigrant community had ended up in Glasgow after being forced to leave their homeland because of ’the great hunger’ or potato famine of 1845~50. These people came to Scotland looking for the work that would allow them to feed their families. Back home in Ireland, over 1,000,000 men, women and children were dying from hunger. Those are facts, not myths (stories that are probably not true).

If the core of the Celtic support was formed by an immigrant Jewish community, would it be acceptable, not to mention funny, if Rangers fans sang, ’Why don’t you go home? Why don’t you go home? The gassing’s over, why don’t you go home?’

Of course it wouldn’t be acceptable. It would be shocking and almost unimaginably offensive. So why do some people think it is okay to ’wind-up’ those of Irish descent by singing a song that refers to over a million Irish people dying because they were poor and hungry? Well, that’s the Old Firm for you. As Billy Connolly once said, “An Old Firm game is where supporters of Rangers and Celtic go to a football ground and shout abuse at each other for 90 minutes. Then they go home and put the telly on to find out what the score was.”

The sectarianism generated by the Rangers/Protestant - Celtic/Catholic divide has been referred to as ‘Scotland’s shame’, and indeed it is; but that shame runs deeper than just footballing or religious rivalry.

In January 2005, the then First Minister of Scotland, Jack McConnell MSP, launched and headed a Scottish Executive anti-sectarian initiative. Indeed, Mr McConnell recently criticised the current First Minister, Alex Salmond, for what the former Labour leader felt was the SNP Government’s failure to build on his initiative since it came to power in May 2007.

Back in 2005, as the McConnell initiative was being launched, I wrote an article on Scotland’s sectarian shame and how Jack’s plan would fail. Unusually, the article was published in both of Scotland’s quality daily newspapers, the Herald and the Scotsman.

I was reminded of the article this week as the ’famine song’ once again revealed the sore of Scotland’s sectarianism. I’ve copied it below. When reading the article, please remember that it was written almost four years ago, and consider whether anything has changed. Please also bear in mind that the First Minister referred to in the article was Jack McConnell.

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Jack McConnell's new attempt to address and tackle sectarianism in Scotland will fail. It will fail for two main reasons: firstly, the two Glasgow football clubs on either side of the religious divide need the revenue generated by their religion-motivated fans; and secondly, because Jack McConnell and his Scottish Government are unionists and unionists are a significant part of the problem.

For British unionists to continue to dominate and govern Scotland, the status quo has to be maintained; and for the status quo to be maintained, Jack McConnell and unionist politicians have to ensure that the people of Scotland - primarily the working class people of Scotland - continue to be divided. The alternative to that would see the people of Scotland shake off historic indoctrination and come together as the nation of Scotland. That alternative would unite the talents and abilities of all Scots. The alternative - the Scottish alternative - would see this nation's interests as paramount. The Scottish alternative would free Scots from the long-instilled notions that they should either aspire to being British or long to be Irish. The Scottish alternative would see Scots proud to be Scottish and focussed on really making Scotland what Jack McConnell claims it is, 'the best wee nation in the world'. But the Scottish alternative could only come about after Scotland had retaken its place on the world stage as an independent nation. However, to a British unionist like Jack McConnell, an independent Scotland is to be resisted at all costs.

It's said that, in polite company, one should never discuss politics, religion or football. That may well be the case, but if Scotland is to tackle sectarianism, we have to accept that all three subjects are intrinsically linked in our country. That being the case, we have to tackle them head on, and anyone too polite to understand that reality should stop reading now.

Scotland's football is, of course, dominated by Rangers and Celtic. Today, in public, both clubs will agree that sectarianism is a problem and will state that they will do everything they can to help eradicate the problem. In private, however, the clubs know that the religious affiliation of their respective supporters is the fundamental driving force of their allegiance to those clubs and that, as a consequence, to eradicate the sectarianism associated with Rangers and Celtic would require the clubs to publicly denounce the linking of any religious persuasion with their teams. To begin to break the sectarian links, Rangers Football Club would have to take every opportunity to state publicly that, if the reason a person supports Rangers is because they are a Protestant, then Rangers consider that to be unacceptable and don't want the support of that person. Likewise, Celtic Football Club would have to reject any supporter whose principal motivation for supporting Celtic was the fact that he or she was raised as a Roman Catholic.

Such rejection of religion-motivated supporters would be the first step towards Rangers and Celtic really beginning to tackle the sectarianism that blights their clubs, but it won't happen. It won't happen because, if it did, Rangers and Celtic would be rejecting the majority of their supporters. Yes, it is only a minority of supporters of both clubs who are openly sectarian, but the reality is that the majority of the supporters of Rangers and Celtic owe their footballing allegiance to their religious upbringing. That's a fact, and if Rangers and Celtic were to publicly reject anyone whose primary reason for supporting the club was that person's religious background, then Rangers and Celtic could be committing financial suicide.

That's the reality of the situation we face today. Rangers and Celtic - like the First Minister - will talk publicly about tackling sectarianism, but both clubs - directors, officials and supporters alike - know that they can only reject the ties that link the clubs to different religions at a very considerable cost.

The football-based sectarianism of the supporters of Rangers and Celtic is the most visible aspect of the problem that blights Scottish society, but it is only a symptom. The real problem lies much deeper and links us back to politics and British unionist domination of Scotland. Because of our country's religious history and the centuries-long domination of our land by our English neighbour, we have one significant section of the population that considers itself British and another that wishes it was Irish.

We can see the British at Ibrox, with their Union flags, singing Rule Britannia and showing how British they are by wearing England football jerseys. Meanwhile, across the city, the Irish will be at Parkhead, waving the flag of the Irish Republic and signing the Fields of Athenry.

Of course, the previously referred-to religion-based divisions apply to this situation but, again, they represent simply a manifestation of a symptom of the problem. The football-based sectarianism in Scotland is born of the real problem, the divisions and resentments created by the historic British/English domination of its smaller neighbours, Ireland and Scotland.

The First Minister may well believe that he means it when he says he wants to rid Scotland of sectarianism, but as a British unionist politician, can he do that and also maintain British unionist control over Scotland?

Scotland will only genuinely begin to tackle the sectarianism that blights our country when we, ourselves, get over the inferiority that drives sections of our population to aspire to being British/English or Irish. Scotland will remain divided and sectarian until we retake our place as an independent nation and the positive focus of the people of Scotland is concentrated on the benefits of being Scottish.

Jack McConnell is a unionist. Scotland's First Minister believes that our country should be a devolved region of Britain and that our Scottish Parliament should play a subservient role to the British Parliament in London. By definition, then, Scotland's First Minister defends the status quo that drives the aspirant British to fly their Union flags and sing Rule Britannia, and which, in turn, stokes the actions of the would-be Irish in shunning this British control. Why some of the would-be Irish would then vote for unionist political parties, thereby securing continued British control of Scotland, is a logic beyond my comprehension.

For Jack McConnell's initiative to work in tackling sectarianism in Scotland, the First Minister has to recognise that we, as a nation, first have to dismantle the structures that have created the Protestant/British, Catholic/Irish divides in Scotland. To free Scotland of sectarianism, we need to free Scotland of the British state and British media indoctrination that drives our people to want to be something other than Scottish.

A Scottish people united in our Scottishness and working to deliver a better Scotland for all of our people, rather than divided on religious and British/Irish lines is a prerequisite to leaving behind the bitterness that has stoked the flames of sectarianism in this country.

A united Scottish people with the power to transform our nation will only come about when we re-take our independence and raise our children to be proud of being Scottish. Jack McConnell, as a British unionist, will fight to prevent that happening - and his anti-sectarian initiative will fail.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com September 13 2008

Capitalism has failed

Capitalism doesn’t work.

If anyone needed further evidence of the veracity of that statement, they surely got it this week when the American government nationalised the country’s two major mortgage providers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Never again should we hear the mantra of the free marketeers that private enterprise is much more efficient than the public sector. It just isn’t true.

All around us private enterprise is hitting the buffers, and who is expected to pick up the tab for this failure of the capitalist system? That’s right, the public sector. Or to put it another way, you and me.

Billions of public dollars have been made available to bail-out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because, we are told, if those two private companies were allowed to fail, the entire American economy could have collapsed, and could have taken with it the economies of just about every western democracy.

Over here, a similar story happened when the Labour Government decided it was a good use of millions of public pounds to prop-up Northern Rock, a private bank. Note the major difference between the actions of the US and UK governments: in the States, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been nationalised, they have been taken into public ownership, but the UK government has made millions of pounds available to Northern Rock while allowing the company to remain in private ownership.

If public funds are made available to rescue failed private businesses, those companies should become the property of the state.

The most glaring of the private enterprise failures bailed-out by the public purse in the UK was British Energy, operators of Britain’s nuclear power facilities, including Hunterston.

Millions-upon-millions of pounds have been poured into British Energy by the UK Labour Government. In fact, had the government not made such funding available, British Energy would have gone out of business. So uneconomic is the production of energy through nuclear generation that it cannot be done without massive public subsidy - and that is before we even consider the billions of pounds of public money that we pay to clean up the nuclear mess. British Energy doesn’t pay for that, we do - and there is still no answer to the question of what we do with the toxic nuclear waste we have already created through nuclear energy generation. Shame on the UK Labour Government - and a majority of North Ayrshire councillors - who want to continue ploughing millions of pounds of public money into the privately-owned nuclear industry, and to bequeath to our children and grandchildren the task of dealing with even more radioactive toxic waste.

In 2004, long before the current economic problems kicked-in, I wrote a pamphlet called ‘Scotland’s Youth - Scotland’s Future’ (published by Beith 1320 Booklets). The point of the pamphlet was to set out my vision of what an independent Scotland should look like if we are to provide the best possible future for all of our citizens.

I remember that, at the time, the main idea from the booklet that the national media latched onto was my suggestion that the public utilities should be renationalised, without compensation being paid to shareholders.

The reason some sections of the pro-private enterprise national media highlighted that aspect of my independence vision was to brand me as one of the ’loony left’. According to the right-wing free-marketeers, anyone who advocated taking private companies back into public ownership was mad. To them, there was a simple rule that was not to be challenged - private ownership was good, public ownership bad. Events have proved that ideology to have been profoundly wrong, and the ‘bad‘ public sector is now having to save the necks of the private enterprise money-men.

Meanwhile, nothing has changed regarding my opinion on the ownership of the public utilities. Of course providers of electricity and gas should be in public ownership. We, the public, need electricity and gas for essential aspects of our lives, such as heating our homes and cooking our food. We should, therefore, own the mechanisms for providing us with that essential energy - and that goes for oil, too.

The people currently calling for a windfall tax on energy companies to help offset price rises are missing the point. Energy companies are private enterprises, which have at their very core the objective of making as much money as they possibly can. It is that greed that drives the capitalist system. What right does government have to penalise private companies for doing what they exist to do?

The answer to prohibitively high energy prices is not to levy additional taxes on private companies, it is to nationalise those organisations, to take them back into public ownership.

Those of us who were politically active in the 1980s will remember how Margaret Thatcher’s Tory Government privatised the public utilities. They sold-off electricity, gas and telecoms to private enterprise. In reality, they virtually gave away the utilities to companies whose owners were donors to, and supporters of, the Tory Party. Then, within a few years, Tory ministers were taking up highly-paid directorships with the private companies that had bought our utilities at knock-down prices.

Those utilities were public assets. They belonged to you and me, and Thatcher had no right to sell them.

As I put it back in 2004, we should take back those public assets, and we certainly should not pay any compensation to shareholders in the private companies that currently run them. Shareholders have made good profit over the time the utilities have been in private ownership - they have made more than enough. In essence, they have profited from stolen goods - stolen from you and me - and if they have a problem with those goods being returned to their rightful owners, then they should take it up with the people who stole them in the first place, Margaret Thatcher and her Tory Government.

Through the privately-owned media, we have been indoctrinated into believing that the private sector was inherently better than the public sector at running everything from local schools to national energy infrastructures. The North Ayrshire PPP for Schools Project and the current energy price rip-off show that is not the case.

Public utilities and services provided to the public should be in the ownership of the public, and should be administered and run on our behalf by publicly-elected representatives. By removing the greed motive of private enterprise, and its need to generate profit, decent wages can be paid to workers employed in the delivery of services to the public, and energy can be delivered at prices people can afford.

All around us we can see the results of the failure of capitalism. It doesn’t have to be that way. Social ownership and provision of services works in our interests.

Capitalism has failed. Its time for socialism.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com September 6 2008

A fair tax

The Scottish Parliament kicked itself back into life this week after the long summer recess.

Now, firstly, let me make quite clear that I’m not having a go at MSPs over the length of that summer recess. MSPs don’t determine its length and, contrary to what the tabloid newspapers would have you believe, recess is not a holiday. Most MSPs will, if they are lucky, manage a couple of weeks away with the family during recess, but the majority of the time away from parliament is spent in local offices, meeting constituents and trying to help resolve the issues they raise.

In fact, most MSPs will get through more work during recess than they can manage when they have to spend the best part of the week in Edinburgh. Of course, in Edinburgh, their workload is very different.

Bringing forward legislation, if your party is in government, or scrutinising proposed laws if you are in opposition. If you think that doesn’t sound like hard work, I challenge you to sit through a Stage 3 debate, where proposed legislation, and any amendments - there can be hundreds - are debated, line by line, and then voted on. It might not be hard manual graft, but it certainly leaves you mentally drained, particularly if you are an Independent without party support.

You see, when you are a member of one of the political parties, you are provided with a sheet that tells you how to vote on every one of the possibly hundreds of amendments. You don’t have to know what you’re voting on; you don’t even have to be in the chamber until the division bell sounds and you have to scuttle back in to vote. Of course, the party members who have responsibility for the portfolio into which the subject being debated falls, they have to know what each and every amendment means, and it is they who provide other members of their party with a ’voting sheet’.

That doesn’t happen when you are an Independent. There are no other members with portfolio responsibility; instead, you have to know what the Bill is about and you have to try to follow the debate on every amendment, so that you know which way to vote when a division is called. Great fun.

Anyway, the first debate for members returning from recess was on the SNP’s Programme for Government. You may have seen or read about the outcome of the debate. First Minister Alex Salmond set out what the SNP Government sees as its priorities for the forthcoming session of parliament. They’re going to be busy.

Mr Salmond announced that his government intends to bring forward no fewer than 15 Bills, including one that would see the scrapping of the hated Council Tax and its replacement by a local income tax, based on a person’s ability to pay. In other words, a fair tax.

Now, obviously, no-one likes to pay tax, but if we have to, and we do, then the tax has to be fair and seen to be fair. We shouldn’t be forced to pay more than we can afford, but neither should we pay less than our fair share.

Under the Council Tax, which is based on the assessed value of the property in which we live, a single pensioner on a very limited fixed income can be hit with a massive tax bill because they continue to live in what was the family home. Just because someone has, for the sake of argument, a detached house in one of our more leafy suburbs, doesn’t mean that they also have a healthy disposable income. That pensioner with only the state pension and maybe a small works pension as income would seriously struggle to pay a tax based, not on their income and what they actually have to spend, but on what someone believes is the value of their home.

The only fair tax is one that is based on a person’s ability to pay. Under a local income tax, just like national income tax, if you don’t have an income, then you don’t pay the tax. If you have a moderate income, you will pay a moderate rate of tax; and if you earn megabucks, then you will be expected to meet your obligations to society by paying a bit more in tax.

Under the SNP’s local income tax, the vast majority of Scots would be better off, but that didn‘t stop right-wing newspapers, like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, from running front page stories claiming that the SNP was to sock the middle class with Salmond‘s Tartan Tax. The only way a member of the so-called middle class would pay more under a local income tax is if their income was sufficiently high to warrant an increased tax contribution. An income tax does exactly what it says on the tin - it is based on your income: no income - no tax; low income - low tax contribution; middle level income - middle level tax contribution; high level of income - high tax contribution. That is fair.

If we want Council services - and certainly we all moan when those services break down or are withdrawn - then we have to make sure local authorities are properly funded, and the way that we fund those services is through taxation. No-one should be asked to pay more than they can afford, and no-one should be paying less than their fair share.

In parliament, the only obvious supporters of the SNPs proposal is the Liberal Democrats, who also favour a local income tax. However, the SNP has changed its long-standing commitment to have the local income tax set locally, by each local authority. What the SNP’s current local income tax proposes is a centrally-set tax of 3p-in-the-pound, covering all 32 of Scotland’s local councils. The Lib Dems support the former SNP position of a locally-set tax, so there might be no agreement between the two parties.

The Labour Party supports the Council Tax, albeit with a few extra valuation bands added to those that currently exist. Such changes would make very little difference and would still be based, not on a person’s ability to pay, but on the notional value of their property.

Tories, being Tories, don’t care about fairness and would rather the rich got to keep their money, while those of us that are less well off pay more tax to make up for the wealthy shirking their responsibility.

It may be, therefore, that the SNP Government is unable to get its Local Income Tax Bill through parliament. That would be a great shame.

Of course, if it turns out that Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems band together to defeat the introduction of a fair taxation system that would benefit the vast majority of us, then we will know who does not deserve our vote when the next election comes around.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com August 30 2008

The British flag

Following-on from last week’s article about the anti-Scottish nature of God Save the Queen, I was approached during the week in a local shop by a man who strongly objected to Scottish athletes at the Olympics standing on the medal podium as the British national anthem played and the British Union flag climbed the flagpole.

I explained about Scotland not being a real nation, just a region of Britain, and how that won’t change until we Scots get off our knees and retake our independence.

“Aye”, he said, “but why should Scots athletes not be allowed to fly the saltire rather than the Butcher’s apron?”

It was his use of the description ’Butcher’s apron’ that reminded me of an article I wrote in 2006, after the SNP had apologised for one of its MSPs describing the British flag in those terms.

I dug it out. This is why I thought the SNP was wrong to apologise:


“So, the SNP has apologised after one of its MSPs used the phrase “Butcher’s apron” to describe the British Union flag in a press release.

British Unionist political opponents were said to be outraged at the use of this phrase, with the Tories describing themselves as “appalled” at this “separatist nonsense”. Well, no surprise there, then. No surprise at all – so just why did the SNP apologise?

Apparently, so the Unionist line goes, to describe the British flag in such terms is to insult the thousands of Scots who have served and are serving under the flag in HM Armed Forces, and those Scots – presumably Unionist Scots - who still look fondly on the Union flag and, indeed, the British Union itself. Had the Unionist critics of the phrase not changed it to read “a butcher’s apron” – with the imagery of a blood-soaked rag (although that might actually be not too far from the truth) - rather than ‘the Butcher’s apron’ – as reference to the flag carried into battle by ‘Butcher’ Cumberland at Culloden in 1746 - they might not have been on quite such shaky ground. In addition, had they even attempted to understand the origins of the phrase, rather than rushing out press releases of their own in order that they could be outraged and appalled, then their petty party politics would not have reflected quite so badly on them and would not have exposed those London-based British Unionist parties as seriously ignorant of Scottish history and, in a more contemporary sense, deeply, deeply anti-Scottish.

Notwithstanding the fact that virtually every ‘Scottish’ regiment of the British Army has in its past some shameful ‘battle honour’ from its role in the name of British imperialism and Empire and in subjugating and exploiting the people of developing countries around the globe, a close look at supporters of an independent Scotland will find many ex-service personnel, plenty of whom were driven to their belief in a normal, independent Scotland by their experiences in the British Army. So, not all Scots who have served or who are still serving in the British armed forces will be upset by the historically accurate description of the British Union flag as the Butcher’s apron.

Indeed, isn’t it a strange wee anomaly that recruitment advertisements for ‘Scottish’ regiments of the British Army have, in recent years, relied heavily on images of the Scottish saltire and the slogan ‘Scottish soldier’ to attract young Scots to join up when, at the same time, the British establishment refuse to allow any flag other than the British Union flag to fly above Edinburgh castle and, therefore, above Scotland’s capital city? Also, isn’t that anomaly compounded when we see images of Scottish soldiers in Iraq - putting their lives at risk in the interests of American oil corporations - and flying Scotland’s flag from their vehicles - particularly when we consider that Scotland’s devolved parliament was denied any say in the deployment of ‘Scottish soldiers’ and when the people of Scotland overwhelmingly opposed the illegal war and subsequent occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq.

So, it would have been extraordinary if the SNP’s British Unionist opponents hadn’t deliberately misrepresented the press release. It would have been extraordinary if the SNP’s British Unionist opponents hadn’t manufactured outrage in order that they could be appalled – particularly in the week when Gordon Brown urged us all to wrap ourselves in the red, white and blue and feel the warmth of the cuddly British State. It would have been extraordinary if the SNP’s British Unionist opponents hadn’t strongly disagreed with any assertion of the benefits to Scotland of retaking our independence, however that argument was phrased. So why did the SNP feel the need to apologise to its opponents, the same British Unionists who loathe the very idea of an independent Scotland, the independent Scotland that the SNP is supposed to have as its core belief?”


The answer I offered to that question back in 2006 was that the SNP was easing itself into a position where it was actually considered to be part of a Scottish establishment. It wanted to portray itself as a respectable party that could be trusted with the reigns of (very limited devolved) power.

Of course, that tactic worked. The SNP left behind it such baggage as those who might refer to the British Union flag as the Butcher’s apron. That is a decision the party was entitled to take, but the description it baulked at is no less accurate because the SNP no longer accepts it.

The term is an accurate reference to a terrible time in the history of Scotland, when British Government forces, marching under the British flag, and under the command of Marshal Wade and the Duke of Cumberland, butchered wounded Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden and then moved through the countryside murdering any Scot, young or old, who they believed had favoured the Jacobite cause.

Cumberland became known as the ‘butcher’ because of the blood-thirsty actions of British troops under his command, and the flag under which those troops marched, the British Union flag, was referred to as the Butcher’s apron in recognition of the Scots blood that was spilt.

Those are historical facts. Perhaps, then, any Scot who willingly accepts the British Union flag as their own, is unaware of its significance in the subjugation of Scotland or is willing to accept our country’s subservient role within the British Union.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com August 23 2008

Why Scotland fans booed God Save the Queen

I had a Mr Angry moment the other night. I was in the middle of painting a room in an empty house and had the radio on for company. As I happily slapped on the paint – I was never meant to be a decorator - I listened to the Real Radio Football Phone-In, presented by Ewan Cameron and Scotland football legend Alan Rough.

By the way, I mean it when I describe Alan Rough as a Scotland legend. During his career, Roughie came in for more than his fair share of stick, mainly from the English media, with most of it unwarranted. Okay, he did stand like a statue as shots from Cubillas (Peru), Zico (Brazil) and Johnny Rep (Netherlands) whizzed past him into the goal, but no-one could have stopped those shots. Alan Rough pulled off some phenomenal saves that kept Scotland in games we otherwise would have lost. Over the years, he certainly earned his place in the Scotland Hall of Fame. As for his co-host, Mr Cameron, a disc-jockey turned sports journalist, that is another matter.

The main topic being discussed on the programme was the behaviour of some Scotland fans at the previous night's international match against Northern Ireland at Hampden. More accurately, Ewan Cameron voiced his opinion that Scotland fans who booed the Northern Irish national anthem were “morons” and had “shamed” Scotland. Roughie simply made the point that he didn't know why the song had been booed, other than the fact it happened also to be the national anthem of England and, he thought, it must be related to them (England) being the old enemy.

As I listened, the phone lines were opened and callers agreed with Ewan Cameron's view – more than one offered the information that they happened to be Rangers fans; but that, of course, had no bearing on their view about the singing, and booing, of God Save the Queen. Aye right.

I was sure that, before long, someone would call in and actually inform Ewan and Roughie of the reason why many Scotland fans would boo God Save the Queen, but the call didn't come. One caller, described as a member of the Tartan Army, was put on air with the introduction from Cameron, “This should be interesting, he's going to tell us why he booed the Northern Irish national anthem.”

At last, I thought, but no: the caller had, indeed, booed God Save the Queen, but he'd done it for no other reason than he wanted to “wind up the opposition”.

Eventually, I couldn't take it any longer and I called the station myself. By that time I had become 'Angry of Ardrossan' and, after ranting at the poor guy who answered the phone, I was put on hold, awaiting Ewan Cameron's summons to speak. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of those nights and, after holding for a couple of minutes, the battery on my mobile decided to pack in. So, I never got to speak to Ewan and Roughie, and I never got to tell them just why so many Scotland fans would boo the national anthem of Northern Ireland.

The fact is, the act of booing God Save the Queen was not intended to be an insult to the Northern Irish team or the nation itself: neither was it simply because the song is also the national anthem of England, and for that matter Britain (unfortunately still including Scotland). The reason Scotland fans booed God Save the Queen is because it was written specifically as an anti-Scottish song; its purpose was to encourage Marshal Wade and his English forces as they sought to subjugate the Scots in the wake of the 1715 Jacobite uprising.

The most offensive verse reads:

Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid victory bring.
May he sedition hush
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the King.

Now, of course, there will be British Unionists who will say, “Yes, but that verse isn't sung anymore”, as if that makes it okay. The verse is there because the song is anti-Scottish, and is actually meant to be.

The other British Unionist line is, “For God's sake, that's all ancient history. Why bring that up?” Well, actually, history is what makes us the nation and people we are today – a nation still trying to find the confidence to re-establish itself as a sovereign state, and a people still subjugated to the extent that we are called “morons” when we voice our objection to an anti-Scottish song being sung at the home of our national football team.

Another line spun by Ewan Cameron was, “Chris Hoy is Scottish and he was happy to represent Britain and stand on the podium in China with God Save the Queen playing.” Actually, while Scotland remains just a region of Britain, rather than a nation in its own right, athletes like Chris Hoy don't have any option other than to represent Britain. As for him being happy with God Save the Queen, that would be entirely up to him. I don't know whether or not Chris Hoy might have been happier with Flower of Scotland playing while he accepted his three gold medals, but neither does Ewan Cameron. That didn't stop him making his comment, though.

Just for the record, the reason God Save the Queen was dropped as Scotland's national anthem at football matches was to bring to an end the totally absurd situation where Scotland fans booed their own national anthem: and the reason Scotland fans booed their own national anthem was because it was, and remains, anti-Scottish.

The Scotland fans who booed God Save the Queen at Hampden last Wednesday shamed no-one. They, rightly, objected to an anti-Scottish song being sung in Scotland. What really is shameful is that people like Ewan Cameron, and to a lesser extent Roughie, broadcasters on a Scottish radio station, are so ignorant of Scottish history that they had no idea why God Save the Queen is offensive to many Scots.

(c) the3towns.com

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the3towns.com August 16 2008

Workers are entirely justified in taking strike action

On Wednesday (August 20), unless senior council officials see sense, North Ayrshire Council workers will take strike action in support of a wage claim. Well, most council workers will withdraw their labour on that day, but not all. The handsomely-rewarded senior management - some in receipt of salaries in the region of £90,000-£100,000, paid for by you and me – will be at their desks as normal, and some will attempt to brand the workers as irresponsible for preventing local people from receiving council services for one day.

Just for the record, and before senior managers attempt their distortion of reality, while council workers are on strike, cover will still be provided for 'life and limb' services. What that means is that in certain essential areas workers will continue to provide a service, on a par with public holiday cover. These areas include Residential Care, Home Care, Child Protection, Mental Health, Emergency Planning, Emergency Housing/Building Maintenance and Public Health.

So, while council workers are losing out on a day's pay in order to advance their legitimate call for a realistic wage increase, ess