CONGRATULATIONS TO KEZIA

So at long last, what we have been pretty sure of for ages, is official. 

Kezia Dugdale is the new Glasgow branch supervisor of Labour. 

Oh yeah, and lest I forget, Alex Rowley (no, me neither) is her new deputy.

So first and foremost, I wish them well in their new posts. Scotland, like any other country, needs good opposition in parliament. 

The reality is of course that this contest, which should have been so important to Scottish Labour, and to Scotland, has all been an anti-climax. Nothing much will change, unless there is a big change at the top. And the top is in London. 

Both Ken Macintoch and Kezia Dugdale made it clear that they had no wish to run a separate Scottish Labour Party, where decisions, suitable for Scotland's issues and Scotland's views could be made about policy. So there was no opportunity for the membership to vote for that option.

They were happy with the status quo, where policy decisions are made in London. 

I seem to recall that every Scottish "leader" has wanted to have more power over the day to day running of the Glasgow branch, and every Scottish "leader" has been slapped down by Blair, or Brown or Miliband. 

Ironically, the one most sure of his own power, Jim "I don't need anyone's permission" Murphy, was slapped down by more lowly bosses in Ed Balls and Chuka Umunna (and on tv to boot!).

Many policies decided at the Scottish conference (Neil Findlay once said that Scottish conference had voted to get rid of Trident, for example), are simply ignored at the grown up conference in Blackpool or Brighton or wherever...

Kezia threw away the opportunity to stand on a ticket of a separate party, so her election is of little import, because all she will do is front up the party in the Scottish parliament as, in fact, she has been doing since she and Jim were elected just after the referendum.

So anti climax now until the real leader is elected next month in London.

Now that WILL be exciting.

FOTOS ON FRIDAY

Good old BBC. Even when it's forced to tell the truth, it does it's best to hide it.

Most of the Press: Barclays (resident in Sark, State of Guernsey; Rothermere (France) and The Dirty Digger (USA)

Well, that's not nearly as frightening as what they put about.

Well, not what I'd do, if I were a business owner, but I take my hat off to him...

Not quite got Nicola's talent for Gender Balance.
Or anything else.

You can see what Mrs Parker Bowles sees in him, can't you?
It's obviously his money.

Now we know why Dan Snow hates the SNP so much. This is the part of Scotland his father-in-law owns.

Just in case you had forgotten what he looks like now that he's a jobseeker.
By now he's probably a chav with his dirty trackies and baseball cap.

Now the Labour Group can meet in...well, in  whatshisname's bathroom.
They can have their meeting while he's taking a shower.

Makes you wonder...

This could be any of us. It's utterly heartbreaking.
WE JUST SHOULDN'T ALLOW THEM TO DO THIS TO OUR PEOPLE

I'm surprised the European Human Rights convention hasn't told Britain to sling its hook. Still, just think of the tax cuts they can give the super rich with all that money they have saved.

They'll bring back the ducking stool.
If you survive you're not sick, and if you drown you indeed were sick and should have got benefits but, as you're dead ...well, think of the savings.

Iain Duncan Smith, aka, The Grim Reaper.

Just in case you missed it first time round.

See... surely you didn't think all these Nobel Laureates in Economics were wrong?

Welcome to London.

SO, TODAY, A BIG CONTINGENT OF SCOTS MPS ARRIVED IN LONDON, ENGLAND

WHAT A LOVELY WELCOME

WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER (JUST SOME ARE MORE IN IT THAN OTHERS)... AND BREAKING NEWS, JOHANN LAMONT TO STAND DOWN

Can I be in this part of it together?

I'm probably more likely to be the hungry man...

Really can't have people of his class going to prison.
Where would it all end?

Sounds like the governor of the bank of England who said
unemployment in the north was a price worth
paying for stability in the City.

There's a lot of money in poverty and suffering
you know.

Note: English figures. You know the score
England... UK interchangeable.

Probably till 2020...roll up, roll up...

Good how Gideon has increased the standard of living of...
hmmm ...those on more than £1050,000

Please can I be reborn in  Monaco?

It's ok... the disabled can pick up the tab.

Something else when you are dying and that is
how you look back at your country.

Add to that all manner of roads and bridges all over England,
which we all subsidise.

Bless him, he doesn't want a job after politics
in North Wales does he?

With apologies to sheep, wolves and pigs everywhere.

Benefits to be capped at £18,000 for families
except this one.

Too good not to put in. But it is flattering him some.

If only they were this cute we might like them a little more.

Stop Press:

Johann Lamont is to resign as Labour leader in Scotland. 

Apparently with immediate effect.

I'd like to be able to say something constructive and nice about her, but frankly I can't think of anything.

She treated opposition as exactly that and nothing more. Whatever the government proposed; she opposed. Her obvious hatred for Alex Salmond and the SNP pervaded everything she ever said. The leader of the opposition needs to be better than that for the money we pay them!

She performed badly in the chamber; she was appalling on television and she failed completely to make any kind of mark on the mess that she took over as leader.

She appears to be angry with London Labour for failing to understand that the centre of political life in Scotland is now in Edinburgh, and for not giving her power to deal with Scottish matters.

The trouble is it's too late to be saying that now. That should have been dealt with when the problems arose. In theory she was in charge of Labour in Scotland. MSPs, councillors, MWPs and MEPs... She came over as weak and ineffectual, cowed by Ed Miliband, for heaven's sake. She should have put her foot down with London and told them to butt out!

I can say that i respect her for standing down now, and giving her successor 18 months to bed in before the general election in Scotland. There, I've said something nice.

NOT SO SCOTTISH LABOUR FROM BUCKINGHAM GATE, SW1

Labour has been obliged by law to register for participation in the Scottish Independence Referendum.

Although we forever hear about 'Scottish Labour' and the 'Scottish Labour' leader, and how much power and authority she has (at least in theory), and how they are all very Scottish (just equally British, which may suggests that they can only be half Scottish), the truth of the matter (as DougtheDug or Dubbieside have pointed out on many occasions) is that Labour is a London organisation. It doesn't exist.  

They just don't want you to know that so they continue with the myth that they do.

However, when faced with registering for something like this, they are, as everyone is, obliged to do so by the letter of the law.

The result is that 'Scottish' Labour doesn't actually have the word 'Scottish' in its title and its address is in London SW1.

Saor Alba agus Albanach gu bràth agus thig ar latha.

LONDON FIDDLES THE FIGURES ON SCOTLAND, AGAIN.

Stewart Hosie

For heaven’s sake.

We know that the Westminster government will do anything in its power to make Scotland look like it is subsidized by all these nice Englishmen and women.

We also know from numerous examples from the Olympics to Badger Killing that Whitehall and accurate figures are utter strangers the one to the other.

But this is beyond a joke.

The UK Treasury has issued figures that appear to show that Scotland cost the taxpayer more than other parts of the UK.

They showed that Scots got £10,088 of government cash each and Londoners got only £9,613.

But what the Treasury didn't bother to mention was that whilst the London figures were based on the 2011 census, the Scottish figures were based on the 2001 census.

Had they taken the time to ensure that the figures were based upon the same year’s population numbers they might ...no, they would, have found a very different story.

But then that wouldn't have suited Danny Alexander in last week's attack on Scottish Independence.

Stewart Hosie, the SNP shadow chancellor in Westminster called the figures “a dodgy dossier” and went on to say: “This report is a con, no more than an attempt to deceive the Scottish people. Scotland more than pays its way. No amount of fiddled figures in a dodgy dossier will change that.”

Why do the London authorities do this? Seriously no one really believes that they are so incompetent that they can't tell the difference between 2001 and 2011. The information must have been stored quite separately  So it was a fiddle. They cheated. They lied. 

It’s incredibly insulting to intelligent people to expect them to believe this nonsense. The trouble is that the more they lie, the less we will believe anything they say.

If they want to encourage people to stay with the UK they could try to find some truthful advantages in our doing so. That they seem to depend singularly on lies suggests to me that there are no real advantages.

But it does tell me that they must want our wealth very much to go to these extremes.

LET'S NOT WASTE THE ONE CHANCE WE WILL GET

Once again I am indebted to "Arbroath" for pointing me in the direction of a Scotsman article which is worthy of a read. Not often I can say that!

Of course we are all aware of the difference between the standard of living in Norway and that in Scotland, but somehow when it is laid out in print (particularly in a newspaper with an editorial policy that would have us believe that membership of the UK holds the best future for Scotland), it knocks it home.

For me it is a feeling of frustration and anger at the opportunities we have missed to be like our Nordic neighbours, to whom, it seem, I feel more closely related, than I do to London, which I have always felt was pleasantly "abroad". London has much more in common with Paris than it does with Edinburgh... the temperature, kind of natural vegetation, insect life and the lifestyle of the population seems quite alien to one who lives in a cool sub-Nordic climate zone. In contrast Edinburgh and Oslo have much more in common than Edinburgh and London.

We had the same possibilities as Norway, but instead of following the sensible government style of a small and relatively unimportant (in world terms) northern state, which both Scotland and Norway are, the UK used the oil bonanza to deal with massive problems built up because of poor government in the 70s, and to pay for Thatcher's devastation of industry in the 80s. 

The UK simply will not lie down and accept that it is not, and can no longer afford to be, a world power. Its power came from how widespread its empire was (and from the vast monies accrued from the exploitation of that empire's resources). That empire now consists of a few scattered islands, which cost the UK more money than they bring in ...but of course are handy for hiding vast wealth from the taxman, and must be kept at all costs!

Oil wealth has also been squandered on the nuclear race. Since the late forties when Britain was snubbed by America because it did not have its own nuclear programme, vast amounts of our taxes have been diverted to ensure that we obtain weapons of mass destruction, which we cannot ever use (not least because the Americans do not trust us with the firing codes).

Successive prime minsters from Winston Churchill and Harold McMillan to Tony Blair and David Cameron have spent money that might have been saved, or at least spent on our crumbled infrastructure, on this vanity project, because it was more important to them that the UK remain a permanent member of the Security Council, than that old people have heat and kids have schools... or even worse in some ways, that soldiers they send to war on behalf of this quest to remain important, have equipment that works.

One of Cameron's reasons for Scotland stay in the union, as articulated in his Edinburgh speech, was that we "punch above our weight in military terms"... Wow, I'm impressed, but the roads are full of potholes. A recent "No" campaign leaflet pointed out that the UK has well over 200 embassies abroad. Wow again. I'm overwhelmed, but, just what does having an embassy in Côte D'Ivoire do for me? Wouldn't it be better if aged relative (and one day me) didn't have to stay in bed in the winter to stay warm?

The UK's mad privatisations policy meant that, when we finally did set up a state oil company (following the Norwegian example) it lasted a few years in public ownership, was sold off into private ownership, as was Mrs Thatcher's wont, and shortly afterwards bought by BP... Big business wins again. 'Twas ever thus!

Norway now has an oil fund of £330 billion. Scotland on the other hand, has an oil fund of £0.

With 59 MPs at Westminster out of a total of 650, even supposing we could get them to talk for Scotland instead of for their various bosses in London, we wouldn't get anywhere with the notion of an oil fund, despite us being the only oil rich country, or region of a country, in the West that doesn't have one.

Well, it's never too late. In 2014 we can, for the first time, make sure that our politicians speak for us. 

Let's not waste it.

WE TRUST EDINBURGH FOUR TIMES AS MUCH AS WE TRUST LONDON...QED

Four times as many people in Scotland trust the Scottish Government to act in Scotland’s best interests than trust the UK Government to do so, new research shows.  

Trust in the Scottish Government has climbed from 61% to 71% over the past year, according to the latest annual Scottish Social Attitudes survey. 

Trust in the UK Government, on the other hand, is at just 18%. 

To engender trust in one's ability to govern and do the best for the country is surely the quintessence of what governance is about. The team in Edinburgh has clearly achieved this.

So... when we can just persuade Scots how much better life would be if that level of trust could be justified in ALL governmental functions...in matters, for example, of, foreign affairs, taxation, military and social security... we shall have our country back... 

That should be in 2 years' time...give or take...

YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO BE ON THE SAME PLANET AS SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WRAPPING THEMSELVES IN THE OLYMPIC FLAG

Photo courtesy of War on Want

While companies like Nike, Puma and Adidas make millions from the London Olympics, their workers are paid on average 16p per hour, with some getting as little as 9p.


What's more, workers in all three companies have been beaten, verbally abused and some even sexually harassed by their managers.


Some workers had to put in 80 hours a week to earn enough to feed their children. One Nike supplier employee told the charity War on Want that she had to get up at 4 am to cook breakfast and get her child ready for school. It is compulsory to be at the factory gate at 7 am, although work doesn't start till 7.30. She then works 9 hours before she can take her bus home, a journey which takes her an hour.

Adidas is the official outfitter of the London 2012 Olympics, supplying the GB team's uniforms, which were designed by Stella McCartney, and the uniforms for the 70,000 volunteers (Big Society) who will help run the Games. It also sponsors many sports "stars", including David Beckham and Jessica Ennis. It is hoping to sell around £100,000,000 worth of Olympic themed sportswear.


Nike has apparently sponsored 25 national teams including the high profile ones like Germany, China and the USA.


These companies are making vast amounts from the Olympics while abusing the workers who actually produce the merchandise.


I wonder what the original Olympians would make of the foul and disgusting business practices that the Games have now attracted.
*****


Despite what some of the commentators here would like to think, everyone that I spoke to in Paris about the Games is delighted that the disruption, dirty, noise and unpleasantness that is the Olympics has gone to London and not to Paris. 

WHAT DOES 2012 MEAN FOR SCOTLAND? ...BRING IT ON AND LET'S SEE

It's December 31: a time to reflect on the year past.


For Scotland it has been momentous. There was a general election which produced an SNP majority government, though the system was designed specifically to avoid any majority government, much less an SNP one. 


So far, with the exception of the Sectarian legislation, all has been well and support for the government has increased rather than diminished in the months since May.

John Swinney has worked miracles with ever decreasing financial settlements over the years  first from Labour and now the Liberal Tory coalition and has continued his magic touch, and Scotland's pensioners, sick, poor and those looking for homes, enjoy much that England's equivalents do not.


Of course, despite having made it clear before the election that the referendum would be in the second half of the 5 year-parliament, the opposition parties seem to find little else to question the government about. And talking about opposition parties, all but the Greens have had a change of leader since May. 

First the Liberals, having swapped their 16 seats for 5, swapped Tavish Scott for Willie Rennie, a bad deal in my estimation. Tavish, despite his intense dislike of the SNP, had at least heard of constructive opposition and was prepared to apply it for the benefit of his country. Willie, maybe having failed to realise that his party had lost 2/3 of its seats because of its participation in Westminster with David Cameron and Tavish's inability before the election to distance himself from that, threw away his opportunity to start a fightback and backed Cleggameron's policies from day one. Duh!

Then the Tories swapped the estimable Annabel Goldie, a woman much more popular than her party, for Ruth Davidson, who had only just been elected to her seat a few months before. In doing so they threw away the opportunity to move forward as a new distinctly Scottish right of centre party under Murdo Fraser, and lost a good deal of support, including from our own resident Tory (or ex-Tory), Dean from New Right.


Finally Labour ditched the inestimable Iain 'don't sleep in the subway' Gray, a dreary soul who never seemed to make the right decision and whined his way through FMQs every week before being left battered and bruised. Iain had presided over Labour's most humiliating defeat ever in Scotland, and it was clear to everyone that a drastic change  of direction was needed, so Labour elected the woman who had been second in charge under the catastrophe, Johann Lamont. Smart thinking.

Each one of the parties has failed to see that there is a new politics in Scotland. Maybe we are on the road to independence; maybe devo max, or independence light, but the status quo is not an option, and sticking to it, on orders from their London bosses, may minimise the damage done to the government (which is of course all about change), but it's not what is best for Scotland.  


While a new separate identity is what people seem to want, Willie Rennie walks around in Clegg's shadow and Ruth is David's woman all the way. After all, David's own strategist man came to Scotland to give her campaign advice.


Whilst it is true that Mrs Lamont in now supposedly leader of everything she surveys in Scotland: (in order of importance, or should that be 'impotence') MSPs, MPs, MEPs, Councillors, the tea fund? the Lords, it's not quite clear what that means. 


Do Labour's English/Scottish stars, Spud and Wee Doogie, at Defence and Foreign Affairs respectively, report to her? Would they continue to do so were Labour in government? Does Vinegar Maggie report to her? Who's boss of whom? 

I suspect that the changes in Labour's constitution are cosmetic only and that orders will inevitably continue to come from London. I don't see Johann as a rebel. But I wonder how long it will be before someone blows a hole in the pretence. That will be interesting.


So far there has been an air of unfinished business about parliament. Now the new leaders are all in place, let's hope that somehow, together we can take Scotland forward to survive what everyone predicts will be battering year all over Europe.