The Scottish Labour Leader–a new title needed? Gauleiter?

The Labour Party don’t have a Scottish leader – what they have is the Leader of the Labour group at Holyrood, whose only function has been to keep his MSPs on message and in line, on behalf of his London master, Ed Miliband, and the UK Labour Party.

But now Labour wants a Scottish Leader – a kind of gauleiter. (I will use a more apt and charitable name for the regional leader of a national party if there is one – suggestions welcome from Labour supporters.) Why do they want this? Because they lost the last two Scottish Parliamentary elections. 2007 could be dismissed as an aberration: 2011 was a rout.

It has been an ill wind, one that has blown little good for Labour, although it has provided a role - and presumably a nice little earner - for John McTernan, who has produced a seemingly endless series of articles telling Labour how they got it wrong and what they must do to put things right. More of the same today from John in The Scotsman. He looks south for inspiration, i.e. Westminster and a Labour MP.

Scottish Scots have been no bloody good – the ‘high-road-to-England’ version are what is needed. Of course, John McTernan has never submitted himself to the democratic process – to my knowledge - by running for Parliament. Instead he has been special adviser to just about everybody in the Labour Party. He is of that strange breed, a political strategist for a party whose political strategy has failed utterly in the UK and in Scotland. He blogs for The Daily Telegraph, exactly the right newspaper for a member of the Tory Lite Party, once known as the Labour Party.

John McTernan sniffs the wind carefully, and yesterday a breeze was blowing from Tom Harris MP, who on radio and on Newsnight Scotland threw his hat – well, sort of sneaked his hat – into the leadership ring, such as it is. I know all I need to know about Tom Harris, MP. He supported Blair, strongly supported the Iraq War, supports Trident – and, of course, he supports the UK.

Quote from today’s Herald: “I do not believe there is any great contradiction in looking after Scotland’s interests and the UK’s interests.” Tom Harris.

Tom Harris has already attracted the support of Louise Mensch, a Tory MP, and David Torrance, the Tory blogger and commentator and former Parliamentary Aide to the Tory Shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell at Westminster. Louise Mensch was positively gushing in her delight at the prospect of Tom Harris’s candidacy. By their friends shall ye know them, as they say …

A seasoned politician, Tom Harris confessed to Gordon Brewer last night on Newsnight Scotland that he knew nothing of the mechanics  of electing a Scottish Labour Leader. Well, the Westminster village does that to a Scot – the state of his native land becomes a faint rumbling way up North – not to be taken seriously unless career is threatened or an opportunity presents itself. Tom, a man steeped in journalism, media and PR, scents both possibilities.

So Scottish Labour may have yet another Iraq apologist, Trident/WMD enthusiast and staunch Unionist as gauleiter. Well, they are all in the job specification. But we could have done worse – it could have been Jim Murphy …

The Scottish Independence Referendum–core principles and objectives–a downloadable document

After my previous blog, it occurred to me that others might share and endorse my two core principles and three core objectives for the referendum and Scotland’s independence.

I have therefore made them available as a downloadable document for others to consider, and sign and submit to whomsoever they feel appropriate, e.g. MP, MSP or First Minister.

 

Here is the link - The Referendum on Scotland's Independence - core principles and objectives

 

The  text and format of the document is as follows -

 

THE REFERENDUM ON SCOTLAND'S INDEPENDENCE

I am eligible to vote in a referendum on Scotland's independence, and I subscribe to the following two core principles and three core objectives -

Independence is the fact or process of independence – it is the state of not being dependent, or the process of ending a state of dependency.

Independence is the natural state of free individuals and free peoples

I want a nuclear-free Scotland – free of nuclear weapons and bases

I want a Scotland with full fiscal and tax raising powers

I want a Scotland with full control of its foreign policy, defence capability and the decision to commit its defence forces

I am prepared to trust the elected government of Scotland and the team it selects to negotiate all matters relating to these principles and objectives. I expect them to consult with the Scottish people on detailed measures only to the degree that it does not prematurely show their negotiating hand or constrain the necessary flexibility that all negotiators must have.

I do not require a second referendum to ratify the agreement reached on the detailed terms of the independence agreement, providing none of the deal breakers above are compromised.

I reject totally the rights of any other country or nation to vote in that referendum, or to claim a right of veto over it, or its results in any shape or form.

I will abide by the democratic decision of that referendum, providing it is conducted legally and properly in accordance with principles of Scots law, UK law where relevant under the Act of Union, and the principles of international and European law.

Signed ____________________________________

Date ____________________________

NAME (block letters) ________________________

ADDRESS ___________________________________

____________________________________

____________________________________

POST CODE ___________________

Hackergate - Delegation and abdication

Yesterday’s select committee enquiries revealed rather more than most media commentators seemed to think, and that perhaps says a lot about the nature of press and media comment in the UK today.

There were many fulsome tributes paid to the reputation and integrity of those on the receiving end of the interrogation, especially the senior police officers, tributes that came mainly from themselves. I use the word fulsome in its correct meaning as excessive, cloying or insincere, not in the sense used by our semi-literate journalists and media pundits. I must invoke Shakespeare yet again: Hamlet asks his mother the Queen how she likes the play, to which Gertrude replies “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”, using protest in the contemporary sense of affirm or profess.

My experience of true integrity in my life is that no man or woman of integrity ever asserts their own integrity - they demonstrate it by their actions and leave it to others to judge it.

The other fascinating aspect of the two enquiries was the way in which those being interrogated chose to interpret their managerial roles, especially in relation to decision-making, delegation and the acceptance of assurances. Without exception, they appeared to adopt instinctively -and perhaps unwittingly - what I call analogously, and with no suggestion whatsoever of criminality, some of the Mafia Godfather principles of management.

The Seven Godfather Principles of management are designed as a firewall against accountability or responsibility for personal actions to an external authority. They are not, of course, the actual operating practices or principles of Mafia Dons and capi de regime - they are designed for external perception and consumption only. They are -

THE 7 PRINCIPLES

1. I believe implicitly everything I am told by my subordinates and professional advisers, and never feel any requirement to check, cross check or verify the veracity of what I am told.

2. I delegate responsibility absolutely and completely, and any failure by the person to whom I delegate is entirely down to them, not to me.

3. I never monitor employee performance or compliance with policy or procedural directives, but I punish failure instantly when it is pointed out to me by third parties, or events leave me no choice but to recognise it. I am never, ever reluctant to blame others for failure.

4. I ensure, by whatever means possible, that I am never told anything that in any way could call my decision-making into question at a later date, or make me accountable or responsible for the actions of a subordinate.

5. When receiving advice to aid my decision-making, I require a single recommended course of action for me to take, even if the adviser has identified a range of options. I dislike intensely having to choose between a range of options, because such a choice would make me responsible, instead of the adviser.

6. I always recognise as mine decisions that produce successful outcomes. I never recognise as mine decisions that produce unsuccessful outcomes - they were, effectively, the decisions of my advisers, which I accepted because I had no choice but to do so, because I trusted the adviser absolutely and uncritically.

7. My memory is strangely and bafflingly selective - I have total recall, usually backed up by detailed documentation and contemporaneous notes, of anything that supports my decisions and my integrity, but I am frequently unable to recall matters that could call my decisions or integrity into question, I never take contemporaneous notes on such matters, and documents relating to them unaccountably disappear.

-------

Since none of those appearing before the committee were criminals, and indeed, were people of the highest probity, reputation and integrity - we have their unequivocal word for it - we must accept that the apparent adoption of some of the above principles - inferred from their answers to questions - actually  did reflect their true management behaviour and operating principles, or at least that of some of them.

But this leads me, at least, to the inevitable conclusion that, if they actually did operate in this way, they would have be grossly incompetent and unfit for the high offices they occupy, since the Godfather Principles set out above are a denial of all modern management standards of competence and accountability.

I am therefore faced with the paradox that, if I am to retain faith on the police and in the Press, neither explanation satisfies me.

Even more worrying is that David Cameron and his government appears to either want us to believe that they are operating under such principles, or worse still, actually are …

Since most journalists and media commentators are direct professional contributors, and with few exceptions, have never managed large-scale operations, we can expect little insight from them on such arcane matters - as they used to say in the auld Glesca, “they couldnae run a menage …”

I await today’s Parliamentary debate with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.

News of the World: a note of distinct unease among the unionists - and others…

I never went to university, having been forced to leave school at fifteen to earn a living to support myself and my widowed mother. The Glasgow of 1950 was an unforgiving place to someone of my class and economic circumstances. But over the years, especially during my management consultancy years, I have had contact with universities, enough to realise that the groves of Academe are as rife with feuds and petty politicking as industry and commerce, and that such behaviour often rages unabated, unchecked as it is by any accountability to shareholders, give or take the odd undergraduate riot.

So I took some amusement from reading in today’s Scotsman of the behaviour of sundry professors at the University of Abertay, and the clear evidence that fancy dress doesn’t protect one’s back from being bitten.

But what caught my attention was a little piece tucked away up in the corner of page 7, at the end of a four-page coverage of the phone hacking affair. It is by a sociology lecturer at Abertay University, one Stuart Waiton, and it is entitled Analysis: NotW closure an act of liberal intolerance.

I wouldn’t exactly describe it as an analysis, more a little anti-liberal rant. Stuart is fond of inverted commas, which doubtless in the flesh he would offer as raised eyebrows while twiddling two raised finger as enclosing quotes to what he says. Paraphrased, his piece comes down to saying that the News of the World closure is a bad thing, brought about by “right thinking” people, the “liberal” elite - a “tolerant” group, driven by snobbery and fear of the “mob”. He dismisses the idea that the “right” is all powerful in our “neo-liberal” world as a myth. The quotes are all from Stuart, who clearly deeply distrusts “right thinking” people, “liberals” and their “tolerant” pretensions.

Tell it as you see it, Stuart. The only obvious omissions from your piece are references to the silent majority and an attack on The Guardian. It’s safe to assume that Stuart and I would not choose each other as drinking companions. Sociology must be an interesting discipline at Abertay, in among the coup plots, the spying, the allegations of the incompetence of the university court, the grievance letters, the resignations - a rewarding research laboratory right on a sociologist’s doorstep, with the conflict doubtless being exacerbated and its extent exaggerated by tolerant, right-thinking liberals and the mob.

For the record, Stuart: Rupert Murdoch took the decision to close the NotW, not tolerant, right-thinking liberals or the mob.

However, this strange little outburst, and a piece on essentially the same theme on page 29 by Allan Massie - who could not easily be mistaken for a liberal - gave me cause for wider consideration about just what is happening here …

The phone hacking crisis has been building for some years, but the accelerated pace of events over the last week, the enormity of the revelations, and the magnitude of the impact on the hitherto seemingly impregnable News International monolith have been welcome to many - including me - but deeply threatening to some.

Professional journalists have been uneasy over the closure of The News of the World, and are worried about just what form regulation of the press might take. These fears are entirely understandable, and in some respects, well-founded. When journalists of the reputation and calibre of Harry Reid and Tim Luckhurst call for a period of sober reflection before rushing into regulation of the press - as they did last night on Newsnight Scotland - we must listen and take account of their views.

But the collapse of the News of the World, the sudden ebbing away of power from the Murdoch organisation, the threat to the BSkyB takeover, the serious questions over the behaviour of the Metropolitan police, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron towards News International are of deep concern to other groups, with very different motives, sharing very different fears about the pattern of recent events and the forces that precipitated them.

The Guardian newspaper played the central role. This venerable news organ, once The Manchester Guardian, with a formidable reputation beyond its regional origins, was a formative influence on my political thinking throughout my youth and during my middle life. It is of course the bête noire of the right, infested as it is by tolerant, right-thinking liberals.

Throughout my career in business, espousing liberal - with a small l -values and ideals was treated with deep distrust by my main employers, and reading the Guardian newspaper was regarded as clear evidence of pinko-lefty tendencies and general unsoundness. One employer objected to my bringing it into the senior management/directors dining room, the existence of which, in itself, was evidence of their non-liberal values!

The forces in our society that were hostile to liberal values had initially seemed to me to be the forces of the right in politics, e.g. the Tories, and amoral big business, the military/industrial complex, and fundamentalist religious groups. However, this distinction - which had been blurring for decades - became irrelevant from Tony Blair onwards, as the Labour Party effectively became - and remain - the Tories Mark II.  Since the Liberal Democrats were becoming increasingly illiberal and undemocratic, especially in Scotland, it seemed at one point as though the game was lost to the forces of the right, and liberal values were in total retreat. The only gleam of hope for me was the SNP win in 2007.

In the absence of any effective opposition to the juggernaut of right-wing values and the increasing dominance of war, the military/industrial complex and the nuclear deterrent as the operating principles of the United Kingdom, those of a liberal persuasion in Scotland had the Scottish National Party, whereas the the people of England were left with no real political choice except the feeble, vacillating Liberal Democrats, who experienced a dramatic but short-lived revival of their electoral fortune before the 2010 general election, but then promptly betrayed their mandate utterly in coalition.

In short, the forces of reaction, anti-liberalism, anti-democratic values, anti-Europeanism, power and privilege were incarnate in the UK, in its three main political parties  - Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats - and the ever-present, ever-powerful unelected British Establishment.

The only possible response of the people to this denial of their democratic rights and freedoms was to operate outside of the perverted democratic process, through alternative media, friendly mainstream media and the power of social networking. Since the UK is not yet a totalitarian dictatorship, it has been possible to do this effectively without the use of violence, although inevitably some mass demonstrations had egregious episodes of violence by a tiny and unrepresentative minority. This has been in marked contrast to the so-called Arab Spring - a spontaneous wave of people power, with violence as its only route, provoking even more violent responses, with as yet unresolved and unpredictable outcomes.

The Scottish Parliamentary elections exploded into the complacent UK Establishment  consciousness in May of this year, delivering an unequivocal mandate to the Scottish National Party, and the ability to call a referendum on Scottish independence.

In the space of 24 hours, the possibility of the break-up of the UK, the removal of the nuclear bases from Scottish waters and Scottish soil, the removal of Scottish armed forces from Westminster control, the removal of Scottish oil revenues, Scottish tax revenues, Scottish whisky duty revenues - all of these things became a frightening reality for the UK Establishment and Westminster.

The present outbreak of consensus between the three UK parties, their enthusiastic but belated condemnation of Murdoch, News Corporation, News International, Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks, the police and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, is an attempt to mask their complicity in what had gone before. This entire web of corruption and influence was and is the UK in all its sordid operating reality - a conspiracy of the rich and powerful - and those politicians who aspire to be both - to exploit the ordinary working people of this kingdom in its four component parts.

It was forced upon them, as was the exposure of the expenses scandal, of the cash for influence scandal, of the revelations of egregious incompetence of the Ministry of Defence, of the sordid machinations of the UK’s complicity in illegal and/or misconceived wars by the actions of those organs of the Press and media that remain beyond their influence and control - and most of all by the people, in their campaigns, in their use of the new media, and in their overwhelming disgust for what is being done to them in  the name of democracy.

And the Scottish manifestation of this deep unease with the true voice of the people, and their aspirations for a real democratic state has been to give a powerful mandate to a party they believe in. This mandate cannot be attacked directly by Scottish unionists, but they have targeted it obliquely by every avenue open to them, questioning the reasons that led them to decisively reject the unionist parties, trying to pretend that the electorate were fools and had been manipulated, that the turnout and the proportion of the vote was not a real mandate - the list of ‘charges’ is endless.

But in the phone hacking scandal, the unionists have taken to attacking the people themselves as deluded, complicit, as bringing it upon themselves.

Allan Massie, Defender of the Union par excellence, closes his otherwise bland piece - which contained no new insights, and says little that has not already been said - with an extraordinary final paragraph.

“Nobody owns the moral high ground in the present kerfuffle - and this includes the public with its appetite for salacious gossip. Of one thing we may be sure. If the Press is curbed, the appetite for such gossip and slanderous comment will not disappear. Already you can find more - and nastier examples of it on the so-called social media. The public indignation now being expressed is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the glass.” 

In other words, it’s all the fault of the people - they are not driven by revulsion at the hacking of the phones of murder victims and their families, of the families of servicemen and woman killed in the UK’s foreign wars, nor at the manifest corruption of the Metropolitan Police Force, nor of those at the heart of government. The people are themselves to blame for bringing all this upon themselves and will do so again - their moral outrage is hypocritical.

I have this to say to Allan Massie - in choosing between the culpability of those who create, feed and profit by depraved appetites and those who suffer from them, the line of argument that chooses the victim is despicable: we have heard it articulated over alcohol abuse, over rape, over drug addiction, etc. and it is usually accompanied by a wish to avoid any form of legislation or practical action that would ameliorate the abuse, substituting instead moral posturing and an attack on the victim rather than the perpetrator.

Any commentator who values his or her reputation for objective comment, as I am sure he does, should consider vary carefully using any argument that contains a hint of this. In his unionist campaign to prevent Scots from achieving their nation’s freedom from and independence of the UK, Allan Massie should be alive to these dangers of unwitting association with the more extreme examples of this blame-the-people mode.

He says that nobody owns the moral high ground. I agree with him on that at least.

But some of us are on higher moral ground than that occupied by the present London-based UK political parties and by the British Establishment, and that higher ground is increasingly occupied by the people, especially the people of Scotland.

I invite him to join us on it - it will be worth the climb …

POSTSCRIPT: As of this afternoon, News Corp has withdrawn its bid for BSkyB.

The Public Sector strikes - a re-run of the General Strike? Lessons that won’t be learned …

I said all of this over a year ago, in March and April 2010, before the lunatic ConLib Coalition got their hands on the levers of power and did more to alienate the trades unions than Maggie Thatcher did in a similar time frame. At least Maggie knew what she was about - this lot don’t, anymore than the feeble and contradictory Labour Opposition does.

In the unlikely event that anyone in this benighted UK government reads this, they will completely ignore it. I offer it to those who want to take time to understand what lies before us, in the hope that Scotland can avoid the worst of it, and demonstrate the common sense - and humanity - that is now possible from our government since the SNP decisive win on May 5th 2011.

EMPLOYEE RELATIONS, GOVERNMENT, EMPLOYERS AND UNIONS

QUOTE

“One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the efforts of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.

“Combination on the one side is patent and powerful. Combination on the other is the necessary and desirable counterpart, if the battle is to be carried on in a fair and equal way.

“The fact that the immediate object of the act by which the benefit to the unionised workers is to be gained is to injure the employer does not necessarily make it unlawful, any more than when a great house lowers the price of goods for the purpose and with the effect of driving a smaller antagonist from the business."

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes – 1896

A dissenting judgement in the case of Vegelahn versus Guntner, an 1896 labour law decision from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

Although it took several years to make its full impact, this dissenting judgement was a seminal one in determining the course of American labour relations and collective bargaining in the 20th century, and its influence was felt throughout the industrialised world.

Its central argument carries the same force today, as we approach a series of public sector strikes that may involve the largest number of workers since the General Strike, and may only be the start of something even bigger.

Americans are much more realistic about labour relations, sometimes brutally so, but after a century or more, attitudes in Britain remain naive and ill-informed, and the reaction of government and media commentators to strikes is remarkably consistent, and raises the question – Why are the unions always the bad guys?

Why won't Government and companies learn these lessons?
Keep your lip zipped in public comment through the media when there is a chance of averting the dispute. A strike threat is a negotiating tactic - until the workers actually hit the street. It is a way to stiffen a negotiating position against an otherwise all-powerful management negotiating team.

Some hard facts -

ONE

Employers, both private sector and Government, don’t recognise trades unions unless they are compelled to do so – by law, by union muscle, or in very rare instances, because they are driven by some other ethical or strategic judgement.

Recognising a trade union for any purpose, from representing employees for grievance and disciplinary purposes up to full-scale recognition for collective bargaining on terms and conditions, implies a restriction of the employer’s freedom to act, and this is not a freedom that any employer should surrender lightly.

Unions, especially craft unions, have very ancient roots in the medieval guilds, however, the main impetus to the organisation of labour in trades unions came from the industrial revolution.

The entire history of trade unionism has been a struggle to secure representation rights against the hostility of employers to granting such rights, and that struggle has often been a violent one, especially in the United States of America in the 19th and early 20th century, notably in the automotive industry and mining industries. Lest anyone in the 21st century think that violence was always initiated by the trades unions, the most extreme examples of violence, often lethal violence, have come from the employers. (Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie had particularly bloody records in attempts to suppress trades unions.)

The law has played a strange part in this, tending to see-saw between granting rights then reversing the judgement in a later court. But the overall direction in the Western world has been towards granting legal right to trades unions and their members to organise, to represent, to bargain, and vitally, to withdraw their labour by striking. The greatest legal restrictions on trades unions were imposed in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher, and their two greatest defeats were in the newspaper industry by Rupert Murdoch and the mining industry by Margaret Thatcher

TWO

Once an employer or government department has granted full representation and collective bargaining right to a trade union it becomes very difficult to end that relationship - to de-unionise – without major conflict and disruption.

There have been relatively few examples in Britain of full frontal de-unionisation – union busting, to give it its pejorative term – but probably quite a few where union recognition has withered on the vine because it wasn’t strongly rooted in the first place.

Why would an employer want to end the relationship with a trade union?

The answer almost always relates to a pressing need to achieve changed working practices and reduce the paybill in times of recession or in the face of severe competition. Quite simply, the management’s right to manage the business and react to market conditions is being unacceptably constrained by their inability to negotiate change with employee representatives.

This was Maggie’s dilemma – to achieve her change objectives for British society, employers had to be able to successfully negotiate change with their workers. If they couldn’t, because of what they defined as union intransigence, then government would stiffen their backbones by legislation and by example, e.g. in the coal industry, and if the unions went on strike except after following due process, they could be sued.

From the union perspective, the failure to negotiate change lay with the employers and the negotiating stance they adopted. Unions are there to protect the jobs and the terms and conditions of their members, and their instinct is to resist any change that threatens these things, but unions can and do accept the need for change and have negotiated change – quite radical change – when they are convinced of the rationale for that change and have recognised that the alternatives to it are even more unacceptable - for example, failure and closure of the business.

THREE

When there is a failure to negotiate a vital change agenda with a trade union, the roots of that failure can usually be traced to the nature of the management/union relationship over many years, and serious deficiencies in the company’s employee relations practices.

I have worked with a very wide range of U.K. and international companies and organisations over the years, both as a employee relations specialist and as a consultant.

Most of those organisations have successfully negotiated the change agendas demanded by the exigencies of the business, the marketplace and technological change, and the successful ones, with negligible exceptions, always displayed certain positive behaviours in their relationship with their employees and their representatives. The ones that failed tended to consistently display certain negative behaviours.

1. In successful companies, directors, managers and supervisors at all levels accepted the legitimacy of the trade union’s role and functions and respected them, not just because they were required to comply with the law, but because they had freely entered into an agreement with the union, and were bound to honour that agreement.

2. Successful companies, whilst accepting the representational and negotiating role of trade union representatives, both internal (e.g. shop stewards) and external (full-time officers of the union), insisted on management’s direct relationship with employees and their absolute right to communicate with them directly. The managers did not channel vital communications through union representatives to employees, e.g. “Tell your members this …” but “We will be telling our employees and your members this …”

For example, the best companies - in terms of employee relations communications – would give trade union representatives an advance briefing on important relevant matters, and would then brief employees in groups with the union representatives present, would answer questions, then would turn the meeting over to the trade union representative and leave to permit them to address their members in private.

Under no circumstances would the company knowingly permit or offer facilities to the the union that resulted in employees hearing an important management message from their union representative before they had heard it from a company representative.

This principle – of management’s absolute right to communicate directly with their employees – was constantly emphasised and practised, and the company would sustain a strike rather than breach it. It rested upon the legal fact that the contractual relationship existed between the company and each individual employee, and the recognition that the union was not the agent of the employee in that contract but their spokesperson. The nature of collective bargaining often creates strange apparent anomalies in relation to this principle, but unless there is absolute clarity on it it, trouble inevitable follows.

In my experience, companies who hit major difficulties in negotiating change agendas had been breaching this principle for years, effectively abdicating their right to communicate directly with their employees, and were now reaping the whirlwind.

The ironic fact of the matter also tended to be that the companies that clearly were unhappy with unions and did not, in their heart of hearts, accept their legitimacy were also the companies that had abdicated their right to communicate with their own workers.

3. Successful companies never cried wolf about change agendas – they told their employees the truth at all times. The companies that had failed to communicate the seriousness and critical nature of the current economic pressures driving the urgent need for change had been crying wolf for years, in situations that were not critical, simply as a negotiating tactic, one that was profoundly misconceived . Consequently, they were not believed when the real threat came along.

4. Successful companies had a strong human resource function, represented at board level, and understood and fully accepted the role of HR. The companies that failed (in my experience) were invariably deeply ambivalent about their human resource functions, failed to understand their role and often impeded their ability to discharge it. They also tended to blame the human resource function when things went wrong. In the worst cases, managers at all levels regarded the HR function with either resentment or contempt. Managers in unsuccessful companies were strong on blaming behaviour and weak at accepting responsibility for their policies and their actions.

5. Successful companies, while always willing to offer negotiating concessions to reach agreement, never compromised core principles, and were willing to sustain strikes to protect them. Unsuccessful companies had a long track record of caving in to pressure expediently, usually after a failure to compromise when valid concessions were possible.

6. Successful companies understood the nature of trade union democracy, hierarchy and communications procedures. Unsuccessful companies drew false parallels with their own management hierarchical, non-democratic structures, and could never understand that a trade union is an inverted pyramid, with all the bosses at the top – its members – and their subordinates – the shop stewards and full-time officers at the bottom.

THE NATURE OF THE RELATIONSHIP

It is vital that the directors and managers of a company or governmental organisation clearly understand the nature of their relationship with the trade union and its representatives. Most  would say that of course they do, but scratch the surface, and crucial misconceptions become evident in many companies.

A fully recognised trade union, that is to say, one recognised for grievance representation and collective bargaining on terms and conditions is not the agent of the employee at contract – each employee of an organisation has an individual contract with the employer, and the union representatives, in negotiating on behalf of employees who are also union members simply reflects the collective wishes of those employees.

An agreement on terms and conditions with union representatives therefore must be expressed in each individual contract of employment and accepted or rejected by each employee.

In practice, employees who are union members express their acceptance or rejection of the offer in mass meetings or by union ballot, and the minority, for or against, usually bows to the will of the majority as expressed by the vote.

(Complex legal situation can arise from this contractual relationship in collective bargaining situations - I have been part of them on several occasions – but it is beyond the scope of this blog to examine them in detail.)

The union is not a contractor for the supply of labour to the company, and therefore should have no role in the recruitment, selection, assignment of duties, overtime etc. of employees. Difficulties nonetheless can arise in all of these areas with unions, and in the specification and qualifications of candidates for posts within the company.

The above is a general statement of good practice, but historically, in the United States of America, the UK and elsewhere, unions have had - and probably still have - a voice in, and sometimes control of these areas.

(For example, in many industries in the USA, all labour was recruited through the Union Hall, i.e. the union HQ. This was true of parts of the rubber industry in Akron, Ohio, to my personal knowledge, up to the 1970s and perhaps beyond.)

In the newspaper and printing industry in the UK, the Fathers of the Chapels (shop stewards of the print union branches) controlled recruitment, entry qualifications, allocation of overtime and many other aspects that should properly be management’s prerogative until the great watershed of Wapping and their crushing defeat by Rupert Murdoch.

A central concept in good management is the company’s right to manage, that is to decide what is in the best interests of the company, its customers and its shareholders, indeed, it is better expressed as a duty to manage.

But that right is qualified by realities in every aspect of a company’s operations – the law limits it, it is limited by the nature of its supply chains, its distribution networks, by its customers, by its shareholders, by public opinion to some degree, and by the relationship it has entered into with a trade union or trades unions. The company cannot do as it pleases, although it must seek the maximum freedom of decision making within the constraints imposed.

For example, the management of a company must change working practices when required to by the business environment or the need to innovate, and such changes can change the duties of existing employees and may result in a need for fewer employees, i.e. redundancy. But the company is bound by the law of contract to either negotiate these changes with employees, or, if it unilaterally applies them, to face potential problems under employment law with individuals or groups.

That situation applies whether the company has a recognised a trade union or not, and a union’s role in these situations is to represent the employees, individually and collectively in matters relating to their contracts of employment, which will include elements that were collectively negotiated and agreed by the union.

Unions were formed principally to deal with inequality in that contractual relationship between powerful, monolithic, essentially amoral employers and vulnerable individual employees. Before the existence of trades unions, employers in many cases – perhaps most - rode roughshod over the employees contractual and legal rights – which were initially very limited. We return to Oliver Wendell Holmes and his seminal judgement that I quoted in Part One and Part Two of this blog topic.

THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Unions and employers in the public sector negotiate in a significantly different context to those in the private sector, and the dynamics of their bargaining and the implications of withdrawal of labour by striking reflect this difference. It is beyond the scope of this blog to examine that in detail, although certain aspects of it will be covered later. Suffice it to say that the nature of the work and the services of public sector workers makes a breakdown in relationships damaging to society in a fundamental way, and strikes in the public sector in vital services tend to impact on the widest range of the general public.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AGREEMENT CANNOT BE REACHED?

Changes in working practices for existing employees fall broadly into two types – those that are expressly or implicitly covered by the existing contract of employment and those that clearly involve a change to the contract.

(It should be noted that what constitutes the contract of employment is not always clear, and it may have to be determined by a legal judgement. All employees are required by law to have a written statement of their main terms of employment after a specified period, but in itself, this is not the contract of employment, and many other aspects of employment may be relevant to the contract.)

If, for example, a contract of employment explicitly contains a requirement for employees to be mobile in terms of their normal place of work, a change to the normal place of work would be required of an employee, and refusal to accept the move would be a breach of contract by the employee.

On the other hand, if no mobility or flexibility on the place of work was in the contract, a unilateral change to the place of work by the employer would constitute the offer of a new contract of employment, and the employee would be free to reject the offer. What follows from such a rejection can be complex, and issues surrounding alternatives, compensation, redundancy, selection for redundancy etc. are raised by the change.

What is clear is that the employer has the right to make such a change, and if other avenues of consultation and negotiation fail, to terminate to employee and hire someone else.

Most conflicts over change agendas by companies arise over such situations, whether they relate to place of work, duties performed, pay and other remuneration elements, qualifications, and to the deadlines for implementation of the changes. Such conflicts always have a legal dimension – the contractual dimension – but they play out the drama as a power confrontation if trades unions are involved.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TALK HAS FAILED?

A hard-nosed management might well approach change by simply announcing it, then implementing it. They might well get away with this in a non-unionised company, or one where union organisation is weak. Leaving aside the obvious impact on human relations and morale in the company, not to mention cooperation with the changes, the main risk of such an approach is of a legal challenge from one or more employees.

But for the majority of employers, this would be a last resort, after many other communications approaches and conflict resolution methods had been exhausted.

What are these methods?

The first approach by the management of a company is briefing the employees and their representatives of the nature of the planned changes and the timescale for implementation.

Briefing would usually be accompanied by a question and answer session to provide clarity on the detail of the changes. If in addition the reaction of the employees and their representatives is also sought, which is good practice, then this is described as consultation – eliciting views on the acceptability of the changes and listening to alternatives presented by the workforce and their representatives.

(Requirements are placed on companies by employment law in relation to change agendas, and these must complied with.)

If management accept the alternatives  presented by the employees and their representatives, then agreement can usually be speedily reached. (Alternatives can range from outright rejection of any change to modifications to the changes and the implementation timescale, and compensation issues for acceptance of change.)

If management reject some or all of the alternatives presented, then their options are to either implement unilaterally or negotiate. In a unionised company, negotiation may be required by previous agreements, and again there may be legal implications.

So we see the potential sequence of the process -

Brief

Consult

Implement or negotiate

Negotiate

NEGOTIATION AND DEADLOCK

All negotiation takes place against the possibility of failure to reach agreement. In most commercial negotiation – buying and selling of goods and services – failure to reach agreement results in abandonment of the negotiation by both parties – the walk-away – and the search for a new agreement with different participants. The company seeks another supplier, the salesperson seeks another customer.

Employer/employee negotiations take place in a different context, one that I call the locked relationship, where the parties to the negotiation cannot easily seek other partners. In theory, the employer can terminate the contracts of the entire workforce and re-hire, and each employee can resign and seek a new employer. The inherent inequality in these possibilities is what gave birth to trades unions. The employers call it a free market for labour – for the employees, it used to be freedom to starve. We’re back again to Justice Wendell Holmes.

Some employers have taken the extreme route, and it has worked for them, e.g. Rupert Murdoch. His success was undoubtedly aided by the British publics distaste for the prints unions of the time – their PR was disastrous, little sympathy was extended to them, and Murdoch became a kind of industrial hero.

(My personal view is that it had to happen, and if it hadn’t been Rupert Murdoch it would have been someone else. But my distaste for Murdoch and his print empire far exceeds any negative feelings that I had for the print union chapels and fathers of the chapel and their featherbedding and restrictive practices.)

Almost all negotiations experience one or more periods of deadlock, when one or more negotiating items cannot be resolved, and neither party is prepared to move. Deadlock, if unresolved, leads ultimately to breakdown of the negotiations, but deadlock must never be confused with breakdown, and when it is, premature and needless breakdown can occur.

Deadlock is simply a negotiation that is becalmed – motionless in the sea of discussion, compromise and concession. It usually indicates that the parties, for the moment, have exhausted their capacity to move, to concede, to modify.

But significantly, deadlock can be a negotiating tactic, when one or both parties actually have the capacity to modify their position but are testing the resolve of the other party. Deadlock can be a form of brinkmanship and may be a bluff, albeit brinkmanship and bluff with risks attached.

(John F. Kennedy called Nikita Khrushchev's bluff in the Cuban Missile crisis. Khrushchev backed down – his bluff was therefore called. Was Kennedy bluffing? Thank God we’ll never know …)

In a commercial negotiation, deadlock implies a walk-away from the table permanently – breakdown. But in a locked relationship between management and union, what is threatened by deadlock and breakdown? Almost certainly not a permanent walk-away, but a temporary breakdown, one that will hurt both parties to the negotiation.

That temporary walk-away is called a strike, and sometimes a lock-out. It is designed to hurt – a power play – but it is also designed to end in an agreement.

THE NATURE OF DEADLOCK AND BREAKDOWN IN A CHANGE AGENDA NEGOTIATION

Management initiates the change agenda, attempts to justify it by the business need arguments available to it, and sets out its planned timescale. If the change agenda has no negative implications for employees, then all that is required is to ensure understanding, co-operation – then implement. But change agendas almost always do have significant negative consequences for employees, and it is their trade union’s job to prevent or at least ameliorate the impact of the changes.

The critical element in the employee and union response is lies in the answer to the $64,000 question – do they believe the company when they state the rationale for change and the consequences of not accepting it?

Faced with a clear-cut, convincing case that the alternative to accepting change is closure or radical contraction of the company’s activities, unions are rarely obstructive. But if the argument is weak, or simply not believed, or the negative impact of co-operating with the change seems as bad as the alternative, then the union will fight the change.

The power balance in the negotiation is then as follows – the company has the power to implement unilaterally and the union has the power to strike. It has always been thus, and no one looking at the history of industrial relations should be surprised at this stark reality.

The underlying dynamic of that reality is that unions have a vested interest in delaying unacceptable changes indefinitely by protracting negotiations and management have a vested interest in bringing the negotiations to a close by implementing on a deadline. When negotiation is exhausted, the parties have reached the point of freedom to act, in negotiating parlance.

(An analogy is diplomacy designed to avert conflict between nations. When the talking stops, there is an act that provokes war.)

So why are the unions always cast as the bad guys in this old, old game?

Well, let me offer a little parable -

A man is locked in a cupboard, and it goes on fire. Outside the door is another man with the key, and the man inside demands that the cupboard be opened. The man outside refuse to unlock the door, but carries on talking. The man inside, threatened by the smoke and flames, finds an axe and smashes down the door. The man outside remarks to observers that the man wielding the axe is a destructive bastard – why couldn’t they have kept on talking?

This can be interpreted in two ways, and dependent on your political view of trades unions, you can cast the roles either way, but reflect on these points – talking cannot continue indefinitely and at a certain point, action, however destructive, is preferable to inaction.

There must be an alternative to force, you cry! Yes, there is, or rather, there are several alternatives. They have been available in various forms throughout the entire history of employer/employee disputes.

The first is to deny one of the parties any rights at all to resist and/or compel change under law, backed by force. This was the model for many generations before more liberal labour laws began to be enacted.

The second is to involve a third party, acceptable to both of the disputing parties to mediate, that is, help the parties resolves their differences by advice, bringing clarity to the issues, and removing the heat from the dispute.

The third is non-binding arbitration, an extension of the mediation role, where a third party considers both argument and gives a ruling, which nevertheless does not bind the parties to acceptance.

The fourth is legally binding arbitration by a third party. The disputing parties have in effect surrendered their freedom to decide to the arbiter.

For several decades now, we have had in the UK a body that specialises in these roles, and which is backed up by legislation. It is called ACAS – the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. (It has been alleged that it was to be called the Joint Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service until some prescient soul realised what that particular pronounceable acronym came up with …)

Although it advises, mediates and conciliates, strictly speaking it doesn’t arbitrate – it appoint arbiters (or arbitrators, if you prefer).

Why in hell don’t management and unions go to arbitration in major disputes? You may well ask …

Well, sometimes they do, but often only after a lot of blood has been shed by both the warring parties. It would seem sensible that, in our vital industries and services at least, that legally binding arbitration should be the norm rather than the exception, but perhaps stopping short of a legal compulsion to arbitrate.

Why don’t they do it?

The answer seems to be that they want to retain their ultimate right, be they employer or trade union, to choose their battlegrounds and fight their wars at their own discretion, rather like countries going to war without the approval of the United Nations.

Now, who would be stupid enough to do that?

STRIKES AND LABOUR DISPUTES
I spent most of my employed working life dealing as an industrial relations specialist with trades unions, and a large part of my consulting practice - from the late 1980s up to about 2004 - related to industrial relations and the training of directors and managers in negotiating skills and collective bargaining on terms and conditions and change agendas, including analysing the dynamics of employer/trade union disputes and their escalation from deadlock through strike threats to strikes or other forms of industrial action, e.g. working to rule, sit-ins.

I was a staff union member (ASSET and ACTSS) for brief periods in my early career, and I was a staff representative and was once on strike for recognition of a staff union against my American employer of the time, Goodyear. (I was in the Personnel department at the time!)

So I can reasonably claim some expertise on these matters.

There are a few golden rules and principles for dealing with escalating crises in labour relations negotiations, and for actual strikes.

1. A strike threat is not a strike, even when it is accompanied by a ballot for strike action and a deadline for its commencement – it is a bargaining tactic.

2. A strike is an action of last resort for a responsible union, when all other avenues for agreement seem to be exhausted, just as is unilateral implementation of change by management.

3. An offer made and rejected is an offer that is off the table, e.g. if one party makes an offer, and it is rejected and followed by a strike, the party that rejected the offer cannot regard it as still extant while a strike threat is extant or after a strike ends without agreement. It can only be a reference point in recommenced negotiations.

For example, if management makes an offer that is rejected, the union cannot claim that it is still on the table after the rejection unless management chooses to regard it as such. Conversely, if the union offers a settlement and it is rejected by management, the same applies.

4. During the lead-up to a strike, i.e. before employees actually hit the street, both management and union should embargo any comments to the press, other than the most anodyne, e.g. “we are still hopeful of a settlement and negotiations are continuing.” Negative comments, attacking the intransigence and sheer bloody mindedness of the other party are particularly damaging.

5. The interests of the media during crisis periods in negotiation are not those of either of the parties to the negotiation – media commentators are usually simplistic in analysis, and deficient in understanding of the most basic facts of negotiating dynamics, politically biased, and their reporting is aimed at sensationalising the impending conflict.

It can be argued that the media brought down the Heath Government in early 1974 by wilfully misunderstanding – if not misrepresenting – the nature of the miners’ union opening demand, one that they never remotely expected to achieve. Heath was fool enough to believe the media, rather than the experienced managers dealing with the negotiations. The figures on the costs of settlement were also deeply flawed.

6. A strike is created by two parties, not one. It takes two to tango – a deadlock is never one-sided. One party is refusing to meet the other party’s terms – both create the deadlock and the ultimate breakdown.  Experienced negotiators and mature organisations accept this reality.

Does that mean that both parties’ demands are justified? Not necessarily, but if one party lacks realism – or compassion, or values –it is the job of the other to get them to see reason by dialogue. If they fail in this, then the strike, providing it is legal, must be accepted as the necessary cost of bringing about a more balanced view. So it is in conflict between nations, even though the conflict may destroy both sides. (The UK is now prepared to talk turkey to the Taliban after a decade of war. You don’t make peace with your friends.)

7. Once the strike commences, the gloves are off – in comment terms, in media publicity, in exerting legal pressures on the other side, etc. but during this period of the strike, a critical consideration must be - what terms will be necessary to secure a return to work, and how can open channels of communication be maintained?

The ludicrous farce that is the British Empire and the UK - by an American

(I first posted this on February 11th 2011, but it has a vital new relevance since the renewed historic mandate of the only party committed to freeing Scotland, and because of the impending referendum. Watch and laugh, but most of all – LEARN! We’ll need all the history and all the arguments to convince the people of Scotland to free their nation. This should make Lord Forsyth’s wee kilt birl roon his ears and his sporran go richt up his nose …)

Superb - wonderful, accurate, funny! A spot-on hilarious but hugely informative account of the long-running farce called the British Empire.

Scotland wants out - I want out - anyone with any sense wants out.

Congratulations, USA - you got out a long time ago.

Stream of consciousness … and the BBC

I like to have a specific topic to address, but today I haven’t. But since I didn’t blog yesterday, and since some regular readers rapidly reach the reasonable conclusion that I’m dead if I don’t blog for a couple of days, I feel obliged to give proof of life …

So I sit at the keyboard with no plan, in the hope that something will come from the Id at least as far as the Ego and perhaps even reach the Superego. I’m not entirely certain that I have an Ego or Superego anymore, but I’m in regular touch with my Id, something closely resembling its manifestation in Forbidden Planet.

Today’s Radio Times confidently states on page 56

BBC1

12.00 The Politics Show  Analysis and debate. Includes News at 12.00 and at 12.30 Scottish stories.

Good old reliable BBC - my trusted public service broadcaster, telling the truth to the four nations of Britain, calling the rich and powerful to account, champion of the ordinary people of these isles, in this great united kingdom - Dunkirk, Churchill, muffins for tea, cricket on the lawn, stiff-upper lips, guardian of the free people of the world, men in fancy dress in great cathedrals, monarchs, Royal weddings, knights, Lords, Ladies, colourful ritual and spectacle, stronger together than apart, etcetera, etcetera. You know the rest …

No need to consult the online guide on my television - after all, it’s not a public holiday, although something called Pentecost has knocked The Big Questions out of its 10.00 slot. The Andrew Marr Show was the predictable load of old Westminster village pap it has become since not-so-super injunctions have killed the mojo of its eponymous host.

I switch on just before midday and wait expectantly, laughing in sardonic delight because the tennis has been rained off. May it piss down on that tedious game for evermore, a game that is healthful exercise and a legitimate pursuit for those who actually get off their arses and play the game, but an exercise in mindless voyeurism for those non-players who watch it …

I should have been warned by the fate of The Big Questions. Midday passes, and the mindless chatter of those under the umbrellas continues, with the kind a vacuous gossip and idle speculation that characterises acres of sporting commentary. Panic-stricken, I switch to BBC2, only to find more crap, so I belatedly consult the online guide. Nae politics today, mate. If we can’t have tennis, you’ll have to be content with Country File, or some such rural idyll.

So at the end of a week in which we have seen the care of the old and vulnerable across the UK threatened by the rabid greed of speculative capitalists, the continued revelations of criminal behaviour by our UK newspapers, a week in which the implications of the behaviour of the UK Supreme Court for the Scottish Justice system becomes even more worrying, a week in which more young men and women are dying in misconceived foreign wars, a week in which we contemplate yet another involvement in Syria, and a week in which the Brian Rix Whitehall farce that is called the UK Government - the ConLib Coalition - move seamlessly from one disaster to another, a week in which Miliband Minor’s relevance to his party and to the nation is placed under question, the main political vehicle for examining events and placing the powerful under scrutiny - and where Scottish affairs get a real discussion platform - is sacrificed to a tennis match that didn’t take place and some countryside rambles.

I’m your long-term friend and defender, BBC - but when you behave like this, I shout aloud for independence, for  a free Scotland, with its own public service broadcaster, employing the fine journalists, presenters, creative artists and technicians that make up the present BBC Scotland, but freed from the dead hand of London.

And by God, we’ll have it, sooner rather than later …

Here to the Scottish Broadcasting Corporation - the SBC!

POSTSCRIPT
Roseanna Cunningham tweeted me to say it (?) was broadcast at 11.30 am. If so, I kick myself for missing it - but the criticism stands.

Stop press: I've now checked - it was broadcast at 11.00 am - now watching on the iPlayer. Will I apologise to the BBC? Will I ****! You ruined my morning - am I suppose to plan my day on not believing the Radio Times and cross check the transmission time of every programme if there's bloody sport on?

Scotland’s First Minister–The Politics Show–and nuclear aspects of independence

The London media village, Westminster-obsessed, has abruptly discovered Scotland.

Alex Salmond tells Jon Sopel patiently how many beans make five.

Scotland watches proudly - and affectionately - as their First Minister courteously answers questions drawn from The Ladybird Book of Politics, which is as far as most UK media interviewers have got so far.

NUCLEAR BASES – TRIDENT

The First Minister says clearly that an independent Scotland would have the ultimate decision on when to go to war, i.e sacrifice the lives of Scottish servicemen and women – and would not, for example, have supported the invasion of Iraq.

He also says there could be some sensible sharing of military bases. But if that were to extend, for example, to leasing the Trident nuclear bases to UK Minus (The United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland) after Scotland has achieved independence, then the Scottish Government would have to have a veto on when nuclear weapons were used from its waters, or from a submarine in international waters that was based in Scottish waters.

Since Scotland does not support the use of nuclear weapons or WMDs in any circumstances, UK  Minus (effectively the US) would be leasing bases and owning weapons of mass destruction, e.g. Trident submarines that could never be used.

This would be untenable, therefore Scotland can never lease the nuclear bases to UK Minus.

Or that’s my logic. It’s also the deal breaker that I’ll go the barricades on, if needs must. And I’ll have company …

We’re on our way, Scotland!

The Big Wait - two days till the result is known …

THE GROUND TROOPS

Today is the last day of campaigning, and exhausted volunteers from all parties will be making the last big push, some dispirited by the polls but still determined to make whatever difference they can and confound the pollsters if possible, some borne up by the good news in the polls for their party, but not complacent, cultivating a mood of finely-judged pessimism so that the prize does not elude them.

In this media age, with old and new media competing for the eyes and ears of the electorate, what still matters fundamentally is the effort of the ground troops - the canvassers, the door-knockers, the envelope stuffers, the leaflet posters. This is still the heart of campaigning, and one day on the stump matters more than one hundred days at a keyboard.

But the media, the commentator, the pundits, the leader articles, the blogs, the tweets, the Facebook exchanges have their place for three reasons -

One, many voters will never be approached by a canvasser, never read a political leaflet, and never attend a political meeting, but still have a vote and do watch television, read newspapers and do utilise alternative media.

Two, the media old and new create the climate within which the debate takes place, and they influence voters both directly and subliminally, albeit not always in the way the media people intended. They promote engagement with ideas and personalities, and awareness of the issues. They contribute to the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, even though they often misread it.

Three, the volunteers need the moral uplift that supportive media offers them in their often lonely and dispiriting task, and they need the anger and resolve that hostile media comment produces to sustain their flagging energies.

THE COMMENTATORS

The news anchors, the chat show hosts, the political pundits, the political reporters and the press commentators have all made their contributions now, and are moving into an inquest mode even before the result is known, because of the polls. Since the vast bulk of the commentators are of a unionist persuasion, their words over the last couple of days lie along a spectrum ranging from millenarian prophecies of imminent doom to rueful, “How did we get it so wrong?” self-analysis, coming predictably to the wrong answers.

And of course there are the metropolitan, Westminster Village obsessed pundits who are suddenly jolted into an awareness that, while their focus has been either events in Tunisia, Libya, Syria and other middle-eastern countries attempting to throw off oppressive regimes, or the squabbling of the ConLib Coalition over the AV referendum,  there is an ancient country just a little north of them that is yet again showing disturbing signs of not sharing their blinkered view of UK, European and world events, with an irritating tendency to upset their unionist apple carts, spilling the carefully-arranged, polished fruit on the ground.

Ay, weel, don’t say we didnae warn ye!

Both Votes SNP -

vote for your ain folk

The Nuclear and Trident horror story that is Scottish Labour–the WMD party

One of two parties will form the next government of Scotland - the Labour party, puppet party of UK Labour, or the Scottish National Party under Alex Salmond.

Labour is committed to nuclear power, new nuclear power stations, Trident, nuclear weapons and WMDs - to hazard, pollution, death and destruction of all you know and love.

The SNP is utterly opposed to all of these things.

Be clear on May 5th in the polling booth where your future, the future of your families and the future of Scotland lies.

If you vote Labour, you deliver Scotland into potential nuclear catastrophe - another Chernobyl or Fukushima - and to the continuation of Scotland as a nuclear dump, with WMDs (Trident) in our Scottish waters, threatening an equally appalling nuclear risk, making us a prime target for terrorists and a nuclear strike

Vote SNP - on BOTH ballot papers - for a nuclear-free Scotland, a peaceful Scotland, a clean, pollution-free Scotland - and for a dynamic new, clean era of renewable energy, revitalising Scotland with new jobs and new industry, leading the world by utilising our natural resources of wind and wave power.

Cast BOTH your votes for the SNP - no second choices, only two clear-cut votes for the SNP and the future of Scotland - your country, your homeland, your nation - your people.

Both Votes SNP on May 5th – two ballot papers -

Two votes for the SNP

Happy St. George’s Day to the people of England – best wishes from Scotland

May I wish all my English friends and colleagues a very happy Easter and and Happy St. George’s Day. A special wish to the great counties of Durham, Yorkshire and Lancashire and the city of Newcastle.

From Saint George and the Dragon

“I’m dreading the Wedding”–not my video, but my sentiments exactly …

Chris Valentine's little masterpiece on YouTube. God Save Scotland from this Royal propaganda! But as good Scots, we'll take the money its little spin-off (Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall at Canongate Kirk) generates, although we'd rather sacrifice the loot to be spared the event. Pragmatism, that's the thing ...

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MacAskill and Baker - Law and Order - Who would you prefer as Justice Minister of Scotland?

Who would you prefer as Scotland's Justice Minister?

A qualified lawyer, former senior partner in a law firm, principled, and with a proven record of reducing crime - including knife crime - and putting more policemen on the streets - a man who is hard on crime, but recognises the vital need to reduce the re-offending rate - a man who doesn't reach for simplistic, knee-jerk solutions - a man committed to tackling the alcohol problem, which is a prime cause of crime in Scotland - Kenny MacAskill.

Or would you prefer Richard Baker, a traditional, lock-em-up, flog-'em, bring-back-the-birch-type Tory - although he's LABOUR, with no track record, except that of opposing minimum pricing for alcohol, thus blocking something demanded and endorsed by every expert in Scotland, including the NHS and the police?
 
Watch these clips and decide ...

You've already guessed who I would choose? I'm astonished!

Vote SNP - vote for a crime free Scotland

Vote for your ain folk.

And lest we forget Labour's double-dealing and hypocrisy over the Megrahi issue, watch this again ...

Iain Gray’s desperate U-turns on policy

Iain Gray desperately makes a series of shameless U-turns on policy, clearly terrified of the SNP's principled stance on tuition fees, council tax, etc.

He still has a U-turn or so up his sleeve - he could suddenly discover that Labour are in favour of minimum pricing for alcohol, free bus travel for pensioners and free prescriptions charges. As Alex Salmond says today, all Iain Gray has to do is wake up in the morning to change his mind - and Labour's policies.

But there's a couple of U-turns even this shallow, expedient politician can't make - he can't suddenly decide he's in favour of banning nuclear power and against Trident and the nuclear WMDs polluting Scotland's waters and draining our economy. And he can't suddenly discover he was a real Scot all along and come out in favour of independence for his nation, Scotland.

And despite Gordon Brewer's cynicism and that of the pundits he assembled tonight, these are the defining issues for Scotland, and only the SNP stands as a beacon of humanity and sanity on these issues.

Vote for your ain folk on May 5th - vote SNP and secure your future, your children's futures and your grandchildren's futures

Scottish journalism and press standards

PREAMBLE

I’ve been here before, but it seems I must say it all over again …  If you’re not in for a long haul dissertation, leave now! There’s almost 6,000 words ahead of you …

For the record - I am a blogger, not a journalist. And I am partisan - I have a position, and I have no duty to maintain a balance between competing viewpoints. My blog is opinion, not news reporting - it is my highly personal perspective on the news, from the baseline of being anti-nuclear weaponry and nuclear power, and committed to full Scottish independence of the United Kingdom, with no half-arsing over devolution max.

BLOGS AND BLOGGERS

The terms blog and blogger have long ceased to be limited to their original meaning of weblog and weblogger - a chronicler of personal day-to-day events, and kind of online diary. Blogs now range from that original concept through considered opinion pieces, political platforms for politicians and parties, alternative outlets for journalists to extremist rants. I exclude from the term blog those sites that are essentially online newspapers, alternative to the printed media, although some of the more notable ones seem to be in a state of confusion about exactly what they are trying to do. (I am far from immune to that confusion.)

Some, I think, entertain the dream of becoming the Scottish Huffington Post - an admirable target, providing it is not driven by the less admirable objective of being bought out and muzzled for a vast sum by one of the media groups to which they originally offered an alternative, and truer voice.

As I observed in a tweet last night, part of the problem is that some bloggers think they are journalists, and some journalists behave as if they are bloggers. The gulf between a professional journalist and a blogger is very wide indeed, roughly the difference between an enthusiastic and modestly-talented amateur musician and a professional musician - a gap of technique, interpretation and artistic sensibility. Additionally, few bloggers generate material from original sources - they venture opinion pieces on material that has been hard won and expertly produced by the professionals. The few that break this pattern are really journalists who simply use a blog as their own medium for publication, and actually break real stories, meticulously fact-checked and verified.

I am not among that elite group, although I would hope that I am comparable to at least some journalists who offer only opinion pieces, and bluntly, I feel superior to many of them - in research, supporting arguments, literacy and style. But readers of my blog have the final verdict if that judgement is deluded vanity or an accurate self assessment.

JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS, PRACTICES AND THE PRESS AND MEDIA

A look back …

We know who spoke the following words -

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask rather what you can do for your country.”

The man who famously uttered them was John F. Kennedy, the charismatic 35th President of the United Stares of America, in his inaugural speech. But who wrote these words?

The same man who wrote these words -

“Kennedy was the first great fraud of the post-modern era. He was the surprised, and grateful object of a mass delusion - he came from a state where electing Irish politicians by fraud was an art form.  His father was a bandit and a profiteer. JFK never won a majority in a national election; it seems likely that the election of 1960 was stolen for him by the Daley machine in Chicago.”

The author of both pieces was Ted Sorenson - speechwriter to Kennedy. The second quote, written many years later, was not the result of the discovery of Kennedy’s feet of clay - Sorenson knew all that when he wrote the immortal first words for Kennedy. He wrote them because that was his job.

Sorenson was not a journalist, he was a lawyer. But many journalists have occupied roles as speechwriters for politicians, and when they accepted that role, they ceased to become journalists, and were freed from the ethical and professional constraints that this vital and noble profession is supposed to abide by. They became ghost writers.

It might be supposed that there would be internationally accepted rules or principles under which journalists operate, but no universal rules or principles exist - opinions, theories and practices vary widely. One would expect governments to have very different views from practising journalists and media proprietors, and especially from public service broadcasters, e.g. the BBC, about what constitutes responsible reporting and comment. But even among those who are completely committed to a free press and media, there are fundamental differences.

The debate is as old as the spoken word, never mind the printed word and modern visual and electronic media, but we may trace the main divide back to America in the 1920s when modern journalism as we know it was born. and some of the conflicting ideas of that hectic decade still resonate today.

The cinema, especially from the advent of sound, was fascinated by the press and the profession of journalism. The adaptation of Ben Hecht’s The Front Page into a movie created a masterpiece of cinema, His Girl Friday(1940).

(There was an earlier verson in 1931 called The Front Page . The remake with Jack Lemmon was also closer to the original story, and was a fine film, because of the superb Lemmon in the Hildy Johnson role, but it never approached the status of the 1940 film.)

Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop in 1938, two years earlier, said just about everything there is to say to this day about being a foreign correspondent and the demands of newspapers on their journalists.

There have been many books and films since, but I would call attention to only one - All the President’s Men (1976) about the breaking of the Watergate story.

If we watch these films, and read the seminal 1920s debates between John Dewey and Walter Lippman, the main issues are all there, and their relevance remains even in the digital age.

On reflection, I will add one almost forgotten film, the 1951 film Ace in the Hole, with Kirk Douglas, as an horrific example of what a cynical journalist  can do with a human interest story involving an underground rescue.

For a modern take on the ethical basis of journalism, try The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. I recommend the book to anyone interested in expanding their understanding of this vital topic.

They initially formulated nine principles for journalism, and later added a tenth; here they are -

1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.

2. Its first loyalty is to the citizens.

3. Its essence is discipline of verification.

4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.

5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.  

6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

7. It must strive to make the news significant, interesting, and relevant.

8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.

9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

10. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

Now I can imagine some of the formidable editors of Fleet Street, who were often foul-mouthed, and legendary Scots, often Glaswegians, saying 

“Fuck all that crap! The only question is - will the story sell newspapers?”

Lest you be tempted to sympathise with the sentiment, if not the mode of its expression, let me remind you that over the last couple of years we have seen a major story break - except in the newspapers owned by the main proprietors in the scandal, News International - that involved the Royal Family, the Metropolitan Police, the spin doctor and close friend of the Prime Minister, and a legion of celebrities, sportsmen and women, politicians and sundry gandy dancers and railroad men, a still -unfolding tale that threatens the very foundations of a free press, our democracy and law and order - The News of the World/Andy Coulson phone hacking story.

We have seen a widely-respected politician, Vince Cable, become the victim of entrapment by journalists posing as constituents at his constituency surgery, leading him into unguarded remarks, resulting in his being removed from the decision process over whether or not to approve a takeover that would result in an even greater extension of the reach of News International, the very press empire under criminal investigation over phone hacking.

And we must also consider the complex ethical and moral questions over journalism, in its widest sense, that yielded great benefits to UK democracy - the expenses scandal exposure by The Telegraph - and the global benefits, disputed by many, of Wikileaks, which may have been seen to pull the veil away from the cynical foreign policies and realpolitik of the US and UK governments. Some- including me - argue that Wikileaks was a key catalyst for the great freedom movements now convulsing the Middle East dictatorships, although where they will lead is an open question.

WHAT ARE THE CORE QUESTIONS FOR ME ?

I do not pretend that what I have to say here is a comprehensive analysis of every aspect of journalistic practices and ethics - it represents the things that seem important and relevant to me in the context of recent events and Scottish political journalism in particular.

Journalists are not saints - they have never claimed to be saints, they are rarely presented as being the most ethical of beings, and yet their place in our society and our democracy is a fundamental one. We must expect and demand a lot from them, but in return, we must understand the pressures they are under, in a beleagured profession that is undergoing revolutionary and often unpredictable change, and we must support them in whatever way we can to live up to the highest ideals of their profession.

I should also make it clear that I include, under the description journalist, the editors, who, if they are not journalists, have no right to exercise authority over those who actually gather the news, write the reports and venture the opinions. The managerial, legal and financial persons in the media must confine themselves to their areas of special responsibility, but if they are allowed to determine news content then journalism goes out of the window.

The best proprietors have always understood and supported this separation of powers - the worst, from the Hearst Organisation through to the Murdoch Empire have either ignored or distorted and perverted it.

This bears on journalists in two ways -

The salaried staff journalist in a contract of employment (if there are any left!) has little choice but to accept the editorial decision. It might be hoped that where editorial judgements fundamentally and repeatedly breach the principles of journalism that the principled professional would either appeal or offer his or her resignation, or perhaps more likely, quietly prepare an exit path to pastures new, but such decisions, especially for someone with a family, are very difficult to make.

The freelance can either refuse to amend the copy or accept the modification and re-submit. If they refuse to make the changes, they can try to sell their work elsewhere. Nonetheless, since many freelance have extended relationships with the media outlet, even this can be difficult.

The nature of the change required will also determine the response. Professionals generally accept that they do not have a monopoly of wisdom, or a God-given right to have all their work accepted unexpurgated. They may well accept the exclusion of a passage or topic, provided what remains has integrity. One would hope that they would never agree to an inclusion of an element, under their by-line, that they fundamentally disagree with - the “You will write this …” approach.

Let’s start with what a journalist decides - or is instructed - to write about. A freelance may have the relative luxury of deciding what to write about, but within a frame of reference, e.g. politics, Scottish politics, arts, etc. that may be determined by the journalist’s expertise and to some degree by the publication he aims at. Once a freelance might simply have made cold submissions to a various publications, operating as a totally free agent: these days, the freelance might well have a continuous relationship with one publication, and be significantly constrained by the terms of that relationship without actually being in a contract of employment. The control exerted by the publication is a commercial one rather than a contractual one. As a freelance management consultant and trainer, I had such relationship with a number of major clients.

(Since I am not part of the industry, I can only speculate about the nature of such arrangements, and I do not know the exact nature of them for any journalist I refer to in this piece.)

The salaried journalist, on the other hand must be subject to significant direction and constraints on the subject matter chosen, and  the way in which the story is treated, and by definition will have less freedom of choice, being left, as observed above, with only the resignation option on a real crisis of journalistic standards.

SOME OF THE PLAYERS IN THE GAME

Iain Macwhirter, a Scottish journalist for whom I have unqualified admiration, believing him to be one of the very few totally objective voices in the Scottish - and UK - press and media, must have a considerable degree of freedom in what he writes about, otherwise he would never be allowed to say what he does in the unionist-dominated, highly-biased media that forms the bulk of his market. (I have never met Iain Macwhirter, and have no personal connection with him of any kind.)

My belief is that he has that freedom because of the integrity of his journalism, his highly-honed professional skills, the absolute clarity of his style, and because of the access - born out of respect for his objectivity - that he has in political circles. I firmly believe that Iain Macwhirter would never allow anything to appear in print under his name that he did not firmly subscribe to, and that he would reject any attempt to shape or distort his copy.

That does not mean however that he is always able to
say all that he might want to say. He has to make a living, and, short of retreating into the blogosphere and shouting indignantly from such a marginal position as some have done, he must accept the editorial constraints of his market.

Another example is Ian Bell, also a Herald columnist, for whom I have a slightly qualified admiration. I believe that he speaks the truth, and always the truth as he sees it, and would reject constraints on his capacity to do that. But his core philosophy could be describe as socialist/internationalist - although he may well indignantly reject such a label - and as such, fits reasonably well with the Herald’s support for the Labour Party and the Union.

Ian Bell’s style is always vigorous, with opinions strongly expressed, albeit at times slightly chaotic and not too accessible. My perception is that the Herald nevertheless manages to keep him within their frame of reference by presenting his pieces as opinion pieces in juxtaposition with the highly slanted ‘news’ pieces that increasingly comprise a depressingly large part of their reporting, thus blunting the impact of his always trenchant views and comments.

But he is undoubtedly a significant Scottish voice, and one that I would miss if it were absent. I hope it never is.

Many of the other notable Scottish journalists are firmly, to my eye, within the category of completely committed to a highly specific and usually unionist viewpoint, which happily - for them - coincides with the overt political agenda of the newspapers that give them their living. They are often described as Scottish editors, or Scottish correspondents when they work for newspapers that have a UK reach with a Scottish edition. A more accurate description would be Scottish Unionist editors or correspondents, since their reporting on Scottish political affairs is almost totally slanted to a unionist viewpoint. Much of their output is either a veiled or direct attack on the Nationalist Government, on the SNP and on nationalist aspirations and values.

Perhaps I can illustrate their approach by saying that if there existed a Scottish national newspaper (print medium) wholly committed to the nationalist cause, and I became their Scottish editor or correspondent, with my present blog output, style and agenda unchanged, I would be their equivalent. What I would not be is a journalist, in any true sense of the word, and neither are they.

Put bluntly, they have taken the shilling, and their journalistic values have flown out of the window. They are the equivalent of political spin doctors.

But there are exceptions to this - more than one - but I will name only one, Angus Macleod of The Times. In spite of being a part of News International and the Murdoch empire, I have always found him to conform to the highest standards of objective, professional journalism. Exactly how he is able to achieve this objectivity within the clammy grasp of News International I am at a loss to explain.

Which brings me to another towering media figure, also a Scot, Andrew Ferguson Neil, currently a hugely influential political commentator, host and presenter on the BBC, formerly a high-powered newspaper editor within the Murdoch Organisation (The Sunday Times, Sky, etc.) and a noted Thatcherite. He left News International after an acrimonious fall out with Murdoch, then jumping into the fire from the frying pan, with the Barclay Brothers.

Andrew Neil arouses strong opinions. I cordially detested him during the Thatcher/Sunday Times years, and many still do, as my postbag and email testify. But I have now come to a grudging respect for him in his new BBC roles, because I believe his values as a journalist now come first, whatever his personal politics views may be. He occupies a unique position in BBC and national journalism, standing head and shoulders above the likes of Paxman and Andrew Marr, with a reputation and personality that puts him on more than equal terms with Government ministers, Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition.

His critics - and they are legion - react furiously to his assertive and forensic questioning of their favoured party personalities, ignoring the fact that he is equally ferocious with all the others. And although he is inextricably a part of the incestuous London/Westminster media village, he occasionally remembers that he is a Scot, and when he chooses to do so, displays an understanding of Scottish politics that is almost totally absent in other metropolitan BBC pundits. In spite of myself, I like and respect him, and believe that he makes a vital contribution to our democracy.

JOURNALISTIC VALUES AND PRACTICES

Let me start with the principle of confidentiality of sources and the off-the-record practice in interviewing and reporting.

A journalist must get the story - get the facts. This is done against the reality that those who have the facts often have a vested interest in not releasing them, whether they are politicians, celebrities, civil servants, doctors criminals or private individuals. The British legal system is geared up to protect the powerful, not the weak. Our libel laws, and the cost of litigation and defence in relation to libel actions, are a standing disgrace, allowing the rich and powerful to intimidate, silence and financially destroy those who presume to question their actions. Even worse, this is not confined to British citizens and residents - the libel laws can be used by any criminal, despot, fraudster or powerful individual anywhere in the world against a British citizen.

But private individuals without substantial financial resources have little defence available to them. This presents the journalist in pursuit of a story with two  ethical and professional standards dilemmas, assuming they have any, or are allowed to have them by their employer, the media outlet. The same problems are faced by the editor - also a journalist - who briefs and controls the person in the field.

The main dilemma is how - without breaking the law or breaching ethical standards - to get the truth from some one who knows it, might wish to give it, but may be inhibited from giving it by professional, party, policy or contractual constraints - for example a politician, a public servant or a manager in private industry - or even by fear of the personal consequences of speaking out.  This inhibition manifests itself in a number of ways.

(The second dilemma is whether they go after easy prey - those whom they believe can’t defend themselves, for example, a Glasgow grandmother trying desperately get a fair price for her home, and the stress and upheaval caused by a compulsory purchase order. It doesn’t seem to have been a real dilemma for the Glasgow Press, however.)

Back to the prime dilemma -

Public servants - and increasingly employees of private organisations - are normally bound by some sort of embargo on making statement contrary to organisational policy, and by a requirement to protect confidential information. The constraints on doing this may range from a code of conduct, through contractual requirements, to signing the official secrets act, with criminal penalties for breaching the constraint. The ethical constraints placed on professionals such as lawyers and doctors are, of course, an important category here.

(Whether the law should always observe religious constraints in this context is highly debatable, for example the confidentiality of the confessional exercised by Roman Catholic priests when criminal behaviour is concerned.)

It is hard to see how public and commercial life could function normally without some such constraints, although the nature of them and the subject matter to which they are applied may reasonably be open to question and debate.

Freedom of information legislation has gone someway to redress the imbalance (see below on the expenses scandal) created by the powerful protecting themselves against revelation of their mistakes, hypocrisy and in some cases, negligent or criminal behaviour: the limited protection afforded to ‘whistle blowers’ is also in this category.

The accepted convention, elevated to an ethical principle by some editors and journalists, is the on or off-the- record assurance offered by the journalist to the person being interviewed or questioned. In broadcasting, this is often given practical application by the on or off- microphone action.

THE RATIONALE FOR ON AND OFF THE RECORD

In dealing with law-abiding citizens, the justification for on and off-the-record promises is that someone constrained by contract or professional standards may be willing to give information for the greater good, providing that it is not attributable. There is a public position and a private one.

The purists demand complete openness in everything, an ideal that I believe is unachievable in practice. It is not reasonable, for example, to expect an employee to risk losing their job and maybe career because they know that their employer is not operating to the highest standards. And realistically, even though there are a few highly principled individuals who are prepared to do just that, the majority are more pragmatic. To get at the truth, we must protect the open, brave whistle-blower, but we must also utilise the concerned, but cautious individual as well.

The negative aspects of the off-the-record briefing or information release are many, however. An off-the-record, unattributable comment is weaker and less convincing than an on-the-record statement, and an unscrupulous - or lazy - reporter can simply invent them to give spurious currency to gossip, or worse, to a lie.

If Iain Macwhirter or Angus Macleod report an off-the-record, anonymous quote, I believe them implicitly. Coming from some others I won’t name, I take it with a pinch of salt or dismiss it.

Off-the-record comments can also be used by spin doctors to present a completely misleading version of events to, say, parliamentary lobby correspondents, who are in fact being expertly manipulated. It would be an interesting experiment if lobby correspondents got together and refused to accept unattributable quotes for an extended period from the government. I suspect that No. 10 would be thrown into a state of utter panic.

There is also the practical problem that if there is only one spokesperson on an issue, then an off-the-record quote will instantly be attributed, and might as well be on the record.

Some politicians - sans policies, sans principles, sans values, sans cojones, sans everything - are more or less permanently off the record. Consequentially, no one gives a **** what they say …

But the off-the-record principle is nonetheless a vital tool in the reporter’s repertoire, and used judiciously and ethically, vital to good journalism and to public information.

How can the off-the-record principle be abused by journalists?

Any journalist who abuses the off-the-record or unattributable staement principle risks his or her professional credibility, and their own effectiveness. For an unscrupulous editor or proprietor, this matters little if the journalist in question is junior and expendable, and there is a constant supply of fodder for this in the shape of those desperate to gain entry to, and cut their teeth in a cut-throat industry.

In this approach, the person being interviewed is not a citizen or professional with rights and human   dignity, but the mark - a gullible target in a con game.

In a face-to-face or telephone interview, the journalist uses the equivalent of the open mike scam. In broadcast interviews from a studio or public venue - and in one notable instance in a Prime Minister’s car speeding away from a pensioner -  inadvertently leaving the microphone on can lead to the capture of unguarded remarks. Of course, the mike can also be left on deliberately.

No one, however exalted, is immune from this risk, not even US Presidents, but as someone recently observed, any grown-up politician who is not aware of the open mike danger should really find another line of work. Such people are regularly surprised when Christmas comes on December 25th …

In the face-to-face or telephone interview, this is almost always deliberate and planned, and rarely results from a misunderstanding, although that is the defence used by the unscrupulous journalist when found out. The normal strategy is to indicate that the interview will be conducted both on and off the record, then deliberately blur the line between the two, confusing the mark. Alternatively, the tacit assumption - never signalled in advance - is made that the subject is on the the record. If the interviewee queries the status at any point, the line is again blurred, or in extreme cases, the journalist simply lies.

Now it must be said, in fairness, that some interviews start out with a straightforward agenda and no Machiavellian intent, but then develop in unexpected ways. In such case, the journalist may give silent thanks to whatever God they worship for having delivered a potentially big story into their lap.

But it is exactly at this point that the ethical journalist takes rapid stock of what is, and what is not admissible.

(Again, I recommend careful viewing of key scenes in the 1976 film All the President’s Men to understand this process in the best American newspapers.)

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FACES OF PUBLIC FIGURES

There is a view that public figures, especially those who have been democratically elected, must display an absolute consistency between their private and public positions on any issues of substance. Some also argue that they must also exemplify a private integrity and morality, both sexual and ethical, consistent with their public face.

At the extremes. I agree with this. I don’t want a magistrate who sits in judgement on criminals, but in private is a professional burglar, a modern day Deacon Brodie: I don’t want a Minister of Health who believes in the efficacy of homeopathy and that blood transfusions are sinful: I don’t want a Chancellor of the Exchequer who runs a Ponzi scheme in his spare time: I don’t want a religious leader who secretly covers up the abuse of children and protects the abusers. I would welcome any journalist who, suspecting these things, used all reasonable measures to tempt the offenders into admitting as much. I might even condone some measures that run close to, but not over the ethical edge.

(A prime requirement is that a journalist doesn’t break the law - but if the law is being used the protect the powerful against the interests of the people, and there is a strong, very strong public interest requirement, then very, very reluctantly I would concede that it might be necessary.)

The investigation into the abuse of MPs’ expenses seems to me a model of a major service being rendered to our democracy by the journalist who deserves really the credit for the story, Heather Brooke. An American journalist based in the UK, Heather Brooke used the Freedom of Information Act to painstakingly, over five long, painful years, get to the truth. But if it hadn’t been for the BBC documentary On Expenses, the credit would have been given exclusively the The Telegraph newspaper and its journalists. Indeed, right at this minute, if you search for the originator of the story - and it was her story, by any standards of attribution and equity - you will find it hard to get past The Telegraph’s journalists’ roles, which although undoubtedly making a significant contribution in carrying it, and keeping it running, were essentially Johnnies-come-lately riding on the back of the real, brave and principled journalism of Heather Brooke.

An example of the worst in British journalism is the News International/News of the World scandal over phone hacking, a clear breach of the law, with no public interest involved, other than the wish to sell the Murdoch newspapers. This still-unfolding affair threatened - and still threatens - the very fabric of our democracy, reaching into the Law, the Police, the monarchy, and the government, and the shameful silence of the News International newspapers, and others with something to hide is deeply worrying for the integrity of our society.

The acknowledgement by Rebekah Brookes, one of the most senior executives of the Murdoch organisation in 2003 that the News of the World had paid members of the Metropolitan Police for information, the retirement of the Police Commissioner in charge of the initial investigation to take up a well-paid post as a columnist of News International, the resignation of the man closest to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, a former NotW editor, Andy Coulson, from his post as spin doctor to the Prime Minister (his second resignation - the first was as editor of the NotW after members of the Royal Family had had their phones hacked), his evidence under oath on the phone hacking scandal, the manifest nonsense that it had been “only one rogue reporter” - all of these things should have the British public rising up in rage and horror.

But unless they read the Guardian or the Independent, or watch certain current affairs, programmes, they will know nothing of it. The readers of the Murdoch tabloids have continued in blissful ignorance - either that or they don’t care…

SCOTTISH POLITICAL JOURNALISM

I don’t want to re-hash again all that I have already said in blogs passim, e.g. Herald and Scotsman  about the blatantly biased Scottish Press, with a recent surprising lurch towards objectivity in one of them, The Scotsman.

I have also blogged and tweeted extensively on the appalling treatment meted out to Margaret Jaconelli, a Glasgow grandmother trying to get a fair price for her home from Glasgow City Council before she is evicted. The matter is in its final stages in the legal system, and Margaret has a last found a champion in the formidable and caring person of Mike Dailly of the Govan Law Centre.

The consistently distorted, slanted  and factually inaccurate version of the Megrahi Affair, and the casual reproduction of the UK government’s desperate attempts to smear the Scottish Government with blatant lies to cover their own shameful hypocrisy and that of the UK Labour Party and their deeply confused Holyrood puppets have been repeatedly - and very recently - covered by me in this blog.

As for the Bill Aitken Affair, well, I have so far confined myself to Twitter on this. I don’t like Bill Aitken, I don’t like his views about rape, I think he was right to resign, and and have a distaste for knee-jerk politics on law and order. But I think the way in which the Herald got this story, the way they leaked the taped transcript to the New Statesman, and the fact that they apparently taped the telephone call without Aitken’s knowledge, the way in which they appeared to have blurred the line between on and off the record comment - all of these aspects give me cause for concern.

 

moridura Peter Curran

#BillAitken I don't like Tories or Bill Aitken and his views on law and order. But I dislike biased and unprofessional journalism even more.

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia This is the 'journalism' of the gutter, not real investigative journalism. And they will come for anyone who opposes Labour.

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia The problem is the set-up, the taping without permission, the leaking to the New Statesman, and the missing 'clarification'.

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia The media smear is Labour's stock-in-trade, through their compliant media supporters. It's bad for Scottish democracy.

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia Before May 5th, this will be done again to another opponent of Labour by the Labour media, probably to the SNP. What then?

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia I don't let my distaste for the man, his politics and his views get in the way of condemning the journalism practices.

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia No one has suggested that he was misrepresented - you misrepresent me by suggesting it. The question is over how it was done

moridura Peter Curran

@JonnyJobson @CalMerc There is every sign that it was a setup, with a Labour agenda, & that he thought he was on the record for part of it >

moridura Peter Curran

@JonnyJobson He was taped without his knowledge. The tape was 'leaked' to the New Statesman - THE Labour mouthpiece, and published >

moridura Peter Curran

@JonnyJobson @CalMerc There is no doubt of what he said, or that is was wrong. What is in question is the journalistic practices used