Excluding the aliens

It does not seem to be a very friendly attitude. But if it is absolutely necessary to keep out the nastier beasties, then I can live with it. The Executive has announced:

Halting the invasion of alien species
28/02/2007

A new way of dealing with the threat to Scotland's native wildlife was published today for consultation.
The draft Invasive Non-native Species Framework Strategy for Great Britain will minimise the threat from invasive non-native species.
Invasive non-native species are the second biggest threat, after habitat destruction, to native species and habitats worldwide and the greatest threat to fragile ecosystems such as islands. They can also have a substantial economic impact across a wide range of sectors such as fisheries, forestry and development.
The Strategy provides a framework focussing on prevention, early detection, and mitigation measures where appropriate. The Strategy will be followed by a separate implementation plan that will be developed with a wide range of partners.

I suppose that a framework strategy and an implementation strategy are bureaucratic necessities? We could not simply track down and then deport or kill the invaders?

Why do they bother?

Clarke and Milburn have set up yet another pointless website (here).

Usual stuff: "Politics is about the future, not the past...open, participatory debate...world has moved on...identifying the new challenges...progressive values...Renewal cannot be about going back. It is about moving forward...blah, blah, blah.

Vacuous.

Financial ignorance is bliss, I think

Does it matter? Should we be worried? The BBC reports:

Worldwide share prices have continued to fall, triggered by Tuesday's 9% losses on the Shanghai stock market.
The UK's FTSE 100 index fell by 1% in morning trading. That took declines in the past two sessions to 3.2% and knocked £52bn off its total value.
France's Cac 40 dropped by 1% and Germany's Dax lost 1.1%. Earlier, markets in Asia, Australia and India had all suffered substantial losses.
Investors are questioning the outlook for economic and earnings growth.
The falls come after stock prices and indexes climbed to record levels in a number of key world markets.
After a flurry of activity at the start of trading and a large drop, the FTSE 100 rebounded slightly and was recently 61.80 points lower at 6,224.30.

I suppose that, if your pension is to be based on market equities, then it might be important; but the current level of the Footsie is still higher than it was for most of 2006. And, in the longer term, it may affect the propensity of businesses to invest, thus hitting the jobs market. But, to the ordinary Joe, I suspect that this is yet more turbulence in a distant pond, something for the financial pages to get excited about, yet with little impact on real life as it is lived outside the Square Mile.

You will search the broadsheets in vain (I have) for any explanation of the significance of what is happening.

Doing the sums

The latest opinion polls indicate that the seats in Holyrood will be distributed as follows:

Labour 41
SNP 44
LibDems 23
Tories 17
Greens 1
Others 3

If this scenario were to come to pass (which is a very big if), and given that the Parliament consists of 129 MSPs, the only two-party coalitions which could command a majority would be Labour-SNP (which is unthinkable) or SNP-LibDem. A Labour-LibDem alliance would only have 64 seats, one short of a majority (although, if a member of another party were appointed as presiding officer and if some other independent member was prepared to be sympathetic, a rather weak Labour-LibDem coalition might just be workable). Nevertheless, the odds would favour an SNP-LibDem alliance, were it not for the fact that they have spent much of the past two weeks throwing brickbats at each other.

At least, everyone now knows what 'xenophobic' means.

I continue to favour a nil result whereby the parties are unable to come to a satisfactory conclusion within the statutory 28 days, leading to another election in the autumn.

The other parties will be probably not be seriously worried

I think it's great. None of that boring stuff like manifestos, programmes and policies. We just have to guess what they might do if they win office (which, I have to say, seems unlikely). But I am sure that we can trust Mr Archie.

The Scotsman tells the sorry tale:

SCOTLAND'S newest political party was officially launched today by millionaire landowner Archie Stirling, former husband of Diana Rigg.
Scottish Voice plans to field candidates in each region for the Holyrood elections in May. But it emerged the party is not planning to campaign on a manifesto setting out specific policies.
Instead, it hopes to put forward people with expertise in business, education, health and other fields.
Mr Stirling said he did not have a "quick fix toolbox". But in a booklet published at today's launch at Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel, he set out his views on what had gone wrong with Scotland under devolution and called for a break with "machine politics".

So there you are. Vote for Scottish Voice to get rid of machine politics and don't expect a quick fix.

Pies

They want to introduce healthier food at football matches. OK, but let us not be silly about it. The Scotsman reports:

Alan Stuart, spokesman for the Scotch Pie Club, said the link between pies and football should not be lost.
"Football and pies have been together for a long time.
"It would be disappointing if that link was lost after all this time," he said.
"I'm not sure if anyone has ever produced an organic Scotch pie, but pies should always be seen as a fun food."

I like a pie as much as anyone and I eat them frequently. But they are not a fun food.

Barefoot puppet on a string

I am advised that today is Sandie Shaw's birthday.

As a gentleman, I will not of course reveal the lady's age, but happy birthday anyway.

Why does Jack always get the dirty jobs?

Labour activists must wonder what on earth is going on. Ten weeks before the election, the First Minister goes out of his way (on a weekend too) to open a privately-run health facility. The BBC reports:

A controversial health centre where NHS patients will be treated by a private company has been opened.
First Minister Jack McConnell performed the official launch of the Scottish Regional Treatment Centre at Stracathro Hospital, near Brechin in Angus.
He said using the independent sector to treat NHS patients was helping reduce waiting times in Scotland.

Whatever Mr McConnell thinks about the involvement of the private sector in the NHS, surely now is not the time to be making a song and dance about it?

Meanwhile, this morning, a junior health minister gets to open a spanking new NHS facility in Edinburgh. The Evening News reports:

A NEW rehabilitation centre was set to be opened by health chiefs in Edinburgh today.
Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald was unveiling NHS Lothian's new south-east Mobility and Rehabilitation Technology (SMART) centre, which will be run out of the city's Eastern General Hospital, this morning.
The £7.5 million centre has been designed to provide mobility and rehabilitation services to patients across South East Scotland and will incorporate other services currently provided at Edinburgh's Astley Ainslie and Eastern General hospitals...
The 4000 sq m building has also been designed to contain environmentally friendly features, including a recycled zinc-covered roof with a life expectancy of around 100 years, and rubber floors in the corridors produced from recycled car tyres.

Something to boast about? Tangible proof of the Executive's commitment to improving the NHS? And it's left to Lewis Macdonald? On a Monday morning?

A welcome U-turn

Obviously, I don't swear enough. Or perhaps I have directed insufficient criticism towards the Scottish Executive. There are even some who claim that I have become too respectable.

Whatever the reason, the Executive has now decided to allow its staff to access this blog (and presumably others) from its in-house computer system.

A bad mistake, I suspect. All these civil servants should be working, not reading the rubbish that I and my fellow bloggers broadcast.

Dave kills Bambi

In the fantasy world that passes for political reality, he's just an ordinary bloke. The Independent reports:

David Cameron has a secret love of stag shooting it emerged last night, and is considered an expert at one of the most controversial blood sports. The Conservative leader is said by those who have hunted with him to be a keen shot who can fell two deer at once.
Mr Cameron has spent 20 years deer stalking and was introduced to the sport as a young man. He takes family holidays on the Scottish estate owned by Viscount Astor - his wife's stepfather - on the island of Jura, in the inner Hebrides, which has 6,000 deer.
Bruce Anderson, the political columnist who stalks with Mr Cameron, said that the Tory leader had a knack for shooting.
"David has been stalking deer for 20 years or more. He is very good with a gun. I have seen him shoot a stag. He has the 'right-left' knack whereby you shoot two deer in one go before they run off. Only the best stalkers can do that," he said.
When stalkers shoot their first stag, the marksman is "blooded" with the animals' blood smeared on their face.

But let us not dwell on the social implications. Just because the wife's daddy owns half a Scottish island does not make him a bad person. Nor does the fact that he can shoot two deer at once.

Eh, well, maybe it does...

Running scared?

Is the First Minister a feardie? It's beginning to look that way. The Herald reports:

Jack McConnell found time for a second successive day on the campaign trail with the Chancellor yesterday, but again sidestepped a head-on debate with SNP leader Alex Salmond.
A BBC radio debate in Eyemouth last night had Work and Pensions Minister Jim Murphy filling the Labour chair, facing down the SNP.
The previous night, a televised Question Time debate in Edinburgh had Lord Foulkes employed in the Nat-bashing role, during which he reignited the controversy started by Liberal Democrats at the weekend by again referring to the SNP as xenophobic.
...
SNP campaign director Angus Robertson claimed the Labour leader's refusal to appear on the show was the seventh time he has declined to debate with Mr Salmond. He also claimed that Mr McConnell has now rejected 15 invitations to appear on the programme.

The longer he leaves it, the more difficult it will be.

Chisellers

Profits of £4,250,000,000 are obviously not enough. The BBC reports:

Lloyds TSB is to impose a £35 annual charge on credit card account holders who do not use their cards.
The annual charge will apply to "low-usage" customers; including people who do not use their cards at all.
The bank has written to 50,000 customers to tell them that the charge will be levied on their accounts 30 days from the date of the letter.
On Friday, Lloyds TSB reported full-year profits before tax of £4.25bn ($8.3bn), up 11% from 2005.

No doubt to be followed by the rest of the sharks.

There you go...

This blog condemns yobs, all of them.

Pretentious, moi?

Who me? A candidate? Don't be silly. Just because this is in The Edinburgh Evening News:

FASHIONABLE duo Trinny and Susannah have launched a search to find Edinburgh's worst dressed man for a new TV show.
Anybody who thinks they can suggest a candidate can contact the researchers on 0870 646 9900.

Suave, sophisticated, debonair - just some of the adjectives which have not been applied to my dress sense. But I'm still not going anywhere near those harridans...

But is he happy?

The Washington Post reveals what Tony Blair can look forward to:

Former president Bill Clinton, who came to the White House with modest means and left deeply in debt, has collected nearly $40 million in speaking fees over the past six years, according to interviews and financial disclosure statements filed by his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Last year, one of his most lucrative since he left the presidency, Clinton earned $9 million to $10 million on the lecture circuit. He averaged almost a speech a day -- 352 for the year -- but only about 20 percent were for personal income. The others were given for no fee or for donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit group he founded to pursue causes such as the fight against AIDS.
His paid speeches included $150,000 appearances before landlord groups, biotechnology firms and food distributors, as well as speeches in England, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia that together netted him more than $1.6 million. On one particularly good day in Canada, Clinton made $475,000 for two speeches, more than double his annual salary as president.

Sometimes I wonder if I chose the right career...

Non c'e male...

The newspapers have been publishing articles like this for at least 60 years. The Independent reports:

In the broad sweep of things, the resignation of yet another Italian prime minister would barely seem to warrant a headline. Italy changes its governments with the same frequency that others change their socks. Berlusconi survived longer than most. In lasting less than a year, Romano Prodi is just a return to form.
Seeming paralysis in government is matched by a growing sense of despair about the economy. The public finances are now completely out of control, with total public debt well over 100 per cent of GDP. Structurally, the country has totally failed to prepare for globalisation, leaving its manufacturing sector cruelly exposed to Far Eastern competition, and its business services industries so far behind Britain and other post- industrial societies that it is hard to see how they might catch up.
More so than perhaps anywhere in the eurozone, Italy needs galvanising political leadership and radical structural reform. Berlusconi was ineffective and only in it for his own good. Romano Prodi has proved little better. Given the constraints of the political system, which makes winning a clear mandate all but impossible, it is hard to see where salvation may come from. Italy still has la dolce vita, for which there is much to be said, but for how much longer given the current outlook for the economy?

It is amazing how Italy is always approaching the economic or political abyss but never actually seems to get there.

More names

Pocahontas McGinty does not exist. The Scotsman reports:

IT IS seen as the ultimate example of the trend for parents to name their children after the latest movie character or celebrity.
But while we have had Kylies, Britneys and Chardonnays, it seems that the Scottish baby named Pocahontas is no more than a myth.
After a quest that has lasted several months, a society dedicated to debunking urban myths has revealed that there are no children in the country who have been given that name.

What a disappointment.

The semiotics of names

It is only a week or two since I mocked the names of the US candidates for the presidency (here). But we in Scotland have nothing to be proud of.

Many years ago, Billy Connolly noted that the aspiring Scottish middle classes had a tendency to give to their sons first names which were more commonly known as surnames: thus Farquhar McTumpshie or Cameron Mackintosh. By and large, this pattern is restricted to those who send their sons to fee-paying schools in the East of Scotland (and of course to expatriates). This has carried over to Scottish politics.

The true Scottish public schoolboys (Fettes, Loretto, Glenalmond, etc) do not indulge in this practice. Hence Tony (Blair) and Alistair (Darling) have perfectly sensible first names. The more traditional Labour politicians also have sensible names - Jack (McConnell), Gordon (Brown), John (Reid), Douglas (Alexander). Some of them would like to be more middle class and therefore pretend to be posher than they are (I mean, whoever heard of an East Fife footballer called Henry (McLeish)?). Others take an overtly proletarian approach by sticking to the sternly stalinist diminutive, thus Tom (McCabe), Andy (Kerr) and Cathy (Jamieson). See also Tommy (Sheridan). As if by mistake, Bristow (Muldoon) has slipped into Labour ranks; his lack of progress up the greasy pole is the obvious result.

The SNP are also more or less OK. Alex (Salmond) and Nicola (Sturgeon) are really neither one thing nor the other, while John (Swinney) is positively dull.

It is the LibDems that fall into the Connolly trap. Charlie (Kennedy) is excused boots as he was originally a member of the SDP. Nevertheless, we have Menzies Campbell (wouldn't you just know that he was a Watsonian?) and Nicol Stephen (Robert Gordon's of course). And what can one say about Tavish (Scott)? Would you enter a coalition with people who call themselves by two surnames?

The Tories don't really matter, but it strikes me that Annabel (Goldie) and Murdo (Fraser) have first names which are deeply suspicious...

The morality (and the verbal accuracy) of The Sunday Post

It's a misuse of the word 'public'. I do wish the Executive would make a greater effort towards accuracy of presentation. The latest press release:

Shetland Islands Council has been given permission by the Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson to introduce a ban on the public consumption of alcohol within Lerwick, from 2 March this year.
Ms Jamieson said:
"Public drinking is often a nuisance and can greatly hamper the quality of life for residents in a particular area. The 29 councils that have such byelaws in force have paid testimony to their effectiveness in reducing the nuisance and disorder commonly associated with public drinking. I will continue to support other councils that come forward with similar byelaw proposals."

As I understand the position, we will nevertheless continue to be permitted to drink in public, at least in those areas with the appropriate licences, such as public bars and hotels. I think they mean 'out of doors' (with the possible exception of beer gardens and the like, although there won't be many of those in Lerwick).

And how can Ms Jamieson pre-empt her permission-giving powers by saying that she will continue to support other councils that come forward with similar byelaw proposals?

Blogger turns flack

Sycophantic or what? Iain Dale is now licking Mr Cameron's boots (at least I think it's his boots) in The Telegraph:

Since Christmas, Cameron's speeches have taken on a slightly harder edge with more "beef" - last week's excellent speech on the family has gone down particularly well. The media have noticed and barely a week goes by without the 24-hour news channels covering his speeches live - something they rarely did with Michael Howard or Iain Duncan Smith.
As the policy groups roll out their proposals, they will provide the ideological ballast to mix with the rhetoric that Cameron's speechwriting team seem very capable of providing. The task will be to translate the policy proposals, not into a manifesto, but into an interim document which will reassure the troops on the ground that there is a coherent theme.

Gizza job! pleez, pleez, pleez...