Ferry timetables

With the new ferry timetable coming into effect on Friday 21 March, strong rumour reaches me that Sunday 23rd will see the first Sunday ferry into Lewis, and that the brand new updated timetable will be announced after the next CalMac Board meeting.

Education Committee

Considering again the decision of the Education & Children's Services Committee, I started to ponder the position of the four appointees as Representatives of Religious Interests to the Committee.

We have the Church of Scotland, The Free Church of Scotland, The Free Presbyterian Church and the Catholic Church join 16 Councillors to form Education policy in the Western Isles.

For those unfamiliar with religious schisms, the history of the various protestant denominations is one of argument and divisiveness, with the result that the Church of Scotland begat various offspring which begat the United (sic) Presbyterian Church, which begat the Free Church of Scotland in 1843 which begat the Free Presbyterian Church in 1893 and in 2000 the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing).

None of these are to be confused with the United Free Church of Scotland, or the Associated Presbyterian Churches (born 1990 to the Free Presbyterian Church).

The Church of Scotland as the established Presbyterian Church was, of course, a schism from the Catholic Church and has in course begat many other Churches too numerous to mention (and that is just in Lewis).

So, given this history of demonstrating how to live and let live with those who disagree with their view point, what right do they have to be the sole unelected representatives allowed to participate in Council decisions?

Where is the representation for parents? For teachers? For Muslims, Jews, agnostics et al? Special needs? Single parents? Gaelic speakers? Urdu speakers? Parents in a civil partnership?

Surely now is the time to remove the imbalance of religion from the Education Committee by either widening the scope of the input to include other views, or by removing an inherent bias in the process and restricting the decisions to elected Councillors only?

Let us grasp the nettle and ensure that education is no longer seen as 'needing' an input that cannot be provided by Councillors, and stop loading the Committee in favour of some denominations.

Taxation and politics

Two very interesting taxation stories appeared just above the radar, sending complementary but confusing messages about Labour's stance on equality on taxation.

The "super rich" should pay 10% more tax on earnings over £150,000 or give the same amount to charity, senior Labour MP Frank Field has proposed.

Oblivious to the fact that as it stands donations to charity can reduce your tax bill in any event, this appears to be a way of proposing a 50% tax rate on the 'super-rich', which will not get shot down in flames by the Treasury.

To get the support of the Socialists, Frank Field quotes their heroine:

Mr Field said the idea came from a conversation he once had with Baroness Thatcher

But the idea was knocked down by the senior partner at Grant Thornton, Chartered Accountants:

Mr Warburton said many of his company's wealthy clients would welcome the chance to put something back into society - provided it was not through the tax system, which they saw as wasteful.

So presumably their less wealthy clients don't see the tax system as 'wasteful'?

Of course this is a non-runner, as the attitude of Labour towards equalising the tax burden and that old discredited concept of "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" has moved from listening to the words of Karl Marx to those of his brother Harpo.

The Treasury has been accused of climbing down over its plans to tax wealthy foreigners living in the UK, after it moved to clarify its position.

No accusation, this IS a climb-down as a result of extensive pressure from the super-rich, who saw this as the first step towards them having to pay some tax, somewhere. The crawling continued,

Under the government's plans, wealthy non-doms will be eligible to pay a flat £30,000 in tax a year - once they have lived in the UK for seven years - or else sign up to the existing British tax structure. "We don't need to know the detail of people's worldwide income if they are going to be paying the £30,000," said Ms Cooper.

In other words, if you can persuade the Inland Revenue that you actually reside in Fiji, or Russia or the moon and are only temporarily in the UK for a decade or three, then you can pay £30k and no questions are asked. Questions like do you pay any tax anywhere in the world?

Meanwhile, the poorest face punitive 67% tax rates ....

The fog descends

As I took the children in to school and nursery today, the fog made driving treacherous with visibility of only 100m. The kids in the playground loved the excitement of not being able to see and being chased by the fog.

The traffic sounds were almost non-existent, despite being only yards from the busy road. However, the fog was punctuated by the sounds of a local farmer shooting geese and the shotgun blasts bounced and echoed through the fog.

But the fog in the Council chamber had obviously descended much earlier and had reduced visibility even further, when Councillors decided against closing two secondary schools.

Hopefully, the full Council will take a decision, rather than prevaricating about taking a decision, next week, against the alternative of considering all the schools together, which will lead to confusion, probable legal challenges, and undoubtedly some bizarre results.

The Herald reports that Daliburgh costs £24,745 per pupil (compared to a Scottish average of £4,675).

However, the religious appointees to the Committee seem to have held the balance between closure and delay, arguing in bizarre terms:

Rev Andrew Coghill shared concern with Daliburgh parents that the schools would shut in the face of an impending new law presuming against rural school closures.

He argued for a situation where the “axes falls on everyone at the same time so justice is seen to be done.”

Which seems to be a case of having your cake and eating it, and I hope his sermons are much more intelligible.

With pupil numbers in the Western Isles having fallen from 6,315 to 3,850 in 30 years, something needs to be done to rationalise schooling, but it looks like closure of Daliburgh may be rejected by the Government - although no extra money will be available - leaving another millstone around the neck of the Comhairle.

School closures

With the "Save Bayble School" minibus parked outside the Comhairle offices, and forecasts of a big demonstration against the proposals, the Education Committee will this afternoon consider the possible closure of some secondary departments, and the eventual transfer of these pupils to other schools.

I'd love to be able to bring you the agenda item, so that those who cannot be present could at least understand the background to the decision, and take a view on the reasonableness (or otherwise) of the recommendation. Unfortunately, the Comhairle does not publish the agendas electronically, and previous attempts by me to scan the agendas resulted in enormous files, so we will have to take on trust the reports in the various media sources.

Some facts are unchallengeable: pupil numbers are collapsing, costs are going through the roof and buildings need huge cash sums spent on them.

Some are more contentious: the new curriculum needs new teaching arrangements, the Government want rural schools to be kept open and the pupils may be better joining with their peers at the start of Secondary rather than in the Third year.

Of course no-one wants to lose their local school, but the financial implications for the community are enormous if we keep the schools open. The PFI PPP quasi-almost-Scottish Public Trust scheme is going to suck large sums out of the education budget over the next 30 years as the 'funding gap' has to be bridged. (What that means is that the costs of the building been done by anyone other than the Council are much higher, but for the purposes of this scam the Government pretends that the private sector having be enormously rewarded for taking a risk, where no risk exists, and consequently education provision must suffer to line the pockets of big construction companies, accountants and lawyers to deliver er... education provision.)

I understand that the Bayble parents may have some unspecified non-financial guarantee from the Government representatives, and it will be interesting to see how that fits into the big picture. However, I guess that the Uist and Barra schools will be selected for closure/rationalisation, and that the decision about schools in Lewis will - inevitably - be given more detailed consideration by Councillors. The majority of whom come from Lewis.

That's what happened last time, and I will be surprised if it doesn't happen again.

Birthday presents

As my enjoyment of cooking is well known through the family, our eldest son recently ensured I got another cookery book: this time it was Nigella Express, and her tasty but speedy recipes.

To accompany this, I acquired a skillet with the intention of using it for some nice steak and venison recipes that I had seen, almost as a substitute for a barbecue.

Incidentally, February has frequently been a good month for an early barbecue in the garden, with the mild weather allowing us to fire it up very, very, early in the evening and letting the kids run around and burn off some steam before bed time.

However, the skillet has been used extensively over the past two weeks as I experiment with various combinations of meat - with varying degrees of success i.e. cries from my wife that "there are flames coming off it!!!"- accompanied by more traditionally cooked side dishes.

Tonight was - if I say so myself - a masterpiece.

Nigella - for it was her - fell open at the seared salmon with Singapore noodles, but in the absence of the metropolitan ingredients (just where can you get Chinese green leaves in Stornoway?) I improvised. A stir fry of sliced baby corn, orange pepper and grated carrot were added to the noodles and stock and cooked with curry powder whilst the salmon seared in a mere couple of minutes, with one side also coated in the same medium Madras powder.

Baby was hurriedly transferred from lap to front row baby seat in front of the fish tank, whilst we descended on the feast like two locusts leaving a health farm.

Yum! I'll be doing this again soon.

Audit committee

Where can we get tickets for the Scottish Parliament Audit Committee meeting which is summoning Messrs Manson and Currie, the former Chief Executive and Chairman respectively?

Will it be live on the parliament.tv site?

Can someone work out how to catch the footage and post it on YouTube?

What about some pertinent questions for the Committee to ask?

And surely the role of the rest of the Board needs to be looked at......?

The Board carefully scrutinise the budget

Labour in the Highlands and Islands

I find myself on the mailing list for the Highlands and Islands Labour MSPs.

Or more accurately a mysterious unknown correspondent sends me a second-hand copy of the newsletter, probably when out walking his dog, in the hope that I might think I am important enough to get a direct mailing.

Whilst the newsletters are vaguely entertaining, most of the document is taking up with the old-style unconstructive SNP bashing which is obviously designed to alienate the floating voter, whilst giving the unreconstructed Labour members something to should about in the pub at the weekend.

Can I solicit membership of all the political mailing lists? Good bits will be reported; nonsense will be ridiculed; and all will be recycled in due course.

Speaking to the Labour candidate, Cllr DJ MacSween, this week, I told him that the biggest problem he faces in getting elected is his own party, as they seem to be determined to cause maximum problems for all their candidates. He did not demur beyond saying the bare minimum he had to. Although, this being the Western Isles, local factors will come heavily into play.

Stornoway Trust, our MP and our MSP

When I posted a comment about a private meeting on Monday between the above, I was lambasted for repeating third or fourth hand stories. That was until the Stornoway Gazette was published this week, and the details were confirmed.

Having now spoken to someone who was present at the meeting, it is clear that the level of frustration felt by Trust members is immense at the incompetence of their guests and the blatant attempted opportunism of the meeting.

• Neither Parliamentarian has had any regular contact with the Trust, mainly because they didn't want to discuss the application for the windfarm on Stornoway Trust land. This despite the Trust being the biggest landowner in the islands, with about 1/3 of the population having them as landlords.


• Neither Parliamentarian had any real grasp of the role and remit of the Trust


• Neither Parliamentarian had any understanding of the current financial position of the Trust


• It was obvious that neither had tried to engage informally with any Trustee, and that those who should have been counted as friends and supporters were alienated by this


• Neither seemed to have any real understanding of the impact of the windfarm on the finances of the Trust, and consequently the plans that the Trust had for improvements to the estate they manage

With MP and MSP having called the meeting on the back of the 'Minded to Refuse' letter, the Trustees were stunned to find that the Parliamentarians were utterly bereft of any constructive ideas for the future, instead expecting the (impoverished) Trust to have some rabbit to pull out of the hat. Virtually everyone who has ever had any dealing with the Trust knows of the situation, so none of this should have been a surprise to anyone with a finger on the pulse. Except two people, obviously.

However, what really, really got the Trustees angry was the blatant attempt to find the mysterious Plan B (which never existed) so that the MP and MSP could claim it as their own.

As my confidant said: Alasdair Morrison chaired the Arnish working group and used to claim the credit for everything good that happened there. He didn't do a lot, but at least he kept in touch. These two were pathetically desperate to claim the credit for anything, without getting involved or taking any responsibility for anything.

Apart from that, the meeting seems to have gone well.

Wendy's donations

Cleared by the Electoral Commission?

Hardly.

It was a verdict of "guilty, but so small it was not worth bothering about".

Can it get any worse?

"Lightning bolt for the Campaign Team, please"

Cat welfare

It is good to know that the Scottish Government have launched an all important "Consultation on the Draft Cat Welfare Code of Practice".

No, seriously, this is important stuff.

I do look forward to this appearing on the Comhairle Agendas, as it will have to do, so that the Councillors can consider this in detail and ensure that they are aware of such important matters, such as....

Your cat should have plenty of things to stimulate it mentally

Which I don't think means a good library or an Xbox. (Explanation for Councillors - an Xbox is a on-line gaming system using Blu-ray disks)

You may wish to consider whether it would be safer to keep cats indoors at night, when outdoor risks to their health and welfare could be greater. However, cats can be active at night and restricting them in this way may cause them stress.

Which means that whatever you do it is wrong, and they can prosecute you.

Your cat should not be too fat or too thin

The ability to state the bloody obvious hasn't been lost by the Civil Servants. Presumably, there will be slimming classes available for fat cats and guidance on diet?

You should make sure that your cat eats regularly and has fresh water available at all times

Look, I was just joking. Is there anyone out there who is going to read that and say "Oh! So that's what I am doing wrong!"

Your cat should have somewhere suitable to toilet

How the hell do they flush the toilet? Do they need a bidet and shower? Should I provide a sauna or a steam room?

There are 37 (yes, count them!) pages of this magnificent waste of time and paper. Complemented only by the 42 pages of Consultation on the draft dog welfare code of practice, which has a different but overlapping set of consultees and will be the next item on the Committee agenda. As for the Consultation on draft goldfish welfare code of practice....

You really cannot make it up.

Year of the Rat

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year, which is the Year of the Rat, so to celebrate the Chinese exchange teacher at the Nicolson Institute was the host and guest of honour at a Banquet in the Golden Ocean last night.

About 50 of us squeezed into the restaurant where a few speeches preceded the serious business of eating.

Mr Lu then entertained the assembled masses with a rendition of Auld Lang Syne in English and then in Mandarin, which brought the staff in the restaurant out form the kitchens to listen and enjoy.

The New Year was brought in with an excellent mix of foods, a wider ranging and diverse range of guests from School, the Education Dept and the Bridge Centre as well as friends and acquaintances.

The staff finally threw us out about 11pm, probably so they could bring in the New Year properly.

The ideogram reads "Happy New Year"

Sheer genius!

Which idiot in the Lib-Lab camp came up with the strategy for the Scottish Budget which involved abstention?

For 64
Against 1
Abstain 60

The Budget goes through (and a good thing too), and in the process the Labour Party have shot themselves in the foot with a certain degree of aplomb. Having listened to the speeches, the decrying of the Budget by Andy Kerr and others made it clear exactly where their sympathies lay, and how much better they could do were they in power today (but not over the last eight years, obviously).

Hence to the vote - SNP, Tories, Green and Margo, presumably - sided for the budget, and instead of doing the arithmetic and staging a protest vote they knew they were going to lose, the idiots - the absolute braindead idiots - sat on their hands, in a show of decisiveness.

Given the option of shaking a fist and worrying the Government about their inherent power in opposition, they have managed to bolster the SNP benches, and become a laughing stock in the process.

I suspect the decline may be terminal ......

Parliamentary Written answers 5/2/08

Angus MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Scottish National Party) | Hansard source

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland in which years since 1997 the Prime Minister sent greetings to the annual Royal National Mod festival.

David Cairns (Minister of State, Scotland Office) | Hansard source

(holding answer 17 December 2007)

Art and culture are matters devolved to the Scottish Executive and Scottish Ministers. However, the Prime Minister sent a hand-written note, in Gaelic, to the Royal National Mod last year and the Secretary of State for Scotland wrote in 2006.

Minority retort

One of the great benefits of proportional representation is that the public are more likely to get what they want, whilst politicians are less likely to be able to manipulate the system to their benefit.

It also produces some deliciously cringe-making compromises as the desperation to hold onto power outweighs every other factor.

So it will be this week as the first SNP Budget attempts to make its way through Parliament.

The balance of power - for this matter - lies not with the SNP, but with the tantalising combination of Margo MacDonald, the Greens and the Tories who hold the votes that will make all the difference.

With the Lib-NuLab pact desperate for the budget to be lost amended in such a way as to meet the prioirities of the people the Lib-NuLab pact for purely altruistic reasons (i.e. so that they don't get embarrassed by what they should have done over the past 8 years), the problem is clear.

As someone who marched along Princes Street on many occasions decrying Thatcher, supporting the miners, opposing the cuts in whatever, and who has probably graced the photo-files of MI5 the Tories are beyond the pale. Indeed, the SNP used to have a policy of 'no deals' with the Tories, until .... well when exactly.

To win seats in Edinburgh and Fife a new Forth crossing was promised, which has alienated the Greens. Who were kind of pissed-off about the airport expansions, new road building and (soto voce) the weak committment to renewables before they realised the power they were wielding.

Margo, being less beholden to anyone except Margo (and that's a complement) has already extracted promises, commitments and money for her chosen projects. And in fine style she has then sat back and demanded more. And she will probably get it all.

If the budget goes through, the SNP will be branded as Tartan Tories again, and they will have to rely on the Tories each and every year to pass the budgets, which will not be very comfortable come the next elections.

However, carefully considering the voting position I suspect that the Budget will be lost and the process will start again, resulting in more changes in the promises, and a blame game between the SNP and Labour. That will be entertaining if not enlightening, and it will be a bitter, bitter, vicious scrap. But only the first of four.

Update 20:20
The toys are out of the pram, as Salmond threatens to resign if the Budget is not passed. Although claiming to be confident of success, this behaviour suggests that the parliamentary arithmetic is on a knife-edge and the pressure is telling.

It is not very edifying, and possibly pointless. I thought that the elections were every four years, and couldn't be any sooner, meaning that a hung Parliament had to struggle on and find a majority issue by issue. That would be a hellish situation for Scotland for the next three years but should produce a better Parliament and better Parliamentarians in the long-run. If they don't kill each other first. Which might in itself be entertaining.

Update 6/2/08
The BBC refreshes my memory about the possible sequence of events. In the event of the Resignation of the First Minister, there are 28 days in which a new First Minister can be elected. Failing which, with the support of 2/3 of the MSPs, a new election can be called.

With 129 MSPs, Labour has a blocking minority for the calling of a new election. Can you imagine Labour candidates standing in a snap election? Turkeys and Xmas.

1+1=3 or is it 4?

Incredible, but true, the budgets for 2005 and 2006 at Western Isles Health Board were fundamentally flawed as they counted savings twice in coming to the final figures.

Is it any wonder that the projected savings couldn't be achieved. And is it any wonder that overspends occurred when the basics were so wrong.

The Chief Executive of NHS Scotland is due to present this information to the Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday, so look forward to more embarrassing revelations.

I tust that we will be told just who made this mistake, and who was responsible for failing to set up a Finance Committee to scrutinise the budgets.

Update 6/2/08
The full text of the letter to the Audit Committee is here, thanks to Hebrides News.

Engaging with the public

The Stornoway Trust is the landowner for the Parish of Stornoway, with Trustees elected every few years to represent the different interests in the area. It is apolitical, but has Trustees from various political parties.

It has also been a leading figure in the attempt to develop windfarms in Lewis, and as such last nights meeting with the MP and MSP to discuss the future plans was timely.

When our MSP was discussing the windfarms and asked the question "So what is your Plan B?" to the Trustees, I understand that the floor was wiped with him and Mr MacNeil, with all the Trustees (including the SNP activists) laying into them with a vengeance.

The kicking was so bad, that the MP and MSP have now refused to attend the informal meeting with Councillors next Monday to get and give a regular briefing on the changes since they last met.

Or more accurately,our MP decided that he just had to attend a meeting with parents at Paible school and our MSP was stopped from attending on the advice of his Assistant, Kenny "Flip" MacLeod, who decided that he had better travel to Paible too.

Perhaps the prospect of meeting people with a differing view is a major problem for them both - which might explain the refusal to debate with the Labour candidate on Isles FM.

Why? With all the opportunities for poking fun, and ripping the usual out of the Labour Party it should have been an excellent opportunity. Instead the smell of fear is starting to become all pervasive.

Prospects for Labour

With the trickle of bad and damaging news becoming a flood - even if the substance is fairly insubstantial - the Labour Party must be screaming at the mishandling of the news about donations to the Wendy Alexander campaign.

Even the 'snouts in the trough' attitude of Derek Conway wasn't enough to distract from the bad news, mainly as press knew all about this, and the public weren't surprised at the duplicity shown by MPs.

If Labour have any serious expectation of winning the next election it would seem that their only hope is a simultaneous catastrophe to remove the entire top echelon of the party, otherwise they face the prospect of humiliation, defeat and disaster in 2010.

I still think that the new openness (hah!) that we can now expect from MPs about their expenses is going to bring more dirty laundry into the open, which will be entertaining for all and sundry, and might actually bring a higher measure of honesty from, and respect for, MPs if they volunteer the information, rather than have the details dragged out of them.

I remain of the opinion that MPs and MSPs should have to publish their tax returns, so we can see just what they are up to, as after the initial furore the public will be better served by the disclosure.

Emergency meeting about windfarms

The Comhairle meet today at 2pm in emergency session to discuss the 'minded to refuse' view of the Scottish Government.

I trust that the Comhairle will take a very robust view on this attitude from Government, and will highlight the inconsistencies and bias in the statement.

However, the way forward was surely illustrated by the vox pops in the Stornoway Gazette this week where four out of five people supported the application and the fifth supported windfarms but not this scheme.

The Comhairle should immediately launch a campaign to encourage supporters of the application to submit letters of support to the Government to show that the supporters have been silent, not non-existent.

I have long said that I believed that 1/3 of the population oppose the plans; 1/3 support; and, 1/3 don't know. The opponents are obviously well organised, and the Comhairle has been remiss on not building on the underlying public support for the plan.

Whatever the outcome in a few weeks time, both sides must be prepared to work together constructively in the aftermath, and if either side sits on the sidelines and sulks, then I they will face nothing but opprobrium from the public.

Update 16:10
From the Gazette: Officials at the European Union expressed 'surprise and dismay' when informed that the Scottish Government were minded not to approve the Lewis Windpower development, councillors heard today (Monday).
[...]
"It was made clear that EU legislation does not prohibit development on designations."

Update 20:45
Checking back through my notes, before the Comhairle came to a recommendation, I was told that the Designations did not give a blanket prohibition on development but could in some circumstances prevent it. The interpretation by the Scottish Government seems to be completely in line with the Westminster attitude of 'implement EU regulations to the maximum.'

Minded to refuse

An exclusive copy of the letter from the Government to LWP is NO LONGER* attached here. The funny pictures are due to the Government not embedding some fancy graphics properly.

I've read it quickly, and I'm appalled at some of the attitudes prevalent in the letter, and the implications of some of the attitudes set out in the document.

The key theme is "Economic criteria cannot be seen as overruling ecological criteria", which is the principal reason for refusal. Fair enough, but it appears that ecological criteria are treated as the primary assessment tool and economic criteria are dismissed.

The economic impact on Lewis is dismissed as there are other alternatives - namely the Eishken and Pairc windfarms, which implies that they will be approved - which can't be right as that prejudges so much that is yet to happen.

But most irritating of all is that the conditions placed on the application by the Comhairle appear to have been ignored. For instance, the objection raised by the Western Isles Fisheries Trust was virtually fully taken on board and became a planning condition to the satisfaction of the WIFT, yet it seems to have been rehashed and used to justify refusal.

I sense political meddling in the decision, forcing trivial points to become improbably important.

There were plenty of valid reasons to choose from if one wanted to find grounds for refusal, but damn few of them make there way into this document.

I'm bloody angry at the poor quality of the decision making process.

8/2/08: * I have removed the link until the response period has expired.
20/2/08: Link reinstated.