Wendy's pal - was it Tinkerbelle or Captain Hook?

May I direct your attention to a most interesting post by one of the Bondbloke people on the resurrection of Professor 'Red' Midsummer who has risen from his grave to clank his chains:

Red has now proposed (Scotsman, 12 June) that the Standing Orders of the Scottish Parliament should be changed to enable "...committees to be allowed to make amendments [to the budget] rather than make [non-binding] recommendations". This would, of course, rob the governing party of the right to set Scottish spending priorities to the extent that these did not chime with the majority on any specific committee. But wait - has Red considered the melee that will ensue should his latest attempt to undermine Scottish democracy be accepted? There are to be 15 Committees in the new Parliament, which gives scope for 15 non-coordinated proposals. To say that financial chaos would ensue is to put it mildly.

I agree. Sensible financial administration would be become impossible. Furthermore, such a system would be become entrenched, in that any subsequent attempt to restore the previous system would be opposed on the grounds that it was an anti-democratic transfer of responsibility from parliamentary committees to the Executive. For MSPs to vote away their powers to meddle would be like turkeys voting for Christmas. Does Prof Midsummer really want to impose such a daft arrangement on future administrations, even if those administrations might be of a more acceptable political flavour to his (admittedly atrophied) tastebuds?

Maybe, after all, we're not such a bad wee country?

David Aaronovitch in The Times comments on the studies of children's development:

Children from Bangladeshi families were a year behind white children in tests measuring “school readiness”; West Indian and African children were six times more likely than whites to be behind. But Scottish children were two months ahead of the UK average in “school readiness”.

And

... crudely, the message of these studies is that we should now pay the Scots to bring up our children, but let the Indians feed them.

It's worth reading the whole article.

Picture this!

May I invite you to study the picture used on the BBC Scotland website to illustrate this story about nurses' pay? To put it bluntly, the picture is of a nurse's breasts - admittedly fully clothed breasts but breasts nonetheless. Is there any reason for this? Does it add anything to the story?

The evil weed

Quote of the day from Hockney in The Independent (here):

"I might point out Turner smoked," he declared, adding it was a fairly common habit among great artists. "Monet smoked, and he died at 86. Picasso and Matisse smoked, and lived to a ripe old age. They didn't have dreary people telling them what to do."

Aye, they get you down, those dreary people ...

Sleepy hollow

This morning The Herald reports that our next Prime Minister is considering the restoration of the Secretary of State for Scotland as a full time job.

Has Mr Brown forgotten that the last full time Secretary of State for Scotland, Helen Liddell (aka Stalin's Granny), had so little to do that she was accused of taking French lessons in office hours? That was of course before she was banished to Canberra (where her linguistic abilities were of doubtful utility).

As for the Scotland Office in more recent times, it was only last December that The Scotsman reported:

THE role of the Scotland Office has been brought into question by new figures which show how little work is apparently being done by its staff.
The 22 staff who work in the lavish surroundings of Dover House in London send out less than one letter per working day and the premises' luxury rooms were used for just 37 days this year for hosting functions for visiting Scottish ministers and dignitaries.
There is no need for postbag either, with the office receiving fewer than seven letters a day.
And for a government often accused of putting spin before substance, the press officer seems surprisingly unbusy, with just 47 press releases in one year ...

And, of course, when a crisis arose, when the Scottish Secretary of State actually had to do something, such as when the UK Government was considering a deal with Libya impacting on the Executive's powers with regard to justice, where was wee Duggie, the current part-time incumbent? A good question, but answer came there none.

Fighting for Scotland in the EU Council Chamber

I hope that he remembered the important thing - to leave enough time to load up with cheap booze at Luxembourg airport on the way home.

The Executive press release indicates a cabinet secretary quite pleased with himself:

Speaking in Luxembourg after attending his first European Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting, Richard Lochhead, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, said:
"It was a privilege to be the first Cabinet Secretary in the new Scottish Government to attend an EU council.
"It was very valuable to experience at first hand the process which determines the future of Scotland's fishing communities and to receive a warm welcome from Commissioner Borg and other fisheries ministers ...
"While this was a relatively low key Council meeting, I ensured that key Scottish concerns were reflected in the UK position.
"Watching 27 countries, some landlocked, debating fishing policy underlined the importance of giving the historic fishing nation of Scotland a much greater say on the future of our fishing communities."

Mr Lochhead will have realised how utterly tedious these meetings, especially the 'low key' ones, are. After the Presidency has welcomed everyone (taking at least 5 minutes), the Commission will present its proposal (10 minutes) and then there will be a tour de table where each Member State has in turn 5 minutes to state its view of the proposal (135 minutes); the Presidency will then sum up the discussion (10 minutes). Then it's time for lunch. The whole process will be repeated in the afternoon.

My only surprise is that Mr Lochhead is not staying for the Agriculture Council tomorrow. Then he could have experienced the tedium all over again.

Playing it straight

Iain Macwhirter in The Herald catalogues the duplicity of the UK Government over the Libyan memorandum of understanding and concludes:

What infuriates me most about this whole affair is the implication that anyone who questions the Downing Street account is a Nationalist sympathiser. Well, I belong to no party, but I can tell this this much: if they want to hand the political initiative to the SNP, they are going exactly the right way about it. And I say this to UK government sources: in future, don't ring me unless you are prepared to tell it straight. You might find I am not at home.

Some of us might wonder if UK Government sources are capable of telling it straight even if they wanted to. Remember Iraq? the BAE/Saudi affair? Even last week's G8 Summit?

Moonlighting again

I have been guest-blogging at the Roundup. Over here.

Throwing some red meat to the backbench jackals

Alan Cochrane in The Telegraph has become over-excited about the allegedly iniquitous Libya deal:

All of the political to-ing and fro-ing notwithstanding, the clincher for this observer and for many others that this is a serious constitutional, as well as legal, dispute was the fact that Elish Angiolini, the Lord Advocate, was fully in support of the First Minister's statement. Both she and he could be seen in deep conversation in the few minutes before Mr Salmond got to his feet.
Further, she was in complete agreement with the letter of protest sent from Bute House to Downing Street last night.
Her political independence has never been in doubt - indeed she is the first Lord Advocate in living memory not to be sacked by an incoming government - and I don't think for a minute that she'd get involved in a political stunt.

Let us bear in mind that the Libya agreement is a memorandum of understanding. It is not a formal treaty. No Libyan prisoners have yet been identified for extradition and, indeed, even if in due course they are so identified, the process will remain open to legal challenge.

Of course the Prime Minister should have consulted beforehand, but it would not be the first time that he'd neglected the proprieties. The First Minister saw an open goal and duly blootered the ball into the back of the net. But a serious constitutional dispute? Doubtful ...

Out, in, out, in?

I'm fed up reading about it. The Telegraph reports:

Paris Hilton will return to court today to see if she will be ordered back to jail after serving only three days of her 45-day term.
But the judge who jailed her for violating her probation on an earlier drink driving charge said he was unhappy with the decision and ordered the socialite back to court.
He issued an order to test whether the sheriff who released Hilton may have been in contempt of court for doing so.

I don't care either way but make up your mind and give the rest of us some peace.

It's only been three years...

I see that Lord Laidlaw is still in trouble with the Lords Appointments Commission. According to the BBC (here):

"During spring 2004, the commission vetted a list of party-political nominees," the commission's report, published on Thursday, said.
"One of the individuals on the list, Irvine Laidlaw (now Lord Laidlaw), was not resident in the UK for tax purposes. Following an exchange of correspondence and a face-to-face meeting, the commission accepted an assurance from Lord Laidlaw that he would become resident in the UK for tax purposes from April 2004.
"On the basis of this assurance the commission found no objection to his appointment. The commission would have taken a different view on Lord Laidlaw's nomination if it had known that he would not be resident in the UK for tax purposes from April 2004," the report said.
"In June 2004 he was appointed to the House of Lords. Lord Laidlaw has not become resident in the UK for tax purposes."

Among other roles, Lord Laidlaw is the effective employer of Lady Elvidge, the good lady of Sir John, Permanent Secretary of the Scottish Executive, as may be seen at this website. It is fervently to be hoped that Lord Laidlaw's troubles do not cause Lady Elvidge to consider her position.

Jobs for the boys

This is an interesting idea but it is far from clear how it can be delivered. The Independent reports:

Gordon Brown yesterday promised his union backers for the leadership of the Labour Party that as Prime Minister he will ensure British people get first refusal on jobs in Britain...
In a further reassurance to the unions, he said he wanted to ensure that 200,000 jobs in construction, the hospitality industry and the financial services for the London Olympics also went to British workers. It follows growing concern that many of the jobs on the 2012 Olympics would go to lower paid migrant workers from Poland and other new entrants to the European Union from the former Warsaw Pact countries.
"We are about to sign agreements for the Olympics and the construction trade so that the jobs in London go to people who are trained up here in Britain to get the jobs that are available," he said.
"I want to extend it too to the hospitality trade, to construction and to the financial services. I want... these jobs to go to British workers with skills that are given by us to enable them to get the jobs that are available," he said.

The rules of the EU do not allow governments (or private sector employers) to discriminate in favour of domestic labour to the detriment of workers from other parts of the EU. Now you may think that this situation is crazy or unfair, but it is a fact. Either Mr Brown is ignorant of one of the most basic tenets of EU law or he is deliberately misleading his trades union audience.

The rise and rise of the New Puritans

There you go. Not content with banning smoking in pubs, nor with denying expectant mothers an occasional glass of the old vino, nor with forcing supermarkets to forbid money-saving offers to their customers on booze, the Executive will today announce its latest wheeze (no pun intended), whereby young smokers will have to be 18 before they buy a packet of fags.

It is of course health reasons that are quoted in evidence, although the BBC rather gives the game away with this:

The executive statistics indicated that 4% of 13-year-olds and 15% of 15-year-olds were regular smokers.
However, smoking by 13-year-olds had declined since 1998 from 9% to 3% among boys, and from 11% to 5% among girls. Among 15-year-olds, smoking had declined from a peak in 1996, from both 30% for boys and girls to 12% for boys and 18% among girls.

If the existing policy is working so well that it has reduced 15 year-old smokers from 30% to 15% within ten years, then why mess about with it?

And there is more bad news south of the border. The Times reports:

Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking, The Times has learnt.
Under the plans published today, a fresh audit is to be conducted by the Government into the overall costs of alcohol abuse to society and the National Health Service. “We want to target older drinkers, those that are maybe drinking one or two bottles of wine at home each evening,” a Whitehall source said.

OK, it may not apply to Scotland for now but can our new nationalist masters see a bandwagon without wanting to jump on it?

It would not be so bad if they really believed in the health arguments. Little old wine drinker me suspects they just hate to see people enjoying themselves. I fear that emigration may be the only answer.

Will we be 'swamped'?

I have spent most of the day worrying about this story in The Scotsman:

HUMAN traffickers have opened up a new people-smuggling route into Scotland, with migrants entering the country illegally from the Faroe Islands.
Immigration officers have launched an operation to uncover the extent of the problem after the discovery in recent weeks of a number of illegal workers living in the North-east who had exploited common travel areas between Denmark, the Faroes and Shetland to reach the UK.
The Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) believes this could be the tip of the iceberg and is concerned gangmasters may be arranging for large numbers of migrants to travel from the Continent to Scotland via the Faroes, evading border checks and heavy immigration staff presence at busier ports.

I foresaw the Glasgow sky darkening with jumbo jets from Vagar Airport full of illegal immigrants. Lerwick Harbour would be crowded with vast continental ferries plying their trade from Torshavn.

But, as anyone who has ever been to the Faroes will tell you, it's not what you would describe as probable. And then I was reassured by the thought that it was just the usual nonsense from The Scotsman.

Not sure I can be bothered any more...

I mean, we can't even run to a decent scandal. All we can come up with is this kind of minor pathetic nest-feathering. And the culprit is so ethically challenged that he can say this kind of thing:

Last night Mr Stevenson - who swapped the three-storey family home in Linlithgow which he and his wife bought in 1974 for the more modest £170,000 house in the same town - said he had done nothing wrong.

Oh dear, Mr Stevenson. In the long dark tea-time of your soul, when you wake up sweating in the middle of the night, do you really believe that what you have done is morally right?

Quote of the day

On reaching no 26 in the UK top 40 with the Zimmers' version of 'Talking about my Generation' (here):

Mr Carretta, lead singer of the band, said: "It's just brought me back to life. I was 90 and stuck in a rut. And now I feel that I have come alive again."

Check out the video at YouTube here. If I were a bit younger, I might describe it as cool.

Handbags

Oh yes, the Labour Party Deputy Leadership. If there is a point to this argument, it escapes me. The Independent reports:

An instant handbag debate was ignited. Under questioning, Ms Harman said she had never spent more than £50 on a handbag. Ms Blears happily confessed to a black leather Orla Kiely, which had cost "around" £250. Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, has been photographed carrying a £750 Chloe bag.

Seems a bit exclusive. What does Peter Hain carry?

Taking care of our data

It's just that you would expect the Bank of Scotland to have a more technologically advanced system. The Herald reports:

Financial details of thousands of bank customers have been lost in the post.
Bank of Scotland yesterday apologised to 62,000 customers after it confirmed that their mortgage details have been reported missing. A computer disc containing details of the mortgage accounts failed to reach the main credit reference agencies for a routine monthly update.
The bank said the disc, which was sent in the normal post with Royal Mail, has been reported as a lost item but claimed it was "almost impossible" that any financial fraud could be committed with the limited information held on the disc.
It contains the names, addresses, dates of birth and mortgage account numbers of each customer, but does not include bank account details, PINs, passwords or bank transaction information.
The bank said there was no suggestion that the disc had been stolen and that it appears to have been lost in the post.

To do a monthly download on to a disc and then to send it through the mail, via 'normal post', seems extraordinarily old-fashioned, not to say careless. Maybe they are not as clever as they think they are.

Trams and trains

I'm really not that fussed. Do we need both a rail connection and a tram connection to the airport? Probably not. Are the schemes proposed not awfully expensive? Probably. Are the expenses out of control? Well, the cost of the tram system seems to have grown like Topsy. Do we need a fancy rail tunnel under the airport runway? Probably not. Are there cheaper options? Probably.

Is there scope for some sort of compromise? Seems fairly obvious to me, but what do I know?

Posh Lady

I rather doubt if anyone cares but it would be helpful if The Scotsman did its homework.

It's believed Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, wants Beckham to be knighted - which would make his wife Lady Victoria.

No, it would not. She would be Lady Beckham.