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Showing posts with label Scottish Parliament. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scottish Parliament. Show all posts

Friday 17 December 2010

Nicola Sturgeon talks to Bernard Ponsonby

Bernard Ponsonby of STV’s Politics Now, is one of the very few political reporters with an effective style of interviewing - forceful, penetrating, but productive. Whereas the others fall back on the simplistic neo-Paxman style of repeated closed questions with a pre-determined agenda, Ponsonby actually gets issues debated, and elicits real and often revealing responses from politicians in a true dialogue that is marked contrast to the arid, stereotypical exchanges of many of the others.

He is on good form here with Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister of Scotland. She is more than a match for any interviewer, calm, unruffled by pressure, and capable of stonewalling with the best of them against aggressive, simplistic interrogators, but she responds to Ponsonby’s approach, and real clarity emerges.

Bernard Ponsonby opens by echoing recent attacks on the SNP administration’s well-deserved reputation for competence in government, based on a series of recent events and the resignation of Stewart Stevenson over the weather crisis.

Nicola Sturgeon refers to the quite exceptional severity of the weather, but acknowledges freely that there were aspect of the Government’s response that did not match up to their own standards. The lessons had already been learned, as demonstrated by Keith Brown’s response this week.

Were events dictating the Government, rather than the Government dictating events? Bernard Ponsonby’s question again related to recent events such as the Scottish variable tax rate issue.

Again, a free admission from the Deputy First Minister that nobody in Government - and nobody who has been in government - is immune from making mistakes. However, she makes the point that this SNP government “has made many fewer mistakes than our predecessors.

This contrasts sharply with the ‘never apologise, never explain’ responses that politicians are forced into by the simplistic, less effective approaches of other interviewers - cynical, stereotypical exchanges that reveal nothing. In fact, the now notorious Raymond Buchanan/Stewart Stevenson interview was a particularly egregious example of this, one that forced a good man into a resignation for the good of his party.

Bernard Ponsonby then came to the issue of the moment – the Green Paper on funding higher education in Scotland – and suggested that it might be an example of the Government avoiding tough choices by simply presenting options.

This rather ignored the obvious, that the purpose of Green Papers is to do just that – present options, not make proposals. They are consultative in their very nature.

Nicola Sturgeon said immediately that Mike Russell had made it quite clear that the Government would present clear cut proposals- would go into the election  next year “making it absolutely crystal clear what our preferred position actually is …”

The SNP Government believed that education should be based on the ability to learn, not on the ability to pay, and that was why upfront tuition fees were ruled out. A graduate contribution was one of the six options presented. It had been made clear by Mike Russell that the government would not necessarily implement all of these.

Bernard Ponsonby pressed the point – was the graduate tax being ruled in or out? The Deputy First Minister repeated that it was one of the options in the paper. She rejected decisively the suggestion that the Government was evading the option, and repeated that the SNP would state its position clearly before the election, in the campaign.






N.B. The above clip inadvertently chopped off the end of Alan Cochrane's remark - he said that the election was Labour's to lose ...

Wednesday 24 November 2010

The staggering hypocrisy of the Holyrood opposition parties

While demonstrations and riots take place in London, Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow against Labour's destruction of the UK economy, Nick Clegg's broken LibDem promises to the electorate and students specifically - and the damaging and ill-conceived Tory cuts, aided and abetted by their tame LibDem partners, the tame Scottish representative of the three London-based parties nonetheless have the effrontery to attack the Scottish SNP government on a non-issue - the totally irrelevant SVR tax, a tax that has never been used, never will be used, and has been ignored by all Scottish parties.

Astonishingly - and contemptibly - they are supported by the two Scottish Green MSPs in their attack on an honest man of high integrity, John Swinney, the Scottish Government Finance Minister.

While young people demonstrate and riot in cities across the UK against their Westminster parties, Scottish Labour, Tories and Liberal Democrats whip up wholly synthetic anger and indignation, posturing and shouting in Holyrood.

Fortunately, the Scottish people have more sense than to pay any attention to this self-serving nonsense. They know who sent their sons to die in foreign wars, are still sending them to die, and who wrecked the economy and blighted their futures - Labour.

And they know who broke their promises and got elected on a false prospectus - the Liberal Democrats.

They know who is directing a programme of draconian cuts against the poor and vulnerable and who is attacking their public services - the party that was comprehensively rejected by the Scottish electorate in May 2010, a dying party in Scotland - the Tories.

And they know who are the compliant allies and agents of the Tories in coalition - the feeble LibDems.

But above all they know which party has the interest of Scots and Scotland at heart - their ain folk - the Scottish National Party.


The Scottish SVR tax–the facts

The constitutional power under the Scotland Act has not lapsed. What has lapsed is the fee to HMRC for collecting it.

£12m was paid by the Scottish Government in 1999 to set up the HMRC collection system.

The £50,000 per annum fee was for collection of tax.

No tax has been implemented

No tax has been raised

No party has proposed raising tax by the SVR.

The first time the Scottish government received the new demand for £7m to set up a new system by HMRC was in July 2010.

A meeting was immediately requested with HMRC by the Scottish Government to discuss this has been ignored by HMRC and no meeting has yet been offered.

The ability to raise the SVR tax has not lapsed: no constitutional power has been lost.

The Scottish Government simply declined to pay an excessive fee to HMRC for their services on a tax that no one intended to use.

There has never been a practical ability to use the SVR at short notice – it takes about 10 months to put the system in motion from the passage of the budget bill to HMRC actually being able to levy the tax.

The maintenance contract with HMRC came to an end in 2007, and not until July of 2010 was the matter raised again by HMRC , in the form of a sudden demand for £7m to update the system.

Why should the Scottish Government spends large sums of money, vital to Scotland in the face of the draconian cuts to its budget by the UK government, to finance a system that neither they nor the Opposition Parties in Holyrood intended to use?

That sum of money plays a vital part in essential services to the Scottish People. To pay it to HMRC, for a service that never has been used and never will be used (it is being replaced by new legislation) by the Scottish Government, or any other party, would be fiscal lunacy, and a dereliction of their duty to the Scottish people.

The Scottish SVR tax – some facts, and a warm-up last night for the main bout today at Holyrood


Newsnight Scotland gives some hard facts on the furore over the Scottish SVR tax debate that has been whipped up by the three Holyrood Opposition parties, with the Greens behaving strangely, apparently hell-bent on solving the entire deficit problem resulting from the UK ConLib cuts solely by taxing the Scottish people.

John Swinney will present the Government’s position in the Parliament today.

I found Andy Kerr's behaviour - accusing Alex Neil of lying - of lies, and deceit - quite disgraceful and unacceptable behaviour in a public debate. Alex Neil, being a robust and good-natured politician, will probably shrug it off. (I would have sought other remedies.)

There's hardball politics, and vigorous politics, but this contemptible showing is all too typical of Scottish Labour's gutter style.

Judge for yourself


Sunday 31 October 2010

Saltire in the sky over Kirkliston

Sunday morning in the ancient Scottish village of Kirkliston, where the first recorded meeting of the Scottish Parliament was held in 1235. A vapour trail intersects with a cloud in a perfect blue sky to form a Saltire - the flag of the nation of Scotland. An omen, perhaps? Not quite the Angel of Mons, but good enough for me.

Saltire over Kirkliston

Of course, it won't please the man who aspires to be Scotland's next First Minister (assuming it is visible from where he lives).

Iain Gray, at his Labour Party conference, uttered the crass words that will now haunt him for the rest of his political career - "I love my country too much to be a nationalist." This is the man that Ed Miliband calls a statesman.

God help Scotland if Iain Gray ever attains the post he aspires to, where we can confidently assume that he will defer in all things to the London office of his party, and to the UK Westminster Parliament. The people of Scotland will come a very poor third in Mr. Gray's scale of priorities.

Saor Alba!