From my post on the Herald - the SNP noise machine tonight is, predictably, saying that any failings in Swinney's budget is, inevitably, all London's fault.
"How can the SNP blame their failure to meet manifesto commitments on the UK government, when:
1) They knew the exact budget increase they would receive for nearly a year before they got it
2) They acquired £900m extra from the Treasury from the budget underspends of previous Executives.
Its silly to blame the decision of Parliament to keep the trams at a cost of £500m, as this was always going to happen, and should thus have figured in the SNP sums. Blaming the trams doesn't make sense when compared with the £900m EXTRA the SNP have got , leaving Swinney with £400m extra to play with when we subtract the tram money. Plus, he has the advantage of knowing how much money they would get from Westminster in advance.
For example, the £70m set aside by Salmond for hiring 1000 NEW police officers was going to be implemented with the budget they already knew they were getting. Now they have failed to provide this (the revised cost of £54m for 500, most of which aren't going to be new, seems like poor costing of the initial pledge), they attempt to blame the UK - who are they trying to kid?"
Wednesday, 14 November 2007
Thursday, 1 November 2007
Reaganism, Not Thatcherism
From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:
Scotland's Coming Boom
The next country to adopt Reaganite tax reduction policies likely will be Scotland. Alex Salmond, who serves as "First Minister" and heads his government's ruling coalition, was in New York recently to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and deliver a message to the global investor community that his nation is hungry for investment. The occasion was the Royal Bank of Scotland's new listing on the Big Board.
Mr. Salmond tells me a key part of his agenda is "lowering the corporate income tax from 28% to 10%." He also sounds a lot like the Gipper when he says he aims to break the country's "dependency mentality that is restraining growth."
"I'm a long-time advocate of supply side economics," he tells me. "We need to rekindle our spirit of enterprise and turn Scotland into a Celtic Lion." He says Scotland aims to join the "Arc of Prosperity," a group of fast-growing nations in the region including Ireland, Iceland and Norway. Over the past 25 years Scotland's growth rate has averaged 1.8%, compared to 2.3% for Europe and more than 10% for the economic gazelle of Europe, Ireland.
In 1900, Scotland was one of the world's three richest nations in per capita income, but it turned socialist, as so many European nations did, after World War II. It got rich again the easy way in the 1980s with the discovery of North Sea oil. But high taxes have inhibited capitalizing on the petro-dollars to create a sustained economic expansion.
Scotland's problem now is that it only controls 15% of its tax system. The U.K. has veto power over the rest, including reductions in corporate taxes. But if British P.M. Gordon Brown signs off on the tax cut, Scotland may be able to duplicate the Irish Miracle in the years ahead. "We want to imitate the Irish success story," Mr. Salmond says. Ireland's tax-cutting policies aren't just a model for Scotland but for the U.S., which lately finds itself lagging in global competition because of relatively high tax rates on job creators.
Scotland's Coming Boom
The next country to adopt Reaganite tax reduction policies likely will be Scotland. Alex Salmond, who serves as "First Minister" and heads his government's ruling coalition, was in New York recently to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and deliver a message to the global investor community that his nation is hungry for investment. The occasion was the Royal Bank of Scotland's new listing on the Big Board.
Mr. Salmond tells me a key part of his agenda is "lowering the corporate income tax from 28% to 10%." He also sounds a lot like the Gipper when he says he aims to break the country's "dependency mentality that is restraining growth."
"I'm a long-time advocate of supply side economics," he tells me. "We need to rekindle our spirit of enterprise and turn Scotland into a Celtic Lion." He says Scotland aims to join the "Arc of Prosperity," a group of fast-growing nations in the region including Ireland, Iceland and Norway. Over the past 25 years Scotland's growth rate has averaged 1.8%, compared to 2.3% for Europe and more than 10% for the economic gazelle of Europe, Ireland.
In 1900, Scotland was one of the world's three richest nations in per capita income, but it turned socialist, as so many European nations did, after World War II. It got rich again the easy way in the 1980s with the discovery of North Sea oil. But high taxes have inhibited capitalizing on the petro-dollars to create a sustained economic expansion.
Scotland's problem now is that it only controls 15% of its tax system. The U.K. has veto power over the rest, including reductions in corporate taxes. But if British P.M. Gordon Brown signs off on the tax cut, Scotland may be able to duplicate the Irish Miracle in the years ahead. "We want to imitate the Irish success story," Mr. Salmond says. Ireland's tax-cutting policies aren't just a model for Scotland but for the U.S., which lately finds itself lagging in global competition because of relatively high tax rates on job creators.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
American Torture
The recent revelations of the existence and extent of the use of torture in interrogations by the CIA in the New York Times this week has confirmed what we secretly expected from the Bush administration. The main exposé article lists some of the atrocities the CIA has visited upon its detainees:
“They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.”
Any one of us could have written today’s editorial in the New York Times:
“Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. American leaders denounced secret prisons where people were held without charges, tortured and killed. And the people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values.
The Bush administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect. As an article on this newspaper’s front page last week laid out in disturbing detail, President Bush and his aides have not only condoned torture and abuse at secret prisons, but they have conducted a systematic campaign to mislead Congress, the American people and the world about those policies.”
It is a shame that the American media did not expose this program until now, as it was initiated in Bush’s first term. Nevertheless, this, with Iraq, confirms the Bush administration as probably the worst America has ever had. If Bush had any credibility or morals, he would apologise to the American people for so comprehensively discarding the values of his country in office. He will try to recycle the old excuses – 9/11 gave us a new war with new rules – with no grasp of the magnitude of his errors.
“They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.”
Any one of us could have written today’s editorial in the New York Times:
“Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. American leaders denounced secret prisons where people were held without charges, tortured and killed. And the people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values.
The Bush administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect. As an article on this newspaper’s front page last week laid out in disturbing detail, President Bush and his aides have not only condoned torture and abuse at secret prisons, but they have conducted a systematic campaign to mislead Congress, the American people and the world about those policies.”
It is a shame that the American media did not expose this program until now, as it was initiated in Bush’s first term. Nevertheless, this, with Iraq, confirms the Bush administration as probably the worst America has ever had. If Bush had any credibility or morals, he would apologise to the American people for so comprehensively discarding the values of his country in office. He will try to recycle the old excuses – 9/11 gave us a new war with new rules – with no grasp of the magnitude of his errors.
Thursday, 27 September 2007
Martyrdom in Myanmar
The clergy-led popular protests against the ruling Burmese military junta has provoked the reaction we all dreaded, and privately expected: a military crackdown.
"Burmese security forces raided two Buddhist monasteries this morning, beating up and hauling away more than 70 monks after a day of violent confrontation, sources said.
The security forces used firepower for the first time yesterday against street protests that have brewed over the past month into the biggest demonstrations against Burma's military rulers since 1988.
At least one man was killed and others wounded in chaotic clashes in Rangoon.
A monk at the Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery, pointing to bloodstains on the concrete floor, said a number of monks were beaten and at least 70 of its 150 monks taken away in vehicles."
Brown has recommended the UN Security Council deal with the situation, and that sanctions be imposed on Burma. The experience of the UN sanctions on Iraq between the two Gulf wars have shown us that sanctions only empower the offending government by its control of increasingly limited supplies and necessities.
Instead, the first thing Britain and the other UNSC states should do is stop selling arms to Burma. A threat of humanitarian intervention if an increase in humanitarian aid is not properly delivered to the people (as happened in Iraq) would put pressure on the government. In addition, we should ramp up our political and financial support of pro-democracy movements inside Burma.
Sanctions are not the way forward to aiding the Saffron Revolution, as its campaign must now change from aiming for survival instead of victory. Sanctions only hurt the people themselves, while empowering the government. We need some fresh thinking on non-military humanitarian intervention, as the strategic cultures of Britain and the US, judging by Brown's prescriptions, are still focused on oscillations between military intervention and sanctions. What happened to soft power?
"Burmese security forces raided two Buddhist monasteries this morning, beating up and hauling away more than 70 monks after a day of violent confrontation, sources said.
The security forces used firepower for the first time yesterday against street protests that have brewed over the past month into the biggest demonstrations against Burma's military rulers since 1988.
At least one man was killed and others wounded in chaotic clashes in Rangoon.
A monk at the Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery, pointing to bloodstains on the concrete floor, said a number of monks were beaten and at least 70 of its 150 monks taken away in vehicles."
Brown has recommended the UN Security Council deal with the situation, and that sanctions be imposed on Burma. The experience of the UN sanctions on Iraq between the two Gulf wars have shown us that sanctions only empower the offending government by its control of increasingly limited supplies and necessities.
Instead, the first thing Britain and the other UNSC states should do is stop selling arms to Burma. A threat of humanitarian intervention if an increase in humanitarian aid is not properly delivered to the people (as happened in Iraq) would put pressure on the government. In addition, we should ramp up our political and financial support of pro-democracy movements inside Burma.
Sanctions are not the way forward to aiding the Saffron Revolution, as its campaign must now change from aiming for survival instead of victory. Sanctions only hurt the people themselves, while empowering the government. We need some fresh thinking on non-military humanitarian intervention, as the strategic cultures of Britain and the US, judging by Brown's prescriptions, are still focused on oscillations between military intervention and sanctions. What happened to soft power?
Friday, 21 September 2007
Marine Energy
The Economist looks at British investment in wave power energy facilities:
British sea power
Sep 20th 2007
"The British have always looked to the sea to protect them from the earth's dangers. The ocean is a handy deterrent to foreign armies, but it is useful for other things too. In the midst of the energy crisis of the 1970s, there was much talk that marine energy would let its possessors break free of OPEC. With the arrival of North Sea oil, marine energy was forgotten. But 35 years later, with North Sea oil in decline, climate change a big issue and wind farms facing lengthy planning delays, sea power is back on the agenda.
On September 17th the government announced that planning permission had been given for Wave Hub, a £28m project off the north Cornish coast that will provide a sea-floor “socket” allowing wave-power generators to get their electricity back to shore. The South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), a quango which will part-fund the project, has high hopes. Four firms are planning to connect their machines, forming what officials hope will be the world's biggest wave farm, with 30 machines supplying up to 20 megawatts of power. An existing wave-power project in the Orkney islands is set to expand, and officials are studying a multi-billion-pound private-sector plan to harness the tides near the mouth of the river Severn.
Marine energy, and especially wave power, is still an immature technology. Many designs concentrate on surviving the fury of ocean storms rather than maximising energy production. Nor is it cheap. Firms are coy about giving precise figures but the Carbon Trust, a government-funded green consultancy, reckoned the price a year ago was between 22p and 25p per kilowatt hour—around nine times the price of gas-fired electricity.
Boosters argue that technology and mass production will bring costs down. British officials seem to agree. Having noticed the success of the Danes in developing their wind-turbine industry, both the SWRDA and the Scottish Executive want to do the same for ocean power.
Geography is one advantage: rough seas and big tides make the British isles one of the best places in the world for sea power. The Carbon Trust believes that, in theory, sea power could provide 20% of the country's electricity. There is engineering expertise, notably in Aberdeen, where the offshore oil industry has been installing complex machinery in rough seas for decades. The International Energy Agency thinks that Britain is pursuing more marine-power designs (29) than any other country (America, with 13, is second). Scotland already boasts the European Marine Energy Centre, a research outfit, an advantage the West Country hopes to counteract by spending £15m on a similar organisation attached to the universities of Exeter and Plymouth.
The economics are more complicated. David Weaver, the chief executive of Oceanlinx, one of the firms planning to use the Wave Hub, argues that Britain's liberalised and transparent power markets make life easier for newcomers, although others argue that fluctuating power prices make planning tricky. Subsidies are more generous in countries such as Portugal, which is keen on building a marine-power sector of its own and offers extra cash to less mature technologies.
Not everyone is enthusiastic. When the Wave Hub was announced, Cornish surfers worried that it might make their tubes less gnarly. Others are more concerned about the price. Mr Edge reckons that the Danes spent around £1 billion creating their wind-turbine industry. Setting up a British marine-power sector will cost a similar amount, he says—a big jump from the £28m Wave Hub."
British sea power
Sep 20th 2007
"The British have always looked to the sea to protect them from the earth's dangers. The ocean is a handy deterrent to foreign armies, but it is useful for other things too. In the midst of the energy crisis of the 1970s, there was much talk that marine energy would let its possessors break free of OPEC. With the arrival of North Sea oil, marine energy was forgotten. But 35 years later, with North Sea oil in decline, climate change a big issue and wind farms facing lengthy planning delays, sea power is back on the agenda.
On September 17th the government announced that planning permission had been given for Wave Hub, a £28m project off the north Cornish coast that will provide a sea-floor “socket” allowing wave-power generators to get their electricity back to shore. The South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), a quango which will part-fund the project, has high hopes. Four firms are planning to connect their machines, forming what officials hope will be the world's biggest wave farm, with 30 machines supplying up to 20 megawatts of power. An existing wave-power project in the Orkney islands is set to expand, and officials are studying a multi-billion-pound private-sector plan to harness the tides near the mouth of the river Severn.
Marine energy, and especially wave power, is still an immature technology. Many designs concentrate on surviving the fury of ocean storms rather than maximising energy production. Nor is it cheap. Firms are coy about giving precise figures but the Carbon Trust, a government-funded green consultancy, reckoned the price a year ago was between 22p and 25p per kilowatt hour—around nine times the price of gas-fired electricity.
Boosters argue that technology and mass production will bring costs down. British officials seem to agree. Having noticed the success of the Danes in developing their wind-turbine industry, both the SWRDA and the Scottish Executive want to do the same for ocean power.
Geography is one advantage: rough seas and big tides make the British isles one of the best places in the world for sea power. The Carbon Trust believes that, in theory, sea power could provide 20% of the country's electricity. There is engineering expertise, notably in Aberdeen, where the offshore oil industry has been installing complex machinery in rough seas for decades. The International Energy Agency thinks that Britain is pursuing more marine-power designs (29) than any other country (America, with 13, is second). Scotland already boasts the European Marine Energy Centre, a research outfit, an advantage the West Country hopes to counteract by spending £15m on a similar organisation attached to the universities of Exeter and Plymouth.
The economics are more complicated. David Weaver, the chief executive of Oceanlinx, one of the firms planning to use the Wave Hub, argues that Britain's liberalised and transparent power markets make life easier for newcomers, although others argue that fluctuating power prices make planning tricky. Subsidies are more generous in countries such as Portugal, which is keen on building a marine-power sector of its own and offers extra cash to less mature technologies.
Not everyone is enthusiastic. When the Wave Hub was announced, Cornish surfers worried that it might make their tubes less gnarly. Others are more concerned about the price. Mr Edge reckons that the Danes spent around £1 billion creating their wind-turbine industry. Setting up a British marine-power sector will cost a similar amount, he says—a big jump from the £28m Wave Hub."
More Ethical Divestment
Jim Mather, the Enterprise Minister, today announces he is to move his £350,000 of shares into a blind trust to avoid a conflict of interest. This is what he should have done upon assuming his ministerial position, not nearly 5 months later and then only under media pressure. Donald Dewar moved all his shares into a blind trust upon being first elected to government as Scottish Secretary, preventing him from these accusations of a conflict of interest. I find it amazing neither Mr Mather nor Mr Stevenson thought their failure to do so would matter.
Indeed, Mr Mather sums it up best himself:
"The reality is that for those of us who hold portfolios that are as wide-ranging as enterprise, energy and tourism, it is very hard to hold shares in anything that doesn't impinge upon our work."
Still wonder why the Herald isn’t covering this at all…
Indeed, Mr Mather sums it up best himself:
"The reality is that for those of us who hold portfolios that are as wide-ranging as enterprise, energy and tourism, it is very hard to hold shares in anything that doesn't impinge upon our work."
Still wonder why the Herald isn’t covering this at all…
Thursday, 20 September 2007
Ethical Divestment
Well, what a day. My tipoff to the Scotsman and the Herald two days ago about Stewart Stevenson's possession of £30,000 of shares in ScottishPower is today's front headline of the Scotsman. Stevenson decided to sell the shares last night, after insisting there was no conflict between his role in shaping energy policy and his financial interests in a major energy company which had just won a £200m contract from his ministry in the Scottish Government.
I wonder why only the Scotsman decided to run with this story, as I informed both the Scotsman and Herald news desks of the conflict of interest at the same time. The Scottish Government is still clearly on its honeymoon with the Herald. I would have thought any reporter would leap on a conflict of interest story, whether it be regarding a councillor, MSP, MEP or MP.
In Stevenson's announcement, he says he is to also sell shares in another energy company called Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE). These shares were not disclosed on his register of interests as of yesterday.
I wonder why only the Scotsman decided to run with this story, as I informed both the Scotsman and Herald news desks of the conflict of interest at the same time. The Scottish Government is still clearly on its honeymoon with the Herald. I would have thought any reporter would leap on a conflict of interest story, whether it be regarding a councillor, MSP, MEP or MP.
In Stevenson's announcement, he says he is to also sell shares in another energy company called Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE). These shares were not disclosed on his register of interests as of yesterday.
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