Actually, it's Brian Wilson's fault

It's just been pointed out to me that Brian Wilson is partly to blame for the awful state of teh Labour party that he keeps complaining about:

Brian Wilson MP says: Allan is an excellent colleague, who has represented this area with great diligence and personal commitment. Every community in the constituency can see the benefits of Allan's hard word and involvement in delivering projects. With your support, we will continue to work together constructively in the future.

There's also a chance to have your say on our constitutional future:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article3723966.ece

Good vibrations? Oh no ...

Perusing the Telegraph, as is my wont, I came upon a most interesting opinion piece by one Brian Wilson which you may wish to read at your leisure.

Aye, life's a beach, boy, life's a beach. Now your very best friend and mine, this former Labour MP and former Minister who served in the same Government as Gordon Brown, has recently been cranking up his criticism of a Labour party demonstrating incompetence on an almost artistic scale. He has, however, now applied a large tackety boot to Gordon Brown's most delicate appendages.

If I may haud my beak and quote from Brian Wilson talking about Brown:

It is as if there has been a collective decision taken among those who were not his natural supporters, but were prepared to give him a chance, that their generosity has been abused.

For many [Labour MPs], the problem is that they are being asked to support an agenda that they cannot make head or tail of

The most problematic conundrum is why a Labour government should be penalising some of the lowest-paid wage earners in our society by abolishing the 10p tax band. As with the poll tax in days of yore, this succeeds in offending not only the victims, but also a large body of opinion that does not wish to benefit at their expense.

At some point, therefore, Labour MPs are bound to make a sober assessment of whether or not they can win under Gordon Brown. Their overwhelming instinct and desire will be to suspend disbelief and assure themselves that they can.

So Labour MPs can't work out what their Government is supposed to be about, voters who were prepared to give Brown a chance to prove himself feel betrayed, Labour has abused the very people it promised to defend (you'll have heard about them - the weak and the vulnerable), and Labour MPs don't believe that they can win an election with Brown leading them - the same will apply to Labour MSPs with their leader.

Image shamelessly nicked from the Grauniad, but given that paper's stated values, it won't mind at all.

Brian Wilson compared Gordon Brown to Donald Crowhurst - it's a bad comparison because Crowhurst had a conscience.

So Gordon Brown - he's a bit rubbish

It came to me in a dream - oh yes!

After thinking about Gordon Brown's 'economic miracle' and the fuss Labour of London's making about refusing to pony up Scotland's money if we dare to decide to be different in local taxation, I came to the inescapable conclusion that something just didn't add up.

I meandered down to the Department of Work and Pensions (well, the website) and had a wee nose about at the benefit claimant numbers. The latest ones available are for May 2007 - not the most recent figures, but exactly 10 years after Labour took power and before the policies of the SNP Scottish Government had time to have an effect.
So 10 years into an economic miracle, how is it that Scotland has almost 428,000 Housing Benefit recipients? That's 19% of all the households in Scotland.

How does anyone square that 'economic miracle' with the more than 533,000 Council Tax Benefit recipients? Almost a quarter of Scottish households can't afford to pay Council Tax.

Where is their economic miracle? Or does the economic miracle only count for the wealthy and the super-wealthy that Brown courts just as Blair did before him?
Ten years of failure as Chancellor, another year failing as Prime Minister - Gordon Brown is either just not cut out for the job or applies his energies in the service of those who don't really need any help from government. Either way he should go now.

Economy's a rotten egg

Gordon Brown used to have a reputation for good political and economic management. It was, of course, guff. The 'credit crunch' supposedly sweeping all before it like a monetary tsunami indicates that a different story might be more accurate. The actualite of the oncoming of this liquidity trap might not have been easy to predict but the coming of the squeeze was entirely predictable - and has echoes in the liquidity trap Japan faced in the 1990s when helicopter money didn't help. Krugman's contemporary examination of the Japan trap reads as if it could have been written this year - and his conclusions should scare the heck out of anyone looking for a rapid end to this crisis.

Krugman wrote that a decade ago, but you can see the ghost of that trap in Roubini's warning of the extent of the current crash. Add to that Krugman's analysis of why helicopter funding failed the Japanese banks and the prognosis is pretty poor. Some European stock markets are already in the grip of the bear, and we could still see a profits recession to force markets even lower.

The blame lies squarely at the feet of those who failed to regulate financial services properly, as Stiglitz pointed out recently, including one Gordon Brown. In the words of Ken Clarke, former Conservative Chancellor:

"He ignored the warnings that personal debt was getting way out of hand, and as for the Government's finances, huge deficits have been run up. This means there is less money available to spend now that the economy is in trouble. From about 2002 onwards, Brown has been an old-fashioned tax-and-spend Chancellor."

We should not imagine that the US 'sub-prime' mortgage lunacy is the culprit here, not even the fantastically-named ninja mortgages, it's only a symptom of the malaise rather than a cause. The cause has been a refusal on the part of governments to accept that economies undergo corrections. As a result of attempting to avoid 'boom and bust' - better referred to as the economic cycle - governments adjusted credit regulations to lever more debt into the economy to continue an artificial driver of the economy - the Consumer Credit Act 2006 is a prime example. Not only that, but governments have been similarly living on IOUs.

National Debt is not normally a problem because inflation takes care of the value of the indebtedness, but an absence of value-added production renders that usual calculation worthless. Stiglitz explains the deficiency from a US point of view, but you can apply the same calculation anywhere. You'll notice, too, that governments took no steps to improve the lot of homeowners facing repossession but hardly drew breath before stepping in to save banks and banking shareholders. While American firms are still obliged to mark-to-market there won't be any let-up in recession drivers either - the difficulties will be exacerbated by the damage they have caused.

Here the obsession that Brown has continued of bowing before wealth as if it has more value than people, where the worth of a person can be measured in their bank account and his failure to act to protect the poor, the vulnerable and the weak suggest that nothing will be done on Labour's watch to address the underlying problems which have created this avalanche of bad economic conditions.

Brown, of course, isn't entirely to blame, seeking to pin the blame entirely on him would require the same kind of naive simplicity that suggests that Blair alone took us to war time after time, that Barack Obama might change US foreign policy, or that Mugabe alone is the problem in Zimbabwe, but Brown must carry a large part of the responsibility for the problems caused.

His failure to act in the best interests of the people who elected him remains a terrible indictment of his betrayal of any collective ideology which might once have been part of a Labour leader's psychological make-up. Interestingly, considering the support Labour party members here are giving to Barack Obama (parallel to the hailing of the saviour that Blair received in the 1990s), his realignment since the beginning of the primary season is a remarkably similar abandonment of the principles he once professed to hold dear.

Perhaps if more politicians were willing to continue campaigning for the principles they professed to believe in we might one day aspire to the utopia described in this untitled William Stafford poem.

This is the field where the battle did not happen,

where the unknown soldier did not die.

This is the field where grass joined hands,

where no monument stands,

and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,

unfolding their wings across the open.

No people killed – or were killed – on this ground

hollowed by the neglect of an air so tame

that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

Odammit!

I take an interest in politics. I do, therefore, watch US politics as much as I watch the politics of anywhere else in the world. I don't particularly support or oppose any candidate in the US Presidential campaign - I don't think I have a right to tell Americans who they should have as their political leaders (although if any of them asked my opinion, I'd tell them they should avoid shallow politicians like Barack Obama like the lumpy plague - we've suffered horrendously through 10 years of presentation and no substance in a Prime Minister and another year of no substance and no presentation).

That's why I was surprised to see Kezia Dugdale organising the Scotland for Obama campaign. Kezia, being in the Labour party, is well used to shallow and insincere politicians but why she thinks she should interfere in the politics of another nation and tell them who to elect is beyond me.

The annoying thing is that Kezia is intelligent enough to know better - I hope she's not pitching for a job on the other side of the ocean, that would be Labour in Scotland well and truly stuffed.

Another aspect to this support for Obama (there's a rally tomorrow - lordy lordy lordy!) - in addition to the Secretary pointing out that it is a little presumptious for a non-US citizen - is the observation of Geordie that support from Europe is unlikely to be helpful to a US Presidential candidate. Is Kezia playing a double-bluff?

Wendy's Independence Commission

I've just spent a couple of days down in Galloway - first time I've dallied in that part of the country - it's a lovely part of country (don't tell Rob Davidson I was there and didn't visit him - I was nowhere near Dalbeattie).

Anyway, being in the constituency of Alex Fergusson (Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, noted unionist-type chap but generally good egg) brought my mind around to the Commission he's still to set up as a result of a Scottish Parliament vote (you know, the one Labour thinks it set up with Brown's blessing which isn't the right one because it doesn't fulfil the terms of the resolution).

I thought, in my usual, generous way, that I should offer a wee bit of advice to those who want to amend the devolution settlement but don't want Scots to have a wee vote about Independence.

We definitely need control of xenotransplantation back, that one's non-negotiable (in the iconic phraseology of Jim Wallace). We should have control of time and outer space as well - what self-respecting administration doesn't have them? And we can add to the list between now and forever if you want.

Here's a better solution. In the Scotland Act 1998, sections 28 to 35 make provisions about Westminster Ministers and their powers as well as noting Westminster's power to legislate on Scotland.

Why not repeal Schedules 4 and 5 of the Act, make a few amendments to the powers vested in the Scottish Secretary and proceed on the basis of common respect and cooperation?

Surely if London still has an emissary in Scotland with those powers then the shackles can quite safely be lifted from the Scottish Parliament and Government to allow them enough freedom to substantially improve the lives of the people of Scotland while London's interests will continue to be protected by the Scottish Secretary? That would also remove forever all of the arguments about which reservations were correct and which should be lifted.

It would be a sensible move for unionists to make which is why I'm fairly confident it won't be made - the union's case is being prosecuted by very small-minded people these days.

Must mention this idea to a few people and see what they think.

What's in your cabinet?

It struck me after Des Browne's ramblings that it probably isn't his fault because he, after all, isn't the sharpest tool in the box, not the brightest light on the Christmas tree, not even approaching the hottest chilli in the packet, and quite a distance from aspiring to be the grooviest dancer in the disco.

Which is a wee bit worrying.

He is, as The Secretary pointed out to me between attempts to obtain a visa for Uzbekistan (don't ask, the answer would take too long), in the cabinet, holding down two fairly important jobs, responsible for prosecuting two conflicts and several peacekeeping operations as well as keeping an eye on the constitutional operations of Scotland. Surely we should be expecting someone with something approaching half a clue to be occupying that position?

Well, that got me to thinking - if someone with the soaring intellect of Desmond has made it to what used to be regarded as one of the great offices of state in London, how does Gordon Brown's cabinet compare to previous cabinets?

Tempting as it was to compare this bunch with Attlee's cabinet or even with some of Thatcher's cabinets, I think it's only fair to compare Gordon Brown's cabinet to the first cabinet of his immediate predecessor, Anthony Blair.

Let's have a look:

Prime Minister

Say what you like about the bold boy, but Tony Blair was an excellent ring-master. He believed the show to be entirely his in spite of all the other people who had to work devilishly hard to keep it running. He never feared the lions because he had a lion tamer looking after them; he wasn't worried about the acrobats falling because, to be honest, you can always get new acrobats; and the clowns were always there to deflect attention from anything that was truly horrific. Gordon Brown? He dropped his top hat shortly after he entered the ring and spends his time looking over his shoulder to see what's going on behind him. He's so worried about what's sneaking up on him he hasn't seen that the human cannonball is pointed straight at his head and is ready to fire.

Chancellor

In the 97 cabinet - one Gordon Brown, the straight man in the double act who never really appreciated that the straight man is supposed to be the butt of the jokes, not try his own 'non-endogenous growth theory' puns. He rode the wave of economic good times fairly well, and he managed to claim quite a bit of the credit for his surfing, so he will probably be judged as a competent chancellor - except for that becoming Prime Minister bit, that's the reputation knackered. I've never believed in the hype about Brown as Chancellor (maybe I'm biased), but he certainly outshone his successor - the problem being that he appointed his successor.

Alastair "what? No, I prefer Northern Soul" Darling ran straight into a faecal typhoon which, to be fair (oh, just this once), wasn't entirely of his making. He was part of a Government which encouraged thoughtless consumption which turned into a consumptive problem, so he was part of it, but it wasn't entirely his fault. What was spectacularly bad was his handling of what came his way his dithering and his over-ruling of a Bank of England decision on Northern Rock meant that the public purse ended up with a bill which some estimates put at over £100 billion (or four times what the Scottish Government gets to run Scotland) and a worthless former private company into the bargain.

Deputy Prime Minister

There isn't one in the Cabinet now, so Prescott takes the Oscar. As the great man himself might say "What? No, wasn't me - help!" and you thought I would criticise his command of the English language - shame on you!

Foreign Secretary

Robin Cook, wee ginger, garden-gnome type philanderer with an unfortunate twitch and a high-pitched voice or David Miliband. I still can't believe Miliband is Foreign Secretary, every time he appears on TV with that subtitle I'm baffled anew. I won't pretend to be a Robin Cook fan, there was plenty to dislike about the wee nyaff, but at least you could argue that he had talent - some people argued that he had loads of talent. Miliband has nothing to offer, nothing that I can detect at all. I watched him in front of the European Scrutiny Committee recently and he was torn apart - by Michael Connarty! Michael Connarty is a fairly talentless individual, wooden and struggling to make sense of the world, but he made mince of Miliband.

By my count that's 4-0 to Blair

Justice

What do you call a judge with no thumbs? Justice Fingers. Anyway, the posts in 97 were Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor, now they're not. Jack Straw was Home Sec in 97 and Derry 'home decorating a speciality' Irvine was Lord Chan. Now the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor (following the Scottish model except for the Lord Chancellor bit) is Jack Straw (not much imagination there, Gordon) and the Secretary of State for the Home Department is Jacqui Smith. Well the old Straw man is hanging in there like a terrier who won't let go but has forgotten why it attacked in the first place, busy proposing to abolish recourse to the law and other woolly liberal ideas he used to support (of which hopefully more later), so that might be a score draw, but is Jacqui Smith really enough to compensate for the demise of Derry Irvine? Yes, Irvine was a tube and a blawhard, but he was actually quite bright - if it hadn't been for the wallpaper...

Defence

George Robertson or Des Browne? Hmmm ....

I'm sure you get the picture - Donald Dewar, Mo Mowlam, Chris Smith, even David 'well hello' Blunkett up against Johnson, Benn and Hutton? Dougie Alexander against Clare Short, even Gavin Strang against Ruth Kelly.

Blair, let's be honest, had people around him he disagreed with and their pedigree was far higher than Brown's cabinet (that's not saying much, right enough) - this could be because Blair didn't care about politics much, but it might be that Brown is simply not very good - I suspect the latter.

I think we're seeing a tired government, having tried renewal, now facing the end of its days - following the MacDougall model perfectly.

The question remaining is - who does Cameron appoint as the Conservative Scottish Secretary? Fluffy Mundell simply isn't up to it. Forsyth from the Lords? He wouldn't - would he?

An episode of Desmond's

It must crush all hope when you've been drowning for almost a year and your rescuers are Yvette Cooper and Des Browne balancing on what little of your head is above water.


With Yvette Cooper understanding less about Funding the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales and Northern Ireland Assembly: Statement of Funding Policy (see especially paragraphs 6.3 and 13.2 and paragraphs 7 & 8 of the statement of principles - annexe A) than about buying herself a house, it was left to Desmond to come riding to the rescue with a fascinating article in Scotland on Sunday.


Des has titled his epistle to the nation "A Year of Governing Dangerously" - I do hope that he just doesn't appreciate the possible resonance of such a title rather than being quite that crass.


Mind you, the tone of his 919 words would suggest maybe not. When a politician starts to throw random and unjustifiable insults instead of debating policy you can be sure the unravelling is beginning. Since Dessie is a Minister in Her Majesty's Labour Government you can take it that the same falling apart is infecting the rest of them

Let's see what Des says. He compares the amount of legislation going through the London Parliament with the amount of legislation going through our Edinburgh Parliament like some over-keen competitor in a sports-car measuring competition. Here's an interesting thing, though, he says

24 of the 26 pieces of legislation in the Queen's Speech impact upon Scotland

The most interesting part of this isn't apparent until you cast a glance at the Queen's Speech and realise that only 20 pieces of legislation are in it. Surely a chap who holds 2 cabinet jobs should know what was in the Queen's Speech? It is, after all, the basic building block of the Westminster legislative programme.

Is Dessie confused? Well, look at these three statements:

The UK Government is actively legislating – with the SNP's agreement

In the parallel universe that the SNP inhabit, everything the UK Government does is portrayed as either an act of betrayal or interference in Scotland.

the SNP choose to use parliamentary time to provide a platform for Alex Salmond to grandstand, to debate issues outwith their responsibility and to promote disagreements with the UK Government, seemingly for the sake of it.

All in the same article! He's not finished at that either:

A statement of fact that council tax benefit has never been part of the block grant is labelled as meddling.

Can I refer him to the Statement of Principles at the back of the Statement of Funding mentioned above in relation to Yvette Cooper? This Statement of Principles was written by his good friend Alastair Darling while the Chancellor was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Paragraph 7 contains this wonderful line:

provision for Council Tax Benefit and Housing Benefit which will both come within the Scottish Block for the first time after devolution;

The document was revised and reissued in October 2007 and this bit wasn't changed, so we can assume it's still relevant. Our good Des goes on to accuse Scotland's Government of

seeking to contrive a row about access to additional funds they know there is no entitlement to

That'll be the £400 million or so in Council Tax Benefit (there should, of course, be a balancing adjustment in the Block Grant this year because Scottish benefit payments growth will be outstripped by English ones - paragraph 6.3, first point), the £120 million in prison building payments, perhaps the attendance allowance that was withdrawn when the Scottish Parliament introduced Free Personal Care - that kind of thing. Have we reached a billion quid yet? Here's the decker for Desmond from paragraph 2.7:

1. Departmental Expenditure Limits (DELs) set firm, three-year spending limits. Expenditure in DEL is split between those items within the Assigned Budget and those within the non-Assigned Budget. Spending within DEL is generally undifferentiated, as the devolved administrations will have full discretion over their spending priorities; these are ‘Assigned Budget’ items. Changes in provision for these items are determined through the Barnett Formula (see Chapter 4). If spending in DEL, however, is exceptionally ring-fenced and specific to that spending priority, these are known as ‘non-Assigned Budget’ spending items

That would be the prisons then. London claims the prisons money doesn't count because it came from reserves. Access to the Reserve is only supposed to be provided in exceptional circumstances - did London not plan to build these prisons? Chapter 10 of the funding statement makes it absolutely clear that you can't just take money out of the Reserve because that will open up the DEL again - whether it is the Scottish Government or a Whitehall department, so there's a Barnett consequential to come to Scotland.


Should the London Government continue to insist that the money provided for English prisons comes from the Reserve, and that this will not result in a renegotiation (exceptionally) of the English Justice budget, Scotland gets access to the Reserve for building the prisons we need 10.2:

specifically where:
1. a United Kingdom department is granted access to the Reserve to enable it to meet exceptional pressures on a spending programme. If a devolved administration has a comparable programme and establishes that it faces similar exceptional pressures, unforeseen at the time spending plans were settled, it will have the opportunity to make its case on access to the Reserve which will be considered.

You would think that if I can find this on the web a Cabinet Minister should be able to ask their Private Office to have it checked out, wouldn't you?

Back to Dizzy Dessie. He argues that abolishing Council Tax and introducing LIT instead would make Scotland the highest taxed part of the UK. Erm, no. removing one tax and replacing it with another does not automatically increase the overall tax take (how long has Labour been 'running' the country?) I might be getting old, but I remember a Labour party that once believed in taxation based on the ability to pay - apparently not any more. How much more pain have the poorest in our society to suffer before Labour relents? 12% of Scotland's taxpayers - the poorest 12% - have just seen their income tax bill double thanks to Labour's budget.


Just a couple more points. Early in his homily, Desmond preaches about

the SNP is the only level of government with any interest in Scotland

Much as I think that Scotland's Party is the party with Scotland's best interests at heart, our members would never think about the party being a 'level of government' - perhaps that reveals something about the arrogance of the Labour party?


The other thing is Dessie-baby's assertion that the SNP Government is 'beginning to wear thin amongst Scots' - I wonder why opinion polls keep going in the other direction if Des is correct? Perhaps he's just wrong?


I'd just like to apologise to everyone connected with the sitcom Desmonds - the pun was too good to miss, but no-one should be associated with the Labour farce against their will.


I will note, though, that the SNP Scottish Government has now come under attack from 4 Westminster Ministers - Gordon Brown, Des Browne, Yvette Cooper and David Cairns - in the past couple of weeks. Is this a tacit admission that Wendy Alexander simply isn't up to it?

As Des Browne signed off, "It's time they got on with governing rather than fostering grievance." Yup, they get paid enough.

The Mother of What?

We are often told about the high level of debate in the London Parliament, how those great and finely honed minds of the Members wrestle with the important issues of the day and how those rapier wits and shining lights sparkle and shine from their Thameside fastness and shed understanding and brilliance around the world.
Being the kind of person I am - handsome, witty, dashing and debonair (and modest with it) - I like to check up on these things so, from time to time, I like to peruse the Official Report of Westminster - a publication they call Hansard. That's how I came to be reading the report of the debate on the Scotland Act from Tuesday just past. Sponsored by one Pete Wishart, it attracted all the greatest talents and was an excellent example of the best debating skills of Westminster. Let us enjoy it together.

Just a couple of minutes into Pete's opening speech when he was talking about the Scottish Government's National Conversation the sage of Midlothian intervened:

Mr. David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab): I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not think that I am part of his national conversation. The first conversation that I have with him will be the last.

Lovely, isn't it?In cruised slim Jim (Hood of Lanark and Hamilton East):

I welcome the national conversation, but I should like it better if we could have it in Westminster.

Kind of missed the point there. The National Conversation is with the people of Scotland - it doesn't belong to politicians - far less to 59 MPs sitting in London, but I'm glad to see that at least one Labour MP intends to engage. Here's something interesting though, see these contributions from Labour MPs:

Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab): I enthusiastically support the
commission because it will develop the Scottish Parliament in a very positive manner.

Mr. Adam Ingram (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab): I want to support the commission that is under way—for one good reason. It allows us to review the whole gamut of the Scotland Act 1998, which allows powers to be taken back from the irresponsible Administration that currently exists in the Scottish Parliament.

Obviously singing from the same hymn sheet but one of them is holding it upside down. Sandra Osborne seeing Wendy's Independence Commission as being a move towards greater powers for the Scottish Parliament, Adam Ingram, still smarting from not being important any longer, sees it as a way of destroying Scottish democracy. I find it interesting that Adam Ingram has been an MP for 21 years and was a Minister for 10 of those years but still doesn't understand the difference between the legislature and the executive - Parliament isn't the Government.

Pete wasn't being kind to them, though:

I have imagined the scene in the Scottish Parliament when the commission idea was first suggested and mooted. I can imagine the Labour Members of the Scottish Parliament sitting in their weekly meeting, despondent and depressed. They have been completely shattered by their Scottish leader getting involved and embroiled in the donations scandal; bruised by the continued popularity of an SNP Government riding high in opinion polls; and monstered on a weekly basis at First Minister’s questions. I can see the former, sacked, disgraced, over-refreshed adviser going to the meeting and saying, “I’ve got an idea to get one over on the Nats. Let’s take the whole issue of the constitution to the SNP”. One can imagine all the back-slapping following such a suggestion.
However, Labour MSPs did not account for hon. Members here in Westminster. I can imagine the steam coming out of the ears of the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton, East (Mr. Hood) and others when they heard the plan for more powers for the Scottish Parliament. I can imagine mutterings of “Over my dead body” from the right hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow and the state of apoplexy induced in the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine).

Then that terrible cad MacNeil joined in the baiting:

Mr. MacNeil: I am struck by the impatience of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties to get on with a referendum, which is welcome. They must know, of course, that the matter will come to the Scottish Parliament, in the terms of the Scottish Parliament, but I thank them for their impatience. Its importance to them is witnessed by the number of Labour Members who have come here today to join in the conversation.

He's a bad lad!

Anne Begg, though, Labour MP and star:

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire began his speech by saying that it is accepted everywhere that devolution is a process, not an event. Again, we can argue whether that is accepted everywhere, but it is his interpretation of the word “process” with which I have a problem. I have always understood a process to involve moving forward and perhaps changing something, not necessarily taking more powers. I do not think that any dictionary definition of “process” includes an assumption of more power. Sometimes it involves putting things together, as in the case of a process worker, but I do not know of any definition that necessarily involves adding, taking back or taking more powers.

Eh? If you know what the Dickens she's on about can you let me know? Mad as a badger!

Gordon Banks (not the former England goalie):

the Calman commission, to which I alluded—is approved by the Scottish Parliament;

Erm - no it's not - that Commission is still to come! He went on to say that

I did not engage in the conversation

which is a great shame -that such a tribune of the people will not engage in the National Conversation started by Scotland's Government. It gets better though:

Willie Rennie (Dunfermline and West Fife) (LD): Perhaps the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) will stand up again and give us his view on whether it should take place in the Scottish Parliament.
Mr. MacNeil: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Willie Rennie: No

I've taken a wee bit out that Willie continued with while Angus leapt to his feet, but this is the essence of the exchange. Marvellous! Here's his Libdem colleague Alastair Carmichael answering Angus MacNeil:

Mr. MacNeil: Let the people decide.
Mr. Carmichael: The people have decided; they decided last May and his party got 20 per cent. of the electorate’s votes, so let us not hear any nonsense about people deciding

That would be the SNP he's talking about. The SNP got 33% in the constituency and 31% in the additional member vote - more than any other party and more than the 16% and 11% scored by the Libdems. Maybe we shouldn't trust Libdem analysis, eh?

Another Libdem, Alan Reid:

Pete Wishart: This all seems to be quite a bit of a shambles; hon. Members cannot agree among themselves about these sorts of issues. What we need to hear from the hon. Gentleman is an answer to this question; if the Labour party persists with the idea of taking powers back from Holyrood, at what point will the Liberal Democrats leave the commission and have nothing whatsoever to do with that particular objective?
Mr. Reid: I will reiterate what I have said; the Liberal Democrats do not support any transfer of powers from the Scottish Parliament back to Westminster, and if the hon. Gentleman and his party would join the commission, they could add weight to that argument.
Pete Wishart: Will the hon. Gentleman answer my question?
Mr. Reid: That is typical of SNP members: they take the ball away; they will not participate in the discussions, and simply shout abuse from the sidelines, as the hon.
Gentleman continues to do.

Abuse? Jimmy Hood's back with his rapier-sharp wit though:

Mr. Hood: Is the hon. Gentleman going to tell the House that, if it was not for his policy, we would not have an SNP Government today? Is he saying that that was a good policy?
Mr. Reid: If it had not been for the Liberal Democrats insisting on proportional representation, the result of the Scottish Parliament elections would be very unfair, and we would have a Labour Government with an overall majority despite the fact that Labour won less than a third of the votes. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not arguing that we should go back to that situation.
Mr. Hood: Yes.

See that intellectual giant strutting his stuff?

Ben Wallace once a Conservative MSP, now a Conservative MP for an English constituency, also spoke - I urge you to just read his speech for yourself - a rant in the classic style!

And so to the big gun - rolled out for a broadside on this occasion was that towering genius David Cairns, Minister of State at the Scotland Office - a grand title ...

Pete Wishart: For clarification, who was the Minister referring to when he came up with the phrase “the McChattering classes”? To which group of people in Scotland was he referring?
David Cairns: Actually, I had in mind the people who write opinion columns in the Sunday Herald and Scotland on Sunday. In fact, the newspapers could save money on those who write those columns. They could send an office boy around to St. Andrews house to collect press releases rather than have Ian McWhirter write them.

Losing the election must have hurt. There's a difference between disagreeing with what a journalist has to say and questioning their right to say it or questioning their motives. Old Cairns carried on -

We remember what things were like before the Act, when a handful of Ministers in
Dover house took all the decisions that affected health, education and transport in Scotland. We remember that that was wrong, and we remember how hard we worked to change the situation, and to have democratic accountability so that decisions on the big day in, day out issues—health, transport, crime—could be taken by Scottish politicians in Scotland who are closer to the people who they represent.

Local taxation maybe getting a look-in there David? Good to see, though, that he acknowledges that the SNP Government is closer to the people of Scotland than Labour could ever hope to be. In that case, though, surely the Scottish Government is in a better position to make decisions on the model of governance for Scotland?

As Mr Cairns himself says:

letting the people exercise power at a level that is closer to them is part of our core principles as a party.

He must be delighted with the SNP Government exercising power so well.

Every time I read Westminster debates I come away thinking "is that the best they've got?"

I think I'm going to have to go down there and sort them out before Scotland heads off into Independence - it doesn't seem fair to leave them drowning.

In the kingdom of the blind

Elaine Smith, Labour MSP for Coatbridge and Chryston, is never afraid to say what she thinks.

Recently she put forward for consideration her thought that Labour should not be afraid to support the SNP where the SNP Government was doing the right thing for Scotland. She argued that Labour MSPs should be voting for the ending of prescription charges, for the abolition of the Graduate Endowment tax on learning, for ending the right to buy on newbuild social housing, and so on.

In the Kingdom of the Blind the one-eyed woman is a heretic proclaiming her belief in the existence of light - Labour will not follow the eminently sensible advice offered by Elaine Smith and she will, no doubt, be decried for actually understanding how politics in Scotland must work under minority Government.

While it is obvious to most people in this country that the SNP Government is making a decent fist of delivering, Labour continues to sit in denial and continues to look for instant and short-term victories over the Government. Continuing attempts to ensure that the majority unionist grouping in Parliament gangs up against the nationalist minority results in the people who watch politics siding more with the minority Government.

Why? Because Labour started in too early and too bluntly, they never had cause for their complaints (and still don't), speculated beyond the available evidence, and never accepted defeat in the election. The people of Scotland had elected an SNP Government - by a painfully thin margin, but elected nonetheless - and the public attitude was one of contemplation and consideration. They'd kind of shoved the cake in the oven and were waiting to see how it came out but Labour keeps opening the oven door. The public view of the Government was of one that was prepared to stand up for Scotland when it was necessary and one that would try to govern well.

The majority opposition ganging up on the minority Government was always going to look like bullying unless they had some seriously string grounds for it - the Conservatives learned that lesson very quickly and the Libdems have cottoned on latterly, but Labour still doesn't get it. Labour preoccupation is with being in power rather than being effective in Parliament, Labour's Shadow Cabinet cannot see that this is no strategy for a Parliamentary session - they continue to run headlong at a brick wall instead of opening the gate in it - that's why Wendy Alexander has had to reshuffle her pack after six months - they're already exhausted.

Partly this comes from Labour's belief that it owns Scotland, owns compassion, and owns all the righteousness - for a look into that particular heart of darkness, you could do worse than take a look at a recent Compass article written by the very cream of Labour's Scottish talent from Michael Connarty to Ian Davidson. I intend to come back to this article at some later date, but a clipping from it may be instructive -

The SNP are fighting hard to steal the social democratic mantle away from Labour.

The idea that any party 'owns' a part of politics is absurd in the extreme. We are watching, I believe the death-throes of a once respectable party.

It's not a new socialism they need, it's some humility and a desire to ask what they can do to make amends.