Tuesday 4 March

The world has had bigger fish to fry this week, as Putin’s troops moved silently – and politely, we’re told - into the Crimea and the West begins to worry about the start of another cold war, Russian resurgence, falling markets, and its gas supply.   This is how John Hulsman described it in City AM yesterday – “Vladimir Putin increasingly strikes me as a disciple of sixteenth-century Thomas Cromwell, at least the version brought to life by Hilary Mantel. In Bring Up the Bodies, Henry VIII’s henchman explains how power politics worked then, works now, and will work for the rest of time. “Once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, once you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect,” Cromwell reasons. Putin has followed that timeless precept to the letter.”

Nonetheless, at home cabinets came and went, and Standard Life pronounced. The love-bombing hadn’t lasted long, and this week the Dam Busters took over…

IT’S 200 DAYS TO GO …

As Alan Trench warns us in his Devolution Matters blog this week, the UK government is making its position ‘increasingly clear’. An independent Scotland will cease to be part of UK institutions. We’ve had the pound, the Bank of England, the EU and the BBC.  We can expect, says Trench, to see other areas where the Scottish government might seek common ground – the research councils, travel arrangements, security and organ transplants to be added to the list. None of this, he says, should come as a surprise – it’s all there in the Scotland Analysis papers; these things will not be negotiated, rather the opposite, they are areas that will not be up for negotiation on September 19th.

Iain McWhirter in the Sunday Herald says it’s more like the blitz – the economic equivalent of war. “The "dam busters strategy" - as the Coalition is reportedly describing it - is a telling insight into the mind of the UK establishment as it seeks to demolish nationalism. The idea was that, after the UK Chancellor ruled out sharing the pound, a flood of companies would rush out of Scotland. The strategy relied on a supportive Scottish media to spin the bouncing bombs and it didn't disappoint. Newspaper readers could be forgiven for thinking last week that Scotland is heading for economic disaster if it votes Yes, with banks taking their money and running from an independent Scottish banana republic”.

But hold on, says McWhirter, this week Sir Ian Wood’s report ‘commissioned and endorsed by the UK government’ suggested that Scotland is on the cusp of another oil boom. Standard and Poors says we might have an AAA credit rating even without oil revenues, and that losing the banks might be beneficial if it removes some of Scotland’s top-heavy risk. The truth is, says McWhirter, that Scotland has the potential to be a world-leading economy…

Hamish McDonell in the Spectator comments on the timing of Standard Life’s intervention in George Osborne’s wake. “The Chancellor had been prepared to rule out a shared currency for some time but it was decided that this had to be done in February, close enough to the referendum to have real impact but also – crucially – ahead of all those springtime annual meetings and reports of Scotland’s big financial companies. So the aim was not so much to receive a boost in the polls but to force Scotland’s financial services industry into the debate”.

There’s an interesting piece by Steve Hewlett in the Observer on culture secretary Maria Miller’s statement that a Yes vote means no BBC.  First, it isn’t really in the government’s gift, says Hewlett – the government doesn’t own the BBC and could only force the issue by seizing the corporation’s assets in Scotland and second, because the White Paper makes it clear that there will be a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation after independence and the assets will be part of any settlement. However, says Hewlett, it all boils down to money…

And still with the money – it appears there is an unequal struggle going on between the two sides for funding. Ben Riley-Smith in the Telegraph reports conservative accusations that Alex Salmond is ‘taking advantage’ of the lottery winners’ donation to the Yes campaign and ‘buying independence’, while Jason Allardyce in this week’s Sunday Times  reported that Better Together is having difficulty raising even half of the £7m it needs from the business community.

Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times [£] takes up a theme we have reported on previously – that the same Project Fear that is being used against Scotland is also being promoted by pro-European lobbyists against those who wish to leave.  Better Together, says Lawson, is a dry run for 2017. It might even be, he thinks, that Barroso’s warning to us was also a veiled threat to the UK that once we left, we’d not find an easy route back. “Those who seek liberation from the institutions of the EU should not derive any pleasure from Project Fear, as deployed against nationalists north of the border.  First they came for the Scots…”

FRUITCAKES, LOONIES, CELTS AND BREXIT

Speaking of those who want to leave…UKIP held its Spring conference this weekend ,and as usual, shot itself in the foot. In general we in Scotland take the Cameron ‘fruitcakes and loonies’ view of Mr Farage and his merry band, and in Saturday’s Click on Wales, Europhile David Marquand explains why UKIP and the Brexit tendency do indeed cut very little ice on the Celtic fringe.

Those who would take the UK out of the EU, Marquand says, believe in the ‘myth of insular self-sufficiency’ which has ‘tough, deep roots, watered by poets’ –But there is, he says, a paradox here – “The heart to which they speak is English, not British. North of the border and west of Offa’s Dyke, Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt and Philip the Bastard, Milton’s vision of England as a providential nation, Blake’s “Jerusalem”, Benson’s “Land of Hope and Glory” and Brooke’s corner of a foreign field cut little ice”.

“For what it’s worth, polling evidence suggests that a significant majority of Scots are against Brexit, while the Welsh are evenly divided… Already there are signs that, in response to the English myth of insular self-sufficiency, the Scots are crafting a national myth of Scotland as a proud, centuries-old European nation whose contribution to European civilisation has been out of all proportion to her size. The more clamant English Europhobia becomes, the more powerfully such a myth is likely to resonate north of the border.”

UKIP of course, would argue that its writ does run in Scotland and Wales, and we shall see if that’s true in this year’s European elections.  The party in question, says Tim Ross in the Sunday Telegraph, is busy making sure there are no fruitcakes and loonies on its candidates list.

 The LibDems appear to be as worried as the Tories, judging by the challenge to voters issued by President Tim Farron  in the Independent -  it’s either  us or UKIP, because we’re the only two parties with an unequivocal view on Europe – “If you vote Labour or Tory, no one will know what you meant … In this election … there are only two votes that will register, only two votes that anyone will notice.”

Meanwhile, Peter Kellner ‘s You Gov has been researching UKIP support in depth. Of course, much of it comes from conservatives (with a small and capital c) who read the Daily Mail and Express, but you might be surprised at the rest, and how far down they actually rank Brexit …

RAG, TAG, AND KATIE MORAG…

Comfort for Yes-sayers has come from some unexpected quarters this week.

Michael Settle in Saturday’s Herald reported Willie Walsh’s ‘timely boost’ for the Yes campaign; Walsh  - BA’s chairman – and Ryanair’s boss, Michael O’Leary, both decided they could do business in an independent Scotland with control of air passenger duty , the latter reckoning that the number of passengers using Scotland’s airports could double in ten years.

Michael Leask, also in Saturday’s Herald, found support for Scotland’s membership coming from former Czech president Vaclav Klaus. Klaus, says Leask, has made it clear that he expected an independent Scotland – and also Catalonia – to remain in the EU. This directly contradicts Jose Manuel  Barroso’s comments on the Andrew Marr show.

Joelle Garriaud-Maylam, ‘a senior French senator specialising in foreign policy’ backed Klaus – effectively accusing Spain and Britain of being behind Barroso’s statement - "The threats formulated by Mr Barroso”, she said, “are inappropriate and the result of Spanish and English pressure. London is increasingly worried. They (the threats) are not credible. If Scotland votes for independence, it will stay in the European Union. It would be in England's interest."

Then there’s David Taylor, former chairman of the SFA and chief executive of UEFA maintaining that independence would improve the national identity and make Scotland ‘truly international’. “Scotland has all the attributes”, he says, “to succeed on the international stage. But in many areas of business or sport, our identity remains blurred, which is never a marketing asset. It is time for this to change…”

And finally, Mairi Hedderwick, author of the children’s books about the island life of Katie Morag, told Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs this Sunday that she thought independence would be a good thing culturally

AND IF WE DO VOTE NO…

At least and at last Scottish Labour seems to be getting its act together over devolution plus. [Though it didn’t stop Johann Lamont upsetting Craig and Charlie Reid – aka The Proclaimers- by appropriating, or ‘distorting’ the words of Letter from America in Holyrood last week] According to David Maddox in Scotland on Sunday, the internal arguments that have been raging over what to offer in the event of a No vote, will be resolved when the party’s Devolution Commission reports to the party conference in a few weeks.

At the moment Holyrood has no responsibility for welfare; the commission is expected to recommend taking over housing benefit and the Work Programme - and for Holyrood to be able to vary each rate band of income tax, as well as taking over aspects of employment law and Crown Estates revenue.

Some Labour MPs are still sceptical and very angry, said Maddox in yesterday’s Scotsman.  Although Douglas Alexander has injected a moment of sanity into the debate, their fear seems to be that if Holyrood gets control of income tax, there will be pressure to reduce Scotland’s representation at Westminster and the Barnett formula will change. And turkeys don’t vote for Christmas…

David Torrance in yesterday’s Herald looked at the possible carrots being offered voters after the stick approach employed so far. The problem is that there are three – and they’re all different (though we won’t hear from the Conservatives until May).  Expect a consensus towards a National Convention to form after that, says Torrance, and in the event of a No vote, the nationalists can join in or not, as the case may be.

AND IF YOU STILL HAVEN’T DECIDED…

You’re not alone out there.   Jan Eichhorn of Edinburgh University has done some analysis of the quite large group – 33% at the time – still making up their mind.  His research made for interesting reading in the Conversation of Feb 19. Yesterday Peter Kellner’s  YouGov  poll  for the Scottish Sun stripped out the Don’t Knows and Won’t Votes and came out 60/40 in favour of a No vote. Kellner thinks there isn’t actually much change going on in voting intentions.

Usually, he says, there isn’t much difference between, say a Labour voter and a Conservative voter, so there is room for a swing. But the Yes and No camps have no meeting points, so change is unlikely unless the Yes camp can really persuade people. Coincidentally, the 60/40 split also figured in an Opinium Research Observer poll this Sunday amongst English and Welsh people asked if they wanted Scotland to remain in the UK. It’s all good for the psephologists amongst us…

OTHER INTERESTING STUFF

The biggest divvy of them all…

The demise of the Co-op Bank could be turned into a huge plus for Scotland, said Lesley Riddoch in yesterday’s Scotsman.  The three Scottish farms that the Co-op is selling to make good the losses caused by the incompetent Mr Flowers might be bought by the Scottish government and leased to tenant farmers – or the public could invest and run a genuine co-operative, instead of them being sold to a multinational. “If Co-op farmland is snaffled up by agri-business”, says Riddoch, “the UK will not just have lost the largest enterprise run on co-operative or mutual lines in the UK with millions of members and tens of thousands of activists on local boards. It will also have lost land controlled by a company with better than average ideas about stewardship, and a democratic ownership structure”.

It’s an interesting concept – and very much in tune with the twin zeitgeists of local produce and mutuality.  Could have legs, if anyone’s listening…

1314 And All That…

Bannockburn lives again! Undaunted by the stooshie over ticket sales and competition from Armed Forces Day, on Saturday the new, renamed, Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre opened to the public, three months ahead of the anniversary.  Julie Davidson of the Telegraph Travel section was duly dispatched to Stirling and declared it “a neutrally spectacular triumph for the combined forces of 3D science and historical narrative. “Experience the future to learn about the past” is the battle cry to a world for which statues and storyboards are no longer enough”.

“The technology is astounding and the scholarship sound. My preview visit found me ducking beneath flights of arrows, flinching from cavalry charges and receiving confidences from a digital Scottish spy responding to “gesture recognition”. Great publicity, though whether the neighbours appreciate her description of the site as “a drab suburb of Stirling” is a moot point…

A pony in the lounge - on the best island in the world…

Still travelling, Kevin McKenna in the Observer dwells on the delights of Harris and Lewis, just voted best island in Europe by TripAdvisor’s millions - and in the top five in the world.

Yet, he says, it remains largely undiscovered by Scots, let alone most Britons. “Heading north from Tarbert in Harris on the road to Stornoway, three jagged peaks are upon you and, in an instant, they are enfolding both you and the road in their misty embrace”.

“Around every bend you expect to see a French camera director wearing sunglasses and filming the latest Audi commercial … the beauty of these places is not landscaped or manicured, nor does it provide easy sustenance for those who live here. You won't see many trees…”  Life isn’t easy, the weather can bring life to a standstill and the importance of Harris Tweed can’t be over-estimated. Go visit, before the rest of the world catches up.

Waitrose Gets The Evil Eye…

There’s a salutary lesson this week for those councils who don’t listen. Argyll and Bute council was warned at the planning stage that it might not be a good idea, but gave permission anyway for a Waitrose to be built right opposite Helensburgh’s new Hermitage Academy campus with its 1300 pupils.

According to For Argyll, the council’s now losing £2,000 a week - £80,000 a year – as pupils literally vote on the quality of school dinners with their feet and instead choose to buy their lunchtime goodies from Waitrose. This is putting pressure on cash-strapped families whose children would normally take free school dinners. And Waitrose isn’t guiltless – it has a food-to-go section inside the door, and of course, the free coffee offered to loyalty card holders, that has brought rumblings in other High Streets.  In short, every health-conscious parent’s nightmare…

It’s a light bulb moment…

Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute has found a new way of measuring poverty. Worstall argues that the main obstacle to finding an exact figure for the world’s poor is the lack of available statistics, simply because most of the poorest countries don’t have any means of collecting any, let alone accurate, figures. A paper posted last week on the VOX website by Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin says that light bulbs are the answer, rather than GDP.  It’s interesting, and all very well, say some commentators, until you factor in the cost of the electricity to run the bulb. Which brings us neatly nearer home…

AND FINALLY...

It’s really simples. A meerkat laughing its socks off while having its tummy tickled.  Watch the video, courtesy of yesterday’s Daily Mail. We defy you not to laugh too …