Now’s neither the day nor the hour

It’s a puzzling paradox.  Having put the prospect of a referendum on independence on the furthest edge of the political horizon, the SNP seems rather in a hurry to launch the Yes campaign.

According to newspaper reports today, the “Yes, Scotland” campaign will be launched later this week, with two and a half years of activity to persuade the populace to back the shift from devolution to independence.  Part of me is thrilled;  you don’t spend much of your life, believing, hoping and at various points, campaigning for Scottish independence not to be excited that its prospect is within reach.

Which is why the timing of the campaign to secure a Yes, vote is crucial.  As is its launch.  And I fear the SNP, caught up in its own sense of indefatigability as well as in the minutiae of its own issues, has called it wrong.

From the party’s and the leadership’s perspective, there are sound reasons for launching the campaign this week.  The team is in place, as is the war chest, the messaging and the furniture of modern campaigning.

But there are also narrower political considerations.  Euan McColm suggested, in the aftermath of the local government elections, that “Salmond’s ‘unstoppable’ juggernaut seems to have its first roadblock”.  Certainly, the momentum has slowed;  Labour proved that it is not down and out;  in some areas, the SNP did spectacularly well but in others, it failed to make the gains it and others expected.  What better way of re-gaining the initiative than to launch the biggest campaign for hearts and minds we have ever seen?

Then there is the small matter of Leveson.  The First Minister heads there shortly, apparently willing to share with the Inquiry all that he has so far failed to discuss here in Scotland.  There is a chance that what the FM has to reveal, under oath, draws a line under the Murdoch thing and shows that he, his Government and Scotland are so far removed from shenanigans “down there” to enable everyone to move on.

But there is also a risk that what is revealed at Leveson sparks a potential firestorm around the FM which grows in heat and intensity during the long grass of the summer recess.  For the media strategists, this week offers a clear window where the launch cannot get buried by other issues or agendas.  This is true only if you take a very narrow view of what matters in domestic politics, and sadly that is what we have been doing in recent years here in Scotland.

But I’m not sure, people will agree that the timing is right.

You don’t have to stray far this weekend in the news agenda to find the doomsayers.  While there are hopeful signs that a way ahead for the Eurozone has at least been signposted, it remains to be seen if Greece’s participation in the currency can be maintained.  And if it leaves, what then happens to the other economic dominoes waiting to fall – Spain, Portugal, Ireland and even Italy – is almost too scary to contemplate.  Some are suggesting we need more bank bail-outs;  others are calling for them to be allowed, this time, to fail.  Only Germany appears willing to hold the austerity line;  remarkably, the UK has snuck in the back door of the G8 summit and emerged out the front at the side of President Obama, giving the impression that a strategy for growth was theirs all along.

Having read my fill of analysis of what is going on and consulted a few who know about such things, I am none the wiser.  It’s all too complex but like most other ordinary punters out there, I can discern that in the big scheme of things, we’re not in a good place and it could be about to get a whole lot worse.  As we saw last week, with downgrading of banks’ ratings and plummeting share prices, things move fast.  We may or may not be where we started, with Greece still teetering on the brink and Spain still staggering along.  By Friday, we could, however, be in a very different place in geo-economic and political terms.

There was good news for Scotland this week, with unemployment falling faster here than in the rest of the UK and announcements on jobs.  And the outcome from the G8 looks like a victory for the Scottish Government’s call for investment to create growth in the likes of its “shovel-ready projects”.  But the Scottish Government has been largely silent on recent developments on the international economic and political stage.  When we need it to assume the mantle of a government with pretensions to full potency, it prefers not to actually.

Yet, I reckon people would be very interested in hearing the Scottish Government’s view of what is happening in Europe, and what the implications are for Scotland, now, and as we might be, as an independent country with a seat at the European table.   And I’m guessing they’d like a little honesty about our current and future prospects – from all politicians.

In 2011, the SNP received an overwhelming mandate from the Scottish people to carry on doing what it had done so well.  With the other parties posted missing in action, only the SNP had offered leadership – and competent leadership in which they could trust.

Now, with the economic ringwraiths circling at macro level, as well as micro for many households, many people want to be reassured that we have a Government absolutely focused on the job at hand.

What matters to many of the so-called persuadables right now is the threat of joblessness, of mortgage hikes, of drowning in a sea of personal debt proving too stubborn to shift, of having to put the heating on in May because it’s so cold and can we really afford to be doing that, of how to service and MOT the car at the end of the month, of what can be cut back from the food shop to keep the cost down and how to afford new shoes for the kids and a night out for the anniversary.

And this is just what is keeping those with means and some level of security awake at night.  The worries and concerns of those sitting below this waterline are even more fundamental.

But whatever their circumstances, chances are, few people outwith the political bubble are excited about the imminent launch of the Yes, Scotland campaign.  Two and a half years might not seem very long to the SNP’s team, when there’s so much still to do to achieve independence, but for ordinary voters, it’s a lifetime away. And they’d really rather their Government concentrate on what’s bothering them this week than their own political priorities.

The timing of the launch of the Yes, Scotland campaign is important, particularly if the timing is wrong.  And choosing to launch at the end of this week is the wrong time. Now’s neither the day nor the hour to see the front o’ battle lour, to shamelessly misquote Burns.

Nemo me impune lacessit

Not content with lazily retreading a creative concept with its front cover (see the original version here), the Economist also decided to invoke that most stereotypical, historical example of Scottish economic folly, the Darien scheme.  Yawn.

The thrust of the Economist’s article is that Scotland, if independent, risks becoming “one of Europe’s vulnerable, marginal economies” and weaves together a slew of tired old arguments to justify the claim.

We’re just too wee and too stupid.  We just don’t have enough of anything to stand on our own two feet and to do so without plunging our economy and society into decades of penury and poverty.  Conveniently forgetting in the process, all that Scotland has gifted to the world in the past.

For years, in my grandparents’ house, there was a cheap and cheerful banner hanging on the kitchen wall, listing many of Scotland’s greatest innovations and inventions.  I wish I’d kept it, though Wikipedia does the job just as well.  Some, of course, are not without controversy…. but taken together, they show clearly that oor wee nation more than punches above its weight.  Apparently, though, we’d be incapable of this kind of thing if we were an independent nation.

There is a humorous (sic) version of this list of inventions that has done the rounds for many years in the form of teatowels and postcards.  And sadly is still available.

But for your delectation and titillation and to serve as a poke in the eye to the Economist, the Wha’s like us “joke” is repeated here. Which is not to say I believe all that it says, nor support its anti-English overtones.  But really it’s to make a point.  We too can be as petty, lazy and stereotypical as they can.  For the most part, though, we choose not to be.

A wee warning – if we think this is as bad it can get, actually they are only warming up.   Fear is what drives the vested interests with most to lose from Scotland choosing independence and fear, in its most basic and nastiest forms, is what will imbue the anti-independence campaign.   We just have to rise above it.  And when we cannot, there’s always this:

Wha’s Like Us – Damn Few And They’re A’ Deid

A typical Englishman finishes his breakfast of toast and marmalade invented by Mrs Keller of Dundee, Scotland, and slips into his raincoat, patented by Charles Mackintosh from Glasgow, Scotland. He then walks to his office along an English – tarmac surfaced – lane, invented by John Loudon MacAdam of Ayr, Scotland. Or he arrives in his car, which is fitted with pneumatic tyres patented by John Boyd Dunlop, of Dreghorn, Scotland.

Before he had a car he used to travel by train, which was powered by a steam engine, invented by James Watt of Greenock, Scotland.

In his office he deals with the mail bearing adhesive stamps invented by John Chalmers of Dundee, Scotland, and makes frequent use of the telephone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland.

At home in the evening, he dines on his favourite Roast beef from Aberdeen Angus, raised in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.  He then watches some television – an invention of Scotsman John Logie Baird, of Helensbourgh, Scotland – about John Paul Jones, father of the United States navy, born in Kirkbean, Scotland.  The Englishman’s son prefers to read Treasure Island, written by famous Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson, from Edinburgh, Scotland.  Whilst his daughter prefers to play in the garden with her bicycle, invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan, of Thornhill, Scotland.

It is impossible for an Englishman to escape the ingenuity of the Scots!

In desperation he turns to the bible only to find that the first person mentioned is a Scotsman King James VI, who authorised the translation. He could – of course – turn to drink, but Scotland makes the finest whisky in the world.

At the end of his tether he uplifts a rifle to end it all, but Captain Patrick Ferguson, of Pitfours, Scotland invented the Breech-loading-rifle! If the Englishman escapes death by the rifle, he would find himself being injected with penicillin discovered by Scottish Bacteriologist, Sir Alexander Fleming, of Darvel, Scotland – or he might be given Chloroform, am anaesthetic first used by Sir James Young Simpson, of Bathgate, Scotland.

Out of the anaesthetic, the Englishman’s mood would not be improved if the doctor told him that his condition was as safe as the bank of England, which was founded by William Paterson, of Dumfries, Scotland.

Perhaps in order to get some peace, he could request a transfusion o guid Scottish blood so that he to could be entitled to ask Wha’s like us….

And in case, you think we’re all taking this too seriously?  Damn right.  Though I’ll confess to chuckling at a few of the invented place names in Skintland….

 

The story of the rigging that wasn’t

Some people need to get out more.  Doesn’t matter where, just some place where there are real people who can tell them what is important and what is not.

Housing associations adjusting their operational plans for 2013 to include the establishment of soup kitchens – that’s important.  The UK Government about to start monitoring everyone’s emails and web activity – that’s important.  Children not being able to count very well at the age of 13 – that’s not just important, it’s a disgrace.

So how come, the politicians (opposition corps, of course) and the meeja (Scotland’s two quality newspapers in particular) decided yesterday that the most important thing happening in Scotland at this particular time was the Scottish Government allowing anonymous submissions to be made to its independence referendum?

An attempt to rig the result of the consultation, cried some – though no one made clear to whom such anonymity might offer an advantage.  Not so, cried the Scottish Government, this was normal practice in its consultations.   Who cares, cried the rest of us.

And frankly who does.

Particularly now the issue has been resolved.  The Scottish Government has changed the settings on its online consultation platform to make the problem go away,  which rather suggests that it wasn’t normal practice, especially since this was the first time the government’s new online consultation platform had been put into action.  But which also suggests that rather than being a policy decision, it was an HTML coding oversight, fixed by adding a comma or a set of brackets or similar.

Now we can all go away and get on with something much more productive, like responding to the consultation.  And we can do so, comforted by the fact that we will all know how many folk responded and who they all are.

Except we won’t.  Since the process of consulting the populace began in Scotland, on matters varied and myriad, there has always been an option not to have anyone know who you are, whom you represent and what you said.  There is, and continues to be a wee box to tick to say, please don’t make public what I said, nor my name and address – and there are mix and match options of this for those who like to live it large.

So actually, the issue of anonymity is not really resolved at all.  And that’s the way it should be.

It is no one’s right to see what anyone else has to say in such consultations.  There are many reasons why a respondent might not want others to know what they have said.  Someone who suffered sexual abuse as a child and wants to help as an adult make sure that child protection guidelines minimise the risk of it happening to other children.  Someone who has been sectioned under previous mental health legislation and wants to have their experience improve new provision but who doesn’t want friends and work colleagues to know about their health issues in the past.  A company provides commercially sensitive information as part of a submission that it is happy to share with the government to improve policy and practice but doesn’t necessarily want bandied about to all and sundry.

Or maybe there are just some folk who don’t want to indulge the nosy buggers.  I’ve responded – and as a veteran consultation respondent in various guises over the years, I commend the new online platform which is efficient, smooth and effective – and I have ticked the box saying please don’t publish my name and address.  I’m happy for my views to be known and what I had to say can be published but not with my name attached.

Why?  Well, because I work in a policy-related job, I didn’t necessarily want my views on a personally political matter being confused or somehow attaching to the organisation I work for.  What I believe personally should not be allowed to prejudice what people might think of the job I might do on other policy and political matters professionally.  Though I’m sure most of you could guess at the gist of what I had to say for myself.

But there’s an even more serious issue than this at work.  I nearly did allow my name and address to be published but pausing to think about it changed my mind.  For the reason above, but also because I did not want my views – nor indeed anyone else’s – to be used as currency by one side or the other in the battle to win or defeat the referendum.  Which is a pretty sad reflection of the state of Scottish politics.

People are reluctant to make their views publicly known because others cannot be trusted to treat those views with respect.  And while I acknowlege the irony and perhaps hypocrisy in a political blogger making such an assertion, it really should give everyone who is going to be seeking folk to vote yes or no in the coming referendum something to think about.  Especially the ones currently indulging in the latest round of cyber hate wars and tussling over whose members/supporters have the vilest views.

This burd has been called many things in her time but wallflower ain’t one of them.  Shy and retiring are not epithets I recognise.  So if the likes of me is reluctant to proclaim unto nation what I think about the referendum process and how it should be run, for fear of the response and the reaction, think how the current poisonous atmosphere within which political discourse is being conducted is impacting on the much more reticent, ordinary voter.

Frankly, I’m not sure anyone would want the don’t knows and stay at homes to win in this, the most important debate on our constitutional future, in our history.