Nationalist Mythbusting... and some other stuff

No, surely he CAN'T have said THAT...

2012-01-14T14:20:00.004Z

Oh yes he did.

"Mr Salmond told the Morning Show on Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE: “I am sure, as many people in Ireland will remember, that sometimes people in leadership positions in big countries find it very difficult not to bully small countries.

“Of course, what we have seen – as everybody knows – over the last week is the most extraordinary attempt to intimidate Scotland by Westminster politicians.”

Later in the interview, he made a similar remark, saying: “As again the people of Ireland will know, bullying and hectoring the Scottish people from London ain’t going to work.”"

What do I feel about it?

Dismay at his stupidity.

Horror at yet another revelation of the ethno-centric, anti-English hatred which underlies the Nat project.

Oh yes, and anger: Salmond ought to be rather careful about drawing parallels between Scotland today and Ireland in the 1920s, just in case those parallels start coming true.

Couldn't have that, could we?

It didn't take long - Nat nastiness on display

2012-01-13T21:39:00.001Z

So according to Nat MSP and Salmond aide Joan Mcalpine, anyone who doesn't agree with the SNP is "anti-Scottish".

Depressing, disappointing, but hardly unexpected - I always knew that this was what they were like.

It goes to confirm something I have felt all along:

- When I see Salmond strutting, preening and dictating in his decidedly Il Duce-esque manner;

- When I see the serried ranks Nat MSPs behind him, cheering every word and slapping their flippers together like Sammy the Seal;

I hear the tramp of jackboots.

Since she started it, I now feel no constraints about having a go at la Mcalpine. She seems determined to set herself up as the Julie Burchill of Scottish politics.

What do I mean? Well it's not just coming out with outrageous and provocative statements. Those with long memories might recall Private Eye exposing the erstwhile Queen of the Groucho and now Doyenne of Brighton as using the same byline photo for many years and kilograms beyond its original date of validity.

La Mcalpine seems to have the same problem. Here she is in a recent pic:

And here is her blog byline picture:

Is this the same person?

In fact, was this EVER the same person?

I think we should be told.

GOTCHA! Cameron forces Salmond into early Referendum date announcement

2012-01-10T20:27:00.002Z

I didn't come up with it, the folks over at Tory Hoose did.

Couldn't think of a better way of putting it, so simply decided to nick it.

What is equally amusing is the way the Cybernattosphere is trying to spin this as some sort of win for them. Hilarious.

Rejoice. Just rejoice.

2011-12-10T15:31:00.003Z

David William Donald Cameron.

Statesman. Hero. Genius.

The Prime Minister who has just begun the process of righting our relationship with Europe, by doing no more than being honest with his European colleagues, his party, his coalition partners and most importantly with us.

And the real brilliance of it is that he has ended, once and for all, any possibility of our being dragged into ill-thought-out European schemes which we don't want, by getting them to decide to leave us. We are still in the EU and have it more or less where we want it; the single-currency mob are going to have to set up their ill-advised mechanisms outside it.

As for being "isolated"? I like Terry Smith's phrase: "if we are isolated, we might be as isolated as somebody who refused to join the Titanic just before it sailed."

And then to make things even better, up pops some Nat MEP (Alyn Smith) saying: "Give it six months and I think you will find the UK sinking a lot faster than the eurozone is. The eurozone is getting its act together. "

Cue uproarious belly-laughter. This guy is beyond lampoon and parody. What a contender, what a prat. A perfect example of the hate-blinded stupidity of the SNP.

Salmond, the liar with a direct connection to God

2011-10-23T19:35:00.004+01:00

Ah bless.

I see it hasn't taken long for it to go to his head.

His Immensity the Fat Minister is now claiming a direct connection to the Almighty.

He's also managed to work himself into a lather over several energy-related issues; remember, he is an expert "energy economist" by background, isn't he?

So first of all, he's offended that the UK Government has decided not to award £1bn of subsidy to a privately-owned Spanish company (that would be Scottish Power, sports fans) to make some ruinously expensive mods to Longannet power station to allow it to bury some of its CO2 emissions under the sea bed.

Which would incidentally make the power produced by that part of the station totally uneconomic, requiring yet more ongoing subsidies from US to allow it to operate.

Is he an idiot or a liar? Oh hang on, it's Salmond, he's both.

(By the way, isn't it crude, tawdry and offensive that he decides to declare his faith in a "creator of the universe" who has favoured us with all this renewable bounty at the moment that he's rowing with the Catholic Church over gay marriage? The man really is a sh1t.)

Back to the "renewables bounty". Remember, he gave us a "vision" and a "pledge" that Scotland would be 100% renewable-powered by 2020.

As previously blogged, for these "visions" to become reality will require the completion of 1000 MW of renewable capacity, each and every year, from now until 2020.

Including this year, 2011.

How are we doing?

According to renewableUK, the grand total completed in Scotland in 2011 so far is...

is...

wait for it...

241.15 MW.

Pathetic.

It seems that the Enormous Shyster's direct connection to the Almighty has not resulted in any connection with the facts.

I look forward to the total failure of his referendum and subsequent humiliating defenestration from office with relish.

Further concerning the leadership

2011-10-11T21:01:00.001+01:00

I went along to the Edinburgh hustings on Saturday.

Margaret Mitchell was nice but baffling; what exactly is she standing for?

Ruth Davidson was good, Jackson Carlaw excellent. Highlights included his impression of Annabel Goldie and a quote from a non-Tory MSP: "Call yourselves what you like, Jackson, we'll still be calling you the effing Tories."

Murdo Fraser sounded tired. Partly, no doubt, a result of a three-hour car journey from Perth (due to Forth Bridge-related delays). However I suspect also that he has realised that he just doesn't have enough support to get over the top. He may well get the most first-preference votes; but the second- and third-preference votes from the other candidates will not be going to him.

Which I think leaves things between Carlaw and Davidson. On policy matters they are offering similar agendas. I think most would agree Carlaw is the best at public speaking and rousing a Tory audience; but he has the "handicap" of being an archetypal 50-something successful businessman. (Irony intended.)

I have a feeling it's going to be Davidson. That is actually quite something for the Scottish Tories; we are supposed to be conservative, after all.

Oh yes - fashion fans may want to know that instead of the trouser suits she is usually pictured in, she showed up in a skirt suit, red blouse and a pair of killer FMBs. Out-FMBing Yvette Cooper, which is saying something.

(Yes, I know she wouldn't be interested. Nurse! Time for my medication.)

Concerning the leadership

2011-10-02T16:35:00.001+01:00

My, doesn't time fly. Nearly half-term already.

Clearly one of the big political issues out there is the question of the Scottish Tory leadership - which has been transformed into a bigger issue by Murdo Fraser's decision to campaign on the basis of dissolving and replacing the party. (Or something like that.)

Where do I stand on this?

I've met Murdo, and he's a smart guy. His thinking seems to be on the lines of the famous quote (which apparently was NOT by Einstein):

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

He has a point.

The trouble is, he could be falling into another fallacy:

"1 - We must do something.

2 - This is something.

3- We must do this."

I had the opportunity last week to meet the other leading contender, Ruth Davidson, and that's certainly her view.

She also used a fairly powerful analogy:

When VW bought Skoda, conventional wisdom was that they should dump the brand as being irredeemably contaminated, and just use the factories to churn out cheaper VWs and Audis.

They didn't. They kept the name, brand and badge, and improved the product to the point where Skodas get higher satisfaction and reliability ratings than VWs, Audis, and Seats, as well as being cheaper. Edinburgh residents will be aware that just about every taxi / private hire car which isn't a "black cab" is now a Skoda. There's a reason for that - cabbies know their cars.

Ruth also made a good case that she has the background, experience and skills to do a similar job on the Scottish Tories.

I haven't decided which way to vote yet - the first big hustings meeting is next weekend, and I intend to go along and give them all a listen.

But, I have to admit that a few months ago I bought a Skoda...

"Weasel" Russell - some thoughts and a new prediction

2011-07-27T22:07:00.002+01:00

Looks like my attempt at edgy humour fell flat. Clearly the readership of this blog is more refined than that of ARRSE (which is where I nicked it from)...

This may be my last post for a while since we are off to our usual bolt-hole in the Cotswolds. There has never been any internet coverage there, although BT are now claiming that their FON shared-hotspot thing should be in range. We'll see.

A while back I looked at the readership stats for this blog, for the first time in ages. There was a bit of a surprise; one page in particular was generating a truly massive spike on the hits chart.

Which one was it, I wondered? One for which I'd spent time developing a detailed argument, or doing lots of research, or generating some nifty charts?

No. It was this one, in which I pointed out the uncanny similarity between Michael "Mike" "Weasel" Russell and a, er, weasel.

Shall we do it again?

Michael "Mike" "Weasel" Russell

A weasel

So why was this so popular? Did someone in the Holyrood bubble pick it up and pass it round? We'll never know.

I've already predicted that "Weasel" is going to have a tough time dealing with the totally ridiculous and unsustainable position he has been left in on university funding. His refusal to contemplate any form of graduate contribution is going to leave Scottish universities with an ever-increasing funding gap relative to their English counterparts, and will have them sliding further and further down the global ratings tables into Euro-mediocrity.

Here's another prediction of an unpleasant and potentially disastrous situation which is about the greet "Weasel": the public realisation of the implications of "Curriculum for Excellence" in our secondary schools. This should hit by Christmas.

(At this point I should declare my involvement / interest. Over the years I have dropped various hints that I've been doing a bit of a career-change thing; this is now complete. I am now a teacher. No, you don't need to know where or which subject!)

Now, the development of "Curriculum for Excellence" (politely shortened to "CfE", or less politely to "Curriculum for Sixty Pence" or "Curriculum for Excrement") has been under way for a while - it goes back to before the Nats' win in 2007. The cohort which started S1 last August are the first to experience it at secondary level.

A lot of CfE looks attractive. More flexible - OK. More engaging - fine. More cross-curricular working across subjects - good. Less formal assessment by examination and more assessment which encourages initiative and creativity - hmm, OK as long as that is crisped up as they get older and approach the inevitability of real exams.

But what is going to cause the rammy is what happens when the kids get to what is now called "the senior phase" and have to start getting qualifications.

Up to now, there has been a pleasing convergence of the qualifications system across the UK. In Scotland, they do 8 or so Standard Grades at 16, 5 Highers at 17 and 3 Advanced Highers at 18. Down south, it's 8 or so GCSE's at 16, 5 AS-levels at 17 and 3 A2-levels at 18. England used to go straight from GCSE to 3 A-levels; the broadening of their curriculum at 17 is, arguably, an endorsement of the historic Scottish approach. It's also the case that the Scottish AH is graded higher (i.e. more UCAS points) by universities than the A-level.

(Admittedly, we have complicated the situation up here with our Intermediate 1s (which sit just below Standard Grade) and Intermediate 2s (which are just above it). In most mainstream state schools, Int 1s are for 16-year olds who couldn't manage S-grade, and Int 2s are for 17-year olds who couldn't manage Higher. But a lot of private schools avoid S-grades and do Int 2s at 16 instead. And there are all sorts of other permutations in the state sector. This is all very flexible for those in the education business, but costs - and is confusing for the outside world.)

CfE is going to change all this. Standard Grade, Int 1 and Int 2 are going to be swept away and replaced by Nationals 4 and 5. So far, so simplified, so good. (Although there are concerns about the fact that the lower-level National 4 will only be assessed internally by schools. Shades of a return to the 1950s, maybe.)

But here comes the kicker. Under the new system, our kids are only going to be taking qualifications in 5 or 6 subjects at 16 - rather than 8 as at present. The brighter ones are likely to be going to start Highers over 2 years from 16, with no dry-run or safety net at 16.

The curricular authorities are at pains to say that they are not forcing this to happen, but it looks in practice that that is exactly what most schools are planning to do.

This is going to cause uproar. Parents who are used to and proud of having 8 S-grades or O-grades are NOT going to accept automatically the idea that their offspring are only going to have 5 or 6 quals at 16 - or possibly none until 17, with no apparent safety net. Particularly in places like Edinburgh, where I know for a fact that the private schools (25% of the system) are looking on this aspect of CfE with utter horror and may well switch over to the IGCSE for their age-16 qualification.

NB I am not saying that the new CfE approach is a bad thing. At this stage of my educational career, I don't know enough to give an opinion. What I am saying is that there is going to be an almighty row.

This can't all be blamed on the SNP. What has happened is that the left-of-centre, consensual, "distinctively" Scottish educational establishment has kept a lot of this to itself and is going to be seen as springing this on the public when it's too late to make any changes.

However, the "Weasel" is going to end up wearing this mess on his face and I can't say I'm sorry.

Elton John to perform at Amy Winehouse funeral

2011-07-26T12:05:00.002+01:00

Yes, he is to deliver another customised version of the one he did at Diana's.

It's to be called "Candle under a Spoon".

(Baboom, tish. Hat, coat, taxi!)

Wendi Deng Murdoch

2011-07-19T18:46:00.002+01:00

Do.

Not.

Mess.

With.

(Seriously.)

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it

2011-07-15T08:58:00.006+01:00

Alex Salmond backs down over secret tax memo

SNP faces fresh questions over free tuition as gap hits £263m

(See previous post.)

The Unstoppable Outpouring of Jubilation Following Our Glorious Day of National Awakening and Liberation

2011-05-27T22:29:00.002+01:00

I must apologise for an even lighter-than-usual blogging rate recently.

It's been really difficult. My commute to and from work has been massively lengthened by the need to fight my way through the crowds of jubilant citizens celebrating the emphatic SNP victory in the election.

And once I get to work, we hardly get anything done. The water-cooler and coffee-machine chat is all about the electrifying effect the election result has had on the country, plus stuff like "Were you up for Kerr?" and so on.

I jest, of course. It hasn't been anything like that, and I bet it hasn't been like that for you either.

In fact the national reaction to this "momentous" result has mostly been "Meh", with good admixture of "Eh?" and no small amount of "Oops!" either.

As in 1997, the poor state of the losing side has resulted in a result beyond any expectation of the winners, or those who voted for them.

So now we have the Nats claiming a "mandate" for all sorts of things beyond running a devolved, subsidiary administration - which is in fact all that the electorate have given them.

Even more unhappily, we have the prospect of Blubberchops preening and blustering at us every week, with 67 clones of Sammy the Seal slapping their flippers together at his every utterance.

Never mind. Be of good cheer, in fact. Here are a few Reasons to be Cheerful:

1) The Telegraph's court case about the Nats' suppression of the awful financial truth behind their LIT proposal is due soon. They'll probably win. Ooops, Salmond and Swinney exposed as idiots and/or liars.

2) "Weasel" Russell thought he was being oh-so-clever by kicking the review of university funding into the post-election long grass. Ooops - that "whop whop" sound is a £300m boomerang heading directly for the centre of his forehead.

3) There are going to be Eruptions of the Bams. They are already marching up and down at NutNatScotland egging each other on about "powers of assumption" and "unilateral declarations" of this and that. This is bound to spread into the new intake of MSPs.

It's actually even better than that - the high-ups are already getting infected by the Bam virus as well. Witness Salmond himself going off on one over the Times report that Dominic Grieve had asked if he could take any action about the Herald's blowing of the Giggs superinjuction (when he clearly had not read the story), or the Supreme Court's intervention in the Nat Fraser case (handed down by a Scottish judge according to Scottish law). This is going to be entertaining.

4) It is going to become rapidly clear that this new Nat administration has no clue about what it is actually going to do. In terms of legislation, we have minimum alcohol pricing, anti-sectarianism and, er, that's about it. They've already said any resurrected LIT proposal won't be effective until 2016.

Oh, they're going to be "demanding" lots of extra stuff in the Scotland Act. But again, most of that isn't due to become effective until 2015-16 either. So even if Cameron says "yes", not much will happen for years. (And I suspect he won't be saying "yes", more like "Interesting - can you come back with detailed drafts for legislation, regulations, impact assessment and implementation plans. Meanwhile we'll put the Act on hold - can't waste Parliament's time, can we?")

We know they're going to be trying to con us all into a referendum "yes" vote. But, er, they've been doing that for 4 years already. We've had the CyberNat Chatroom, policy papers on this, that and the other, and at least two pre-referendum White Papers with two different versions of a referendum question. All of these documents have been total, mendacious, deceptive garbage, some of which I have deconstructed here. What new lies do they have to try on us?

But the referendum has to happen now - there is no way they can run away from it this time. So we are going to see the delicious spectacle of the Duke of Pork and his 10,000 men marching up to the top of the hill and then throwing themselves off a cliff, in the form of a referendum they are bound to lose.

Grab a snack and a drink, and enjoy the show.

Appalled

2011-05-04T21:31:00.003+01:00

Hacker: "Humphrey, I'm appalled."

Sir Humphrey: "You're appalled? I'm appalled."

Bernard: "I'm appalled, too."

Hacker: "There's no doubt about it: it's appalling."

It's obvious why. The old Clinton-Haughey maxim that you CAN successfully lie to an electorate if you do it in a chirpy, cheery, jocular way, looks like it may get another confirmation.

Still, let's see, shall we?

The effort I put into filling in all those postal votes might pay off.

The Nats - more renewable obsession and more lies

2011-05-01T21:20:00.004+01:00

So, the new Pack of Lies (er, "manifesto") is with us.

I feel my hostility and derision is fully justified, given what we experienced last time - remember what happened with "Scottish Futures Bonds", LIT, class sizes, abolishing student debt, and so on, on and on?

I'm left wondering how anyone can trust a single word of anything they say this time round. For the moment I'm going to leave the detail for those more expert; I'll just say that in general, given the background of fiscal retrenchment and cuts, a party coming along promising to freeze council tax but keep loads of things "free" - prescriptions, universities, you name it - lacks a certain degree of credibility.

The best example is their "Scottish Futures Fund" - to be funded by, wait for it, "savings" from the new Forth Bridge.

Which hasn't been built yet.

And of course, large engineering projects are FAMOUS for coming in under budget. Um, aren't they?

In any case, for now I'm going to focus on one particularly ludicrous Nat / Salmond "pledge" - the one about Scotland getting 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. Conveniently, this lets me finish off the planned pair of posts I started back in January. Huzzah!

So, what did he say back on the 15th?

"The First Minister said Scotland could, by 2020, produce twice the electricity it required for domestic use..."

"Mr Salmond envisages wave and tidal power, which now produce 2.35 megawatts of power, would produce 800 MW by 2020. He also said he expected Scotland to be producing 12,000 MW of wind power by 2020, up from 2,575 MW at present."

Firstly, why on earth does he think that producing and exporting lots of renewable power is a Good Thing? As my first post was meant to - and did - draw out, there are no taxes on power exports. So no government revenues. And since the gadgets aren't made here, so there's not much employment gain either. And the nature of renewables is that they don't need many people to run or maintain them either.

Furthermore, all these technologies are uneconomic and only proceeding because they are getting massive subsidies from the consumer. So any notion of being able to tax exports at some point in the future is also far-fetched - the things have to get to the point of being subsidy-free first!

(The thought also occurs that 90% of the subsidies for Scottish renewables come from consumers in England & Wales. Would this continue, post-"independence"?)

Second, let me give credit where credit is due. Salmond's numbers may be utter tosh, but they are internally consistent tosh. If you run the numbers, assuming 12.8 GW of wind and marine power, roughly flat demand in Scotland and factor in the closures of Hunterston (nuclear) and Cockenzie (coal), then in 2020 Scotland could indeed be exporting as much power as it consumed internally.

Which could, possibly, allow a claim that the country was 100% renewable-powered, with all the nasty nuclear, coal- and gas-fired power being exported. (There's a slight problem there - how would generators in an "independent" Scotland continue to receive subsidy payments from conusmers in England & Wales, if their government was claiming that all the exports were actually the nasty, dirty sort?)

But the operative words here are "assuming 12.8 GW of wind and marine power". We shall return to this.

I see today that the Nats, clearly spooked by the sceptical reaction to El Presidente's ravings, have released a paper intended to back up his position. It's full of suspiciously precise numbers.

The problems aren't too hard to find:

1) no attribution of the numbers to any source

2) they obscure and lie about the current situation for renewables - claiming that "consented" projects equates to projects "about to be built". Oh yes, every major energy project with "consent" always gets built. No, they don't.

3) it is somewhat curious that the Fat Minister was talking about 13.8 GW of renewables on April 15th, while a week later the "supporting" paper is talking 14 GW of wind & marine plus another 0.5 GW of biomass and stuff. Oh dear, are these numbers being made up on the hoof?

But let's cut to the chase. Here is why these "visions" are total, vapid, mendacious nonsense:

The chart shows the actual rate of wind capacity build - readily available from renewableUK. The highest ever rate of completion of wind capacity in Scotland was 536 MW, in 2009. The average annual rate is 310 MW.

In order to hit Salmond's "visionary" "target", the rate of completion would have to go up to almost 1000 MW per year, every year, from now until 2020.

Including 2011. Which we're now almost one-third of the way through, and so far the grand total of completions is...

...er...

15 MW.

And as for the money? Well, wind farms cost roughly a billion pounds per GW. So this extra 10 GW of wind capacity means roughly £10bn being borrowed from some banks, somewhere. Has anyone noticed that banks are bit less ready to lend than they used to be?

The wind farms are only half of the story. The existing transmission lines to England are full - so plans call for a whole lot of reinforcement, including subsea cables down both the east and west coasts, plus new onshore lines in the far north. Pylons.

No construction of any of these projects has begun. The total costs of all the new lines comes to around £4bn. Anyone think they're going to happen on time?

My conclusion is simple. Salmond has form from 2007 on lying about a lot of things, from SFT to LIT to reducing class sizes.

He is lying again. He thinks that he has found a big, popular, compelling image (although why it should be compelling baffles me, since it costs us all money), and he's telling the big lie again.

Scotland - why should you re-elect a proven, compulsive liar?

Nat lies on LIT - CONFIRMED

2011-04-09T18:24:00.000+01:00

Ooof, that was a bit of a break in posting.

There I was in the middle of a planned 2-part post, and suddenly it's nearly 3 months later. This new job does that to you.

What has brought me back?

(a) the Easter holiday

(b) the fact that the estimable and formidable Alan Cochrane and his cohorts at the Daily Telegraph have been able to break and confirm one of the best anti-SNP stories for ages.

They've got hold of the document about LIT (Local Income Tax), the release of which the Fat Minister has been spending so much public money trying to block. For some reason, the online edition of the Tele doesn't have an image of the document; never mind, here it is:

This goes back to the Nats' proposal for LIT at the 2007 election. It turns out that after they got into office, the official Chief Economic Adviser told them that their policy was incoherent and unaffordable; the promised 3% rate of LIT would leave a shortfall (compared to the existing Council Tax) of around £400m, even if the Treasury could be persuaded to transfer Council Tax Benefit (claimed by and paid to individuals, on the basis of need) to the Holyrood budget. (The basis for this was, of course, never explained.)

This just goes to prove what some of us have always thought - the Nats' 2007 manifesto was never meant to be implemented. They didn't expect to win, so thought they could just bluff, bluster and lie, thinking they would never have to deliver on the big promises.

The big question for 2011, of course, is whether they are now any different.

If they lied in 2007, what are they lying about now?

Salmond's obsession with "electricity exports"

2011-01-12T20:48:00.004Z

I see that His Immensity the Fat Minister delivered another Xmas message to his grateful nation in the pages of the Hootsmon on Sunday.

Once again, he wibbled on about renewables and electricity exports as the next Great Big Thing for the Scottish economy. It's clear from this, and other sources, that he regards the prospect of an "independent" Scotland becoming a "green energy exporter" as something very important, in many ways a replacement for dwindling oil.

What I am going to do is look at the realism of this quite slowly and carefully.

First, let's consider the present and historical position. Here's some official data:

Scotland is already a significant exporter of 'leccy. Over the 10 years to 2009, on average 18% (just under 9 TWh) of electricity generated in Scotland was exported, mostly to England but some to NI. In fact Scotland was also a net exporter over the previous 10 years, ever since electricity privatisation in 1990. (It was not an exporter prior to this. Go on, ask me why.)

Now this is clearly good business for the electricity generators in Scotland: Scottish Power (Spanish-owned), British Energy (French-owned), and Scottish & Southern (HQ in Perth, listed in London, most of their business in England & Wales). So it's good for you too if you are an employee and/or shareholder in these concerns. (I need to labour this point because they are a few Nats out there who seem to think that all these power exports happen for free. No idea why.)

Aside from that, what good is it for the rest of us?

I'd like to ask any passing enthusiasts for electricity exports - as Salmond seems to be - the following:

How do you view the fact that Scotland has been a net exporter of electricity for the last 20 years? Do you see it as some sort of indicator of success?

What benefit does Scotland in general get from the fact that private companies based here have been exporting electricity?

Salmond's "Blood and Bone" Nationalism - an apology

2011-01-06T21:48:00.004Z

My last post reflected my utter shock and horror at Salmond's use of "Blood and Bone" language to describe Scottish Nationalism.

In my dismay, I thought that this reminded me of the "Blood and Soil" language used by the first Chancellor of the unified German Reich, Otto von Bismarck.

I now realise I am guilty of misquotation and misrepresentation.

Of Bismarck, that is.

The phrase of his I had been misremembering was "blood and iron". Turns out that it was actually "iron and blood", and was simply an 1862 forecast that German unification would require military action to overcome the opposition of its neighbours, not just political resolutions.

No, the "Blood and Soil" phrase got its 20th Century popularisation by Nazi ideologue SS-Oberfgrueppenfuehrer Richard Walther Darre, one of Hitler's cronies.

Now, do I resile from anything I said earlier? No, absolutely not.

“There is no country on earth that we have more family connections with than Northern Ireland,” said Salmond. “They are the blood of our blood, bone of our bone."

As I said earlier at Unionist Lite, this is a classic Nick Ridley moment. A politician relaxes in an interview and gives away a lot more than they really meant to: an insight into their subconscious thoughts.

So, Salmond really thinks that the relationship between "we" Scots and "they" Northern Irish is defined by "blood and bone". This is only possible, of course, if both "we" Scots and "they" Northen Irish are also defined as groups by "blood and bone".

Deep down in his psyche, he is an ethno-nationalist. He may have constructed a rationalist, civic-nationalist superstructure on top of that, but that is the way he thinks and feels in his core.

Yikes. Nasty.

[Edit:

I know he claims in his next sentence "I would have done the same for anyone."

First, too late: he's already let us see how he thinks. Second, I frankly don't believe him. There is absolutely no way he would have used the same language about any part of England. (Oh, I can see him offering to sell some water to one of their water companies, if it had hit trouble...)

I am also aware that he is paraphrasing a poem by Alexander Gray. This makes no difference: the original can indeed be seen as an expression of "civic nationalism", solidarity between all those working in a country, while Salmond's version has been changed in meaning and context to refer to the "family ties" between two "peoples".]

(Now I could go on about the other point - Salmond evidently thinking that it's right and proper for him to treat state-owned companies as playthings which he can tell to do whatever he likes. And the fact that Scottish Water habitually sits on "an emergency stock of 380,000 litres of bottled water, with 500,000 litres on stand-by from suppliers" - this isn't actually their water from their reservoirs, mind, it is bought from privately owned bottling companies. And people keep claiming that SW is tightly run and doesn't have any featherbedding which could be exposed by privatisation... Never mind, another time.)

The mask slips - SNP "civic nationalism" shown to be a lie

2011-01-05T21:21:00.006Z

I Knew It. I Told You So.

The SNP posture and pretend to be "civic nationalists", blind to race and origin, and also to be business-friendly centrists.

All this shown to be a lie by the Fat Minister's recent explanation of his decision to donate bottled water to Northern Ireland - something which should have been good-hearted and charitable, but which is now shown to be driven by base, repellent motives and a desire for political grandstanding.

From his interview in the Weegie:

“There is no country on earth that we have more family connections with than Northern Ireland,” said Salmond. “They are the blood of our blood, bone of our bone. "

Right, so all of your crap about "civic nationalism" is just that, is it? You're only interested in helping people if they have the same "blood and bone" as "us".

Can I introduce you to Herr von Bismarck?

“These are things we can do because Scottish Water is a public company,” he added. “I can make the decision to send water anywhere and at any time to help our neighbours. A private company would ask: what are we contracted to do? A public company asks what the right thing to do is."

Translation: because Scottish Water is state-owned, I can interfere with its commercial decisions and make it do things which are uneconomic, against the interests of the taxpayers who own it but which allow me to make grandstanding political points. If it were privatised, I couldn't do that.

As I have known and said all along, Salmond is a lying, hypocritical, principle-free shyster who is dangerous to the nation and needs to be ejected from office as soon as possible.

I don't hate him and his lackeys; I merely despise them!

A few days ago I asked in the "Hootsmon" comments pages whether the Nats would have been so keen to send free bottled water to, say, Northumbrian Water plc.

I guess we now know the answer, don't we?

From the past, confidence for the future

2010-12-08T19:47:00.003Z

I just finished working my way through a hefty set of volumes: Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

I read the Steele Commager one-volume abridgement a few years ago; I thought it was OK, but very much biased towards stuff of interest to a US audience. Also, I hadn't really grasped just how much got omitted when it was cut down from four volumes to one.

I also read Andrew Roberts' attempt at continuing the Churchill narrative beyond 1900. I'm afraid I can't recommend this very much. Roberts puzzles me: he is supposedly a doyen of modern right-of-centre history and he did some fantastic original source work for his Masters and Commanders - finding the unpublished (and supposedly destroyed) verbatim War Cabinet minutes from WW2.

However, it is evident from Masters and Commanders that whenever he gets into the military and technical detail of the subject, he commits enormous howlers. I have declined to buy his A Storm of War because all the reviews I've seen say that book is even worse. And there are all sorts of problems in his English-Speaking Peoples: a weak and contorted attempt at explaining the underlying thesis, apparently random choice of topics, repetition - sometimes the thing feels like it was written on a number of plane or train journeys, and no-one's bothered to edit it together.

That said, on reading it I did learn a few things about Australian, Canadian and New Zealand history which I didn't know. However I'm left wondering if the context of this stuff is remotely accurate!

But now I've got round to reading the whole of WSC's opus in full. Found it in a local charity bookshop. (Sadly, my set isn't quite in the condition of the one pictured, and isn't signed. Otherwise it would be worth a substantial sum.)

Now I am fully aware that as a historian, Winnie comes with a few health warnings. Factual accuracy is not always guaranteed, especially when he's dealing with his own actions, his father (Lord Randolph Churchill) or his hero-ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

But the old boy could certainly write. Orotund phrases combined with sharp insight - it's a winning combination.

One thing shone out clearly for me: the fact that this United Kingdom of ours has been down, out and on its uppers quite a few times in the past 300 years, and it has always bounced back.

So there's no reason not to expect that we will do so again. In fact on the basic demographic trends, the UK is forecast to become the most populous EU Member State in the not-too-distant future (unless, of course, Turkey is ever let in). That also means a much more healthy age structure and a better foundation for a growing economy.

It's always been worthwhile being British, and despite everything, it looks like it always will be.

Defence Review and Carriers, II

2010-11-29T20:18:00.005Z

Further thoughts on the Review. There has been much media whoopin'-an'-hollerin' over the retiral of the Harrier force and HMS Ark Royal, and the supposition that we are now building new aircraft carriers for which we will have no (fixed-wing) aircraft.

I do think some of the initial MOD announcements were cack-handedly worded, since quite a few normally reliable commentators were confused. However, they could and should have gone to the Liam Fox's Commons statement:

"The House and the country must understand that any decisions regarding the carriers must be taken in the context of their extended service life of 50 years. The final captain of a Queen Elizabeth carrier has not even been born yet. When they go out of service, I will be 109 years old and the shadow Defence Secretary a sprightly 103. We are taking decisions now on what will be best for us as a country in the middle of the century. That is why we have taken three decisions. First, we have decided to take a capability gap in carrier strike, because we assess that the risk of not having access to basing and overflight for our fast jet force in the next decade is low. However, the same cannot be said looking further ahead.

Secondly, we have decided to install catapult and arrester gear, which will allow greater interoperability, particularly with US and French carriers and jets, and maximise the through-life utility of our carrier strike capability. Thirdly, we have decided to acquire the carrier variant of the joint strike fighter. Adding the "cats and traps" will allow us to use the carrier variant of the JSF, which has a bigger payload and a longer range than the STOVL variant planned by the previous Government. Overall, the carrier variant will be significantly cheaper, reducing the through-life cost compared with the STOVL version.

Contrary to popular belief, there will not be a new Queen Elizabeth class carrier in service without the planes to go on it, apart from in the period required by law for us to have the carrier properly crewed up and ready to accept the planes. The idea I have come across in some parts of the media-that we can get brand-new carriers and the brand-new planes to fly off them almost on the same day-simply defies the complexity of the operation involved.

When the carrier enters service towards the end of the decade, the JSF will be ready to embark on it. Yes, there will be a delay to the programme as a consequence of the decisions I have mentioned, but unlike the previous Government's delay to the carrier programme in 2008, which added £1.6 billion to the overall cost-more than the whole Foreign and Commonwealth Office budget next year-and gave us nothing in return, our delay will give us a carrier that is best configured for the next 50 years."

As I had hoped and predicted, "Dr Foxy" is shaping up to be a very good SecDef who know both his onions and his history - the points he made are absolutely correct.

In fact, going further back in history, one of the things to remember is that Britain and the RN have been in this place before and got through it quite successfully.

Just after WW2, the economy was in ruins and the currency in the toilet. The RN had more hulls in the water and on the slipways than it could possibly hope to run, or even man.

This was especially true of the carrier force. The roughly 60 escort and merchant carriers were not a real problem, since they could be sent back to the US or converted back to merchant duty. But the RN had 6 Illustrious-class fleet carriers and 6 Colossus-class light fleets in commission, plus another 14 light fleets and 2 large fleet carriers (Eagle and Ark Royal) fitting out or on the stocks.

Apart from the financial problems, this was a time of tremendous technical change: the jet was replacing the prop, and aircraft were becoming much bigger, faster and heavier. It was clear that all the ships in existence and under construction would need expensive and extensive modification to be able to operate the new aircraft; it was uncertain exactly what those modifications would be.

So, everything was slowed down. Some ships were given limited updates to operate the immediate postwar generation of aircraft; others were left half-finished in the shipyards until it became clear what would be needed for the longer term. Ark Royal was laid down in 1943, launched in 1950 and only completed in 1955; Hermes laid down in 1944, launched in 1953 and completed in 1959.

(The picture shows the scene at Harland & Wolff in 1948 - with HMSs Bulwark and Centaur laid up incomplete, and HMS Eagle fitting out in the background.)

The parallels with the current situation of our new carriers - Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales - are striking and obvious.

We have new hulls on the way.

We have a financial crisis.

We have technological uncertainty over the aircraft which will fly from these ships - we had previously settled on the "B" version of the F-35 Lightning, which can do "short take-off and vertical landing" (STOVL) like the Harrier, but this is having a troubled birth - costs are going up and it may never actually happen.

With less money to play with, we may never be able to afford to fill our new carriers with the 36 F-35Bs they were designed to accommodate. The new decision to move to the F-35C - the "catapult and arrestor" version which will be used by the US Navy - therefore looks wise. It will have greater range and payload and be cheaper. And it means we can plan (at least initially) on buying fewer of them - 12 per ship is the number currently outlined.

Since the ships are to be modified from "ski-jump" to "catapult and arrestor" configuration, they will be capable of operating the aircraft used by other folks: crucially, US and French F-35s, F-18s, E-2s and Rafales. So in a future joint operation, we would be able to fill up the spare capacity on our carriers with their aircraft.

Also, it looks very likely that the carriers will find themselves doing double duty, also filling the Amphibious Helicopter Carrier role currently performed by HMS Ocean - with fewer F-35s, there will be lots of room for "jungly" Chinooks, Merlins and Apaches. Ideally you wouldn't want to combine the roles, but needs must and so on.

The saga also illustrates the wisdom of some of the decisions taken by the last government and lobbied for by the Navy. The ships were designed and are being built BIG, because "steel is cheap and air is free", and the size allows the flexibility to multi-role and adapt. Although the original decision was to go for F-35B and STOVL, the capability to convert to F-35C and "cat and trap" was deliberately built in from the beginning - a very wise decision, and another by-product of the choice of a decent-sized hull.

So what of the future? I'm optimistic. We are going ahead and building both of the things, which is fantastic. The current doom-and-gloom about "carriers without planes" and mothballing/selling one hull is overblown. The first ship will be ready more or less when the first planes are, and as the economy recovers there will be cash to keep both ships (only one normally operating at a time, but that's what we do now) and to buy more airframes for them.

And the UK will have an incredibly flexible and powerful defence, intervention, disaster relief and deterrence asset which only a handful of other countries will possess.

Britain will bounce back. We always do; that will be the subject of the next post.

Oh yes - the Defence Review

2010-11-21T20:58:00.000Z

It really is very inconsiderate of HMG to make announcements about things I'm interested in when I'm off on hols. The Strategic Defence & Security Review (SDSR) is clearly a big deal, and one with potentially large implications for the future.

My first reaction was one of relief - there is considerable pain in there, but things could have been much, much, worse. Liam "Dr Foxy" deserves a lot of credit for softening the blow, and if things pan out he may end up being seen as a truly great Defence Secretary - taking some calculated risks and capability gaps because the finances make them unavoidable, but retaining the ability to regenerate capabilities if and when needed and the money allows. But there's a lot of uncertainty.

I actually found a better summary than anything I could write here.

This is from someone whom I have "known" over the net for a few years - both MOD and RNR:

"I’ve been travelling back to HERRICK from R&R over the past few days, so managed to miss the SDSR announcements and initial reactions. However, one comment from a mate of mine at KAF seemed to perhaps sum up a point of view not widely appreciated – when asked how it had gone, his reaction was ‘dig beneath the surface reactions, and it’s not as bad as it seemed, or could have been’.

I think this is an interesting take, so wanted to try and put into words my thinking about how despite the desperate hyperbole out there (yes, I’m looking at you pro CVF brigade!), the actual result isn’t actually as bad as its made out to be.

From my perspective the SDSR seems to be tackling the problem of a huge overspend, dire economic position and much needed update on the UKS strategic direction in one go. This is never a good starting point for a review, as its never clear how much of the end result is actually ‘strategic’ and not ‘budget’ driven. That said, the National Security Strategy (NSS) makes a pretty good stab at setting out the threats that we face, and putting the UKs key weakness areas on display. Any discussion of the end result of SDSR force levels has to be set against the realities of the NSS issues – decrying the UK for losing its sovereign ability to kick the door in, is pointless if the NSS quite rightly recognises that we’re not really doing that anymore.

My assessment then is that if you look at the force levels and the decisions taken to remove elements from service in 2 contexts, some of it isn’t actually that bad. Firstly, lets consider force structures against NSS mandated threats to the UK. Secondly, lets consider the force structure of 2020 as being the point at which the UK is able to operate again – we’re clear that HERRICK ends in 2014/15, and its equally clear that the recuperation, force regeneration and retraining to ‘peacetime’ capability is going to take 4-5 years. In other words, when we talk of a 10 year plan, it makes a lot of sense – HM Forces will not have the physical ability to do much beyond HERRICK anyway until 2015, and then we will be so broken, and the political appetite for intervention will be so weak, that its unlikely that we’ll see any significant ‘imperial adventures’ until this point at the earliest. So in those circumstances, the ‘big 4’ threats (namely Terrorism, Disasters, Cyber, Alliance Warfare) make a compelling argument for future priorities.

One thing that I was most struck by was the lack of emphasis on our wider multi-lateral commitments outside of ISAF. I didn’t spot a single reference to the FPDA for instance. It is clear that the ‘East of Suez’ Mentality which has permeated thinking for years is being de-emphasised in favour of a more ‘hands off’ approach. It will be interesting to see how this sits with our allies in the far east.

Labour would have done the same - This is a key point we need to get about the SDSR. None of the options on display seemed new or innovative. I have no doubt at all that had a labour government done this SDSR, then we’d have seen almost identical results – for all the talk of it being a strategic review, it doesn’t seem to have generated any new or exciting options for the MOD.

CVS & The Escort Fleet
The most significant arguments seem to revolve around the RN and its decision to go to 19 escorts and lose a carrier. To my mind, this hyperbole is somewhat overblown - the RN has always been clear that we would lose the 3 Invincibles in 10,12,15 respectively, and the GR9 OSD was always aligned to coincide with that. Even if the decision not to lose GR9 had been taken, we’d have faced a ‘carrier gap’ in 2014 anyway as the Royal approached OSD. This decision is merely bringing forward the same gap as before.
What impact does losing GR9 actually have on the RN – well its hard to tell. On the one hand there is the natural loss of pride that comes from losing fixed wing aviation. However, as a hard headed realist would note, the RN has been out of the fixed wing carrier business since FA2 went OSD. Since that point we’ve only seen occasional deployments by CVS with a GR9 airwing embarked, usually a maximum of 6 aircraft. In other words, since 2004, the RN has been unable to deploy more than 6 planes to sea anyway, and to all intents and purposes was a non fixed wing deploying nation anyway from 2006 – 2009 when the GR9 was in HERRICK. In other words, we’ve not actually really had a carrier fixed wing capability now for nearly half a decade – we’ve done the odd short deployment, but to all intents and purposes, the RN has been out of the fixed wing game for some time now.

So, while some of the posters here bemoan the loss of CVS as some kind of mortal death blow to the RN, I’m far more sanguine about it. Ultimately GR9 provided us with the ability to put a tiny number of airframes to sea, which when set against the context that the UK isn’t planning on using carrier borne airpower for strike purposes anyway for the next 10 years, makes little sense to retain the GR9 capability beyond seedcorn capability for the CVF.

Now when we talk about regeneration of skills, this is where I do worry – its going to be several years before the RN gets to do fixed wing flying again, and in this time many pilots will leave. I really hope that a clever plan is in place to ensure that we get retain the skills required for CVF, otherwise we’re going to look pretty bloody stupid having a carrier with no planes. This is my big worry – I cant think of a single navy that has ever successfully regenerated carrier capability after such a long gap, so I’d like to know how the RN is going to manage it.

As for the escort fleet, well to be honest I’m fairly relaxed about the cut to 19 hulls. To all intents and purposes the RN has been operating with 19 hulls for years – dig beneath the fleet stats and you’ll see that the residual 42s are barely floating and not deployable. To all intents, the RN has managed to meet its commitments with a lot less than 23 hulls for some time now.

The SDSR seems to make clear that we’ll continue doing the 3 traditional tasks (UK home waters, West Indies and South Atlantic) and then do East of Suez and Piracy as available. To my reckoning a fleet of 19 escorts will give us about 15 available and in the programming cycle at any one time – so 4 deployed, 1 in home waters as FRE, and then 10 spare for work up / work down / surge capacity. Its tight, but not much more so than recent years.

Amphibiosity - The cuts to the Amphib fleet look bad on the face of it, with the loss of an LPD and LSD(A). However, having dug about a bit, it seems we’re looking to retain the ability to dump roughly 2000 troops on hostile soil and recover them. This is a reduction in previous planning assumptions, but one that does make quite a bit of sense – we’ve not had the ability to do a proper amphibious assault for some years now – the RM commitment to HERRICK means our amphib forces have only really worked at roughly 2000 boots ashore now for a few years. Additionally looking back to the strategic context, 2000 troops is a figure commensurate with the much vaunted ‘SSFI’ (Small Scale Focused Intervention) capability, enabling us to put people ashore for a short raid, or recovery of UK persons. Given that we’ve said we’re not seeking to carry out a wider operation till at least 2020, and given that sticking 4-6000 troops ashore (which seems roughly previous levels) is not so much a raid, but a statement of intent to take out a lease on the local property market, then the reduction to the amphib fleet makes strategic sense.

SSN Fleet - Delighted to see that there is a commitment to 7 Astutes – this seems to make sense now that Trident is delayed as it will provide a drumbeat capability for the Barrow yard. My key concern though is what force levels do in the build up to 7 hulls – will we see a dip to 6, or even 5, in the next few years as the older T boats pay off? My concern is that although we aspire to 7, we may end up with a significantly smaller SSN fleet for a prolonged period.

The Strange Death of the Fleet Air Arm - To my mind, one of the most disturbing aspects of the SDSR process has been the way in which the FAA has lost both the fixed wing and commando helicopter force. One of the little noticed paragraphs is that the SK fleet will pay off in 2016, but there appears to be mass confusion over the Merlin. At present it looks like the Merlin Mk 3 will not be transferring from the RAF to the RN, and that the RAF has become the new provider of the CHF. At a stroke the RN has lost its littoral capability, and a 10 year capability gap on the fixed wing community. At the moment its looking increasingly difficult for the RN to justify the continued existence of the FAA – no FW pilots, no CHF assets, merely 30 odd Merlin and 30 odd Lynx. How much longer till the RAF moves to absorb the FAA into its ORBAT?

No news on MARS - One of my main concerns is the complete blackout with regards to the MARS tanker project. This is essential to the future of the RN if we are to remain a blue water navy. We need 5-6 tankers soon as our current ones are rapidly running out of life, so the lack of news on them is a major concern. The RFA is in a dire state for its tankers and replenishment ships, yet all funds seem to have been diverted to feed the hungry behemoth that is CVF – I think this is a major mistake.

MPA Woes - The decision that I am most concerned about is without doubt the removal of the Nimrod from service. While I can see the logic in not proceeding (9 airframes = 3 deployable ones), and accept that the project was doomed from the moment we dropped below 10 airframes, it is still madness that we will be running an SSBN operation without fast on call ASW capability. This is going to place a much heavier burden on the extant ASW forces – could we see a new Merlin det up in Prestwick again to help with the ‘delousing’ process in future?

My expectation is that we’ll see UK coastguard eventually acquire some form of cheap MPA, but that the UK has taken a major capability hit in this area. Of all the decisions in the SDSR, this is the one I disagree with the most. "

But as for the wisdom of the Nimrod cancellation, here's something from someone on the same thread who is a British-born, but now American defence analyst and consultant:

"There's two terrifying words that sum up the problem. Systems integration. That and the fact that every airframe is different and things that fit in one don't in others. There's a lot of other things as well but everybody is keeping very quiet about them. The upshoot of it all is though that Nimrod MRA.4 is about as much an LRMPA as Noddy's tricycle. "

And that is just about that.

[For those who don't know already, here's a potted account of why the Nimrod MRA.4 project has been such a disaster.

Back in the early 1990s, it was decided (correctly) that the existing force of Nimrod MR.2s needed upgrading or replacing. Various options were considered, including buying new US-built replacements or even entirely new-built Nimrods. But the option chosen was an almost total rebuild of the existing aircraft - they would be given new wings, engines, tailplane, fuselage pressure floor, and internal kit. The only original item left would be the fuselage pressure tube itself.

BAE got going with the prototype. The laser micrometers and computers got to work recording the dimensions of the original parts. The replacements were made using CAD/CAM machines to the same specs. They fitted perfectly.

BAE turned to the second airframe. They churned out a second set of new components to the same spec as the first. They were brought together with the second airframe.

Klunk, crunch, screech.

Nothing fitted.

The horrible truth dawned - the original Nimrod airframes had been built in the 60s - a time when "precision manufacturing" meant "build it roughly to spec and then use a hammer to get everything to fit".

On top of which, 30+ years of maintenance and customisation by RAF lineys meant each aircraft had a unique set of drill-holes, conduits and so on.

So, inevitably, the original idea of 21 generic rebuilds fell to 12 customised ones, and then 9, and then cancellation.

Some may be tempted to laugh at this as a uniquely UK problem. It isn't.

Look up the disasters the French have had with their carrier Charles de Gaulle and the Rafale aircraft, or the American procurement catastrophes with the A-12, LCS and Zumwalt-class destroyers.]

NY-LON and other thoughts about cities

2010-10-30T20:24:00.001+01:00

I am just back from a week's vacation in New York.

This was my first visit; I've been to lots of other bits of the US (24 states plus DC, I think) but never to the Big Wahoonie itself. (Hat-tip to Sir Terry.)

One of those debates which gets kicked around is which city can claim to be the most cosmopolitan or global, with New York and London usually being the two candidates for the title.

Now, we had a great time, and clearly NY has all sorts of wow! and glitz factors. But after a few days I still found myself thinking "Naah, I prefer London," and then I wondered why.

I felt there was something both empty and ephemeral about New York, in comparison to London. London has been there for 2000 years or so, and has been about being and making history, as well as making money. NY has only been in existence for 400 years, and the making and spending of money is basically all it has done.

This seemed a bit trite and harsh, so I thought a bit more.

For one thing, there is the curious American habit of separating their political centres from their commercial ones. Most of the political symbology and mythologising about America's purpose and contribution to the world - they would say "freedom" and they're not far wrong, although both ourselves and the French would have the right to snort a bit at that - is concentrated in DC, and magnificently done it is too.

But it leaves the "normal" places like NY, Chicago and so on sort of standing as symbols of nothing but themselves.

Thinking about it a bit more, though, this isn't such a bad thing. NY's status as a place where people have been able to come from all over the world and make something of themselves is no bad thing to symbolise (although,, of course, it was a lot easier to do that if you weren't black or Chinese, until fairly recently). And if you go back to the 70s, it looked then as if NY might not even survive, given the riots, chaos and general deindustrialisation that was going on. So simply standing as a monument to itself is no bad thing.

The further thought occurs that it's actually given to very few cities to stand as symbols of anything more than places where lots of people happen to live and work. London is one of the few.

Ed Miliband - separated at birth

2010-09-29T19:40:00.004+01:00

No, not from David.

Gromit

Ed Miliband

Uncanny, no?

Uplifting thoughts

2010-09-19T17:35:00.004+01:00

Blogging has clearly been light recently. The new occupation is fun, exciting and rewarding, but time- and energy-consuming. (No, I'm not going to say what it is. Some people would start hyperventilating. And with Scotland being such a small place, I'm not dropping any more hints about my real identity.)

Anyway, I just came across these uplifting thoughts in my reading:

"It is to the Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; it has been to us all a copious foundation of national , social and personal happiness.

"I have not allowed myself, Sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this Government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union may be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be broken up and destroyed.

While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day at lest that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind!

When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonoured fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!

Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Kingdom, now known and honoured throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a cross erased, polluted or obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty from the Union,' but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true British heart - Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!"

I've changed a couple of words, but it pretty well sums things up, doesn't it?

A hearty round of applause for naming the original speaker.

Conflict of loyalty?

2010-08-22T19:51:00.003+01:00

An intriguing thing arrived in the post this weekend - my first proper Trade Union membership pack.

For the first time in my life I am now "part of the Union" ('til the day I die, etc etc.) (Actually, I think I was technically an AUEW member for about two weeks in around 1989-90, the result of a summer job in a factory which was a closed shop. But that doesn't really count.)

Anyway, I've tucked the membership card in my wallet right next to my Scottish Conservative & Unionist card.

No signs yet of spontaneous combustion or adverse chain reactions, but I'm watching.

Costs of "independence" II - Defence

2010-07-21T20:24:00.003+01:00

In my wanderings I came across an interesting set of numbers, and I felt like writing something.

And then, lo! and behold, Christine "Dingbat" Grahame started one of her bonkers fulminations about how terrible it is for the Services to recruit in poorer areas, so I'm even topical!

We all know the Nats face in all directions and none on Defence. Salmond moans about the "folly" of spending "£100bn" on Trident replacement. (That's a Greenpeace number, BTW, and so hardly reliable; also it would be spread over 30 years or so, so is total nonsense.) The Nat lefties like "Dingbat" clearly think Defence as a whole is unnecessary and would like to "do an Ireland", spend virtually nothing on it and free-ride on the UK and NATO.

Meanwhile, others in the party seem to think that that would be a) immoral, b) unwise and c) electoral suicide, and so promise to maintain Defence spending on "nice" conventional weaponry, which would keep bases like Faslane, Kinloss, Lossiemouth and Leuchars, as well as the shipyards at Govan and Rosyth, open.

The designated spokesman, Angus "Fat Head" Robertson, moans about an "underspend" of Defence money in Scotland. Well Angus, it is hardly possible for the MOD to spend money buying tanks, aircraft, helicopters and submarines in Scotland if there aren't any made here - basically what we do are ships and various components. And of course, "independence" would make no difference to any of this, since a "Scottish" MOD would still have to buy its tanks, aircraft, helicopters and submarines from the places where they are made.

But anyway, back to the data source which set me off.

This is the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) database of international defence budgets.

The UK seems to have the 4th largest defence budget in the world, at $58.3bn. [EDIT: since the time of writing, SIPRI have apparently changed this to $69.3bn.] At an 8.5% population share, this costs us in Scotland just under $5bn [EDIT: $5.9bn, on the new number.]. For which we get the services of a full-spectrum Gucci military: Trident, aircraft carriers, SSNs, assault ships, first-class fast jets, AWACS, long-range transport aircraft, attack and transport helicopters, proper tanks, UAVs and so on. Clearly everything isn't rosy in the defence garden (and some things are about to get worse as the cuts hit), but this is still a setup which is the envy of most countries in the world.

Now, let's do a comparison. Hmm, how about Norway, which is always being held up by Nats as our "natural" comparator?

They have exactly the sort of military which the "official" Nats tell us we should have. A handful of frigates, diesel subs and patrol boats, 50 fast jets and a handful of transports and maritime patrol aircraft, 50 tanks and associated other ground stuff adding up to one brigade. Penny-packet stuff, enough to make things difficult for any putative invader of Norway but nothing which can go anywhere in the world doing Necessary Things in Dangerous Places.

And no nukes, although as a member of NATO, Norway is fully signed up to nukes being brandished as a deterrent on its behalf by those members of NATO which do have them. This, of course, is another fundamental problem for the Nats, since even the "official" "pro-defence" line excludes NATO membership, because of those nasty buckets of instant sunshine.

So what does this cost the Norwegians? About $6.1bn, according to SIPRI.

Oops!

So the peaceable, non-nuclear Norwegians, with exactly the sort of defence set-up that the "official" Nats tell us we should have, actually pay a billion dollars a year more [$200m more, on the new figure] for it than we currently do?

Oh dear.

Maybe they get more local spending out of their budget, with less of the "underspend" that "Fat Head" keeps complaining about?

No, not really. The frigates are Spanish, the aircraft are American, the subs, tanks and other army bits & pieces are German.

Sure, they've been able to get some offset spending sent back to Norway, but that's largely because they've been part of the NATO procurement setup. "Independent" Scotland, apparently, wouldn't be.

So the conclusion is simple, and utterly unsurprising. As with the Foreign Office, as with the BBC, all "independence" would leave us with in Defence would be paying more for less. A less safe country, with an infinitesimal capability to contribute to global security.

More bucks, practically no bang.

Yet another cost of "independence".

Mandelson - to buy or not to buy?

2010-07-14T13:02:00.005+01:00

So, the memoirs of the Dark Lord of Foy and Hartlepool are out tomorrow, following serialisation and a delightful TV ad campaign by the Times.

I'm tempted to buy. I'm a bit of a fan of political memoirs, albeit only the top-drawer ones which (necessarily) only come out after major changes of leadership or government. So I have on my shelves the memoirs of Lawson, Howe, Heseltine, Heath, Major and of course the Blessed Margaret, but I haven't bothered with any personal memoirs since. (I have picked up a few of Peter Hennessy's excellent books on the workings of government, e.g. The Prime Minister, The Secret State and Cabinets and the Bomb, along with Jim Naughtie's The Rivals).

But the demise of New Labour means that we have a bumper crop of memoirs to look forward to, starting with Mandelson's.

What holds me back is the thought of helping to enrich these folks still further. (BTW I haven't paid a penny so far as the only part of the serialisation I've seen was in a copy of the Times picked up for free in a lounge at LHR.)

I've already decided that Blair is so filthy rich that I'll wait until I can pick up his tome as a cheap paperback. Campbell is clearly trying to milk it - one volume of edited diaries, to be followed up by multiple volumes (one so far) of the unexpurgated version. Sod him, he can wait for any money from me until they're all out in one cheap paperback omnibus edition (and if that never happens, small loss - he was only one of the hired help, after all).

But Mandy's book put me in a bit of a dilemma. However, a bit of thought has led to a decision. All we've seen so far are the salacious bits about who said what to whom. We basically knew all this in outline already, we're just getting confirmation of the details (and I see Campbell is already challenging His Darkness' recollection of events). If this is all that's in the book, I'm not that interested and I'll wait for the paperback.

But if the reviews in the next couple of days show that there is more, I will be much more interested. Was there really a coherent vision that Blair, Brown and Mandelson were pursuing? What were the drivers for Mandelson to go into politics? What, personally, did he want to achieve, and how does he rate his actual achievements? How did his sexuality (and the accidental outing by Matthew Parris) impact things? What has he got to say about the events leading up to his two resignations / sackings?

If Mandelson's book offers some genuine insight into these sorts of questions, I'll happily buy it in hardback and read it over the hols. If not, I'll wait.

The Scottish Nationalist Quisling, revisited

2010-07-01T21:34:00.002+01:00

A while (eek! more than year) ago I posted about the wartime travails of leading Nat Arthur Donaldson, who became SNP leader in the 1960s. Apparently he had been the subject of accusations (and MI5 / police investigations) that he had been talking about setting himself up as some kind of Scottish "Quisling", in the event of a Nazi invasion of the UK.

(This had been prompted by a post by the Grumpy Spindoctor, and led to a 2005 Sunday Times article.)

I said then that, when opportunity arose, I would have a look at the file in the Kew PRO and see what it said. I managed to do that last week, while there having a look at some of the naval stuff I normally go there to research.

So, here is a transcript of one of the key documents in HO 45/23801:

"Edinburgh City Police CID – 8 Jan 1941

SNP

I beg to report that our contact with the above Movement and Thomas Maxwell of the Young Nationalist Party, visited Arthur Donaldson at North Halkett, Lugton, Ayrshire on Sunday 5 January1941.During a long conversation, Donaldson gave great praise to Germany saying that England would be completely crushed by the early spring; the Government would leave the country and that England's position would be absolutely hopeless, as poverty and famine would be their only reward for declaring war on Germany. Scotland on the other hand had great possibilities.

We must, he declared, be able to show the German Government that we are organised and that we have a clear cut policy for the betterment of Scotland; that we have tried our best to persuade the English Government that we want Scottish Independence and that we are not in with them in this war. If we can do that you can be sure that Germany will give us every possible assistance in our early struggle. The time is not yet ripe for us to start a virile campaign against England, but when fire and confusion is at its height in England, we can start in earnest. He then went on to tell them that he had an idea in his mind for fixing up a wireless transmitting set in a thickly populated district in Glasgow or Edinburgh, in order to give broadcasts to the public.

At the moment he is working very hard in an endeavour to combine all the Nationalists together as a unit, whereby they can strike out with great force when the time comes. He is naming this combined body “The National Aid Society”. If any questions are asked, he said, you can say it is to help the dependents of young men who have been called to the Services. Actually it is to help members who have refused to fight and are at present in hiding. He mentioned that he had a number of places that could be used as hide-outs."

I think we can work out why MI5 and CID were interested in this bloke, can't we?
Of course, an obvious retort would be that this is all a fit-up, was never stood up in court, and at worse could be "pub chat".

But the file also contained a number of the leaflets and flyers which Donaldson produced and distributed - complete with his name and address. Lots of exhortations to Scots not to "fight for England" and instead dodge the call-up.

One was particularly interesting, because it brought together the two reasons I was there:

"Scottish News and Comment – No.28 - March 1941

NEW ASPECTS OF THE MILITARY SITUATION

The German aerial attack in January on the English Mediterranean Fleet...

The possibilities are enormous as the English admitted losses show...

The German campaign against English shipping..."

Our Arthur is referring to the Luftwaffe Stuka attack on the aircraft-carrier HMS Illustrious, on 10 January 1941. The ship was crippled and had to limp into Malta for emergency repairs, although she later escaped and received full repairs (lasting around a year) in the US. 126 men were killed and 96 men were wounded in the attack, and there were further Maltese casualties in the "Illustrious Blitz" of bombing raids which took place as the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica tried to finish her off. With the Mediterranean Fleet now shorn of air cover, the Luftwaffe were also able to bomb the cruiser HMS Southampton so heavily that she had to be abandoned and sunk, with further loss of life.

Still, it's nice and wholesome to know that Mr Donaldson thought that all these losses to the armed forces attempting to save Europe from Nazism were "English", isn't it?

And that he thought that the "possibilities were enormous"?

So, while I don't know whether the person who wrote these things is also likely to have planned to set himself up as a Scottish Quisling under Nazi occupation, I know what I think.

Make your own mind up.

Scots in Cabinet

2010-05-12T19:46:00.002+01:00

Excellent to see not only the young Danny Alexander as Scottish Secretary, but two favourites of mine making it into cabinet: the suave, saturnine Liam "Dr Foxy" Fox at Defence, and the cerebral and engaging Michael Gove at Education.

So at 3 out of 20-ish, Scotland yet again provides a greater than pro-rata share of the Cabinet.

Even when the Tory Party has only one seat in Scotland, and the Coalition together 12.

Come to think of it, it's hard to think of any points in the 1979-1997 Conservative cabinets when there were fewer than two Scottish cabinet members, and quite often there were up to four - think George Younger, Michael Ancram, Malcolm Rifkind, Ian Lang, Michael Forsyth, Norman Lamont, James Mackay, Teddy Taylor, and probably a few others I've forgotten.

Not bad for a party which some have called "anti-Scottish", is it?

OK, I was wrong.

2010-05-11T19:55:00.003+01:00

The ability of David Cameron and the Conservative leadership to be flexible, conciliatory and open to the Lib Dems has astounded and impressed me. Wow.

And, from the Scottish perspective, it is very hard to claim that the new government has "no mandate". 12 MPs and 36% of the vote, thanks.

The only problem is that this new government will have to take some of the hardest and most unpopular decisions in history.

Still, the world looks slightly brighter this evening than it did this morning.

EDIT TO ADD: Oh, and we will now have, in the shape of Clegg, another Cambridge man at the centre of government. Even if he did only go to Robinson ~~shopping mall~~ College.

Er, if that's the answer, what was the question?

2010-05-07T09:19:00.003+01:00

Ho hum.

Forecast: Clegg very publicly opens negotiations with Cameron, in line with his pre-election commitment.

He demands electoral reform. Talks fail.

Clegg waltzes off to No 10 and agrees a deal of some sort with Brown, based around a referendum on electoral reform next year (and probably an election to follow).

Labour + Libs will amount to 315ish seats, Tories 305ish. So no majority for anyone, but the various small parties all want electoral reform as well, so will back Lab-Lib.

This is, apparently what we wanted.

One bright spot is the 80% Scottish vote for the Union. Nice.

The first Scottish debate

2010-04-20T21:31:00.002+01:00

Only halfway through, but as I expected, the Murph is generally wiping the floor with the lot of them.

I say that as a Tory.

And someone who remembers that he got his place in Cabinet by piloting the EU Lisbon Treaty through Parliament without the promised referendum.

The other thing is that Space Cadet Robinson's head is even larger than when I last saw it.

What on earth is his diet?

I also note that he's married.

Curious.

Celtic nuclear fallout ahead

2010-03-31T20:10:00.001+01:00

Given today's arrogant and hubristic announcement from the Scottish and Welsh Nats that they intend to try and hold the country and market confidence to ransom in the event of a hung Parliament, I thought this was appropriate to raise.

"Island chosen for nuclear plant

The UK's next nuclear power plant could be built on the island of Anglesey by 2020.

Horizon Nuclear Power says it will apply for planning consent in 2012 to build a reactor on the island to produce up to 3,300Mw of electricity.

Wylfa, the existing nuclear plant, will be decommissioned in December.

Plaid Cymru leader and Anglesey AM Ieuan Wyn Jones said it was an economic boost, and Labour MP Albert Owen called it a vote of confidence in the area.

County council leader Clive McGregor said the move would have a "positive impact" on the community and deliver "high quality jobs".

He said: "We have suffered tremendous job losses over the last few years.

'Vital contribution'

Alan Smith, Horizon's Wylfa project manager, said the plant "would make a vital contribution to meeting the country's energy needs and tackling the challenge of climate change"."

So, one assumes, the "Celtic Alliance" could be in for a bit of falling-out over, for example, whether to have any future minimum carbon price benefiting nuclear as well as renewables.

2009 oil & gas production

2010-03-29T13:10:00.005+01:00

Last time I looked at this, the UK government were forecasting total combined oil & gas production for 2009 to be just over 9% down on 2008.

The actuals are now out.

2009 was a rather staggering 9.4% down on 2008.

I will leave the obvious comments as an exercise for the reader.

Ship porn: HMSs Dauntless and Astute

2010-03-22T16:44:00.001Z

(They're in the Clyde. So it's relevant!)

Osama Saeed - well, well, well

2010-03-21T11:04:00.002Z

I'm hardly breaking the news since I saw it on the front page of the Mail in the shop about 15 minutes ago, but apparently Salmond's best buddy Osama Saeed is resigning from his Scottish Islamic Foundation in the wake of a devastating auditors' report.

What are the odds on him staying as a Nat candidate, I wonder?

Don't think I need to comment further.

Other than noting that, of course, this is all the fault of "Westminster", and could not possibly have happened in an "independent" Scotland.

A quote from just before a rather famous Scottish battle...

2010-03-18T19:27:00.003Z

"Remember, you are the free soldiers of a free people.

Go forth, show yourselves like men, and your enemies will as snow in the sun melt before you."

Which battle and which general?

Answers by comment please.

(With thanks to the new edition of the NTS magazine, Scotland in Trust.)

Clever Jim, Silly Swinney

2010-03-17T20:04:00.001Z

It's taken me a wee while to get round to this, but never mind.

Back in June 2009 Jim Murphy's Scotland Office put out this paper on the relationship between oil revenues and public spending in Scotland.

I blogged about it here; concluding that they were absolutely right to state that Scotland has had all the oil revenues that it could possibly ever have claimed, and more, spent in Scotland. Wrong however to try and over-egg things by adding up a long time-series of money numbers without correcting for inflation. Sort of like adding up apples and helicopters to see how many bananas you have.

They followed up with a sequel in January 2010, which, basically does the same thing again, with more of a focus on the post-devolution period.

Ho hum.

But the response they provoked from the Nats was quite interesting and very useful.

"Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland is the official report, and it contains the real figures for 2007-8 ..."

(Plus a lot of financially incoherent drivel, claiming that capital spending doesn't count because, er, it doesn't. It's also obvious that the quotes in that story couldn't have come from Swinney because we know that under pressure he starts spouting management-consultant bolleaux and sounds like Kryten out of Red Dwarf; the belligerent tosh on display bears rather the signature of Salmond's own spin-thug, Kevin Pringle.)

But isn't this a marvellous, and possibly very clever (if deliberate) thing for Murphy to have done?

He provoked Swinney (or at least Pringle pretending to be Swinney) into endorsing GERS as being factually correct.

After all these years of the Nats denouncing GERS as being "distorted", "flawed", "lies", and so on.

Dishing, irretrievably, the idea that somehow there are all these "lost" or "stolen" billions which would somehow transform the finances of Scotland if "independence" were to happen.

No, we'd just have to plod along with the same amount of income, while incurring all the extra costs of duplicating things like DWP and the Treasury, and setting up vanities and fripperies like embassies and a Foreign Office, and paying £300m a year more to the EU as we lost our share of the existing UK rebate.

Attractive?

Thought not.

Like I said in the title: Clever Jim, Silly Swinney.

So the Nats have abandoned "independence". Or are they just conning us again?

2010-02-27T14:28:00.003Z

After a month of hemming and hawing beyond the date they initially said they would launch their fatuous referendum, the Nattists have finally got round to it.

And we can see why there's been a delay - clearly, a lot of internal wailing and gnashing of teeth over yet another climbdown, which will be difficult to sell to the grassroots.

Because the referendum question on "independence" has been watered down AGAIN. We've gone from:

"negotiate a settlement so that Scotland becomes an independent state"

to:

"the Parliament's powers should also be extended to enable independence to be achieved."

Surely, not even the most delusional, swivel-eyed Nat could possibly argue that a positive vote on this question would constitute a mandate for independence. Voting for powers to be extended so that something could be achieved is NOT the same as voting for that something to actually happen.

So, they've retreated still further and abandoned "independence". Huzzah!

Or, could it be the case that this is another pathetic attempt at a rigged question, trying to disguise the irrevocable destruction of the United Kingdom as something bland and innocuous?

I wonder.

[PS, the referendum consultation paper nails the Nats' trousers firmly to the mast on a couple of issues which demonstrate the ludicrousness of the entire project. To wit:

"1.20. Within this relationship, a broad range of cultural, social and policy links would continue and it is likely that both an independent Scotland and the remainder of the UK would seek to maintain and build on a series of cross-border partnerships and services. As members of the European Union, both Scotland and the rest of the UK would enjoy full access to the other's markets and there would be freedom to travel and work in either country.

1.21. Scotland would continue to operate within the Sterling system until any decision to join the Euro by the people of Scotland in a referendum."

I'll come back to this later.]

Earth to Sunday Times: no, the national anthem is not "anti-Scottish"

2010-02-14T08:39:00.002Z

Nothing like resurrecting an old post - clearly the folks at the Sunday Murdoch don't read this blog. Still, here we go again:

There is a myth that "God Save the Queen" is anti-Scottish, because for about a week in the 1740s some people added an extra verse with the line

"Rebellious Scots to crush".

This is an easy one. Like a free kick or a penalty.

http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/Symbols/NationalAnthem.aspx

"There is no authorised version of the National Anthem as the words are a matter of tradition. Additional verses have been added down the years, but these are rarely used.

The words used today are those sung in 1745, substituting 'Queen' for 'King' where appropriate. On official occasions, only the first verse is usually sung."

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/LivingintheUK/DG_10012518

"'God Save The King' was a patriotic song first publicly performed in London in 1745, which came to be referred to as the National Anthem from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The words and tune are anonymous, and may date back to the seventeenth century. There is no authorised version of the National Anthem as the words are a matter of tradition."

There is no "official version" with an extra "anti-Scottish" verse.

Got it?

(And in any case, you'd only have a problem if you were a "rebellious" Scot; us loyal ones would be OK. Heeee!)

"Too poor. Too wee. Too weak." Sorry?

2010-02-12T21:38:00.001Z

V. sorry for the silence, I've been a bit busy to do much other than occasionally take the mickey out of Cybernats elsewhere.

One thing which occurred to me is this: "Too poor. Too wee. Too weak."

Such is the mantra which Nats accuse Unionists of continually throwing.

The thing is, when and who?

(BTW, this is someone who has accessed a database of the main parties' general election manifestoes, and I know they say no such thing.)

Rejoice. Just rejoice.

2010-01-17T21:18:00.006Z

OK, I'm getting bored waiting for the Scotland Office to actually put out the new version of their oil / budget balance paper, instead of giving us multiple teaser press releases on it.

Here's something I've been sitting on for a while.

"Carrier starts to take shape

The ships are probably beginning to look familiar – you will have seen them, in various guises, in computer-generated graphics over the last few years.

The ones pictured on this page are about as close as we will get to the real thing, because the main structural elements have been finalised. Only the details are liable to change.

But the two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers are more than just digital images. They have started to take physical form.

In shipyards and workshops around the country, parts of the new carriers are under construction, and even at this stage, geographically scattered as they are, recognisable sections are approaching completion.

Under the auspices of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance – the main players being BAE Systems, BVT, Thales, Babcock and the MOD (as both customer and participant in the process) – and their sub-contractors, the bulbous bow is nearing completion at Appledore in the West Country, work on Lower Blocks 1 and 2 has begun on the Tyne and Lower Block 3 is under way at Govan on the Clyde, with the same yard starting on Block 4 next month.

Construction of the rudders and stabilisers is well under way, as is work on the sponsons.

The massive aircraft lifts and diesel generators are all completed.

There has also been a good deal of work on infrastructure to cope with the new ships, with one of the main projects being the preparation of No. 1 Dock at Rosyth, originally built in World War I.

The £35m project, due for completion next summer, will include 120 m-span crane which is due for delivery early next year, and by then the dock will hopefully have a name with more resonance than No. 1 Dock.

So the hulls are in hand, but it will be years before the diverse units are welded together into a recognisable ship.

A similar, parallel path is being trodden by those responsible for the ships' systems, with integration being the mantra on everyone's lips.

There are two aspects to the systems side of things.

The first is the actual engineering – the development of hardware and the associated software to achieve the desired results, and how each system fits into the steel hull and interacts with other such systems, whether mission control, communications or myriad other crucial computer-driven functions.

But the second is just as important – training sailors to use these systems.

The beauty of the approach employed by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance is that these two aspects are symbiotic – as systems are developed and refined, people are more adept at using them, and as the people become more familiar with them they can feed observations or criticisms back into the system, identifying problem areas or ironing out wrinkles as they occur.

That philosophy exists at all levels of the carrier project in what some might consider the acme of 'smart acquisition'.

Regular meetings between members of the Alliance allow potential problems, possible design improvements and a host of other build issues to be aired as soon as they come to light – a means of 'de-risking' the process in the hope that no nasty shocks appear when it is more costly or difficult to rectify them - “plenty of wonders but no surprises” as one manager put it.

As Navy News went to press the focus was on de-risking joint air operations using a mix of sophisticated computer-driven simulations, and a sin-bin... more about that in our January edition.

Similar work is being carried out elsewhere – the communications and radar suites are the responsibility of BAE's Coronet facility on the Isle of Wight, and where possible each separate system will be hooked up to the others to ensure they can 'talk' to each other and operate together with no interference.

The ethos of openness and honesty between commercial partners and the customer extends across the Atlantic, where levels of industrial co-operation have pleasantly surprised some of the more experienced workforce on the Alliance teams.

And it is not just the war bit of these warships which require an in-depth, integrated approach.

A carrier is certainly a floating airfield, allowing the UK to carry out autonomous operations wherever the politicians and military decide.

But it is also a floating office block for around 1,500 people who need to be connected to a reliable integrated IT system.

It is also a floating town, with the need for power, water supplies, sewerage, health services, recreation facilities and so on.

Components for the first ship, then, are taking shape right now.

But because of the requirements for niche expertise and sheer weight of engineering and manufacturing capacity, HMS Prince of Wales will be built subsequently – it was simply not practical or cost-effective to 'surge' production on two ships through the yards and factories."

And before there are any sarky comments about these beauties being cancelled, my contacts in the know are pretty clear that the institutional memory of the cancellation of CVA-01 in the 60s is so strong that between them, the Navy and Big-And-Expensive-Systems plc have made damn sure that it would cost any government more to cancel the CVFs than to build them.

Huzzah! Especially for various places like Govan and Rosyth.

Not something that would be happening in an "independent" Scotland, would it?

Category error: Salmond as "statesmanlike" "head of the nation"?

2010-01-14T20:58:00.001Z

Sorry, blogging has been light lately. Too much on. I have a few half-formed posts sitting in the draft folder, but nothing I'm happy with yet.

But this from the Telegraph tickled my fancy:

">Alex Salmond to boost profile in run-up to general election

Scottish voters will be seeing more of Alex Salmond after he approved a higher risk strategy that looks to increase his public profile in the run-up to the general election.

The First Minister has decided to ape Gordon Brown and Barack Obama by holding regular televised press conferences in the hope of seizing the news agenda and overshadowing his rivals.

He will use the events to portray a statesmanlike image, and contrast his credentials as ‘head of the nation’ with Iain Gray, Labour’s Holyrood leader, and Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary."

"Head of the nation"?

"HEAD OF THE NATION"???

Someone needs to remind the blubbery shyster that he is "head" of a subordinate regional administration, nothing more.

And a minority one at that, put in by the votes of less than 17% of the electorate.

"But Labour will be hoping that Mr Salmond’s tendency to be overconfident will provoke gaffes in the press conferences."

Too right, which is why the idea of His Immensity being "statesmanlike" is hilarious.

If I were an opposition politician I would be feeding the press with lines to provoke the Great He-Zeppelin into the belligerent, aggressive, egotistical, (multiple) chin-thrusting Mussolini-esque rants which we have come to know and love from FMQs. Some "statesmanship".

I'm sensing that the cracks in the Nat project are starting to show.

The nuttier grassroots are appalled that the revolution hasn't happened, and the "hidden" "stolen" billions haven't been found - instead, we've had the GERS numbers signed off for two years now. It is admitted that an "independent" Scotland would not have billions more to play with.

We've also had the "Nationalist Chatroom" "policy" papers starting to quantify exactly how much extra it would cost to have an "independent" Foreign Office, "SBC" and so on.

And at ministerial level, they're starting to discover that it isn't all about making stuff "free", they are increasingly going to have to make hard choices and get blamed for them.

Which will in turn inflame the left-right splits we know exist in the Nats (although they've managed to hide them well so far), and reflect that back into the grassroots too. There are a surprising number of right-of-centre folks who, inexplicably, have become Nats. They need to face up to their choices.

I'm quite optimistic about the next decade. I'm not all that bothered about knocking Labour out for an extended period, but hopefully we can make a start on destroying Nattism as a political force.

Power lines - Nat hypocrisy / stupidity UPDATE

2010-01-06T16:01:00.000Z

Today the Hootsmon reports:

"SCOTTISH ministers are expected to confirm today that a controversial plan to build a major new power line through the heart of Scotland will finally go ahead. The 137-mile line – between Beauly in the Highlands and Denny, just outside Stirling – is considered essential..."

But a few days ago, as noted a couple of posts down, it was:

"the First Minister focuses specifically on the controversy over high transmission charges for renewables firms in Scotland. As they are based further away from the UK's main centres of population, they are charged more for access to the National Grid. Mr Salmond said the charges were "totally unfair and totally unacceptable"."

So the line is "essential", but the charges needed to raise the money to pay for it are "unfair" and "unacceptable".

Is it stupidity or hypocrisy?

The other curious thing is that I posted a comment very similar to this on the Hootsmon's story last night. Today it is gone, and the story is barred from comment.

What's happened?

Another example of Kevin Pringle's notorious touchiness where any criticism of The Immense One is concerned?

If I were a CyberNat, at this point I would be calling Pringle, Salmond, and all those involved at the Hootsmon rude names, possibly involving female genitalia.

But I'm not, because as a Unionist I'm too mature, sensible and dashed stylish for that.

Got it?

EDIT TO ADD:

I've been reminded that the original Scotsman story was by David Maddox, so the comment ban may simply reflect their policy of not allowing comments on his stories. (He upsets the CyberNats into making threats, exposing his home address, and so on, apparently.)

The other development is that as expected, the approval has been announced.

"Scottish Energy Minister Jim Mather... told parliament: "Scotland's electricity network needs significant reinforcement to allow our vast renewables potential to be harnessed, transmitted and exported.

"Currently, we simply do not have the transmission capacity to carry the green energy which Scotland will generate over the coming years."

The minister said the new line, which could cost up to £400m..."

Yes Jim, I'm glad you've got it at last.

No, we don't have grid capacity for all this "green energy".

Yes, it is expensive to build it - £400m is a lot of money.

Where is that going to come from?

Might I suggest about 73% from electricity consumers and 27% from the generation projects which need the wires to be built?

Does that sound "unfair" and "unacceptable" to you?

If not, please go tell your boss.

Life imitating art - "Weasel" Russell really is one

2010-01-02T19:58:00.003Z

Given my previous post, the fact that this picture has surfaced in a couple of places recently is uncanny...

Michael "Mike" "Weasel" Russell

A weasel

Separated at birth? I think we should be told.

Salmond - a new low and an epic fail

2009-12-31T14:31:00.003Z

The Hootsmon reported yesterday on the Fat Minister's New Year message to his grateful and attentive nation.

"In it, the First Minister focuses specifically on the controversy over high transmission charges for renewables firms in Scotland. As they are based further away from the UK's main centres of population, they are charged more for access to the National Grid. Mr Salmond said the charges were "totally unfair and totally unacceptable"."

It says something about the abject and humiliating failure of his governmental programme that he has to focus one of his most important messages of the year on, er, electricity transmission charges.

It also demonstrates what an opportunist and ignoramus he is - both at the same time, which is pretty impressive!

Let us - as is my wont - look at the facts.

We can find the data on these fascinating charges here on National Grid's website.

And we can indeed see that power stations in Scotland have to pay more to National Grid than elsewhere in the country. In fact, power stations in some parts of Southern England pay negative charges - i.e. National Grid actually pays them for being there.

Why?

Supply and demand.

There is a lot more generation capacity in Scotland than there is demand for power. So for these power stations to actually find a paying customer, their output has to be exported and carried a long way by the Grid. This costs.

In fact, the Grid is having to invest in new transmission lines to carry the output from all the lovely new wind farms that are being built. This costs even more, and the Grid raises the money by charging the power stations that want it to export their power. Seems fair to me.

In Southern England, on the other hand, there is much more demand than generation. So power stations there don't need new infrastructure to be build and don't need their output carrying large distances. In fact it would save the Grid money if more stations were built there. Hence the negative charges.

Locational incentives, see? It would save the Grid - and all of us - money if power stations located themselves in the South of England, close to the centre of demand.

But this is only half the story. In fact it's a lot less than half - more like a quarter. Viz page 11, paragraph 1.5 (v) of the Grid's Charging Methodology Statement:

"v.) The application of a Transmission Network Use of System Revenue split between generation and demand of 27% and 73% respectively."

The Grid actually gets 73% of its use-of-system revenue from demand - i.e. customers like you and me - and only 27% from power stations. (This charge is bundled up inside the tariffs we pay to our electricity suppliers.)

Let's look at the charges for consumers.

Oooh! Aaah! Lo! and behold, the picture for the demand-side charges is exactly the other way round from that for the generation-side charges.

Who'd have thought it?

This means that Scottish consumers pay lower transmission charges than anyone else in the country.

For exactly the same reason National Grid wants to incentivise generation to locate in the South, it would like demand to locate itself in the North. That's good for us consumers personally and directly, and it's good for the Scottish economy since it makes it marginally cheaper for energy-intensive manufacturing industry to locate here.

Isn't it amazing that the much-vaunted "professional economist" of Bute House is unable to grasp this?

It's not as if he hasn't been given the expert answers for a long, long time. Here is the electricity and gas regulator, Sir Alistair Buchanan, in the Hootsmon in August 2008:

"You were inaccurate to describe the methodology behind locational transmission charging as a "special levy" on Scottish generators.

This charging system is applied in the same way on generators throughout the GB network. It fairly reflects the costs that generators impose on the network to get their energy to the end user.

This is because the further a source of gas or electricity is from its end user, the more it costs to transport that energy to them.

There is no evidence that cost reflective transmission costs are somehow harming the generation of renewable energy in Scotland.

There is a substantial queue of renewable generators waiting to connect, many of which are only being held back by the lack of planning consents. We are not aware of any proposed development that has not gone ahead because of network charges."

It ought to be obvious that the amount of money the Grid needs to raise to fund its operations and investments is pretty much fixed. So if Salmond were to get his wish of reduced charges for generators in Scotland, the obvious corollary would be increased charges for consumers in Scotland.

Brilliant! He wants to reduce charges for the big, rich, mostly foreign-owned corporates building wind farms (Iberdrola, RWE, E.on, EdF, and our own Centrica and SSE) and put them up for ordinary consumers. Clearly an example of a consummate master political tactician at work.

Hopefully you can see why I'm calling this a new low for our Fat Minister.

He hasn't got a lot to talk about in his New Year message. No LIT, no meaningful SFT, failure on class sizes and not much worth saying about the doomed "independence" referendum either.

So the only target the portly one can find for his nakedly politicised, opportunist attempt at gripe-and-moan Union-bashing is, er, electricity transmission charges.

Hardly likely to set the heather alight and inspire the Nat grassroots to charge the barricades, is it?

And what makes it, in addition, an epic fail, is that he has either totally misunderstood the facts or (could this be true?) is choosing to misrepresenting them. What he is actually doing is calling for costs to be transferred from big multinational companies to Scottish consumers.

Whichever explanation is true, it demonstrates why this charlatan is totally unfit for his position.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

Another Day in the Cheese Shop

2009-12-21T11:57:00.007Z

Sadly we are fresh out of Red Leicester, Tilsit, Caerphilly, Bel Paese, Red Windsor, Stilton, Gruyere, Emmental, Norwegian Jarlsberger, Liptauer, Lancashire, White Stilton, Danish Blue, Double Gloucester, Cheshire, Dorset Blue Vinney, Brie, Rocquefort, Pont-l'Eveque, Port-Salut, Savoyard, Saint-Paulin, Carre de l'Est, Boursin, Bresse-Bleue, and Perle de Champagne.

We did have some Camembert, but it was very runny and the cat ate it.

We also have no Gouda, Edam, Caithness, Smoked Austrian, Sage Derby, Wensleydale, Gorgonzola, Parmesan, Mozzarella, Pippo Creme, Danish Fimboe, Czechoslovakian Sheep's Milk Cheese, Venezuelan Beaver Cheese, Cheddar, Ilchester or even Limburger.

We do, however, have this interesting contribution from an ex-SNP councillor.

"As the Brie hits the ventilation system I must confess my own very minor involvement in the whole debacle.

Back in the day when the SNP were more concerned with believing in the cause rather than absolute unquestioning devotion to the latest Blackberry instruction of the day, I was contacted by Mike Russell to get involved in a pro-SNP blogging ring.

I was to be part of the 'group' as an 'influential' (sic) blogger and I was to be contacted again as part of the blogging network he was setting up.

Perhaps I was not pliant enough, but I never heard from Mike again.

All of which explains why I blog in my own name and not under a nom de ~~guerre~~ plume. "

[irony on]

Makes "Weasel" Russell's statements that he had no knowledge of and no involvement in a certain political blog all the more convincing, doesn't it?

[irony off]

Hey, hey, it's Cheesehog Day!

2009-12-20T11:45:00.002Z

The Sunday Times goes with not one, but two stories on the continuing saga of whether "Weasel" Russell knew about and contributed to his ex-office manager's blog.

If he did, of course, he is guilty of a terminological inexactitude since he has said he didn't.

The ST coverage is a bit curious since neither of the stories adds very much to what was out last weekend.

But to save us from ennui, Mr McLachlan has popped the latest round of correspondence up on his blog.

Read away.

Cheesegate continues

2009-12-19T22:50:00.003Z

[Why am I reposting this verbatim? Just in case it "disappears".]

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/row-over-blog-deepens-with-liar-liar-post-1.993317

Row over blog deepens with "liar" post

Michael Russell

Brian Currie

0 comments

Published on 19 Dec 2009

The controversial blogger whose website has seriously embarrassed Education Secretary Mike Russell has posted a new entry – two clowns singing "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire".

The entry on Mark MacLachlan’s Universality of Cheese site is not accompanied by any comment and does not specify any target.

The sketch, which is available on YouTube, was taken from an episode of a North American children’s TV series, the Big Comfy Couch. It features a main character called Loonette the Clown and her friends and regularly focuses on moral or educational themes.

During the "Liar, Liar" song, another clown scolds Loonette for telling lies and during a dance routine sings that the habit makes people "squirm".

It stands alone on Mr MacLachlan’s site without any accompanying remarks from the blogger, who is in dispute with Mr Russell over whether he was sacked or resigned and whether the Education Secretary was aware of the smears in the attack blog’s content.

They included suggestions about the sexuality of a married MSP, a claim that one of Scotland’s most successful QCs is a liar and accusations about the conduct of a top Labour Party official.

The addition to Mr MacLachlan’s site was posted as Mr Russell fought back after the issue provoked a heated exchange in the Scottish Parliament between First Minister Alex Salmond and Labour leader Iain Gray.

Mr Russell, who has been vigorously defended by Mr Salmond, strongly denies that he knew anything about what Mr MacLachlan was writing, while his former colleague has implied that he knew more than he has admitted.

The Education Secretary has taken the unusual step of reporting himself to the Scottish Parliament’s Standards Commissioner for investigation and has threatened to sue his former aide for "totally false" allegations.

Mr MacLachlan denies he resigned and claims an apology in his name was written by First Minister Alex Salmond’s senior special adviser, Kevin Pringle.

The blogger did not respond to attempts to contact him yesterday, but his website said he would be "making a statement though my legal representatives in the next 24 hours" regarding stories about him that had appeared in The Herald.

Late yesterday afternoon, the legal advice had still not appeared and Mr MacLachlan’s partner suggested it would not appear on the blog until later in the weekend.

A spokesman for Mr Russell, who had viewed the latest addition to Mr MacLachlan’s blog, said: "We have no further comment to make. Mr Russell has instructed solicitors to make it clear to his former employee that his allegations are totally false, and any repetition of them by him will result in legal action."

Mr Gray also urged Mr Salmond yesterday to sack the SNP group leader on Dumfries and Galloway Council, Rob Davidson, who claimed not to have known anything about the blog, but has since admitted he was a source of some of the material.

The Labour leader said: "Alex Salmond said in Parliament he deprecated such behaviour and political parties should not have anything to do with them. Will he now then ask Rob Davidson to resign or sack him for his part in the SNP smear campaign?

"The First Minister must not hide the role of any MSP or special adviser in this smear campaign or its cover-up. He must also come clean about his own role. Did he order Michael Russell to sack Mark MacLachlan, and did he order his adviser Kevin Pringle to draft a resignation statement?

"If Alex Salmond is sincere about rooting out smear campaigns by the SNP, he must be open about the conduct of his ministers and special advisers and publish all documents and emails relating to Mark MacLachlan."

The SNP, which earlier said Mr Davidson "repudiates the comments" posted by Mr MacLachlan, said yesterday: "Councillor Davidson is the subject of party disciplinary procedures. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage."

Bloggergate - now it gets interesting

2009-12-17T22:18:00.003Z

"Weasel" Russell is toast.

It's a matter of time. Heeee!

http://the-universality-of-cheese.blogspot.com/2009/12/ding-dong-merrily-on-high.html

"Wednesday, 16 December 2009

Ding dong merrily on high.

Interesting repercussions from my article in the weekends Sunday Times.

Having just received a phone call from Paul Hutcheon of the Sunday Herald who is doing a story for tomorrow's Herald, in which I will yet again be smeared as a vile individual, who not only accuses Michael Russell and his South of Scotland adviser Aileen Orr of being not only aware of the blawg, but also of them suggesting stories and much of the sly innuendo and tittle tattle for which I have been panned. In addition I will be accused of attempting to coerce Mr Russell into giving me either my job back or finding me a cushy number in a quiet quango.

It appears that someone has released private emails sent between myself and Michael Russell's home email address to Paul Hutcheon. I can with one hundred percent certainty, hand on heart, scouts honour, tell you that I am not the person who has released these emails, as I was legally advised that it was best to not tell the Sunday Times that Mr Russell not only knew about but suggested possible stories for the blawg as it would hinder any subsequent tribunal.

Now obviously, what appears in The Herald will be skewed against me. So I've decided to give you, my lovely readers, all 14 of you the main emails* from which I suspect I will be kebabed.

So sit back and be prepared to be bored.

* Some details of the following emails have been removed, basically names of certain individuals,

Oh one final reminder, Aileen Orr mentioned above is the SNP candidate for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweedsdale. She is without doubt the laziest candidate the party have probably ever put up for a seat, she has done close to zero campaigning in the constituency, has done a mere handful of Activate calls despite claiming to have spent every working moment doing them. She is a great pal of Paul Hutcheon, who didn't deny receiving these emails from her. The reason, I know all this? Well, until this all blew up, I was her election agent. I may still be as I haven't received ANY paperwork regarding my employment situation.

==================================================================================

-----Original Message-----
From: *******@******.com
To: feorlean@mac.com
Sent: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:33
Subject: Re: This week.

Michael

I am sending this to your Feorlean account as neither of us want the following appearing on the Parliamentary system where it could be accessed by an FOI request.

It is my understanding that you told me on the Friday morning that you would 'have to let me go'. I am unhappy about a situation where I humbly resign, as I do not accept that the blog was a sacking offence, it was something I composed outside of office hours, as a check on my parliamentary internet account will confirm, neither do I accept that the comments you refer to 'were of a serious nature'.

Yourself, Kevin Pringle and the FM responded in a knee jerk fashion and chose to sacrifice a loyal party member, employee and friend. You blindly accept the perceived 'truth' of the News of the World, rather than check the claims thoroughly yourselves and the context within which they were written.

At no point did you even begin to explain or even ask how the NOTW got my name and details. The FM's comments in Perth at the weekend basically give credibility to the belief that I was smearing opposition politicians with vile lies and that there is some great cybernat conspiracy.

The condemnation of Norman Will for having the temerity to comment on my facebook status was utterly pathetic and worthy of Stalinist practises long thought dead. Are the party aware that their is a vicious campaign to silence pro-independence bloggers and the FM's statement has gone down like a lead balloon.

You said the post on Cllrs Smyth and Nicholson were accusations of wife beating. That is completely incorrect, the images used to illustrate the post were tongue-in-cheek satire of the 1950's and 1960's showing woman being treated as less than equal.

Rather ironically, the first I knew about Cllr Smyth's dismissal was when you yourself told me about it on Friday the 20th, the day of the flooding and as we drove to Whithorn. I also have Cllr ****** weekly round-up which mentions it in detail.

If you remember correctly, it was you who told me about driving a drunken &%$^(*) ^*%$&& in Edinburgh and having to stop the car whilst he picked up some young men, where else could I have found that information?

Any comments on ***"£$ *^&%$***, came from comments that both you and Aileen made to me. Although, there is a seven Tories in a bed comment on the blog, it links to a photograph of ********* sitting on a bed in Africa…you know, humour.

The abject humiliation I have suffered in the media, both national and local (thank you for your Jekyll and Hyde comments in the Dumfries Courier) could have been prevented had you and the FM team taken time to consider the situation positively, rather than this pathetic knee jerk reaction better suited to your political rivals.

As it is your subsequent feeding me to the lions has left me virtually unemployable. As stated previously, I am looking to you as my employer to assist me in finding an alternative job, rather than let all of this sorry mess make its way into the public domain.

I intend to contest my sacking, given that although you now deny it, you were aware of the blog and even suggested possible subjects, such as the Daily Record pictures of Megrahi which I had asked SPICE for when I arrived at Parliament at 11.30am on the Thursday, for which they subsequently sent me an email claiming they could not locate the hard copies. As you will remember you said you would get them to me for putting on the blog.

I’m not trying to be a bastard about this situation, and I appreciate the kind words that you said in Friday’s email. I’m merely looking for some help from a friend in a powerful position who has not been truthful to the world about his knowledge of what I was doing.

You could have at any point told me to shut it down and I would have. I see the Courier even manage to publish my home address as justification for a letter I sent complaining about Smyth not identifying himself as a councillor when he attacked you over flooding/sea gulls/ regeneration.

As you gave me a deadline of Wednesday to respond, I will give you the same opportunity to respond to the above before I send it to your parliamentary address and cc the Presiding Officer and other interested parties.

I have recorded nothing on the telephone, I bear you and Cathleen no ill will, I only want some assistance. As you know I am loyal to the party and the government, however, I place Jane’s health and my family above that of politics. I would dearly love to walk away from this whole mess by the end of the week, if this is not possible then I will take up the offer from the media to talk about the blog.

Mark

==================================================================================

-----Original Message-----
From: ********@****.com
To: feorlean@mac.com
Sent: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 14:47

Changing the office door locks, having Aileen demand to know if I was recording our conversation and and making ***** ********* try to find out what journalists I had spoken to is not really the best way of maintaining my loyalty. For the record, the only journalist I have been in touch with is ****** ********, after she contacted me to say she'd spoken to you at the Diaspora event.

The NOTW as part of their concerted campaign against Independence supporting bloggers, have managed to to knock out another five bloggers this week. ****** ******* is being dragged into it, after his former constituency secretary and friend, is exposed as someone who failed to condemn a racist comment on the Scotsman forum. Iain McWhirter's blog from Monday questioning just how much you knew about my blog, the accusations that the FM responded in a knee jerk reaction rather than actually look at the truth through a NOTW prism, are all gaining momentum.

****** has asked if I want to give my side of the story to ****** ******. I don't want to.

What I do want is help finding a job. It needn't be immediate, some time in the next few months, stuck in some quango, under my first name, not even in Dumfries and Galloway.

Falling on the sword is one thing, destroying my families future for the SNP is an entirely different thing.

Mark

Posted by Mark MacLachlan at 12/16/2009 10:08:00 PM "

Bloggergate - heading for the courts?

2009-12-13T08:50:00.005Z

On the trivial front, there appears to be an idiot out there who is so staggeringly politically illiterate that he thinks he can "out" me as, er, Lord George "Zebedee on acid" Foulkes MSP.

More seriously, an interesting tale in the Sunday Times:

"Nationalist blogger to sue SNP over 'unfair sacking'

Jason Allardyce

A former aide to Michael Russell, the education minister, is to take legal action against the Scottish National party, claiming he was unfairly sacked for writing a blog with rude comments about political rivals.

Mark MacLachlan also claims to have recorded the computer identities of everyone who logged onto his Universality of Cheese website, which could be revealed at an industrial tribunal.

MacLachlan says he was forced to resign as Russell’s constituency office manager after he was exposed as the creator of the satirical website that included gossip about the private lives of opposition politicians.

Among his targets were Lord Foulkes, the Labour MSP, Paul McBride QC, the Conservative lawyer, and Colin Smyth, general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party.

The SNP leadership immediately distanced itself from the site, with Russell claiming he knew nothing of MacLachlan’s blogging. A similar scandal involving Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor, was hugely damaging to the prime minister.

MacLachlan said it was common knowledge among senior nationalists that he was the blogger behind the website, known within nationalist circles as “Cheese”. He insists he did not resign, as the SNP has claimed, but was effectively sacked, with a resignation letter drafted in his name by Kevin Pringle, the first minister’s most senior adviser.

At the time, a spokesman for Russell said he was “shocked” to learn that MacLachlan, who wrote under the pseudonym Montague Burton, had been responsible for what the minister termed “despicable anonymous commentary”.

Writing in today’s Sunday Times, MacLachlan denies he was involved in a smear campaign and insists that he had acted alone.

“The big question I’ve been asked repeatedly is: ‘Did Michael Russell know about your blog?’ I haven’t answered the question; that’s for Michael Russell to do,” he said.

“Personally, the saddest aspect of this sorry mess is the deterioration of my friendship with the man I regarded as my mentor.”

He added: “[Russell] commented last week to the local press that, although I did a lot of good work in Dumfries, he feels a victim and that I am some sort of Jekyll and Hyde character. This strikes me as taking the knife and twisting it in a little deeper.”

McLachlan said there were plenty of people within the SNP “both locally and nationally” who knew he was the author of the website and who had supplied him with material.

“I realise that in order to preserve themselves they had to put the boot in,” he said. “However, an IT-minded friend thankfully installed an ISP tracker on my blog about six months ago, and I now have access to the ISPs of the thousands of people who read my blog — people from all walks of Scottish life. Some were even daft enough to post Holyrood gossip from their work machines.”

John Park, Scottish Labour’s campaigns spokesman, described McLachlan’s remarks as “explosive”, adding: “It is very worrying that this goes right to the heart of the SNP. Michael Russell has to be very clear on what he did and didn’t know. Things have been said that have cast doubt on the integrity of a lot of people but we have yet to hear an apology from Mike Russell, Alex Salmond or anyone at a senior level of the SNP.

“We need to restore the public’s faith in politics. The SNP have to be very clear on what they expect from people who support them and be very clear on what role they have had developing these sites before they were in government and since they have been in government.”

Park said that MacLachlan’s comments underlined the need for the SNP to publish all of the emails and correspondence between its ministers, special advisers and the sacked aide. A spokesman for Russell said: “Mr MacLachlan resigned from his position as a constituency worker in the Dumfries office.

“It is difficult to understand how he could believe he could ever have remained in post, given his unacceptable conduct. Michael Russell, who employed him in his capacity as an MSP, was shocked to be told about the matter, knew absolutely nothing about it, and accepted Mr MacLachlan’s resignation.”"

It appears we have the sacked MacLachlan threatening to expose in court which other SNP members knew exactly who was behind his blog, and - as the argument will doubtless be - gave it their implicit approval.

Will the list include party office-bearers, MSPs or even ministers?

The world wonders.

(Furthermore, MacLachlan offers some interesting insight into the exact manner of his "outing".)

Blogs: another two bite the dust

2009-12-05T14:27:00.001Z

Two more Nat blogs fold.

Spookums has - apparently voluntarily - hung up the keyboard at the so-called "Advanced Media Watch".

No loss. He seems a fairly nice if naif chap, but I thought there was supposed to be more to blogging than vignettes from Spook's life and him saying "I love football and the SNP" over and over again.

When he wasn't calling named journalists c**ts.

And the shutters have gone up at Subrosa.

This is more interesting (and/or concerning), since apparently this is a response to her being "outed" and "threatened" by a "stalker". (Can't confirm this, since I wasn't there, and I haven't been able to turn anything up in the Google cache.)

Rumours suggest there is to be a story about Subrosa in the News of the Screws on Sunday. I would guess that this might be about a thread on her blog in which she and her circle of male admirers made some unfortunate comments about what they thought ought to be done to asylum seekers, and the fact that she boasts of being a mate of "Hapless" Swinney.

Of course, there was also the personal attack on Jenny Hjul of the Sunday Times. Or the remarks about "incomers" (see below).

I've blogged on Subrosa before. Frankly, anyone who puts up a picture of themselves and makes regular references to where they live and what they do / have done is not going to stay anonymous for long. Duh.

And that means that said blogger needs to exercise due care and attention about what they say and allow to be said on their blog. Particularly if they value their supposedly close links to politicians.

Polaris seems to be having a fine stab at whoever is going after the Nat blogs.

As for Subrosa's blog, again small loss. Most of the time it read like some sort of dating site for over-55s. Presumably this is still going on behind closed doors.

Oh, one more thing, love: no female resident of Broughty Ferry ever describes themselves as a "Dundee wifey".

Another Nat blog downed, and a new comment policy at the Hootsmon

2009-11-29T18:31:00.004Z

Well, well.

Another Nat blog has been downed, and the author forced to resign as Mike "Michael" "Weasel" Russell's constituency office manager.

I'm afraid I have very little sympathy in this case. A paid political staffer using a blog to make specific, but unsupported, allegations about named individuals, and expecting there to be no come-back. Think of it as evolution in action.

It's a bit curious that this was an anonymous blog. Were "technical means" used to identify the author?

On the other hand, it's frighteningly easy to give away your ID by accident on the web. Alternatively, it could have been the result of old-fashioned real-world blabbering:

"Gosh, that "Universality of Cheese" blog is really good, isn't it? I wonder who "Montague Burton" really is."

"You like it? Let me tell you a secret..."

A secret is, of course, something you only tell to one person at a time.

And then we have the Scotsman's David Maddox explaining why the paper no longer allows comments on stories published under his byline.

Christ on a bike, the paper's had comments sent in threatening physical violence against the man, and he's had his windows smashed 8 times in 2 years.

It comes back to what Scottish Unionist said for years - and what prompted him to cease blogging - there is a nasty, zealot fringe of nutters surrounding the SNP. Curiously, they don't ever seem to have been disowned or condemned.

I'm not happy with a situation in which it appears that one or two Labour-connected folks and newspaper journalists have made a bit of a project out of monitoring and targeting Nat blogs and their authors.

But given the way some CyberNats carry on, is it any wonder?

The (immediate) future of Faslane

2009-11-24T18:07:00.005Z

Hunter killer sub Astute arrives at her home port

"The biggest and most powerful attack submarine ever built for the Royal Navy – Astute – today sailed into her home base on the Clyde.

Measuring nearly one hundred metres from bow to stern, Astute is longer than ten London buses. When fully loaded, she will displace 7,800 tonnes of sea water, equivalent to 65 blue whales.

The Astute submarine has the latest stealth technology, a world-beating sonar system and is armed with 38 torpedoes and missiles - more than any previous Royal Navy submarine. She will be able to circumnavigate the globe while submerged, and advanced nuclear technology means that she will never need to be refuelled.

Astute will be followed in due course by her sister submarines Ambush, Artful and Audacious. These four comprise the first of the expected seven submarines in the Astute Class. The Astute class will carry the potent Spearfish Heavyweight torpedo which can destroy submarines or surface ships, and Tomahawk cruise missiles that can hit inland targets with pinpoint accuracy. The boats will have 50 per cent more firepower than the existing Trafalgar class submarines they will succeed in service.

After touring Astute, the Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, Quentin Davies, said:

“This is a significant milestone for Astute as she arrives for the first time in her homeport of Faslane. The Astute class of submarines will deliver a step change in capability for defence in terms of anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, protecting the deterrent, providing land attack and intelligence gathering. Astute will now begin a set of sea trials ahead of her full acceptance with the Royal Navy next year.”

First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, said:

“The Astute Class is truly next generation. They are immensely powerful vessels and they will form a key part of our future programme, giving the Royal Navy the versatility and technical excellence needed to operate successfully across the globe.

“Astute is a joint warfighting asset and I look forward to her entry into service, along with that of her six sisters – which include Ambush, Artful and Audacious.”

Commodore Chris Hockley, the Naval Base Commander at HM Naval Base Clyde, said:

“I am particularly pleased and excited at the prospect of welcoming Astute to her home Base today. There has been significant investment and preparations made over several years to prepare us for this occasion.

“The Clyde will become a centre of specialisation for submarines, and, of course, submarine training. With the arrival of Astute I cannot think of a more exciting time to be a submariner.”"

What's not to like?

THAT picture of Salmond - the horror, the horror

2009-11-22T19:41:00.001Z

Further on the topic of the media and legal shmeagles, a curious thing happened at the Hootsmon on Wednesday (November 18).

There was a story entitled "SNP will miss key target on boosting economy".

Here is the the story as it appears on the web now:

But thanks to the wonders of the Google cache, here's how it looked when first published:

Spot the difference?

Let's look at it more closely.

Actually, those of a nervous disposition might not want to go any further. It's a bit unpleasant.

I mean it. Only proceed if you're braced for a shock.

AAARGH! MY EYES!

Give yourself a minute to get over the transcendental horror of the experience.

Now, the funny thing is that this terrifying image was originally put up by the Hootsmon to accompany the story, but disappeared during the course of the day.

It's also notable that they normally don't use pictures as big as this one.

So what happened? Someone at Hootsmon towers was having a laugh, and there was probably a phone call from the Bute House press office.

The fun bit is imagining what it must have been like.

"Hello, Scotsman. Oh, Kevin, what can I do for you?

You're complaining about the picture of Salmond in the web edition? What's wrong with it?

It's too big? Kevin, in my entire life I have never heard a spin doctor complain that a picture of his principal was "too big". You'll have to do better than that.

It makes him look ugly? Well the camera never lies. We haven't retouched that photo in any way.

OK, let me repeat this back to you so that I've got it right. You want us to pull the pic because it makes Salmond look like a fat, jowly, boss-eyed Shrek-a-like. Is that it?

Just for you, Kevin, I'll do it. But you owe me one, OK?"

Heee!

The Muzzling of Muttley - updated

2009-11-22T17:32:00.002Z

Had an email from my occasional "contributor" Wardog (known to me as Muttley) saying he was packing in his blog. For a while this carried an announcement confirming same and referring cryptically to some sort of run-in with the press, but now it is no more. Along with Muttley's Blogger account and email address.

I was busy last week so I didn't see what happened. Reading between the lines, it seems Muttley abandoned his usual fare of warmed-over SNP press releases and said something which may have been original, but also seems to have been objectionable. Hence interest from the press and possibly (I'm guessing) m'learned friends.

Since Muttley semi-deliberately "outed" his real identity not long ago, he seems to have had no choice but to cease, desist and retreat.

("Semi-deliberate"? Thanks to a bit of inside knowledge of both Muttley's case and that of another ex-blogger, here are a couple of Laws of Anonymous Blogging:

1. When sending an email or putting up a blog post or comment, check VERY VERY CAREFULLY which email or blog account you are logged in to.

2. When putting up a screen grab on your blog, check VERY VERY CAREFULLY that there is nothing else on it which reveals your true identity. Or, indeed, if you've been looking at naughty websites.

I've had a couple of close calls myself.)

Seems a bit extreme for the chap to have to trash his entire online identity, but without knowing what originally sparked it off, it's hard to judge. If anyone wants to let me know (privately or in public) what happened, I'd be grateful.

UPDATED TO ADD:

Aha. It seems the matter has actually been covered in the SoS:

I may have to watch out myself. I regularly say rude things about politicians here. Should I be expecting a knock at the door?

The difference is, of course, that I'm anonymous. Anonymity is like being pregnant - you either are or you aren't. And if you aren't, you need to act accordingly - in particular, you need to be aware that those you criticise and insult may decide to retaliate.

(I do find amusing those who seem to think there's a middle way, e.g. putting up a picture of themselves, declaring where they live and what they do, but hiding behind the very small fig-leaf of a nom de plume. You know who you are. No names, no pack drill.)

Having "outed" himself, our chum Muttley seems to have forgotten that he'd done it and carried on as if he were still stealthy.

It would be interesting to know who initiated the complaint. One of the insulted politicians, or maybe a journalist off their own back? I've thought for a long time that the CyberNat habit of using newspapers' own comments pages to decry them as being a) crap and b) biased would lead to tears.

The involvement of the man's employer is potentially serious and will look unfair and heavy-handed to many. But it's the education sector - contracts there these days contain words like "professional standards" and "reputation" and yes, they do mean them.

Let's just hope that the outcome isn't too serious.

The Nats and broadcasting: "Weasel" Russell thinks he can change the laws of physics

2009-11-15T17:12:00.009Z

Mike "Michael" "Weasel" Russell

Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott

The unintentional hilarity of the Nats' "policy" papers continued with the one on broadcasting. This one is going to be a new classic. Not only does this give further evidence that the Nats do not understand, or compulsively lie about, the rules of commercial economics, but in this paper they seem to be trying to convince us that "independence" would somehow change the laws of physics. "Weasel" Russell thinks he can do something that even Scotty couldn't.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let's begin.

The Nat broadcasting paper can be found here. The first parts are dull. There is bleating that "Scottish broadcasting has been marginalised within the UK framework." As usual, no evidence is given to support this.

The real hoots come in chapter 4, describing what Scottish broadcasting could be like in their "independent" Nirvana.

"4.9. The future of the BBC and the licence fee revenue raised within Scotland would be a major consideration in the move to an independent Scotland. It is envisaged that the existing assets, staff and expertise of BBC Scotland would be used as the basis of a Scottish national broadcaster, along with an appropriate share of the BBC’s other assets, including its commercial activities."

Oh, so "we" are grabbing the bits of the Beeb north of the border, then.

Stand by for the customary hilarity which accompanies these Nat "policy" papers.

"4.11. One obvious example of this is Ireland (which has a lower population than Scotland) where the RTE service supports two television channels, three radio stations and five performing groups through a mixture of a licence fee (which in 2008 was 160 euros per household) and advertising revenues. RTE’s total income in 2007 was 441m euros (245.7m euros from advertising revenue and 195.7m euros from licence fee revenue) Scotland’s estimated level of licence fee revenue in 2008-09 would be equivalent to 335m euros."

Now as anyone who's spent time in Ireland knows, RTE is - and let's be fair to it - fecking awful. (So, of course, is STV, before anyone accuses me of picking on our fellow Celts across the water.)

But the Nat vision of a possible future "SBC" is that if we continued to pay the same licence fee as now (£142.50 = €160), AND added some adverts (which of course irritates the viewer and reduces actual content time), then we could end up with something as, er, "good" as RTE.

What a marvellous prospect.

But would we still be able to catch the Beeb?

"Irish viewers can also, of course, access BBC channels from the UK and a range of channels on other platforms, just as Scottish viewers in an independent Scotland would do."

WEASEL ALERT! WEASEL ALERT!

This is the bit where the Nats attempt to con us with some well-chosen weasel words. Either that, or they've somehow discovered a way to change the laws of physics. Which do you think it is?

As anyone who knows anything about TV is aware, terrestrial TV broadcasts are in the UHF band. This means the broadcasts can only be received if you have, more or less, a line of sight to the transmitter. This is why we need so many repeater stations scattered across the country: here's a map.

Now, these transmitters aren't owned by the BBC or the state. They are owned by a private company, Arqiva.

They don't work for free. They use up quite a lot of power, they need to be maintained, repaired, upgraded and so on.

Broadcasters like the BBC have to pay Arqiva a fee to use the network. The level of this fee is regulated by Ofcom.

So let's look forward to "Weasel" Russell's hypothetical future in which "we" have taken over BBC Scotland and are using the licence revenue to run our own little RTE-a-like.

The BBC is no longer receiving any licence revenue from Scotland. Naturally, it stops paying Arqiva to use the transmitters in Scotland. So the Beeb goes off the air in Scotland. This applies to FM radio too, of course, since its VHF signals are pretty much line-of-sight too. We'd only be able to get Radio 1-4 on wheezy, crackly MW and LW.

Great.

But how can this be true? "Weasel" Russel has told us that we'd still be able to get the BBC, "just as" they do in Ireland!

Let's look at the weasel words, which are carefully chosen to fall just short of being a lie.

"Irish viewers can also, of course, access BBC channels from the UK..."

Note that it doesn't say "all Irish viewers". Instead, it's left for the alert reader to work out what's going on, which is that some Irish viewers can access the BBC.

Some of them do it via their cable or satellite packages, which of course they have to pay for.

It's also technically possible to get the Freesat package in Ireland, although I understand that, as it is not legally marketed there, this requires a bit of jiggery-pokery (i.e. running your satellite box with the card from your package provider removed.)

A glance at the map above also shows that, for reasons of geography and physics, people in the north and east of the Republic can effectively pirate the spillover signal from transmitters in Northern Ireland and possibly Wales. This region, of course, includes the bulk of the Irish population!

Another glance at the map shows that the same isn't the case for Scotland. There is this rather large lump of rock called the "Southern Uplands" between Scotland's central belt and the transmitters in northern England. No-one in Edinburgh or Glasgow or points in between is going to be picking up the BBC signal for free. (And of course they won't be doing it in Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling or Inverness either.)

So the truthful and correct version of the weasel sentence should go like this:

"Some Irish viewers, in the north and east of the country, can also, of course, access BBC channels from the UK. In an independent Scotland, a few Scottish viewers in Dumfries & Galloway would be able to do likewise. The rest of us would have to fork out for cable or a satellite dish, just as they do in the west and south of Ireland."

Of course, it would be possible to prevent the loss of the BBC signal by continuing to pay them the Scottish licence revenues. But hang on, we're using this to fund the crappy RTE-alike thing we're trying to create out of BBC Scotland.

Oh.

Er.

Um.

I just love these Nat "policy" papers. Time after time, whether it's foreign representation, EU membership, or broadcasting, all they achieve is to show convincingly that the net effect of "independence" would be that we would have to pay more and get less.

Unless, of course, the Nats have found a way to change the laws of physics.

But as we all know, even Scotty couldn't do that.

[PS: as is apparent from the comment thread, a sharp-eyed (but dull-witted) interlocutor noticed that the map above is for analogue coverage.

This was deliberate.

Digital coverage is actually slightly worse.]

Someone doesn't want this on the web...

2009-11-08T18:28:00.000Z

...but it can be found here, at least for now.

"subrosa,26/11/2008 09:25:33
# 2 'Thank goodness we still have privately owned bed and breakfasts. Oh no - they tend to be owned by English people opting out of the rat race.'
>You're not far wrong there. I own a bed and breakfast and in this small town nearly 50% of them are run by incomers from the south east of England. They're on every committee connected with tourism and the locals have just given up. We keep ourselves to ourselves now."

Now we can't be surprised at this Cybernat being a touch embarrassed about the staggeringly repellent hypocrisy of someone who's prepared to make money out of people as tourists, but then complains about them as "incomers" if they become neighbours.

What's even more amusing is that she gets all upset and offended when these unpleasant and self-published remarks are pointed out. Also that she's apparently clueless about to how to remove them.

Too bad, and too late. They're out, they're up and they're staying there, because I've got a screengrab.

Defence, continued - cosmic, comical timing

2009-10-22T18:37:00.006+01:00

I am prompted by a contribution to the previous thread from my occasional interlocutor Indy to start a new one afresh.

"I can't believe you can have so many comments on this. The NATO issue does not, in itself, matter. It is one of the things that will be negotiated and decided on at the time.

What matters is the way it is spun in the here and now in the run up to the election.

That's the politics of it which you guys don't seem to understand."

Hmm. Let's see, shall we?

"Re the spending issue - this is a totally dead duck for you unionists. Scotland does not benefit from UK defence spending. There is in fact a massive underspend. You can bet the SNP will go large with that one."

(Metaphorically rolling up sleeves while trying to stifle a snigger and conceal a feral grin.)

First of all, this is a total misconception of the notion of defence spending. It's supposed to buy you defence and security - it's not supposed to be pork-barrelled up into spending in particular bits of the country for political reasons. The spending happens where the defences need to be for strategic reasons.

We don't need naval bases at Scapa Flow, Invergordon, Tobermory and Rosyth - or for that matter Harwich or Chatham - any more, so we don't have them. Similarly, East Anglia is no longer full of bomber bases sited for maximum proximity to the Soviet Union (or Germany, for that matter).

But even if you wish to pursue the "underspend" argument, it's so wrong it's comical. On this of all days. (Cough. Splutter. Hee!)

Defend And Destroy: Navy's Latest Ship Launched on Clyde

"Thousands turned out on the banks of the Clyde today to cheer on the latest ship to make up the Royal Navy’s formidable new Type 45 destroyer class. Defender sailed for the first time today.

Chief in Command Fleet Admiral Trevor Soar said:

“The thousands gathered here today to witness the launch of Defender is testament to the pride Scotland rightly takes in its shipbuilding industry which has seen a resurgence in recent times with the Type 45 build programme and the manufacture of the Aircraft Carriers that they will defend.

“Defender’s affiliation with her ‘home town’ of Glasgow will ensure these strong links live on and gives the Royal Navy the chance to give something back to the community that worked so hard to deliver her and her sister ships.

“The launch of the fifth ship is an exciting milestone as we draw nearer to the first of class HMS Daring entering into service in the New Year to begin her duties with the Royal Navy.”

Defender was launched amid a cloud of balloons and fireworks by Lady Julie Massey, wife of the Deputy Head of the Navy Second Sea Lord Sir Alan Massey, to the fanfare of the Band of the Royal Marines.

Chief of Materiel Fleet Vice Admiral Andrew Mathews said:

“The Type 45 class is a most formidable ship. Her world-class Sea Viper missile system which can defend against multiple attacks by the most sophisticated anti-ship missiles bears out the title ‘destroyer’, while Defender’s name hints to her main future role in providing air defence to the Navy’s new aircraft carriers.

"Defender will be capable of carrying out a wide range of operations, including anti-piracy and anti-smuggling activities, disaster-relief work and surveillance operations as well as high intensity warfighting.”

As versatile as they are powerful, the Type 45s will have a range of capabilities. They will be able to carry up to 60 Royal Marines Commandos and their equipment, and operate a Chinook-sized helicopter from the flight deck. The standards of accommodation are also able to exceed previous classes thanks to the ships’ size.

Defender is the fifth ship of six in the Type 45 destroyer class. Good progress is being made on the programme: HMS Daring (ship one) has been commissioned into the Royal Navy and is on her final trials prior to her entering service, planned for February 2010.

Dauntless (ship two) has recently completed two very successful sets of sea trials while Diamond (ship three) has just begun her sea trials. Dragon (ship four) was launched in Scotland at the end of 2008 and Duncan (ship six) is under construction in Govan."

Sorry Indy, you were saying?

Possibly you also missed the announcement that the Navy is moving all its submarines from Devonport to Faslane.

That's Faslane, the rather large naval base which really does employ 6500 people directly and another 3000 indirectly:

"The Base is the largest single site employer in Scotland with an integrated workforce of around 6,500 personnel – drawn from the Royal Navy, Ministry of Defence civilians, Babcock Marine (the MOD's industrial partner at the Base) and external contractors. A further 3,000 Scottish jobs are supported indirectly by HM Naval Base Clyde and more than £250 million is spent in Scotland on wages and contracts awarded each year, directly related to the Base."

Where do you think those 6500 people live and spend their wages, Indy? What do they eat and drink?

I apologise for having to mention the construction plans for the new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers.

"The ACA has approved the following decisions under the developing build strategy:

Lower Block 1 (the bow section) will be built by Babcock’s yards at Appledore and Rosyth;
Lower Block 2 will be built by BVT Surface Fleet in Portsmouth;
Lower Blocks 3 and 4 (the stern section) will be built by BVT on the Clyde;
The sponsons (the overhanging upper hull structure) will be manufactured by Babcock Marine;
and the two superstructure Islands will be built by BVT in Portsmouth.

Final assembly and integration of the two warships will be undertaken by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance partners at Rosyth."

I believe someone was saying something about "underspend in Scotland".

Let's look at the RAF at Kinloss, Lossiemouth and Leuchars. According to the RAF squadron list, we currently have 55 operational squadrons. A quick look at the station list shows that something like 9.5 of them are based at the three Scottish stations, going up to 10.5 next year as the Typhoons come into Leuchars.

9.5 / 55 = 17%. Got a problem with that?

I can't even be bothered to look at the Army's basing. It will be the same story.

So please, please, please let it be true that the Nats are planning to "go large" on the issue of defence spending in Scotland.

It will only prove the existence of a substantial Union benefit for Scotland from UK defence spending, and utterly discredit the idea that an "independent" Scotland could somehow sustain anything like it.

We were promised a "defence policy paper" from the Nats. Where is it?

Surely not delayed because they realise it will be a disaster?

Defence - the worthy thoughts of Macleod and Cochrane

2009-10-12T17:35:00.003+01:00

Following the pompous Angus Roberton making an erse of himself and his party over their non-defence non-policy, I was impressed by the thoughts of the Times' Angus Mcleod:

SNP blueprint for English military bases to stay in independent Scotland ‘a fantasy’

"Defence has always been the SNP’s Achilles’ heel. The party has never been able to square the desire to leave the United Kingdom with the expense of providing an independent Scotland’s defence requirements.

Even then, they have tied themselves in knots explaining why an independent Scotland would need an Army, Navy and Air Force in any case and how exactly these soldiers, sailors and airmen would be equipped.

Neither has the party ever adequately explained how they would meet the social and employment cost of closing these bases they do not want to see in Scotland. It is an inescapable fact that the Trident nuclear submarine base on the Clyde employs, directly and indirectly, thousands of people and provides a key part of the economic backbone of a good part of West-Central Scotland.

Now, we learn from Angus Robertson, the party’s defence spokesman, that while Trident would go, the SNP’s latest thinking on defence would see other UK military bases in stay. So an independent Scotland which, according to the SNP, would not be a member of Nato would play host to the forces of a country which would very much be a part of Nato. It is a strange ambition to want to see your newly independent country reduced to the status of a base for another country’s forces. Not exactly Braveheart.

But the Robertson doctrine should not be seen in isolation. It comes after recent SNP policy documents that have envisaged Scots in an independent Scotland having shared citizenship with, we presume, what what is left of Britain: shared Scottish/British embassies abroad; a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation which would access programmes from what is left of the BBC at no extra cost; even a shared monarchy. The only thing this financially independent Scotland would not share would be the revenues from North Sea oil.

It’s all to do with the SNP’s new mantra of a “social union” between Scotland and England. The old notion of independence where brave little Scotland would go its own way and for which generations of nationalists campaigned is dead. Long Live the Social Union is the new cry.

In all this no one in the SNP has shown the English the courtesy of asking their opinion. Why would the rest of the UK, free of turbulent Scots, want to share anything with a country that had turned its back on them. Perhaps the SNP know that they wouldn’t like the answer."

And then we turn to the inestimable Alan Cochrane in the Telegraph:

With military thinkers like Angus Robertson, who needs enemies?

"Arguably the daftest aspect of the SNP’s policy portfolio has always been its attitude to defence. How to disentangle an independent Scotland, which they say should be non-nuclear and non-Nato, from one of the world’s leading military powers — which in spite of everything is what the UK still is — has always been a huge imponderable for the Nats.

However, as we head for their annual conference in Inverness, they have tried to find a way out of this difficulty. In doing so, they have come up with an even bigger load of nonsense. It should come as no surprise that they have managed to make things worse — the man they charged with finding a way out of this particular hole has been happily digging them deeper into the mire for years.

I refer, of course, to Angus Robertson, the MP for Moray, who rejoices in the twin titles of SNP defence spokesman and leader of the party’s seven Westminster MPs. Given that he has the major UK airbases of Kinloss and Lossiemouth in his constituency, Mr Robertson prides himself on his expertise in all matters pertaining to the defence of the realm, even if this interest is conditioned by his desire to hold the seat.

We are well used to Mr Robertson’s pompous declarations on military matters, but he has excelled himself with his latest pronouncements. I have often asked the Nats what they would do with those bases — Kinloss and “Lossie” included — currently dotted all over Scotland. They are home to elements of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, almost all of which the SNP says it would retain.

What would an independent Scotland do with all that military hardware? Were they planning to wage war against someone? For several years, there has come no answer. Until yesterday … Mr Robertson says the bases can indeed stay and the English can continue to use them, presumably on a rental basis. Only the Trident submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde would be booted out. An accommodating SNP government in an independent Scotland would allow its English, warmonger, next-door neighbours to continue to use their current homes.

There is no reason, says this latter-day Clausewitz, why Scotland and England couldn’t remain as “friends and allies”. No reason? I can think of lots. For one — why would the rest of the UK wish to reward Scotland, which wanted nothing to do with Nato and a united defence posture and wanted to pick and choose which bases it would allow on its soil, by stationing its servicemen and women here?

Mr Roberston added that it would be “perfectly possible” for the two countries to “share basing, procurement and training facilities”. He is clutching desperately — and ludicrously — at straws because he knows full well the effect losing all UK bases would have on Scotland’s economy, never mind its defence. If we are to have bases such as RAF Leuchars, as well as Kinloss and “Lossie”, won’t they remain targets for potential enemies, just as they are now?

Des Browne, the former Labour defence secretary, delivered a withering analysis of Lance Corporal Robertson’s plans last night, suggesting that they must have been drawn up on the back of an envelope. He added that the Nats “seem to want Scotland to be just a big military base for the remainder of the UK”, adding that in the absence of any idea of how to defend Scotland, “they simply want the rest of the UK to do it for them”.

They may have convinced the voters that they can govern reasonably competently but can only watch in despair as support for independence remains resolutely stuck at about one third or less. As a result, they try every trick to win the rest of us around.

They have accepted that they must keep the Queen. They have now agreed that we can individually choose which nationality we will be after independence — Scottish or British. And now they are admitting that they need the bulk of the bases. Why don’t they just admit defeat and say we might as well stay as we are? Better that, surely, than any more of this hokum from Angus Robertson."

Quite.

The Nat paper on foreign affairs, continued

2009-09-27T17:38:00.002+01:00

[This would have been a reply to the comments thread on the previous post, but it's too big. Never mind.]

Observer

Let's have a go, shall we?

“You just so completely don't get where we are coming from Smee it's almost comical.”

I do, actually. It's just that what you call “aspiration” I call “half-baked, ill-informed naivete”, and I start from objective, quantifiable facts while you don't.

“We will be a small European nation that yeah doesn't play with the big boys, we'll be in with the smaller nations”

Right. With as little influence as they have.

“The reason why we want to be independent is because it will bring government closer to the people.”

Non-sequitur. You can have closer, more responsive government without “independence”. That's what devolution does. You could even try devolving more power down to the local tier – although I keep detecting a Nat tendency towards having smaller, larger councils. Are we going to get the Regions back again?

“The big boys are all mega capitalists and in the nuclear club. We want to join the other guys. The ones who have options.”

What “options” would these be?

On the economic front, you are ignoring the fact that it is not 1905 or 1922 or even 1973, it is 2009. Corporate globalisation has happened. There is no Scottish currency, central bank or stock exchange. There is no such thing as a “major Scottish company” - they are all “British” at least, if not international. (There might be an exception or two to that, but I doubt it.)

The cold, hard, unpleasant fact is that Scotland is and will be a “branch-office” economy. The choice is between staying part of the Union and having some entrenched say at head office (or at least at one of them), or having none.

Politically, I also fail to see where there are any “options” that we don't currently have. Oh, we could do an Ireland and choose to free-ride our security on other people's efforts. Morally despicable and also pretty dangerous, if you have any idea at all of the quantity and quality of intelligence-sharing which happens under the UKUSA agreement. (Hint: look it up.)

This argument seems to rest on the notion that once “independent”, the nutty bits of the world will somehow leave us alone, just because of that.

Hmm. Lockerbie. Glasgow Airport. Denmark. Do I need to say more?

“We have done Empire and power for so bloody long and what has it got us?”

No, actually we stopped doing “Empire and power” around 1956 (if not earlier). Since then, what we've done is a bit more than our fair share of defending and securing the liberal democracies against the various totalitarian / theocratic threats facing them. And where we've felt that our Septic chums have gone off on a bit of a tangent (e.g. Vietnam), we've left them to it.

Similarly, on the economic and social front we have developed a solution which is balanced between the high-tax, high benefit situation of Continental Europe and the free-for-all of the US. Personally I quite like it. What's your problem?

“My finger will be pointing to Norway - not an Imperial power any more. Never was.

But who do you wanna be like? A big bad nuclear power or Norway?”

Nothing like a false choice as a poor debating technique.

I don't want to be a “big bad” nuclear power, I think continuing as a “small and cheap-as-possible” nuclear power is quite appropriate, thanks.

As for “being like Norway”, that is simply not possible for Scotland. It is 2009, not 1905 or 1973. Norway has always had, and continues to have, a lot more oil and gas than we do. (See here and here.)

And as pointed out above, globalisation has happened. The next-door-neighbour isn't the small and inoffensive Sweden / Stockholm, it's England / London. Oh, the alternative is to do what the Irish did and put Germany / Frankfurt in charge of their economic policy. That worked for a while, but didn't turn out too well, did it? I assume you've taken on board the incontrovertible fact that if we had joined the Euro back in the 90s then our property / equity boom-and-crash would have been even worse than it is.

Norway was independent in 1905, Ireland in 1922. Pre-globalisation. Entities like Bank of Ireland, Den Norske Bank, StatoilHydro could be set up and protected. No more. Look at who really owns and runs corporate Belgium, Slovenia, Lithuania, etc etc. It's French, German, Swedish, Austrian companies. So what does those countries' “independence” really mean?

As you say, “D'oh.”

The other thing I'd like to point out is that no-one has challenged my main point, which is that an “independent” Scotland wishing to join the EU will find itself paying more than £300m a year than it currently does.

Can I just write that one up as a “hit, a palpable hit”?

The Nat paper on foreign affairs - weasel words and unintentional hilarity

2009-09-20T18:21:00.007+01:00

Mike "Michael" Russell

A weasel

I was astonished to read in the SoS that our precious Nat devolved Executive planned to put out papers on issues including Europe and foreign affairs, and defence.

My immediate reaction was "Great - this is going to be hilarious."

His Immensity and his troupe of poltroons merrily charging off into all the policy areas which will show them up as naive and incompetent. Brilliant.

And the paper on Europe and foreign affairs, put out by the inimitably pompous Mike Russell, has not disappointed me.

There are bits of this document that have had me laughing more than I've done in ages.

Let's have a look at a few of the gems.

"2.22. ... Mechanisms exist for Scottish interests to be fed into the decision making process, directly and via the UK. However these are often lost or diluted during their incorporation into the UK negotiating line, even where Scotland's carry a disproportionate share of the UK's interests."

[Sic.]

Apart from the dodgy grammar, this is asinine drivel and a frankly offensive attempt to mislead.

Exactly how "often" are Scottish interests "lost or diluted"? Can we have some specific examples? Around, say, six ought to be enough. Oh, we can't.

"5.4. A Scottish Foreign Service and embassy network could and should look very different from the FCO model."

It certainly would. As discussed previously, it would be a lot smaller, less effective and would cost more, pro rata, than the existing UK network of embassies and consulates does. Who wants that?

"5.6. Under current arrangements, Scottish Government officials working on Scottish Affairs are accredited with UK diplomatic status and work alongside, or within, UK representations overseas. That reflects the fact that in many policy areas Scottish and UK interests coincide. Independence would not change that and there is no reason why close co-operation on policy and representation, up to and including shared services, should not continue"

Quite. So if in many areas Scottish and UK interests coincide, why do these morons want to secede? And if "independence would not change that", then what exactly is the point?

I'm glad they realise that "close co-operation and policy and representation, up to and including shared services" is a good thing.

What they don't seem to realise is that we already do a lot of "close co-operation" and "shared services". We have this "Union" thing, see - the UK has one of the largest networks of embassies and consulates in the world, they represent us just as much as the rest of the UK, and we only have to pick up 8.5% of the cost. OK?

(Continuing on these lines, the Nats provide an Annex A which gives comparisons of the costs of foreign ministries & embassies, as well as UN, Commonwealth, World Bank etc memberships.

Hilariously, when you do the maths, you find that 8.5% of the UK's costs always comes to quite a lot less than the costs incurred by the likes of Norway, Denmark and so on. So the Nats have actually gone and provided us with the evidence that "independence" would actually cost us quite a bit more in duplication and loss of shared economies of scale. Well done, Agent Russell, the Union thanks you for your help.)

"5.7. An independent Scotland would be recognised as a state in its own right by the international community... ...it would be able to develop its own foreign policy to promote Scotland's interests internationally, and engage with other states as an equal partner."

"Equal"? About as equal as Iceland, Malta, Upper Volta, Laos and so on. In other words, ignored, just as they are.

"5.8. Small countries can and do take lead roles in international organisations and policy development. Key positions within the United Nations including that of Secretary-General are often filled by individuals from smaller nations."

The Hootsmon led on the prospect of Fatso becoming UN Sec-Gen. Laugh? I nearly became incontinent.

How can I begin to respond to this dross?

Power at the UN resides with the Security Council. As part of the UK, Scotland has influence over the UK's permanent membership of that body - which carries a permanent veto.

The job of Sec-Gen, however, is a powerless sinecure. That's why the big, powerful countries are happy to see it go to people from small, puny countries. They don't care.

For comparison, look at the treatment of posts like the top jobs at the World Bank and the IMF. They matter. They are split between the US and the big countries in Europe.

"Small countries ... have all made significant global contributions to security, peace and reconciliation initiatives. New Zealand, for example, hosted a major conference on cluster munitions"

The mirth continues. Wow, the Kiwis hosted a conference! Clearly a massive contribution to global security and world peace. On that basis, the Hilton Hotels Group must count as the world's leading superpower, since it must host more conferences than anyone else.

Now here's the real corker:

"5.17. An independent Scotland would continue membership of the European Union, fulfilling the responsibilities which membership brings."

WEASEL ALERT! WEASEL ALERT!

Note the pathetic attempt to slide and whitewash past the fact that there is a huge amount of controversy and uncertainty over this one.

I've covered some of this before, but let's do it again.

There are no precedents for a secession from an existing EU Member State.

There is, however, a precedent for a secession from an existing member of the League of Nations. That happened when the Irish Free State left the UK. And in that case, the UK carried on happily as a member, while the IFS had to apply to join.

But the precedents are irrelevant, as is the fine detail of the UK's internal constitutional legislation. The EU writes its own membership rules. If the other Member States wanted to treat Scotland as "inheriting" the UK's membership, they could. If they wanted to treat it as a fresh applicant, they could do that too.

Which would they choose?

Whichever suited their own interests, of course.

Now, let's recall that the UK isn't just any EU Member. It has a special status in a number of areas, most notably the Budget Rebate secured by the Blessed Margaret when she said "I want my money back" in 1984.

The rest of the EU don't like this special status. It costs them money. They keep trying to find ways of ending it.

So in the event of a Scottish secession, the rest of the EU could choose between two options:

A) recognise both Scotland and the UK as inheriting the UK's previous membership. Both would inherit their respective shares of the budget rebate. The total cost of the rebate to the rest of the EU would stay the same.

B) decline to recognise Scotland as inheriting the UK's previous membership, and insist instead that it make a fresh application. Scotland would, then, not inherit its share of the UK rebate. The total cost to the rest of the EU would go down, by about 8.5%.

Add to this the political factor, that various countries like Spain, Belgium, Italy and so on are likely to feel a certain inclination towards not "rewarding secessionism", in case one day it's turned against them.

So let's think about it. I'm an EU State, I might not feel too disposed to reward secessionism, and I can choose between reducing my costs or leaving them the same. Hey, I'm going to go for B. Trebles all round!

But not for us, of course. Incredibly, the Nats provide an analysis of all this in Annex B. (I'm starting to think that the Annexes are actually the output of a Unionist mole. Cracking stuff, whoever you are.)

Here we are:

"Depending on the treatment of North Sea GDP in the analysis, Scotland is estimated to have made an illustrative contribution of between €742 and €991 million before accounting for the UK rebate in 2007. When a population share of the UK rebate is included, Scotland is estimated to have made an illustrative contribution to the EU of between €263 million and €512 million in 2007."

But there would not be a "population share of the UK rebate", as we have established above, so one immediate consequence of "independence" would be to cost us €479m, or £328m.

Christ on a bike, that's getting on for 10% of the entire devolved Scottish budget, and nearly 6% of total Scottish public spending.

Yikes.

And on top of that, we have to add the extra costs of the new "independent" foreign ministry and membership of international bodies. I'm not doing the detailed sums now, but it has to be heading for £500m.

Once again, let me propose a vote of thanks to Agent Russell - Codename "Weasel" - for doing such a good job at exposing one of the immediate, bottom-line costs of "independence".

Well done.

"The Economist" on the end of the Nat dream

2009-09-06T18:44:00.002+01:00

An article from "The Economist" which deserves a bit of an airing.

Lockerbie and Scottish politics

A dream fades

Sep 3rd 2009 | EDINBURGH
From The Economist print edition

The release of the bomber has dampened the nationalists’ appeal

Reuters

Salmond and MacAskill need divine aid

IT WAS supposed to be so different. Alex Salmond, first minister of Scotland’s devolved government and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), must have expected to grab the limelight this week with the launch of a bill to permit a referendum on Scottish independence next year. Hardly anyone even noticed. The long shadow of Lockerbie has dimmed prospects for both independence and Mr Salmond himself.

Two weeks after the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, announced the release of Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, the row shows no signs of abating. On September 2nd the Scottish Parliament refused to support his decision. Opposition MSPs defeated the proposed expression of confidence by 73 votes to 50. Fortified by polls suggesting that more than half of all Scots object to Mr Megrahi’s release, they argued that it was a bad decision, badly made.

Whether bad or good, the decision remains mysterious. Official correspondence released on September 1st shows that Scotland fought tooth and nail for almost two years to have Mr Megrahi excluded from the bilateral prisoner-transfer agreement that Britain and Libya were negotiating, only to let him go last month under a 1993 law that permits compassionate release in Scotland.

Explaining it, Mr MacAskill clung as much to the rules as to the compassionate moral high ground. There are certain conditions for release, one of which is that a prisoner has only three months to live. The unanimous view of Scotland’s prison and medical authorities was that Mr Megrahi, suffering from prostate cancer, met that and other requirements. (The quality of the medical advice is being questioned as Mr Megrahi’s plans to write his memoirs are aired.) Previously, 30 prisoners who applied for compassionate release were freed; none of the seven who were refused had unanimous backing from the authorities.

Yet doubts remain. Mr MacAskill rejected a bid to transfer Mr Megrahi to a Libyan prison because, he said, the American government and victims’ families believed the British had agreed before the trial that anyone found guilty would serve his sentence in Scotland. MSPs wondered why this reasoning had not ruled out compassionate release.

Rumours of some secret deal are rife. But though Scottish firms do have interests in Libya, and Scotland almost certainly wants a bigger subsidy from London, politics may matter more than economics. One of Mr Salmond’s first acts on taking office in 2007 was to complain that Tony Blair had promised Libya a prisoner-transfer agreement without telling him, though Scotland is autonomous in judicial matters. Relying on Scottish law instead to release the Libyan may have satisfied nationalist feeling.

But that does not explain why Mr Megrahi was let go under any law. Some argue that it may have seemed a chance to stake out an independent foreign policy. Though attention has focused on America’s hostile reaction, the Libyan view is also striking. In an interview with the Herald, a Scottish newspaper, Saif Qaddafi, the son of Libya’s ruler, said Mr Megrahi’s release had made Libyans and Arabs think of the British and Scottish as more “merciful and more civilised” and less as Islam-hating “crusaders”.

A nice thought, but it is not doing Mr Salmond much good. A YouGov poll on August 27th found that only 28% of Scots would vote “yes” on independence and 57% “no”, a much wider gap than when the question was put in April. In another YouGov poll, support for the SNP itself was also down, to 26% on August 30th in national elections from 31% in June. So dies the dream.

Some sensible, moderate thoughts on the finances of "independence"

2009-09-06T13:39:00.002+01:00

Stumbled across this piece from the Adam Smith Institute:

"Spending on Scotland

Written by Tom Clougherty

Thursday, 03 September 2009 06:02

In his Daily Telegraph column yesterday, Simon Heffer stated that, "As far as one can tell... the subsidy from other parts of the Kingdom (ie, England) to Scotland is currently at least £22 billion a year." This is something you often hear English people saying, much to the annoyance of many Scots, who insist it isn't true. Who is right? Well, the truth – as usual – is slightly complicated.

On the one hand, Heffer is right: Scotland does get 22 percent more public spending per head than England. Indeed, it even gets more spending per head than comparatively poorer areas of England, such as the Northeast. Interestingly, this disparity is not explained by higher levels of welfare dependency in Scotland – if you were to exclude spending on 'social protection' then the public spending gap would rise to 28 percent. It is simply a matter of government being bigger and less efficient north of the border.

But on the other hand, if you factor in Scotland's geographic share of North Sea Oil revenues (about 83 percent), then Scotland pays just about as much in tax as it receives in spending. That isn't to say that public spending in Scotland isn't too high (it is) or that it is sensible to base current spending on natural resources revenue (it isn't) – but those are separate issues.

So perhaps Scotland is – just about – pulling its weight at the moment. However, this should not distract from the fact that it won't be able to for much longer. North Sea Oil production peaked in 1999, and is now declining at an increasing rate. Meanwhile, Scotland's public sector wage bill has risen by 55 percent since 1999, with 1 in 4 Scots now directly employed by the state. Public spending has risen from 50 to 56 percent of GDP in the same period, and on current trends is set to reach 67 percent by 2012/13.

According to the Centre of Economic and Business Research, that would make Scotland the third most state dependent country in the world, after Iraq and Cuba. And what a sad accolade that would be for Adam Smith's homeland!"

What's not to like about this?

Mild, moderate, factual, and dishes both Eng Nats like Heffer and the Scot Nats at the same time. Couldn't have put it better myself. (In fact I'm fairly sure that I have used the phrase "pulling its own weight" in various places, but I have no monopoly on common sense.)

And also making the telling point that the current situation is only temporary, and that we really, really need to do something about improving productivity, entrepeneurship and economic growth up here. (Please could no-one suggest that "green energy" can come close to replacing oil in either physical or financial terms, or I will be forced to direct them here. And anyone mentioning fresh water or fish will be deleted without mercy.)

The answer to this problem is, of course, out there, and it's blue. Hopefully it won't be too long before that's got through to Scots as well as the rest of the UK.

This article does give a good summary of the core of my own position. Even if we set aside all the subjective stuff about feeling British (or not), if someone could show me that we would be significantly better off - say, due to a currently "hidden" oil surplus - after "independence", then I might be prepared to entertain the idea.

But this isn't the case. "Independence" would mean we were no better off than now, and when you add on the costs of transition, disruption, duplication and diseconomies of scale, and then consider the subjective issues, the whole idea stands revealed as a ludicrous vacuity.

Still off-topic: CVF porn

2009-08-30T20:44:00.009+01:00

Sorry, blog activity light due to discovery of other things to do.

Still laughing my ass off at combined incompetence / untrustworthiness of both Nats and Labour over Megrahi.

Enjoy pics of the future flagships of Her Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy.

Which will, of course, be substantially built in Scotland (some blocks on the Clyde, and final assembly at Rosyth), unless a certain idiotic separatist party gets its way and manages to destroy both a major Scottish industry and the integrated defence of the United Kingdom.

But it's not going to happen, so why worry?

Off-topic: submarine porn

2009-08-24T20:04:00.004+01:00

Now isn't the Astute seriously cool and sexy?

There are all sorts of features on that hull which make you want to sit down with the designer and ask "Why that?"

Except, of course, that all he could do would be to shrug and make slitting motions near his throat.

Creeping sort of back on-topic, it is of course highly gratifying that as part of the UK we will have babies like the Astute defending us. Not something an "independent" Scotland could afford by any stretch.

And, of course, the Astutes are a bit late and over-budget. This is because there was too much of a gap between the last order for the Vanguard-class bombers and the first for the Astutes, which meant that the one yard in the country which can build subs (Barrow) suffered significant de-skilling.

Which leads on to further thoughts about Trident replacement. If this is cancelled or delayed, then we might find ourselves having to order extra Astute-class SSNs. Otherwise, Barrow will shut and the UK will lose, for ever and ever, the capability to build nuclear-powered subs. Which are literally in a different order-of-magnitude class of effectiveness from conventional diesel-electric boats.

This feeds in to the Trident-replacement debate, as you can see. A huge chunk of the apparent cost-saving from not replacing Trident disappears, unless you are also willing to see Barrow close and the loss of a UK SSN construction capability. It's not just about morals or costs, it affects industrial strategy.

Enough of this. Enjoy the sub porn as a distraction from the boring froth about Megrahi and "Thicky" MacAskill.

Megrahi - jings, cripes, crivvens, crikey

2009-08-22T18:47:00.002+01:00

Eh?

I go away for a week , cut off from all home media, and this happens?

So the Nats not only manage to make themselves look like hopelessly inexperienced and naive idiots who shouldn't be trusted to run a whelk stall, but they bring down the ridicule and derision of the entire English-speaking, nay Western, world on the collective heads of us all.

Agent MacAskill strikes again. Well done, that man.

National stereotyping

2009-08-14T11:26:00.002+01:00

This is something which was almost, but after a bit of discussion and thought, not posted to Scottish Unionist's thread on Suppressed anti-Englishness.

Clearly it doesn't belong there, because that's turned into a serious and lengthy discussion, while this is just a bit of tongue-in-cheek hooliganism. Nonetheless, it does illustrate some of SU's points about the fairly unique nature of British national identity.

This isn't new - you'll have seen it knocking around before - but I've added a Scotland-specific coda.

For those who are offended all I'd like to say is: Hee!

"European Terror Alert Status Update

The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings and have raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved". Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross". Londoners have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorised from "Tiresome" to a "Bloody Nuisance". The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide". The only two higher levels in France are "Surrender" and "Collaborate". The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country's military capability.

It's not only the British and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing". Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides".

The Germans also increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs". They also have two higher levels: "Invade Several Neighbouring Countries" and "Lose".

The Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

Meanwhile in Edinburgh, the devolved SNP Government has also been forced to respond. After initially declaring that it could not do anything because it lacked the full portfolio of policy levers available to an independent state, it has now declared that it has delegated the matter to its local councils via a "Historic Concordat" which does not actually commit them to do anything, but serves the purpose of deflecting any blame away from the SNP.

Well-placed sources indicate that more robust measures have been discussed, but these depend on funding being available from something called the "SFT", which unfortunately does not exist.

The same sources indicate that in the last resort, First Minister Salmond will communicate directly with any terrorists, blaming their grievances on the English and quisling, traitorous, lickspittle Scottish unionists, and beg them to restrict their activities to south of the border."

I'm away for a few days. TTFN.

A cost of "independence"

2009-08-13T21:46:00.001+01:00

For folks like me, aside from the facts that

(a) we don't want to turn the rest of the UK into a foreign country; and

(b) the numbers (now endorsed by the SNP) show that Scotland would be, at best, no better economically out of the Union than in it;

...one of the things that is bothersome is the inevitable and unnecessary costs of duplicating stuff that is currently done on a shared basis through the UK.

It occurred to me that it ought to be relatively easy to get a handle on the numbers for one aspect of this, namely diplomatic representation: embassies, consulates and the like.

Let us look at some facts.

As part of the UK, we are represented abroad by 261 embassies, high commissions, consulates and so on.

The total FCO budget seems to be around £1.7bn. So, very crudely, dividing one number by the other (and ignoring the fact that not all the costs are associated with the embassies and so on) the cost per overseas mission is £6.5m. Of which Scotland's share (at around 8.5%) is only £550k per mission, for a total of £144.5m.

For comparison, Ireland has only 75 missions abroad. Applying the same methodology, the Irish DFA costs €207m, or £178m - £2.6m per mission.

So, Irish embassies, consulates and so on are cheaper than British ones. Not surprising - not only will they be in less grand and expensive premises, but they will be more lightly staffed and less effective. After all, the smaller and more insignificant a country is, the less the rest of the world cares what it thinks - and so the less point there is in that country paying people to explain what it thinks!

The point is, of course, that Scotland currently gets representation by 261 missions abroad for £144.5m. An "independent" Scotland would, like Ireland, have to pay £34m more to achieve less than 30% of the representation it currently gets. (Oh I know, "independent" Scotland ought to be entitled to 8.5% of the embassy estate. This would no doubt be expressed as a cheque for the capital value, offset by the rental of a couple of portakabins in the embassy grounds until the new Scottish diplomats found new digs.)

Now these are only small numbers, but they are illustrative. Multiply these sort of effects across the health, education and social security systems and suddenly you're into billions. And as the saying goes, "A billion here and a billion there, and before you know it you're talking real money."

Divorce is an expensive business.

A Burns' metaphor for Salmond's Scotland (thanks to the Grumpy Spindoctor)

2009-08-11T19:58:00.004+01:00

I was a bit tickled by this post from the Grumpy Spindoctor:

"The Grumpy SD has taken our First Minister at his word and decided that in this year of homecoming he will take the road north from London to see Scotland as a foreign visitor might see the country.

Mr Salmond you'll remember called on Scots the world over (and non-Scots like President Obama)to come home, stating that in this special year: "It will be a fantastic year to come home for presidents and citizens alike."

He went on: "Scotland will honour the Bard with the biggest party our country has seen.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime celebration of the lasting legacy of Robert Burns and of the country he loved.

"A celebration of our literature and language, of our culture and history, our sport, our national drink...and whisky as well."

So where better to start in Salmond's Scotland, than to take in the birthplace of his favourite Scot - Rabbie Burns.

Sadly despite the rhetoric, a visit to Burns birthplace in this 'Year of Homecoming' is not quite the celebration of the Bard that Mr Salmond may have wished for.

Burns cottage in Alloway is open for business but the museum next door is closed for refurbishment with far from attractive scaffolding and building work ongoing within yards of the cottage. Visitors have to travel to a museum in Ayr to view key Burns memorablia rather than at the birthplace.

Sadly they can't see any artefacts at the slightly tawdry Tam o' Shanter Experience also in Alloway and in walking distance of the Burns Cottage - aside from acres of embarassing tartan tat in the extensive shopping area, the building is virtually surrounded by another very large building site as work continues on the new Burns Museum (completion date 2010).

Signage to carparking near the 'Experience' and Burns Cottage is also far from ideal.

But at least the Kirk of Alloway which features prominently in Tam O'Shanter is unchanged.

A few yards away though the Burns Monument lies little visited - damp destroying the interior plaster work, with no one on hand to give any interpretative information about the Bard or his poetry.
Even climbing the stairs to the viewing level is a disappointment, as the view to the old brig of Alloway is completely obscured by two large trees.

And a visit to the brig, only metres away - famous from Burns Tam O' Shanter - finds a historic monument which has visibly suffered from the attention of less than reverential visitors.

It's clear numerous cobbles on the roadway of the bridge have been sporadically removed, presumably for souvenirs.

In short, this visitor's experience - to this, the focus of Burns commemorations, was hardly 'once-in-a-lifetime' - rather, at times, it was a pedestrian, uninvolving, experience, bordering on the shambolic.

Those nationalists who pour scourn on Scotland's capital city because of the disruption caused by the tram building work - might also like to consider - how is it in this 'Year of Homecoming' that Burns' birthplace looks like a large building site?

Hardly the advert for the new confident Scotland that Mr Salmond likes to boast to the world about.

And what message does it send out to the world that when we have a First Minister who brags about the importance of Burns and about Scotland, only for the visitor to discover 'Closed' or 'under construction' signs at the very places that were supposed to attract visitors to the place in the first place?

Obviously the blame for the fact that various organisations and institutions have failed to get their act together to ensure that at least when it comes to Burns, that the visitor experience can be the best it can be - cannot be put at the First Minister's door.

However it does speak volumes about the reality behind the Salmond rhetoric about the Scotland visitors see on their arrival.

In short, it is not quite as advertised. A bit like the great man's own government. "

Ordinarily I would just write a comment, but the GSD doesn't do comments. Too grumpy.

So I have to do it at one remove.

What I would say is that while the GSD might think that Salmond and Co have assumed a commitment to deliver a quality Burns-related Homecoming experience for visitors, that is not in fact the case.

Instead, they agreed a "Historic Concordat" with the NTS, Ayrshire Council etc etc which made THEM responsible for delivering said experience, subject to this, depending on that and with reference to the other.

Any failures are thus not the SNP's fault.

I hope that's clear.

Myth and moonshine about "oil funds"

2009-08-02T21:59:00.005+01:00

This week John "Hapless" Swinney, Cabinet Secretary for Economics, Finance, and Nearly Everything Else, made a speech and put out a paper about what a jolly fine thing it might be for Scotland to have an "oil fund".

(I have been referring to Swinney as "Hapless" ever since his disastrous stint as SNP leader. I (very) occasionally feel (a little bit) guilty about this as he is supposedly nice in person, but then he regularly does or says something which reminds me that:

a) he is just as much of a duplicitous lying liar as his boss; and/or

b) he is just not very bright.

The SFT debacle being the clearest illustration of this.)

So let's turn to the latest confirmation of the status of "Hapless" as a waste of oxygen.

The paper is quite sizeable at 64 pages. It is much better written and presented than the recent Scotland Office paper on oil. There are a few things in the paper's Chapter 2 which are quite welcome:

the marine dividing line between Scotland and England used is the "median line", as used in the 1999 Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order and the Kemp & Stephen work done for GERS - so the nutcases howling that "the Tweed is the border" should take note;

the estimates used for the remaining reserves left show that, at best, we are slightly more than halfway through the total - so the other nutcases claiming that there are vast undiscovered fields out there which would give rise to a "new boom" can also take note (i.e. shut up). (Amusingly, the "Nationalist cringe" of the authors / editors is illustrated by the fact that they give pride of place to the reserve estimates from the trade body Oil & Gas UK, relegating the UK Government ones to a secondary position. Despite the fact that the official ones are higher.)

Further evidence of "spin and cringe" is provided by the fact that they're happy to show Kemp & Stephen forecasts of a rising Scottish share of oil & gas tax revenue. But not the fact that those revenues will be declining in absolute terms, as a rising share of a decreasing total still means decreasing revenues. Curious, hmm?

The rest of the paper treats us to an exposition of the purpose of an oil fund, international experience of same, connected policy issues, and so on.

The perceptive reader will note that one key question is ignored:

Where is the money for this fund coming from?

That's a good question, and I like it so much I'm going to repeat it:

WHERE IS THE MONEY FOR THIS FUND COMING FROM?

(If you want to add a 7-letter swear-word starting with "f" before "money" and "fund" then be my guest.)

To answer the question, let's look at the ever-popular GERS report. (Incidentally, one of the few benefits of having the Nats in "government" is that it's forced them to quit whining that "GERS is distorted". They've now had two years to look in detail at its data and methodology. They've made no real changes and now quote the thing. Guess it must be near enough on the money after all, yes?)

"In 2007-08, the estimated current budget balance for the public sector in Scotland was a... ...surplus of £219 million (0.2per cent of GDP) including an estimated geographical share of North Sea revenue.

In 2007-08, the estimated fiscal balance in Scotland, that is the estimated current budget balance plus estimated net capital investment, was a deficit of... ...£3.8 billion (2.7 per cent of GDP) when an estimated geographical share of North Sea revenue is included."

Now Swinney, who is clearly arithmetically challenged, likes to quote the first of these bullet points but not the second. This is, clearly, absurd. Try that one at the bank: "I know it looks like I'm overdrawn, but I used the money for capital spending so it doesn't count".

Let us help Swinney by using an example: the Annual Report of the Government of Alberta, which has an "oil fund" called the "Heritage Fund".

"2007-08 Annual Report Highlights

The 2007-08 surplus was $4.6 billion. This is $550 million higher than last forecast (April 2008).
$1.8 billion of the surplus was allocated to savings.
$1.4 billion of the surplus has been allocated to the Capital Account for future requirements.
Another $312 million will be allocated to savings and another $616 million will be allocated to the Capital Account in 2008-09 from the higher-than-forecast fourth-quarter results."

Spot the difference?

Alberta was lucky enough to have a true bottom-line surplus - even after allocating money to the capital account, there was still surplus left over to allocate to "savings" - which includes their Heritage Fund.

I say "was" because they went into deficit in 2008/9 - but that followed a continuous 14 years of annual surpluses.

The hard, unpleasant truth is that Scotland is not in such a favoured position. There is no bottom-line surplus. There has not been one since the late 1980s. Now "Hapless" treats us to some hypothetical calculations of what might have happened if an "oil fund" had been created back then.

What is the point in this? It wasn't done. And one of the main reasons Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson didn't do it was because they took the view that the State (at that time) had proved itself to be spectacularly bad at making investment decisions, and they preferred to give the money back to individuals and companies (as tax cuts and interest rates which were lower than they would have otherwise been) and let them decide how to invest it.

Not a particularly fashionable view to take right now, of course, but one that looked pretty good in 1980. (One can just imagine the politicians and civil servants running the UK State Oil Fund hemming and hawing for years about investing in technology stocks, and then piling in big time in December 1999...)

Now I hear the cry, "Ah! But the benefits of oil were spread over the entire UK, instead of being kept for Scotland! Thievery!"

Er, no. Au contraire, mon frere. As that Scotland Office oil paper showed, over the years the higher level of per-capita public spending in Scotland has done the job. (The SO paper is a bit ham-fisted, but I've already shown here that their conclusion is fundamentally correct.) In effect, Scotland has already had - and continues to get - its "oil fund" in the form of higher public spending. It is, if course, arguable that it would have been better to get this benefit in the form of lower taxation, or indeed in the form of an explicit "oil fund".

But all such speculation is irrelevant and futile, as it didn't happen and there is no surplus today to create this miraculous fund!

(The paper claims that oil revenues are on an "upward trend". Yes, they're up from £7.8bn in 2007/8 to nearly £13bn in 2008/9. But they were over £9bn in 2005/6 and 2006/7, and we already know they're collapsing back to under £7bn for 2009/10. Some "trend". And my own fag-packet calculations suggest that even £13bn won't give a bottom-line surplus for 2008/9, given the way that other tax revenues have fallen and spending has gone up.)

So, the only way for "Hapless" to put some pennies aside into an "oil fund" piggy-bank would be to increase taxes and/or reduce spending to create a genuine surplus.

And he is, of course, at liberty to do this. He could use the "Tartan Tax" power. Or he could cut spending, perhaps by reversing some of the decisions to "make stuff free" (or at least "cheaper than England") which have been taken over the years when life seemed easy. Bridge tolls, prescription charges, university fees, all spring to mind.

But of course we see no signs of any proposals for any of this.

Which means that the entire exercise is simply a total waste of time, effort and money, other than (of course) being another excuse for the Nats to stoke their "grudge and grievance" agenda.

Well done, "Hapless".

The Homecoming and CyberNat Buffoonery

2009-07-27T18:15:00.002+01:00

Today the Scotsman ran this story noting that the Homecoming thingy at the weekend had been pretty successful. Not a sellout, but good nevertheless.

Now I'm sure we're all aware that the thing was kicked off by the previous Lib-Lab administration but was seen through by the Nats. You may not also be aware that the head organiser, Lord Jamie Sempill, is a Tory. So all the main parties are sort-of behind the thing.

I think most Scots regard the whole clans-and-tartan thing as "All In Good Fun", but sigh a bit at some aspects of it. The tartan tat shops infesting Princes Street and the Royal Mile. The fact that a lot of this stuff was more-or-less fabricated by Walter Scott & co in the 1820s. The slight loopiness of some of the devotees, both Scots and from abroad.

So you might find the following comment fairly innocuous:

"Good grief, the lid of the shortbread tin still makes money.

Still, if it sells, it sells..."

...which was posted on the Scotsman website three times today, by someone I know.

It was not only deleted three times, but that person's ID was locked up three times.

Almost certainly due to a deluge of complaints from immature, over-sensitive, chip-on-both-shoulders CyberNats who see insults where none exist.

Curious behaviour.

Now do you see why I'm an anti-Nat and have a bit of fun busting their little myths?

Yes, the Nats' Referendum IS rigged...

2009-07-24T08:25:00.001+01:00

It's not just the wording of the question - an exchange of comments on my last post:

Observer said...: I've just read my own post and need to amend it. The referendum the SNP wish to pursue now is not the formal question that needs to be asked to establish independence. The first referendum will be to open negotiations. After that, there would need to be some other formal question posed by way of Scottish GE or referendum again (I don't know) to establish independence.; 23 July 2009 23:26

sm753 said...: Now as for your second post.

I was initially astonished that you think there would be more than one referendum.

The Nats have made it clear over and over again that as far as they are concerned, it would be a one-time, irrevocable choice.

At least verbally.

But now I've looked at the relevant section of

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/08/13103747/7

"5.11 It has been suggested that there might be two referendums: on the principle of independence, to give the Scottish Government authority to negotiate; and following Acts of Independence being passed by the Scottish and United Kingdom Parliaments. A second referendum would recognise the significance of the decision for Scotland to become independent and allow the people of Scotland the final say on the matter. On the other hand, there are strong arguments against such an approach. One referendum on the principle of independence could give the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government sufficient clarity and confidence that the people wish Scotland to become an independent state. The prospect of a further referendum could reduce the certainty of the choice facing the people at the referendum, and reduce the impact of the decision that the people make. As a democratically representative legislature, the Scottish Parliament could carry forward the people's will to conclude the arrangements to deliver independence."

So now I can see why you're confused. When it comes to putting it in writing, they don't quite come to a conclusion, do they?

There's a strong hint that there would only be one referendum, but no actual unambiguous statement.

And that ambiguity is clearly working, since it managed to confuse even you.

Which is one of the reasons why people like me think that the whole referendum scheme is rigged and fraudulent.

And, therefore, that the Nats are bunch of shifty, dishonest con-artists.; 24 July 2009 08:24

No need for me add anything, really.

Scottish "popular sovereignty" - II

2009-07-23T20:38:00.001+01:00

Yes, it's time to plunge boldly back into the past.

Where had we got to?

In the previous post, we'd established that the source of this myth is the Declaration of Arbroath, but noted that the problem lies in what the signatories of said document meant by "we".

Did they mean "we, the people" or "we Men with Fancy Titles and Hats"?

We left off with the suggestion that subsequent history ought to give a guide as to which of these alternatives was true.

One commenter on the last post suggested that I ought to look at the events of 1488, and I agree. So did a chap called George Buchanan around 1560, and we'll get around to him next time.

So what happened in 1488?

Scotland was being run by James III, who had been making a bit of hash for things for some time. This meant he was not too popular with the nobility.

In latter years he had also embarked on the rash course of favouring his second son over his eldest and heir - not usually a smart thing for a medieval monarch. (Both sons were named James, which seems to be carrying the idea of "an heir and a spare" to the limit. Maybe he just got confused between them?)

Anyway, this inevitably led to a spot of insurrection and civil war, with James the elder son and many of the nobles taking up arms against the king, culminating in the Battle of Sauchieburn, which James III lost.

He also ended up dead, although the exact circumstances remain something of a mystery.

A bit later, with the elder son safely on the throne as James IV, the Scottish Parliament got together and issued a proclamation containing the following:

"These articles being seen and read, it was plainly evident that the desire and the tenor of those articles had on many occasions been satisfied, but broken by the perverse counsellors of that most illustrious late king, who were with him at that time, [and] who assisted him and gave him advice on the inbringing of Englishmen, to the perpetual subjection of this realm, and that the same illustrious late lord the king, under cover of deceit, offered and refused them; because of which things, the earls of Huntly and Erroll and [the Earl] Marischal and the said Lord Glamis, and many [and] various other barons and faithful lieges of the realm withdrew from the same said late king and the aforesaid perverse counsel, and attached themselves to our present king and to his faithful party, for the common good. All and sundry of which things having been discussed, examined, and fully understood by the three estates, the entire body of parliament, fully advised, declared and concluded that the conflict at S[tirling], where the aforesaid most illustrious late lord the king, on account of his faith in battle, was killed, with many barons and inhabitants of the realm at that place, [was] entirely the fault of them, and the false deception [which] emanated from their perverse counsel; and that our present serene king and his faithful lords and barons who were with him in this conflict were and are exempt and innocent of the conflict and suffering and killings perpetrated there."

[The "articles" referred to were a set of rules for the conduct of a king and his relations with his heir, and the nobility; you can see for yourself via the link.]

So what does this amount to?

Clearly a retrospective legalisation and legitimisation of the change of regime. Pretty standard for the time.

Also, an assertion of the rights and powers of Parliament, and a denial of the idea of absolute monarchy. Again, standard for the time.

What I do not see is any notion of "popular sovereignty". There is a repeated use (here and in other declarations around the same time) of the phrase "for the common good", but again we have the uncertainty of what this meant at the time - "good of the commons" or "common good of the people (men) who mattered"?

And moreover, whatever that meant, the declaration was made, and the actions were taken, by Parliament. There were no mass referenda or plebiscites. So it's hard to interpret all this as evidence of "popular" rather than "parliamentary" sovereignty.

It's equally difficult to see anything "distinctively Scottish" in all of this.

This is 1488.

Three years earlier in England, Henry Tudor (Henry VII) defeated Richard III in battle, ending the Wars of the Roses. A very similar (although longer-lasting) intra-dynastic, crown-versus-nobility squabble. As noted in another previous post, this merely cemented the fact that England was much more given to deposing monarchs than Scotland was, on a statistical basis.

So once again, we find little or no evidence in this episode to support the ideal of a "distinctively Scottish" notion of "popular sovereignty".

Onwards we go, towards Mr. George Buchanan.

"The Union has failed Scotland economically"

2009-07-16T21:11:00.001+01:00

On top of the flawed, but still basically sound, Scotland Office demonstration that Scotland's oil revenues (and more) have been spent in Scotland over the years, this graphic in The Economist caught my eye.

Interesting numbers, aren't they?

Sourced from ONS and Treasury data.

I thought I'd a do a little bit of ranking analysis on the figures for GVA (gross value added) and public spending (PS) per head.

GVA Rank PS Rank

East 3 12
E Mids 6 10
Lon 1 2
N East 11 5
NI 10 1
N West 7 7
Sco 4 3
S East 2 6
S West 5 11
Wal 12 4
W Mids 8 9
Y & H 9 8

So what's the problem? Scotland ranks 4th for GVA and 3rd for public spending. Seems about right, and lines up with the other published statistics. Looks like the wily Welsh and Norn Irish are doing much better out of public spending than we are, and the folks in East Anglia and the South-west should be most concerned.

But I hear the cry "Aha! I bet these numbers ignore the North Sea!"

And so they do. Those figures have been calculated excluding the "Extra Regio".

But fear not. Our [irony on] hated Westminster colonial masters are so keen to hide Scotland's true economic situation [irony off] that it is rather easy to compensate for this, from the published data.

If you do that, then Scotland's GVA (assuming a geographic split of North Sea revenue) goes up from £19,200 per head to £24,000 per head.

So, while I can't be sure what the corresponding values for the GVAs for the bits of England & Wales ought to be, the equivalent of the above table would look something like this:

GVA Rank PS Rank

East 4 12
E Mids 6 9
Lon 1 2
N East 11 5
NI 10 1
N West 7 7
Sco 2 3
S East 3 6
S West 5 11
Wal 12 4
W Mids 8 8
Y & H 9 10

Again, what's the problem?

Scotland is more or less given public spending in accordance with its economic contribution - and let's remember that this is just a snapshot for one particular year.

We should also reflect on the wider unionist morality of this. Do the Americans think "let's kick out Mississippi, Arkansas and the like because they get more spending than they contribute in taxes"? No they don't, because they consider them all to be American.

Similarly, do we think we should kick out the Geordies, Welsh and Norn Irish for the same reason? No we don't, because they're Brits too.

Just like us.

The Nats and their rigged referendum question

2009-07-15T21:44:00.002+01:00

Following up Scottish Unionist's raising of the rigged nature of the Nat's proposed referendum question, in the light of John Mason's admission that their 2007 election ballot paper entry was "a bit naughty".

Let's remind ourselves of the proposed question, which can be found here:

"I AGREE that the Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the Government of the United Kingdom so that Scotland becomes an independent state."

Now, the Nat claim put about (the myth to be busted, if you will) is that this is the "only possible" form of question which gets to the root of the matter, and also gets around the fact that the existing Scotland Act reserves all constitutional issues to Westminster.

This ought to raise the hackles of anyone with Standard Grade Maths, of course, because just as there is an infinite range of lines which can be drawn connecting two points, there is a near-infinite range of collections of words which can meet a simple legal requirement.

Why do we care?

Well, we now know that, as long suspected, the Nats' particular collection of words is designed to obscure and minimise the impact of the notion of "independence" and so increase the chances of a "yes" vote.

How do we know?

Well, from this ICM poll, which suggested that 42% of people would vote for the SNP’s proposition, whereas only 28% would vote for independence if the question clearly set it against the other main constitutional options.

So is this actually the "only possible" question?

According to the Nats' own consultation paper,

"3. The competence of the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a referendum would depend on the precise proposition in the referendum Bill, or any adjustments made to the competence of the Parliament before the Bill is introduced. At present the constitution is reserved, but it is arguable that the scope of this reservation does not include the competence of the Scottish Government to embark on negotiations for independence with the United Kingdom Government. "

[Bold in original source.]

(We can note in passing that this is all a bit weaselly. We're not given a court ruling or an opinion from a leading QC, we just get "arguably". Aye, right.)

But let's take it at face value. Apparently, "negotiations" is the magic word which solves all those ultra vires problems! Hurrah!

So that means the following would also be legally OK:

"I AGREE that the Scottish Government should negotiate with the Government of the United Kingdom the total secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom."

or:

"I AGREE that the Scottish Government should negotiate with the Government of the United Kingdom the complete separation of Scotland from the United Kingdom."

or indeed:

"I AGREE that the Scottish Government should negotiate with the Government of the United Kingdom the irrevocable divorce of Scotland from the United Kingdom."

OK?

Personally I think a referendum in the current circumstances would be an enormous waste of time, space, effort and money.

But if events force it to happen, then the Unionist parties should be determined to vote through a question which fully reflects the enormity and finality of what is being proposed.

Some variation or combination of the above ought to do. I won't ask for royalties.

"There's no such thing as UK law"

2009-07-09T12:00:00.001+01:00

Since we're on a roll at the moment, here's another quick and easy "penalty kick" courtesy of some CyberNat or other.

It is sometimes asserted that the continued existence of "Scots Law" means that the UK Parliament and/or Government can't do this, that, or the other.

It is indeed true that the 1707 Union provided for the continued existence of a separate Scottish legal system, and that this (along with a few other things, such as the status of the Kirk) is "entrenched" and can't be changed by the UK Parliament.

But some folks seem to think that this means that any "UK law" has to be accompanied by a separate "(Scotland)" version, or even (bizarrely) that the UK Parliament can't legislate for Scotland.

Have a look at the Statute Law Database.

Look at the "Legislation Type" box of their search engine at top right.

Select "Act (UK Public General)". Hit "Go".

You will get a screen beginning with:

"Matching legislation

Your Search for: type Act (UK Public General);

Your search produced 3715 results of which 500 are displayed below.

If you do not find the results you are looking for please search again."

So much for there being "no such thing as UK law".

OK?

The Nats' Kerevan talks bolleaux about shipyards

2009-07-08T20:42:00.001+01:00

Thanks to Scottish Unionist for pointing out the Newsnight Scotland interview with George Kerevan, high-up at the Hootsmon and prospective SNP Westminster candidate.

Proof positive that Nattism, or at least politics, rots the brain. Here we have a reasonably-respected journalist suddenly spouting utter, factually-incorrect tosh in pursuit of office.

I shall leave SU to deal with Kerevan's unpleasant references to the "English" government, and concentrate on the fact that he was talking ordure on the factual front too.

"The Norwegian navy has 70 ships"???

According to the Royal Norwegian Navy:

"Important materiel in the Navy:

Vessels:
2 Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates
6 Ula-class submarines
14 Hauk-class missile torpedo boats
1 Skjold-class missile torpedo boat
4 Oksøy-class mine hunters
4 Alta-class mine sweepers
1 Vidar-class mine layer (supply vessel until 2008)
Coast guard ships

New materiel:
5 Skjold-class vessels and 4 Nansen-class frigates (within 2010)"

I make that 2 (with 4 being built) "ships", 6 (small, slow and short-ranged) submarines and a bunch of what amount to wee boats.

And the total comes to 30-odd, not 70, George.

(And other sources indicate only a total of 5 frigates, BTW).

"Only the SNP can guarantee the yards after the carriers are finished"???

How?

Sub-building is an incredibly specialised art, the Clyde yards have never done it, and there is massively well-entrenched competition - e.g. ThyssenKrupp.

Wee boats will not keep the yards open.

Even if "independent" Scotland were to order as many as 5 frigates/destroyers, they only take 3 years to build, and have a service life of 25+ years.

Do the math. Even if you built them sequentially at one yard (militarily stupid, of course) hoping that the wee boats could keep the other yard busy, after 15 years you have nowt to do.

The UK, on the other hand, *has* to place an order for up to 18 new frigates to follow on from the carriers, as the current T23s will be wearing out.

Crossed-fingers that we can afford them all, of course. But the fact that the UK is finding it hard to keep its naval yards in work - e.g. if we stop the regular ordering of submarines, then the one yard at Barrow shuts - illustrates the total nonsense of the idea that Scotland could sustain the yards on its own.

After this display of nakedly biased hogwash, we should treat anything from Kerevan with even more suspicion than previously.

"'God save the Queen' is anti-Scottish"

2009-07-02T14:11:00.002+01:00

You know, because for about a week in the 1740s some people added an extra verse with the line

"Rebellious Scots to crush".

This is an easy one. Like a free kick or a penalty.

http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/Symbols/NationalAnthem.aspx

"There is no authorised version of the National Anthem as the words are a matter of tradition. Additional verses have been added down the years, but these are rarely used.

The words used today are those sung in 1745, substituting 'Queen' for 'King' where appropriate. On official occasions, only the first verse is usually sung."

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/LivingintheUK/DG_10012518

No "official version" with an extra "anti-Scottish" verse.

Got it?

"Threat of sanctions forced UK into devolution"

2009-06-27T14:53:00.006+01:00

I was reminded in the Scotsman today about one of the more goggle-eyed Nat myths.

"Dr. James Wilkie, Isle of Barra 27/06/2009 10:07:14

Yes, Labour and Conservatives are all admitting now that devolution has been a great success, but none of them is prepared to come into the open and admit that it was finally introduced only after threats of international sanctions against the UK. The vile methods used by Labour in particular in their unsuccessful attempts to kill the devolution project are a stain on British politics. I would suggest celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament by opening all the relevant records of the Cabinet Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. However, since that would effectively indict those responsible I am not waiting in anticipation."

Now this is on the list to be myth-busted, but that will have to be later.

For the moment, let's just contemplate the sheer bonkerosity of it.

So, supposedly devolution was "forced" on the UK by "threats of international sanctions" - from the Council of Europe, so the claim goes.

So this must be known about by hundreds of politicians and diplomats across Europe. Yet not one of them has ever blabbed to a journalist. The only people who know the "truth" are our friend "Dr Wilkie" and his pals in the "Scotland-UN Committee". Curious, isn't it?

Then there are "the vile methods used by Labour in particular in their unsuccessful attempts to kill the devolution project".

Well stone me. I thought I had this recollection of Smith, Dewar and Brown being keen devolutionists, Labour being active in the Constitutional Convention, making a manifesto commitment, bringing forward a bill, holding a referendum and all the rest of it.

Turns out I was mistaken - the whole thing was an illusion.

There are some odd people in the world, aren't they?

(Mind you, this is because some of them are really disguised, alien shapeshifting lizards.)

The new Scotland Office oil paper

2009-06-21T11:24:00.004+01:00

...is now available on-line.

Now this ought to be useful for number-crunching and myth-busting, but let's first comment that the standard of written English in it is dire. What happened to the smooth, Oxbridge-educated Humphrys and Bernards of legend?

Another thing is that the data presented is in "money of the day" rather than "real terms" - it is unadjusted for inflation. Compare their oil price v. revenue chart:

...with my one from a previous post, in which the numbers were expressed in real 2007/8 terms:

Now this makes no difference for statements like:

"• If all North Sea oil revenues had been allocated to Scotland there would only
have been 9 years out of the last 27 when Scotland’s finances would have
been in surplus.
• Including all North Sea oil revenues the last year of surplus was in 1988-89
and since then there has been 18 years of annual deficits with Scotland’s
spending being greater than the tax raised in Scotland."

(NB there is a "sic" applying to the second bullet point here.)

However, if they have come up with:

"• Even if all oil revenues had been allocated to Scotland the total deficit would
have outweighed the total surplus by £20bn since 1980-81."

..by adding up a time series of money-of-the-day numbers, it is bolleaux.

(And I think I need to put a "sic" against this one as well. I think what they meant to say was "Even if all oil revenues since 1980-81 had been... ...the total deficit would...".)

I think I'm going to fire up the spreadsheet and check this. Back later.

...

And we're back.

There are indeed a bunch of balloons at the Scotland Office.

Using their charts (so a bit rough and ready, since I don't have access to the underlying data) I have been able to replicate their claim of a "£20bn cumulative deficit".

They did, indeed, get to this figure by adding up a time series of money-of-the-day numbers.

Twits.

When you convert to real-terms 2007/8 money (using the Treasury's GDP deflator series), it turns out that on these numbers, over the period Scotland was a net contributor to the tune of nearly £12bn.

But this assumes 100% assignation of oil and gas revenue to Scotland, which we know is not true.

The other figure used in the paper is 82.5%, which is probably broadly right given the GERS / Kemp & Stephen work (see here).

On the 82.5% basis, Scotland looks like having a cumulative £44bn deficit using money-of-the-day (which is wrong), and £29bn in real 2007-8 terms.

Which is broadly the same bottom-line answer the Scotland Office paper got to, but by using the right data and the right sums rather than the wrong ones (sigh).

Despite the shoddy and politicised analysis, there is useful stuff in this paper. It demonstrates that, even if you go right back to the beginning of North Sea oil, "Scotland's oil revenues" have stayed in Scotland. That is a powerful fact.

I'm thinking of emailing the Murph, though, and recommending that he re-issue this paper with the right sums done on the right data...

New GERS 2007/8 - total Scottish deficit deepens

2009-06-18T19:36:00.005+01:00

The new version of GERS - covering 2007/8 - came out today.

The bottom line is that

"In 2007-08, the estimated fiscal balance in Scotland, that is the estimated current budget balance plus estimated net capital investment, was... a deficit of £3.8 billion (2.7 per cent of GDP) when an estimated geographical share of North Sea revenue is included."

This compares to last year's

"In 2006-07, the estimated fiscal balance in Scotland, that is the estimated current budget balance plus estimated net capital investment, was... a deficit of £2.7 billion (2.1 per cent of GDP) when an estimated geographical share of North Sea revenue is included."

Hilariously, "Hapless" Swinney is still attempting to spin things up by quoting only the current budget figures which show a tiny (~£200m) surplus. Always helps to only show half the result, doesn't it?

This change was utterly unsurprising as we already knew that North Sea tax revenues had fallen from £9.1bn to £7.8bn between 2006/7 and 2007/8.

Similarly, we already know that the 2008/9 North Sea revenue position will be a lot better - £13bn. The question for the overall balance is what effect the recession will have on other revenue sources and on spending, of course.

Another quick point to note that the Scottish geographic share of North Sea revenue is up from 84.5% in 2006/7 to 93.5% in 2007/8: this is a larger rise than expected last year, indicative of a faster-than-expected change in the balance of northern vs. southern production.

Of course, an increasing share of a decreasing quantity is not necessarily a good thing. All this means is that "Scottish" oil revenues were down 4.5%, while those of the UK fell by 13.8%.

The reported Scotland Office paper looking at overall historic oil revenues isn't on-line yet. Looking forward to this as it could be a valuable data source; previous work in this area (e.g. Taxpayers' Alliance) cut off around 1985 so omitted the oil revenues of the early 80s boom years.

Scottish "popular sovereignty" - I

2009-06-17T21:35:00.001+01:00

Having tasted the delights of contemporary politics, let's go back to this notion of "the distinctive Scottish doctrine of popular sovereignty".

Now let us be clear. The claim we are contesting is not just that in Scotland (as in England and most of Europe) there was a process of shifting power from an absolute monarchy to the nobility and then to a parliament, the electorate for which gradually became more and more universal.

No, the claim is that in pre-Union Scotland there was an established "doctrine" that the "people" were sovereign, unmediated by any form of parliament.

Let's go back to the original fount - the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath (which for convenience I shall henceforth label the "DoA").

The first part of the DoA is a totally fictitious recitation of the historic roots of the Scots, together with a made-up list of ancient monarchs - these are the non-existent folks whose portraits you can see at Holyrood. (And yes, I do know that this sort of thing was par for the course in medieval declarations of independence, and that the Pope and the other senior people in the Church - to whom the DoA was addressed - were probably perfectly aware that it was cobblers.)

For our purposes, the important bit is this:

"Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

Stirring stuff. An assertion that "we" would overthrow a king and choose another, in order to assert "freedom".

The problem with reading nearly 700-year-old documents is that the meanings of words change. (And this one was written in Latin, so there is a translation issue as well.) What did the authors of the document actually mean by "we" and "freedom"?

We can never really know. We do know, however that the "we" who attached their seals to the document were 49 nobles, sons of nobles and clerics (in those days, again sons of nobles). As I like to call them, Men with Fancy Titles and Hats.

It is as likely as not that, when this lot wrote "we" and "us", they meant "Us Men with Fancy Titles and Hats" rather than "The People" in the modern sense. And that by "freedom" they meant "Freedom of Us Men with Fancy Titles and Hats to choose which of us gets the Fanciest Title and Hat of all".

At this point we have to note, of course, that in England Magna Carta was in force, starting from 1215 and fully adopted as statute in 1297. This document also contained a lot of stuff about nobles having the power to decide who should become monarch, but also had much more specific and comprehensive rights for "freemen". The DoA may have had more stirring rhetoric, but Magna Carta gave much more protection for non-Fancy Hat wearers.

Which sort of trashes any claim that Scotland was "distinctively" ahead of England in the field of "popular sovereignty", does it not?

But we can look further at the historical record. If the DoA really was a declaration of "popular sovereignty" for "the people" as we currently understand it, then surely there will be further expressions and articulations of this over the succeeding centuries.

And as the pre-1707 Records of the Parliament of Scotland are now on-line and indexed, we should be easily able to find laws, decrees, speeches and resolutions attesting to this.

So, we've got the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, and then we've got the...

...ah

...er

...um.

To be continued.

Calman Report published

2009-06-15T10:40:00.004+01:00

Well well, the Calman Report is now out - all many hundred pages and multiple documents.

Nothing very surprising - devolution of a big chunk of income tax and some other small specific taxes, corresponding borrowing powers, a bit of adjustment of which things are devolved versus reserved, and some recommendations to make Holyrood work better itself and for better coooperation with Westminster.

The tax recommendation is quite clever. It isn't the level of the devolved rate which matters as much as the fact that the Scottish Parliament will have to make a positive decision in every budget about what that rate will be - the current option of doing nothing and just accepting the Barnett grant will no longer be possible.

I like the fact that the report puts things in a global context - despite the usual idiots (e.g. Mike Russell) shouting about "messy fudges", it is evident that most of the rest of the world operates multi-level government, and they are all fudges of various sorts - there is no unique "logical solution".

I have a couple of wonderings about the implementation. Firstly, legislation needs to happen at Westminster, and it will be interesting to see how Calman fits into all the other constitutional tinkering now being considered - term limits, PR, Lords reform, "English votes for English laws", and so on.

The other one is on the taxation and borrowing power. Having a power to borrow is all jolly and nice, except for the fact that we are already borrowed to the hilt against our existing revenues - so any additional Scottish borrowing will almost certainly need additional Scottish taxes. That would be an interesting argument for someone to try and make.

The key thing to watch for now will be whether the parties which sponsored the report now accept the results, and what they say about committing to implementation - both in Edinburgh and more importantly London.

If implementation commitments make it into all three of the main parties' General Election manifestos, then we wouldn't need to muck about having a pointless referendum, would we?

The "Saudi Arabia" of renewable energy

2009-06-10T14:53:00.001+01:00

Grrr.

Here we go again. The potential of the Pentland Firth to produce electricity from tidal energy.

Gratuitous use of a phrase of meaningless Salmond / Nat spin which is guaranteed to get me reaching for my calculator.

"Saudi Arabia". Nice phrase, isn't it? Evoking images of us all wafting around in armoured limousines and never having to work.

Shame that it's utter crap, when you look at the numbers.

The Sustainable Development Commission - which is a pro-renewables government body - estimates in this report that the entire power production potential of the Pentland Firth is some 12.7 TWh per year.

That would require over 1600 separate tidal turbines totalling almost 3000 MW in capacity, operating at a load factor of around 50%. This would, of course, take decades and multi-billions of pounds to develop, since tidal stream turbine technology is not yet commercial.

Oh golly gosh. That's as much power as a new 1700 MW baseload conventional power plant (coal, gas or nuclear) would produce, running at 85% load factor. (1700 x 365 x 24 x 85%...)

So, far from being the "Saudi Arabia" of renewables, the Pentland Firth is more accurately the "Peterhead", "Longannet" or "Torness" of renewables. (1600 MW gas, 2300 MW coal, 1300 MW nuclear power stations, respectively.) Obviously worth having and providing a few high-tech jobs in the locality, but hardly a "Saudi Arabia" with the spin-worthy images of sheikhs and limos, no?

Can I rub it in a bit more?

According to BP, in 2008 Saudi Arabia produced 515 million tonnes of oil. Burning that would produce 6012 TWh of heat energy, which a 45%-efficient power station could transform into 2705 TWh of electrical energy.

So the "Saudi Arabia of renewables" equates to less than 0.5% of the real Saudi Arabia.

It's also only 3.35% of the UK's oil production (72.2 Mt in 2008).

Shall we look at the money side, too?

In 2008 oil prices averaged $97.26/bbl, and Saudi production in barrel terms was almost 3.8 Bn bbl. So the market value of that Saudi oil was $367bn. (The UK's production was worth $51bn.)

Using a wholesale electricity price of $100/MWh, the total market value of a year's Pentland Firth output would be $1.27bn. Only 0.35% of the real "Saudi" again.

And let's consider government tax revenues. Oil is specially taxed and yields large amounts of government revenue, while electricity is not. The only revenue the UK government sees is ordinary corporation tax from the owners of power plants, and as we know there is quite a lot of flexibility in where these multinational companies declare their profits have been earned.

On top of that, not a single tidal machine will be deployed in the Pentland Firth or anywhere else without the generous subsidies provided via the Renewables Obligation and paid for by consumers, i.e. us. So far from being a source of revenue, tidal power would be an additional cost for us all.

The point of this? Tidal power and other renewables may, possibly, be a good thing. But do not let shifty politicians like Salmond con you into thinking they could be some sort of energy or revenue substitute for North Sea oil as it declines, because it just ain't so.

A teaser on "Scottish popular sovereignty"

2009-05-27T20:55:00.002+01:00

Conscious that I've not posted much for a couple of weeks, and won't do so for another couple as I'm off on hols.

Something I'm working up is a demolition of the idea that there is some kind of "distinctively Scottish" "doctrine of popular, not Parliamentary, sovereignty". But give me strength, it's dull. (The very topic, not my demolition of it, natch.)

But here's a wee teaser.

One of the key sources for this nonsense was one George Buchanan, early Church of Scotland cleric and tutor to James VI/I. He wrote an account claiming that Scotland had this tradition of removing unsatisfactory monarchs. Thing is, most of the cases he mentioned were entirely fictitious - deriving from the same source that led to all those portraits of non-existent monarchs in Holyrood Palace.

And a quick glance at the real historical record shows how much codswallop this claim really was.

Between 1320 and 1603, Scotland had 11 monarchs. 3 of those (James I, James III, and Mary) were removed through assassination, civil war or deposition.

In the same period, England had 18 monarchs. Of which no fewer than 7 (Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, and Jane) were removed through civil war or deposition. (Hint: "Wars of the Roses".)

So who, exactly, had the richer tradition of overthrowing monarchical power?

The UK nuclear deterrent is not "independent"

2009-05-14T11:07:00.002+01:00

Right, let's do something involving the 21st century and which doesn't have any graphs.

In fact, let's get bang up-to-date.

Nuclear weapons. Boom-boom! (Sigh. Stop it.)

It is an article of faith for the SNP, CND etc. that the UK's nuclear deterrent is "useless" because it is not "independent" - "the Americans have the launch codes" and so on.

This would mean that every Prime Minister since Harold Macmillan, who negotiated the Nassau Agreement with Kennedy in 1962, has been lying. You might think, as I do, that this is a little far-fetched.

In fact there shouldn't really be any room for debate on this topic any more (apart from the fact that SNP and CND adherents base their position entirely on emotion, and not facts) because some enterprising soul made an FOI request to the MOD back in 2005. The key passages of the response are:

"2. Does the government of the United States of America have any involvement in the use of nuclear weapons by the British government?

No. But in the event of the contemplated use of UK nuclear weapons for NATO purposes,
procedures exist to allow all NATO Allies, including the US, to express views on what was
being proposed. The final decision on whether or not to use nuclear weapons in such
circumstances, and if so how, would, however, be made by the nuclear power concerned.

3. Can the government of the USA prevent, veto or forbid the UK to use its own nuclear weapons?

No.

4. Does the British government have to tell the US government if it intends to use nuclear weapons?

No. But the US would be involved in any consultation process at NATO as described in the
answer to your second question."

In 2006 the the Commons Defence Select Committee went into all this in more detail.

The key testimony was from (the now late) Sir Michael Quinlan, former Permanent Secretary at the MOD, and Commodore Tim Hare, former Director of Nuclear Policy at the MOD.

"80. It is important to distinguish between two different types of independence: independence of acquisition and independence of operation. We heard that independence of acquisition is what the French have opted for at a significantly higher cost to the defence budget. Independence of operation is an alternative concept of independence and it is this which the UK has opted for at a lower price.

81. Sir Michael Quinlan told us that the UK's decision to choose independence of operation meant that "in the last resort, when the chips are down and we are scared, worried to the extreme, we can press the button and launch the missiles whether the Americans say so or not".[67] He argued that the decision to fire is an independent, sovereign decision. The United States "can neither dictate that the [UK's] force be used if HMG does not so wish, nor [can it] apply any veto—legal or physical—if HMG were to decide upon [its] use".[68]

82. Commodore Hare told us that "operationally the system is completely independent of the United States. Any decision to launch missiles is a sovereign decision taken by the UK and does not involve anybody else". He told us that the United States does not have a "technical golden key" which can prevent the UK from using the system.[69]

83. The potential disadvantage of the UK decision to forego independence of acquisition is that "if, over a very long period, we became deeply estranged from the Americans and they decide to rat on their agreements, we would be in… great difficulty".[70] Commodore Hare told us that such a risk was, in reality, "very low" and that, ultimately, "one must balance that risk against the enormous cost benefits that we have in procuring an American system to house in our submarines. That should not be underestimated".[71]"

Now this is good as it really does cover all the issues (and you can also read the various witterings from Greenpeace, CND etc elsewhere in the report, and note that they do not actually disagree in anyway on the topic of operational independence).

The UK nuclear deterrent is entirely independent of the US in the operational sense - i.e. we can fire the thing if and when we like.

However, it is also "less independent" than the French one, since we do not own, and have not designed and built, our own missiles. Instead, we have title to 58 missiles at any one time out of the combined US/UK Trident missile pool, on a sort of leasehold basis. The missiles are maintained at the USN base at King's Bay, Georgia. We have, however, designed, built and own our own submarines and warheads. And at any instant, 32 (i.e. two sub-loads) of missiles will be physically present on UK-owned submarines, plus an unknown number at Coulport.

This would only become relevant on a longer timescale. I.e., if we fell out entirely with the Septics, then over the course of a few years the UK deterrent would gradually become less usable as the Trident missile bodies became due for maintenance in the US. Eventually - after four-five years? - the UK deterrent would be unusable in its present form.

One can imagine various forms of emergency - and expensive - remedies. Crash-development of indigenous UK missiles. Purchase of French missiles and mating to the Trident subs. Conversion of ex-Trident warheads to air-droppable form. All technically possible.

The upside of this capability-sharing with the Yanks is that we've ended up with a deterrent which is much cheaper than the French one, and also much better - i.e. more throw-weight, longer-ranged, more warheads per missile, etc. The French are only acquiring a similar capability to Trident as they replace their M45 missiles with the M51 - which is only due to happen over the next decade.

Now I realise that some may not believe either of the above two sources as they both emanate from the UK government. You know, it's the usual "It's all lies!" response.

So it might also be beneficial to look at some media coverage of the issue, in particular the Radio 4 / Peter Hennessy documentary "The Human Button" broadcast in December 2008. This contained some very interesting, sensitive and even sensational material. It is notable, for example, that the UK regards ministers as being outside the military chain of command, and so PMs and Defence Secretaries cannot "order" nuclear strikes, only authorise them. It's also interesting that, in the context of the Cold War threat from the Soviet Union, the UK had such a fatalistic view of things that we assumed that if deterrence failed, the PM and the cabinet would be gone. The decision to retaliate (or not) thus fell on the captains of the bomber subs at sea, hence the "Last Resort Letters" locked in their safes.

More pertinent to this topic, though, is the statement by Denis Healey (Defence Secretary in the late 60s) that he would not have authorised a British nuclear retaliation, even if the Soviet strike was already on its way in or, indeed, landed. By contrast, Jim Callaghan would have retaliated, although with a heavy heart.

The key thing is that neither of them say "Of course it wouldn't have mattered because we'd have needed American permission anyway." Clearly because that simply wasn't the case.

Those interested in more are directed to the recent Peter Hennessy book "Cabinets and the Bomb", which includes a vast amount of declassified PRO documents on the UK deterrent over the years. Again, no mention of any "US veto". Various chunks of the book and a transcript of an associated discussion meeting - involving a bunch of former Defence Secretaries and MOD Perm Secs - are available here.

So, the only conclusion I can reach is that, whatever one thinks about the morality and/or cost-effectiveness of UK Trident, it really is "independent" in the sense that the UK government has the technical ability to fire the thing off as and when it likes.

That makes it an effective deterrent.

It is less "independent" than, say, the French one only in the sense that if we fell out with the US over missile maintenance then we would lose our deterrent capability over a timescale of a few years. That's the price for getting a deterrent which is both cheaper and qualitatively better than the French one.

Given that it's something we hope never to use - and indeed if we had to use it, it would have failed - that looks like the right choice to me.

The Scotsman's David Maddox on Cybernats

2009-05-05T15:06:00.007+01:00

Not exactly "Mythbusting", but I felt this deserved a bit of an airing.

"Cybernats highlight dangers of web anonymity

Hazel Blears has lambasted Labour's keenness on the Internet but the SNP has a problem too

David Maddox

HAZEL Blears, the fiery haired Communities Secretary, is not the first person you would think of as mistress of the elegant put down. But her disdainful "YouTube if you want to" swipe at her boss's cringeworthy appearance on the web to promote his plans for MPs' expenses was a killer and may be written into his political obituary.

Her comment reflected frustration with the obsession of Mr Brown's hangers-on and spindoctors with blogging and the internet which infuriates some traditionalist door-knockers and leafleteers such as Ms Blears.

Her point was that it puts a distance between politicians and voters, unlike meeting them, and it underlined serious concerns about internet campaigning, its poisonous and guerrilla nature carried out usually by anonymous snipers.

This was pulled into the public glare with the "noxious pair"- as former Home Secretary Charles Clarke calls them - Damian McBride and Derek Draper, caught planning anonymous attacks on leading Conservatives using lies, rumour and innuendo.

In Scotland, too, the blogosphere and on-line comment sections of newspaper websites are getting a dubious international reputation as being among the most vicious in the world.

And the issue that has not been properly addressed north of the Border is that the overwhelming number of producers of on-line bile, bigotry and hatred are sympathetic to the Nationalist cause.

There are a handful of others - including the pro-Labour Leaky Chanter and somebody pretending to be Alex Salmond on Twitter - but they are engulfed by the tidal wave of Nationalist angst.

This army, dubbed cybernats by Labour MSP Lord George Foulkes - a favourite target - launch daily, sustained attacks on journalists, politicians and anybody else perceived to stand in the way of their cherished aim of independence, or who raises even the mildest criticism of Alex Salmond or the SNP.

One of the more vitriolic cybernats last week posted a piece entitled 'David Maddox is a c***' because of a piece I had written on Faslane. While I, like many other journalists, take these attacks as abadge of honour, comments about Jewish Labour MPs allegedly blocking coverage on Gaza is an example of the anti-semitism that creeps into these extremist sections of the Nationalist community.

His suggestion that English-born people whom he names should be sent home once Scotland gets independence is a far cry from the "positive Nationalism" that the modern SNP stands for. It is only not racism on a legal technicality.

The Scotsman no longer allows comments on pieces about the Holocaust and Gaza because of such offerings. One of our last allowing comments, on school trips to Auschwitz, drew a classic cybernat remark: "Scottish children should be learning about Scottish history not Polish history."

The SNP always maintains that any member caught doing this sort of thing would be thrown out and insist that it has nothing to do with them.

But it is never able to say whether anybody has been disciplined and I have yet to hear a leading figure in the party disown them publicly.

There was a half-hearted SNP comment about a pro-Nationalist blog that made infantile allegations about Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray's private life which condemned "all such blogs" but mostly attacked Labour and McBride.

There are, though, MSPs who privately take pride in the number of pro-Nationalist postings and agree with some of their lurid comments.

The lack of action is, of course, because the bleary eyed brigade who stay up until midnight to be the first to post vitriol on newspaper websites, always hide behind pseudonyms.

There have been allegations that some of the cybernats work for the party at Holyrood, but that has never been proven.

The SNP quite rightly points out that McBride's plans for an attack blog were the one casewhere a leading spin doctor has been caught at it and as such was a cause for the party leader to apologise, even if Gordon Brown took his time about it.

But there is an issue that the SNP needs to tackle. While Hazel Blears is probably right that YouTube and blogs are no substitute for meeting people on the doorstep, one of the internet's greatest uses is that it provides a window to the world.

The Nationalist window is distorted by daily rantings of supporters as badly as if not worse than the integrity of Labour was damaged by McBride and Draper simply because of its volume.

A reader of many of these blogs or the web comments on Scottish newspapers' political stories would conclude at different times that Nationalists are bullies, filled with hate, anti-English, anti-semitic and obsessed with a 13th century world view.

So while Alex Salmond trots around the globe trying to explain that his party is unlike most nationalist outfits and is interested only in "talking up Scotland", his anonymous supporters on the web portray the SNP as something akin to the BNP.

The doctrine or positive nationalism has been a bedrock for the modern SNP because without it the party would be in danger of becoming a home for bigots who define themselves through their anti-Englishness.

There is no doubt that the leadership of the party has adopted that view, almost to the extant that it is a mantra.

But there are many supporters, who may or may not be party members, who clearly have not accepted this view and, with the safety of anonymity, let their true feelings be known. The uncomfortable question is how many supporters present one face in public which hides a much darker side in private.

Nothing suggests that Mr Salmond is not genuine in what he says about "positive nationalism,' but he and the SNP need to find a way to publicly separate themselves from these cybernats. Otherwise, they risk being tarnished by association."