Liveblogging - well, shortly after blogging

I have been watching the PM's speech to the Oban Labour Party Conference. Here are some initial impressions.

As ever, you have to say that Mr Blair is a class act. He manages to combine the personal touch with a sweeping policy vision, an ability that few politicians possess. The BBC preceded his speech with excerpts from this morning's speeches by Bristo Muldoon and Tom McCabe (the Laurel and Hardie of Scottish Labour, but without the jokes) which only served to emphasise the quality of Tony Blair. (Although I did think that Stephen Purcell, the Glasgow labour leader, was quite impressive.)

The PM managed to get away from the politics of fear, which has previously dominated Labour's reaction to the SNP. He sought to emphasise the opportunities of the union, with the prospect of Scotland becoming more prosperous within the UK, highlighting the benefits of partnership. The SNP was dismissed as pursuing the politics of grievance - it's all England's fault, etc, as well as advocating 19th century nationalist policies for a 21st century nation.

The PM was also remarkably complimentary about Jack McConnell - he is straight, he sorts out his own problems, he has made Scotland better, you can't ask more from a leader, etc. (Needless to say, the First Minister loved it; he was like a cat that had swallowed a bucketful of cream.)

Nevertheless, Blair does rather resemble a Chinese banquet: it tastes good while you are eating it, but by the next day you wonder where the substance was. We'll see what tomorrow's papers say...

Foodies rejoice

I am ashamed to say that I have never visited it, but maybe tomorrow. But congratulations are definitely in order. The Guardian reports:

It boasts hot porridge doused in whisky, fresh ostrich meat, organic beers and hunks of wild boar, and it nestles under the battlements of one of the country's most imposing castles. Welcome to the farmers' market in Edinburgh, officially crowned as the best in Britain.
The city best known to shoppers worldwide for its garish tartan gift shops on the Royal Mile and Jenners, perhaps the country's most genteel department store, has seen off competition from five towns including Tavistock, Chepstow and Huntingdon. Its 65 regular stallholders drive beer down from the Black Isle near Inverness, ship fresh langoustine, crab and mussels from the island of Arran and boar raised on smallholdings and hill farms across the country.
The winter weather in Edinburgh, which stallholders admit can be miserable, has produced one of the market's most popular, even notorious, institutions: the Stoats' "porridge bar". It serves that famous staple of the Scottish diet with traditional salt, or a good belt of body-warming whisky and seasonal raspberries and cream. Ostrich, farmed in Lanarkshire, is about as exotic as it gets, said Caroline Hamilton, a lamb and beef stallholder at the market, whose stall was voted the market's best in 2004. "You don't come here to buy olives and red peppers. You don't get them,
because we don't grow them in Scotland."
Visited by between 6,000 and 10,000 shoppers each Saturday, the market has evolved since it first opened as a small monthly event in 2000 into a showcase for Scottish agriculture.

I understand that it's in Castle Terrace, from about 10 am.

News values

Like most newspapers, you might think that 160 deaths in Baghdad, plus the 257 injured, constituted a suitable story - at least for an inside page, if not the front page.

Not so The Herald , which ignores it completely. It is more concerned with a survey of the stress levels of Scottish secondary school teachers.

Ban the bomb - naw, let's have a debate

What is the First Minister's position on the renewal of the UK's nuclear deterrent?

What he said:

"If the Prime Minister's Cabinet has agreed this morning—as I believe it intends to—to launch its debate throughout the United Kingdom on the future of the Trident missile system, I welcome that debate. A debate should take place. It is essential to have a debate and to discuss all the options that should be available. As I have said before in the chamber, it would be wrong at the start of that debate to rule out absolutely a replacement for Britain's nuclear deterrent, given the international circumstances in which we operate. However, people who believe that we may need to renew the deterrent should also have an open mind at the start of the debate about the possibilities that could be on offer. A debate should be welcomed."

[Source: FMQs yesterday]


What he meant:

"Look, I can't say that I support the renewal of Trident, because that would upset too many of my backbenchers, not to mention potential labour voters next May. Nor can I say that I oppose the renewal of Trident, because Tony and Gordon would shout at me; and, as the renewal of Trident is going ahead anyway, I would look even weaker than usual as there is nothing I can do to stop it. That's why I have to spout this rubbish about welcoming a debate, even though everyone knows that Tony and Gordon have already made up their minds.

What do I really think? For so long, I've been saying what I'm supposed to say, that I can't remember what I really believe. But, honestly, I welcome a debate..."

A word to the linguistically challenged football reporters

For Dougie Donnelly and his chums on tv tonight:

'Auxerre' is pronounced 'Oh-ser', not 'Awkser' or 'Ohkser'.

Spoilsports!

The BBC reports:

The European Court has ruled against making it easier for European consumers to buy cigarettes and alcohol from countries where excise duties are low.
High-duty countries like the UK had risked losing large amounts of revenue.
It means that shoppers who want to take advantage of low duty and VAT in other states will still need to go there and bring back the goods themselves.
Had the ruling gone the other way, consumers of alcohol and tobacco could have gone on an internet bargain hunt.

A conundrum

Can someone who is infallible be occasionally fallible? The Telegraph reports:

The Pope has shocked theologians and opened a chink in the theory of papal infallibility by saying that people should feel free to disagree with what he has written in his latest book, a meditation on Jesus Christ.
Entitled Jesus of Nazareth, the first book that Pope Benedict XVI has written since his election as Pope in 2003 will be published next spring.
The first part describes Jesus's life from his baptism in the river Jordan until his transfiguration, when he reveals his divinity to his disciples. Referencing hundreds of works of history, the Pope writes that he believes Christ is a "historically convincing figure".
In the foreword, he states that the book is "absolutely not" a work of Catholic doctrine, but rather the "expression of my personal research". He adds: "Consequently, everyone is free to contradict me. I only ask the readers that they read with sympathy, without which there will be no comprehension."

As a matter of faith, you may or may not agree with the proposition that the Pope is infallible. But partial or qualified infallability is an interesting, even oxymoronic, concept which I will need to ponder further.

Malcolm fails again

The Executive's policies on council housing are not succeeding. The BBC reports:

Highland Council tenants have voted against transferring ownership of 14,500 homes from the local authority to a private housing association.
More than 60% of tenants voted 59.7% to 40.3% against the plans to transfer to Highland Housing Association. ...
Three "wholesale" stock transfers have already taken place across Scotland - in Glasgow, the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway.
However, tenants in Renfrewshire, Stirling and Edinburgh voted against transfers.
A ballot of Inverclyde tenants will end on 30 November.
Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm said he was "disappointed" with the result.

Being 'disappointed' is not good enough. Four out of seven ballots resulting in the rejection of proposals pushed by the Executive and the local authorities indicate that the policies are not working. Mr Chisholm should be thinking about his position.

Getting old

I was once cool. No, really. Well OK, it wasn't called cool in those days. And an encyclopaedic knowledge of early Leonard Cohen did not deliver everything that it was reputed to do. But the pink corduroy flares were surely an indication of something?

Some of you younger people may recognise the names in the following list, lifted from The Times:

The NME Cool List Top Ten:

1 Beth Ditto, The Gossip
2 Faris Rotter, The Horrors
3 Lily Allen
4 Jarvis Cocker
5 Karen O, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6 Kieren Webster, The View
7 Kate Jackson, The Long Blondes
8 Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance
9 Thom Yorke, Radiohead
10 Lovefoxxx, CSS

At least, I recognised three of the names (four, if Kate Jackson is the same one that starred in the original version of Charlie's Angels; but it seems unlikely somehow).

It's just like signing a mortgage application form...

Would you trust this person to be in charge of a project costing billions of pounds? The Independent reports:

The budget of £2.375bn during the Olympic bid has increasingly been derided as a "fag packet" calculation and Ms Jowell was forced to concede that the current figure is more like £3.3bn.
It became clear that creative accounting by civil servants has resulted in a figure of £1bn-plus for regeneration of the Thames Gateway no longer being included in the overall Games figure - even though urban regeneration has hitherto been considered part and parcel of the Olympic project.
In front of the Select Committee of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Ms Jowell blamed rising costs on construction inflation, the doubling of steel prices and a revised figure for public transport links serving the Games site near Stratford, east London. Incredibly, the original bid figure did not include the £400m cost of hiring the international project management consortium CLM.
She admitted there were further "potential liabilities" in the cost of Olympic security, which some estimates put at £1bn; the extent of a contingency fund within the budget; and a VAT bill thought to be up to £250m not included in the original calculations.

No, neither do I.

Scottish football reporters are mathematically challenged (or just don't do their homework)

So well done Celtic FC.

Disappointing STV coverage, in that neither the commentators, Archie Macpherson and Andy Walker, nor the presenter, Jim White nor the studio guests, John Collins and Gerry McNee, realised that the victory over Man U and the Benfica-Copenhagen result meant that Celtic had qualified for the final 16.

Heresy

And I suppose that the occasional touch-up of the Mona Lisa would be fine? And maybe Bach could be improved by removing some of the extraneous notes? Finkelstein on the Beatles (here):

Perhaps you couldn't care less about the release of the new Beatles album "Love" but some people care a great deal. And I'm one of them.
Love is a remix, a mash-up of tracks recorded by the group...
The production of new takes on Beatles music does not remove any of the original canon from anybody's collection.
So I can't see anything wrong with it.

Silly boy.

The Indie lifts the firewall?

Intriguingly, The Independent appears to have lifted the firewall prohibiting access to most of its comment section.

But then it goes and spoils matters by including an article on Scottish politics by the normally reliable Steve Richards which among other things states:

At a more parochial level tensions are rising between Scotland's First Minister, Jack McDonnell, and the government in London. Most recently Mr McDonnell has demanded that the Scottish Parliament be given the same powers to slash levels of corporation tax that might be ceded to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Gordon Brown is resisting such a move, arguing that the demand is a gift to the SNP with its implication that Scotland should function almost as an independent economy. Mr McDonnell argues that only by making such concessions can Labour stave off the threat posed by the SNP. Nearly every move in Scotland is viewed through the possible ascendancy of the SNP.

Ah whatsisname, that Mr McDonnell, or perhaps Mr Macdonnell... It's enough to make you think about voting SNP.

Does it matter?

Well, I suppose it must. But what are we to make of it? The Independent reports:

The London Stock Exchange prepared itself yesterday for another takeover battle after strongly rejecting its fifth bid in less than two years.
LSE's chief executive, Clara Furse, said the £2.7bn "final" offer from America's Nasdaq, worth £2.9bn when the exchange's debt is taken into account, "fails to recognise the outstanding growth record and prospects of our group on a standalone basis, let alone the exchange's unique global position". She also flatly refused the Nasdaq's offer of talks.

Does it matter that the Yanks are seeking to take over Europe's stock exchanges, while at the same time the City banks (mainly US-owned) are seeking to break away?

Nasdaq acted after the sharp fall in the LSE's share price caused by the announcement of the launch of a major competitor by seven of the City's biggest investment banks last week. "Project Turquoise" aims to create a pan-European share trading platform that will sharply cut the price of trading in the Continent's biggest stocks, potentially eating into the LSE's business.
Both Nasdaq and the LSE also face a serious competitive challenge from the merger of the New York Stock Exchange with Paris-based Euronext.

Ken Livingstone obviously thinks so:

The exchange's rejection of the offer was backed by London mayor Ken Livingstone, who called it "anti-competitive" and "against the interests of London".
He added: "London's financial and business services have boomed over the last decade not only because they have been able to escape excessively rigid regulatory control, such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but because they have positively invested in innovatory products, for example the huge success of AIM."

Is the mayor simply playing the protectionist card? And does it matter when the big city players are already US-owned and intending to go their own way anyway? Is more regulatory control necessarily a bad thing? Think not only about Enron, but also about Farepak...

Big issues, but you will struggle to read anything about them outside the financial pages. And what does Mr Balls, Minister for the City, think? He may deign to tell us in due course, probably after any decisions have been made. Maybe someone will raise the issue in Parliament?

Promises, promises...

Adam Boulton of Sky News is in Afghanistan with the Prime Minister (here):

...by the Prime Minister's own admission, the reality on the ground is "difficult". So far in the South, Britain's DFID (Department for International Development) has only spent £2m of its £50 million 3-year budget because most aid agencies (including DFID's own staff) cannot operate in the field because of the dangers. Yet it is vital that the Afghan people should see some benefits coming from the occupation. Senior British Military sources estimate that only about 3% of the population are Taleban, with perhaps another 7% sympathetic; against them are ranged 20% out and out enemies; that leaves about 70% of the population "up for grabs". If NATO and the Kharzai Govt can't deliver peace and prosperity, many of the undecided may opt for the rougher stability under Taliban rule.
There are also problems with NATO's military operations. Many of the nations contributing troops, including Germany, ban them from taking part in conflict. That places an ever tougher burden on fighting nations such as Britain, the USA and Canada. There have also been demands for more troops and more and better equipment, which have gone largely unheeded. NATO leaders are to attend a summit in Riga, Latvia later this month, where its hoped, without much expectation, that some of these difficulties can be ironed out.

Compare and contrast Mr Blair's rather more optimistic pronouncements as reported by the BBC:

Tony Blair says British troops will stay in Afghanistan until their job is done and has praised its president for the "remarkable progress" made there.
He told reporters he believed Afghan people deserved to live in a democratic country without oppression.
"I want to recommit ourselves to say that we will be with you in this endeavour," the UK prime minister said, after talks with the Afghan president.
Earlier he had visited British troops in the south of the country.
Addressing President Hamid Karzai in a joint press conference in the capital Kabul, Mr Blair said: "The progress that Afghanistan has made under your leadership over these past few years has indeed been remarkable."
There had been economic growth over several years and a lot of reconstruction and development was under way, he said.
He said the UK would help the country to meet challenges of security, reconstruction and development.

All very well for Mr Blair to play the statesman by issuing assurances - he is not going to have to deliver...

Charlie's dram

HRH is engaging ever more deeply in trade. The Sunday Times reports:

Move over Johnnie Walker, stand aside Jack Daniel’s — here comes Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor. The Prince of Wales is to launch his own brand of whisky.
Called Barrogill — the original name of the prince’s Castle of Mey [sic] holiday retreat — it will be stocked in off licences in the new year.
Charles, known to enjoy a drop of Old Pulteney single malt, picked the blend from four samples at a tasting in Clarence House. Every £20 bottle sold will raise £1 for a charity that helps the struggling economy of the Highlands.
But it’s doubtful whether Buckingham Palace will be stocking up. Courtiers say the Queen views her son’s growing commercial activity with horror. In her view, they say, the role of monarchy is to provide a head of state, not operate as a high-class charity shop.

Och, as long as the man is doing something useful. And if it upsets Health Minister Andy Kerr, so much the better...

What's the world coming to (part umpteen)?

I blame Dave Cameron. Nowadays, politicians have to be in touch with their touchy-feely side. Even our First Minister has gone all introspective. Scotland on Sunday reports him saying:

"There have been times when I have thought, is what I am doing what I believe in? What am I achieving? Is it worth it given the amount of pressure that's on the family and the ways things have had to change? There have certainly been moments over the last five years when I have thought like that."

If Mr McConnell does not know if what he is doing is what he believes in and if he does not know what he is achieving, then what does he expect the rest of us to think? At least you knew where you were with the old dour McConnell, deliberately and obtusely misundertanding criticism, ruthlessly eliminating rivals and playing to whichever gallery was nearest at hand.

What next? The Tories welcoming gay adoption? Oh dear, see here in The Sunday Herald:

THE leader of the Scottish Tories has won praise from the gay community after backing adoption rights for same-sex couples. Annabel Goldie said it was “ludicrous” to suggest that gay men and lesbians could not provide a loving home for young people.

See modern politicians - they just have no respect for tradition...

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

The Sunday Herald is making a bit of a meal of the MSPs' Edinburgh Accommodation Allowance:

THE deputy first minister is facing serious questions over a £9000-a-year allowance he receives from the taxpayer to meet interest payments on a £190,000 house he owns with his wife.
Holyrood rules state that MSPs cannot claim the controversial Edinburgh Accommodation Allowance (EAA) unless theirs is the only name on the mortgage for the property in question.
Nicol Stephen, who is also leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, has been claiming interest payments for a house he bought in Edinburgh in February 2002.
Both Stephen and his wife are named as debtors in the standard security agreed with mortgage providers. That means if the mortgage is not paid, both are legally responsible.
Yet the Holyrood Allowances Office says it has another document – which it has refused to identify – which lists Stephen as the only name on the loan. There is no clear legal ruling on which document constitutes the mortgage.

Yes, the Allowance is excessively generous, and the system should be changed. But a £190,000 house in Edinburgh is hardly a palace. And does it really matter whether or not Mrs Nicol's name is on the mortgage?

Weekend poem No 10

Is this bad poetry? Maybe. I'm not sure. See what you think.

An Autumn Reverie

William Topaz McGonagall

Alas! Beautiful Summer now hath fled,
And the face of Nature doth seem dead,
And the leaves are withered, and falling off the trees,
By the nipping and chilling autumnal breeze.

The pleasures of the little birds are all fled,
And with the cold many of them will be found dead,
Because the leaves of the trees are scattered in the blast,
And makes the feathered creatures feel downcast.

Because there are no leaves on the trees to shield them from the storm
On a windy, and rainy, cloudy morn;
Which makes their little hearts throb with pain,
By the chilling blast and the pitiless rain.

But still they are more contented than the children of God,
As long as they can pick up a worm from the sod,
Or anything they can get to eat,
Just, for instance, a stale crust of bread or a grain of wheat...

Full text here

The dance continues...

Last week and earlier this week, the No 10 spin machine launched an attack on the police enquiry into the cash for peerages affair. As The Times today puts it:

On Monday The Times reported that No 10 had made an informal complaint about Scotland Yard’s handling of the investigation. The office of Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, received the complaint last week, according to Westminster sources.
Reports at the weekend suggested that No 10 was furious over leaks about the investigation. Downing Street sources are reportedly suggesting that they believe any trial would not now be fair.

Perhaps the No 10 spinners are losing their touch. Or perhaps they are too used to dealing with the Tory party or with recalcitrant backbenchers. In any event, the police are made of sterner stuff and Yates of the Yard refused to be intimidated. Hence yesterday's publication of the now famous letter (here in The Guardian); among other things, this states:

"Before I go into any detail, I thought it appropriate to comment on some of the publicity surrounding this investigation in recent days.
Speculation about the outcome and progress of this inquiry is not something we welcome. It would seem perverse to suggest (as some commentators have) that it is the police inquiry team who are responsible for placing matters in the public domain.
I say this in view of the very significant time invested by us in persuading you and your committee to do precisely the opposite, firmly believing, as we do, that this may undermine the investigation.
I have, however, conducted a further review of our own operational security. I am confident that this remains very tight. This is endorsed by the fact that the major developments in this inquiry are not in the public domain."

I find it distasteful and depressing that the parties to this continuing minuet should feel obliged to conduct their dispute through the media. But I have to admit that it makes for enthralling watching.