I cried today

I cried today on the way home from work. I had BBC Radio 4 on as I usually do and Evan Davis, whose abilities to head up this news show I regularly whinge about to my friend Ryan Morrison, bumbled even more than usual through a piece in which his total lack of grasp of the state of Scottish current affairs was laid bare for all to hear but thankfully not see.

I came in and thought I'd write a blog and I've done a few of those in my time - but the subject of the last blog 3 years ago hadn't turned out well, and I cried again (it's the one under this!)

I had dinner and tried to write it again but the words wouldn't come and I cried again so I went out for a walk along the Clyde to the bridge before the Squinty bridge and back again and that cleared my head a little.

5 years ago today Scotland went to the polls and a few days before that I had perhaps rashly said to David Linden and Alison Thewliss (now both MPs): "I could help with that" and found my self standing beside a hastily drawn up plan of polling places in Shettleston constituency sending strangers all over the east end of Glasgow to stand outside Primary and Secondary Schools whose names I had only just learnt and whose locations were a little bit vague to say the least. I don't think I lost anyone although I'm pretty sure some people were away for a little longer than they and I had intended! 10pm and I was in the Emirates and the excitement was electric. I was so ecstatic at having been asked to go to the count (yes I cried at that time too - I do it a lot as my friends know). The the first result came in - I think it was Clackmannanshire - and it was a no and the game was a bogey from then on in.

But fast forward to the present and where stand we now? My good friend Maggie Lennon and I have both agreed that there's a lot of anecdotal evidence of people moving, often surprisingly, from No to Yes, and when Sarah Smith alluded to this in an excellent piece on Radio 4 the other week (Evan Davis take note - listen to it) and I thought of my own friends and acquaintances who have changed their minds on the subject recently, often in a dramatic manner but sometimes quietly but confidently, I felt much happier.

It's not been shown up in the opinion polls to any large extent, although I read earlier in the week the good BBC favourite Professor Curtice (yes him with the British Empire gong) point out a definite move to Yes in Remain voters and Yes is averaging 49% now, but having read a bit about the flux the polls are in I'm not as worried about that as I thought I might be.

So I've stopped crying now, though I'm pretty sure I may well shed a tear tomorrow morning when I stumble across a certain Facebook memory posted by my daughter 5 years ago.

So many people have come on this journey that although I can't imagine we'll match the 99% vote in Norway for their independence (and how badly did that end....not!) I am very confident that once the starting pistol is fired, and we're closer than ever to that, the end result will be a resounding Yes vote and not for the first time I'll quote the words of someone who inspired me many years ago, Winnie Ewing: "Stop the world - Scotland wants to get on!"

I'm voting RISE on 5 May

I suppose a GP may seem an unlikely convert to left wing politics but it's no "Paul on the road to Damascus" moment that's led me to leave the SNP and join and campaign for Rise - Scotland's new left alliance.

After leaving the SNP largely due to personal circumstances in the late 1990s I spent the next 10 years outside a political party. I voted at every election, sometimes for the SNP and sometimes not - I voted SSP in the 2003 Holyrood elections for instance and my vote was just one of thousands that delivered the so-called "rainbow Parliament" that promised much but in the end delivered little.

In 2007, just before the Holyrood elections I re-joined the SNP, believing that in doing so I was moving the cause of Scottish independence, in which I have always believed, a little further forward.

But it was the referendum campaign of 2014 which made me realise, in large part due to the activities of Radical Independence, the Common Weal and many other disparate organisations, that another Scotland was indeed possible. The visions of social justice and the narrowing of the wealth inequality gap were what empowered me and thousands of others to participate in what became truly a mass movement. One which in the end, despite the powerful array of the British state, with its monarchy and unelected elite, the broadcasting oragnisations and the Scottish press, came close to achieving our aim.

Like many others after the referendum I threw myself into the SNP again, serving as an office-bearer and doing my bit to help achieve what became the 2015 General Election landslide. Like many others, thousands of whom joined the SNP, the Greens and the SSP, most of them joining a political party for the first time in their lives, we thought that surely independence was just round the corner.

But a gradual realisation dawned on me that the policies espoused by the SNP were fairly timid, and under proper scrutiny the record of the SNP in government demonstrated a total failure when it came to narrowing the huge gaps between rich and poor, healthy and ill, employed and unemployed, that unnecessarily blight our nation. Don't get me wrong - they have delivered on many issues, and the abolition of  prescription charges (first proposed by the SSP in the rainbow Parliament), the building of a new hospital in Glasgow, the abolition of road tolls and hospital parking charges in all but three sites, and the start of a social housing programme are indeed achievements.

But laterally, and in particular as this election campaign has progressed, it seems to me that the SNP campaign has been more about retaining power than utilising that power to change Scotland in a substantive manner.

The tinkering round the edges of the Council tax was the last straw and if anyone seriously believes that making me pay £30 a month more in Council tax is real wealth redistribution they are kidding themselves.

There is so much more that could and should be done and if you haven't already seen it the RISE manifesto sets out some of the details.

The endless bleating of #bothvotessnp by SNP activists in response to any argument to the contrary is increasingly sounding like something out of George Orwell's "Animal Farm".

Have a look at the policies for yourself - ask some questions - look at the polls, every single one of which has demonstrated that the SNP are pretty much certain to achieve a majority on the constituency vote. Now think how much stronger that government and indeed Parliament would be with some Green or RISE MSPs to give it a radical and cutting edge!

Margo

I’m sure others will put it far more eloquently than I will, but as Margo winning the Govan bye-election in 1973 is my first ever political memory I thought I’d pen a few words.

Sadly I never met her, though I did speak to her on the phone back in my political days to ask her if she would consider standing for the SNP in Hamilton. Sadly she turned us down but took the time to listen to a young and keen nationalist make his case and didn’t dismiss me out of hand.

 

And from what I know that was one of her endearing characteristics – she was prepared to listen.

Laterally she fought a battle with Parkinson’s disease and sadly it has carried her away within sight of the referendum victory she strove for with every ounce of strength she had.

As we wipe away the tears that many like me are undoubtedly shedding at the passing of this political giant let us strive even harder to achieve our nation’s freedom in her memory.

R.I.P. Margo

Flying the flag!

Well it’s certainly been a summer for flags, has it not?

Turning swiftly side from the recent jingoistic Union Jack display that accompanied the birth of an heir to the heir to the heir to the throne, and I pause here for a yawn, we saw the controversy as Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond unfurled the Saltire from his wife’s handbag and, some would say unceremoniously, brandished it to celebrate Andy Murray winning at Wimbledon.

 

 

“Gaun yersel Eck!” I would say, but others begged to differ and the Unionist press attempted to have a field day, with all sorts of accusations of improper conduct being hurled in the poor man’s direction. He only did what any one of us would have done in the situation, and the fact that David Cameron was right in front of him was surely mere coincidence!

But the flag controversy has now moved on to closer at home: Glasgow Pride to be precise.

Apparently last year Glasgow City Council claimed that they couldn’t raise the Rainbow flag over the City Chambers due to the presence of nesting seagulls. Sounds a bit fishy to me but that’s their story and they are sticking to it. The year before the flag certainly flew loud and proud as they say in the LGBT community and I do remember my own personal pride when we entered George Square and there it was. And much commented on it was too!

However this week saw the appearance of a statement from the organisers of Glasgow Pride in which they asked Glasgow City Council NOT to display the Rainbow flag, due to their accusation of lack of financial support for the event itself. Now I am not party to the inner goings on of the organisation of such events. I support them through donation when the buckets come round, but as to the machinations of how the money is raised and indeed spent, well I leave that to those involved.

 

And not being involved, directly at least, is my personal choice. I have quite enough on my hands with a busy job and active social life, and volunteering has never been my “thing”. I have lots of admiration for those who do however, and one of my friends, who is involved with such events, has certainly opened my eyes to the amount of hard work that is needed behind the scenes to make such events a success, though I have to say we still have a long way to go to even make the same league as the likes of Manchester, Brighton or London.

 

A lot of that has to do with population of course, and although Glasgow acts as a Mecca to the Scottish LGBT community, many of whom, like myself, have moved into the big city from outside, the numbers don’t even remotely compare to those down south.

But back to the flag itself – and what does it represent? As ever Wikipedia comes to the rescue and if you don’t know then this article on the rainbow flag will help you out! Worth a read!

Who does it belong to? Glasgow Pride? Glasgow City Council? Me? You?

The truth is of course that it belongs to none of the above and all at the same time. On the day of the Pride march in Glasgow you will see it everywhere – from face paint (which reminds me to get some ordered in after the spectacular success of last year’s venture with this!) to costumes, on flagpoles above the LGBT pubs and clubs, but NOT if the organisers of Glasgow Pride were to have their way, adorning the flagpole of the City Chambers.

 

It is a symbol which binds us all together and reminds us of where we have come from to get to the point where marching through the centre of Glasgow is actually safe! As ever Wikipedia to the rescue and a quick read of story about the Stonewall riots will perhaps give you an idea of exactly why we are marching at all.

Anyway as ever I digress and so back to the controversy around the flag in Glasgow, which stepped up a gear when a larger than life celebrity from the gay scene got involved and had the temerity to say that we should all lobby Glasgow City Council to fly the flag after all!

For those of you on Facebook here’s where to read what was said: Letter to the Council

After the (sad but expected) personal insults and name calling (all going in one direction I have to say) had died down it became apparent that this point of view, that it was OUR flag and had a symbolic value which over-shone any monetary one, was really quite popular and had great merit.

 

So for once I put pen to paper (well ok I typed it on a pc) and wrote an almost identical letter myself. I’m not often moved to such acts of rabid community action but on this occasion I did so, adding a short sentence expressing my concern about the accusations of the financial playing field not being level, and asked for comments about this aspect.

No sooner was the ink from my printer dry, and the letter in the post, though bearing in mind the seagull controversy I didn’t use any pigeons, than the proverbial (bird) shit hit the fan – and the council pointed out that Glasgow Pride would in fact be receiving a large discount for various parts of the event, including such as the use of Glasgow Green. In a statement they added, “The council will be flying the Pride flag in support of Glasgow’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents, and the Pride movement as a whole.”

 

And with that statement I have to agree – the flag belongs to no-one but has symbolic value to us all!

More questions have perhaps been asked than answered during this whole sorry episode, and personally I do feel that the attempt at gesture politics did the organisers of Glasgow Pride no favours at all. There is more than one way to skin a cat as they say, though perhaps with those pesky seagulls in mind the alternative saying – there is more than one way to fry a fish – might have been more appropriate! All very fishy to me anyway!

 

So there you have it – it’s now time though to get this controversy behind us and as the slogan says: “Let’s get back together oot on the Green!”

 

Nato: wrong - Trident: gone!

NATO: wrong – Trident: gone!

As many of you will know the SNP recently changed long-standing policy and adopted a position of an independent Scotland being, or remaining if you wish to follow the EU analogy, a member of NATO.

I’m against nuclear weapons. No matter how you dress them up. I always have been and always will be. The sooner Trident, a weapons system of mass destruction and murder, is removed from our country the better. 

So that’s where I come from.

You can disagree if you like, arguing that “we” need them to deter some undefined threat from some undefined source, but I’m afraid as far as I’m concerned their use cannot be justified. They didn’t stop the airliners in 9/11 and there just isn’t any other credible threat elsewhere.

I’m old enough to remember the Cold War. Over a third of my adult life has been spent under its shadow. I actually remember, unless it’s some figment of my imagination, having drills in Primary School about what to do if the air raid sirens (which were only decommissioned in 1993) went off. We were told to crouch down under our desks in the same position you see in the airline safety brochures when you fly anywhere: precious good that would have done us with the Leuchars airbase a mere 7-8 miles across the Tay!

And make no mistake about it Dundee as Scotland’s 4^th city with its port facilities would have been on the list of targets for those incoming missiles of mass destruction and wanton slaughter.

Glasgow too, where I now live, as a major population centre and with at the time its extensive ship building industry would have been wiped from the map with as much ease as you might swat a fly. Easier in fact – unlike the fly, a city can’t get out of the way.

As a student I remember going to see a film in the students union – almost certainly The Day After, released to a TV audience of 100 million in the USA in 1983. It’s well worth a watch if you are in any doubt as to the outcome of a nuclear exchange. Scroll forward and watch from around the 50 minute mark if you just want to see those effects, but the film itself, although long, is very watchable.

So taking all that into account I don’t see the benefit of an independent Scotland being in an organisation which would still permit the FIRST use of nuclear weapons. Not retaliation: the FIRST use.

But isn't everyone else is in it you may ask? You’d be wrong to think so. Many European countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Austria are not. They participate in the Partnership for Peace Programme but are not NATO members.

I’ve always believed that independence for Scotland will give us a chance to be different. We already have  health and education systems diverging widely from the rest of the UK and there is no reason why we should go down the same road as other nations.

A couple of statistics I came across whilst researching this blog took my breath away.

The first is that the combined military spending of the NATO countries makes up 70% of the world’s defence spending. The second is that the percentage of GDP spent on defence by the UK is second only to the USA and at 2.6% is a full 0.5% (and that’s a lot of money) ahead of the country in 3^rd place.

Who are we trying to kid here? Why are we spending so much of our money in this manner?

A quick read of some of the comments on any SNP/Independence stories in the likes of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and even sadly the Guardian will soon reveal the answer.

Down south they still haven’t grasped the fact that 2/3 of the globe is no longer coloured pink and that there is no British Empire.

There is of course another way. The way an independent Scotland, no matter its political make up,  would undoubtedly follow. A small compact defence force, comparable with the likes of Norway and Denmark, nations of similar sizes, available to the UN for peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

But to participate in NATO in its present form is simply morally wrong.

So for all those reasons I think the SNP got it wrong at their conference, perhaps making the decisions for what it thought were all the right reasons, but still wrong. In all my years of campaigning not ONCE has anyone on a doorstep asked me what our policy on NATO was.

For that matter the two MSPs who resigned from the party afterwards got it wrong too. They were elected on a party list not an individual platform. The policy of the party they represent has changed. Get over it, admit you made a mistake, ask to come back and let’s move forward together. There are mechanisms for changing party policy – it was done once and it can be changed again. But not this side of independence.

Moving to Trident and the nuclear submarine “fleet” (another post-Imperial hangover to call four submarines a fleet of course) with a projected cost of £20 BILLION – at 2006/7 prices. Faslane, their base, is of course another reason Glasgow would have been obliterated in a nuclear strike.

Post-independence these submarines would of course be inherited by “rumpUK “or whatever they wish to call themselves. I have no inherent problem with the remainder of the UK pursuing this make-believe Imperial identity, but if it comes complete with a Scottish dartboard, bullseye Faslane, well they can have that all to themselves. The Thames would seem a nice new home for them – it would certainly concentrate a few minds down south on the matter as the awful truth of the matter is that all three rumpUK political parties are in favour of spending that £20 billion.

How many hospitals and schools could that money build? How many much needed homes? How many jobs could an investment of that scale produce? Put it however you like it’s a scandalous amount of money.

Going back to the jobs and you often read, usually with Jackie Baillie’s name writ large in the article, much like the rest of her you might think, that thousands and thousands of jobs are at risk if Trident is either scrapped or moved south.

Not so – an article published in the press this week, incidentally hot on the tail of another one suggesting Scotland’s defence spending would be over £1 billion LESS than our share of the UKs total (largely but not entirely due to not squandering cash on Trident), gave the lie to that statistic. 520 jobs directly depend on the nuclear submarine fleet.

520 jobs is still 520 jobs. But £1 billion a year is a lot of money to play about with to create new ones!

Scotland has a chance to take its place in the world – let’s make it a place we would want our children and grandchildren to grow up in!

 

Citizen or sir?

Now I have to say at the start of what I see, now that I have finished writing, has turned out to be a bit of a rant, that when I was a teenager, George Reid was one of my political heroes.

As one of the 7 and then 11 MPs in the SNP’s breakthrough in the two 1974 elections he was in the vanguard for Independence, which many of my generation believed was just round the corner.

A generation and a half later in 1999 I was delighted when he was elected to the newly formed Scottish Parliament. And my delight was doubled in 2003 when he was appointed as the Presiding Officer of that body. And superbly well he performed in that role. Always fair. And honourable if that word must be used.

But my feelings this morning when I woke up to discover that he should now be addressed as “Sir” George Reid were altogether different.

I have no problems with an “honours” system to reward publicly those who have contributed to the fabric of our society. I’m sure most countries have one: a modern one.

But the whole concept of an honours system based on some 19^th century long since defunct Imperial power quite frankly leaves me cold.

“Knights Bachelor – Knighthood”, “Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath”, “Companions of the Order of the Bath”, “Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire”....I gave up reading the list at that point in abject disgust.

Apart from a few scattered islands of value simply as bases for our American “allies” in their never ending quest to impose their warped idea of democracy on the rest of the planet there simply ISN’T a British Empire any more. The days that half the globe were coloured pink are long gone!

And even if there was, what on earth is an SNP politician accepting an honour as part of it? Our whole ethos as an Independence movement is surely to break away from the outmoded 19^th century London-centric United Kingdom and all its accompanying layers of patronage and hat tipping etiquette!

There has never been an SNP member of the House of Lords for this reason, and indeed rumour has it Donald Stewart turned down such an offer on more than one occasion being a man of some consistent principle.

When you boil it down to the basics what on earth is the difference?

I mean no personal disrespect to George Reid. As I have said he inspired me and many of my generation to commit ourselves to the Independence cause; a cause that two years away from the 2014 referendum looks like coming to fruition at last.

But to accept this “honour” is to disrespect me and many, if not most, supporters of the Independence cause, striving as we are for a Scotland fit for the 21^st century – a beacon of social democratic, green or socialist (depending on your view point) egalitarianism in a world crying out for such models.

Ex- SSP MSP Rosie Kane put it better than I could ever hope to do this morning when she tweeted:

“The only title I would accept is citizen, and I’d be taking it no being given it”.

Two weeks off - next time for sure

Well the dust has settled, the counting machines have been locked up, the pundits have crunched their numbers (and much has been said about that elsewhere so I’ll not repeat it) and all over the land politicians’ cars are returning to a state of normality. Talking of cars I was most impressed how Alison Thewliss managed to get two of us in the back of hers at one stage, as I feared we’d need to hail a passing rickshaw, of which there are more in John Street than Bridgeton I have to say, to get us to our leafleting area.

Having bravely dipped my toe back into the political water at last year’s Scottish Parliament elections by stuffing some letters into envelopes, I felt inspired, for a variety of reasons, to do a little more this time round. Having once, long ago it now seems, lived my life fully engrossed in politics, it felt more than a little strange standing at Bridgeton Cross one Saturday afternoon, having dragged along my friend Allan for moral support, waiting to see who would turn up. After what seemed an eternity the two candidates and a couple of others arrived and off we went, into parts of Glasgow I never knew existed, although as it turned out we were probably never more than half a mile from our starting point at any stage.

 One of the problems explaining  my lack of political involvement these days is that I have never identified myself with Glasgow in the same way I did with Hamilton all those years ago and even yet I have no real grasp of the area covered by the Calton ward where I now stay. It’s a very diverse area and some of the flats we delivered leaflets to were seemed worlds apart from the affluent pocket of housing I stay in on one edge of the ward. Having been challenged to use two words in this blog (and I’ve used one already) I think I could safely say that some of the gardens we trudged through to deliver our leaflets through worn out letter boxes, in even more worn out front doors, could safely be summed up by that excellent Scots word “midden”. It was distressing in the second decade of the 21^st century to see filthy children’s toys languishing in unkempt gardens in what had clearly once been if not quite “des-res” then an improvement on the tenement slums of the area in the 1950s.

Council elections, perhaps strangely for a Nationalist, are always what have interested me the most, partly I think as back in the late 80s and early 90s, the era of my previous political involvement, they were the one area where with a big of hard and concentrated work it was possible for the SNP to do well.

My first ever election campaign was helping out in Bellshill where a dedicated team of workers saw Duncan McShannon win the seat in a council by-election. I stood as a candidate myself in 5 council elections, twice for the now thankfully dismembered Strathclyde Regional Council, twice for Hamilton District Council, and lastly and the time I finally got elected, for the new South Lanarkshire Council. And I have to say I really enjoyed the campaigns and all the organisation that went into them.

There’s a lot of work involved in an election campaign, much of it unseen by the voters, whether of the planning variety of which splitting a ward up into manageable leaflet runs is but one, and that’s the main difference I think between Hamilton and the area we were in. There were no manageable leaflet runs – a hotchpotch mixture of lanes and alleyways, tenements with and without controlled entries (I’m sure the Labour candidate at the polling station swore that 2/1 was the lucky buzzer to get in), and all in all nothing like the leafy suburb of Silvertonhill with its mass of Wimpey houses.

Then there’s the STV voting system itself with all its nuances, not least of which is the influence played by the alphabet on your chances of election. Calton was one of the few wards in the city where the SNP candidate with a surname starting with T beat the other one whose surname had the fortune to be nearer the start of the alphabet. I do think that is something that should be looked at, whether by grouping candidates of the same part on the ballot paper, or my totally randomising the order the names appear in.

Well having survived my first venture back onto the streets I managed to help out another couple of times before Polling Day itself. Now back in the day I’d have taken a fortnight off work for the whole thing, but I’m not quite back at that stage just yet. But I still found myself out at 7am delivering, or rather failing to deliver (those dreaded controlled entry doors again – clearly the postmen have long since stopped arriving at that time) a “Good Morning” election leaflet. Then it was off to work, and I have to say that by mid-afternoon I was twitching to get away and both vote (it’s always been a recurring nightmare of mine that with our antiquated voting system I’ll arrive to discover someone else has already done so in my name) and stand at a Polling Station.

And that was an experience and a half. Having divested poor Alison of her rosette I spent the next three hours representing the party to those few electors who actually bothered to turn up. There were the usual smiles, growls, winks and nods as I handed out our reminder leaflet as they went in leaving me I have to say with no concept of how we’d done at all.

The independent candidate and his hand-held megaphone were the light entertainment for the evening and I have to say that the Labour candidate and her father were pleasant company and full of friendly banter for what became an increasingly chilly evening, and by the back of nine were winding me up no end when anything remotely looking like Alison’s car came along the street, as by then I was in desperate need of a quick dash home to collect the jacket I should have brought to begin with.

I also had the pleasure of meeting our SNP MSP John Mason for the first time, although I didn’t quite know what to make of him saying, “Ah you’re Nic – I’ve heard all about you”!

But before long Alison did appear, a jacket was obtained in time to avert hypothermia, and the polls closed. And that was that. The counting wasn’t to take place till the next day so off home I went to put my feet up after what I have to say was an enjoyable experience.

Will I do it all again? Roll on the referendum in 2014 – I’ll be taking 2 weeks off work for that one!