Breaking, Catalonia

Remember before the September 2014 Independence Referendum in Scotland, when there were rumours that MI5 was undermining the Yes case? I thought it was all conspiracy hoo-haa.

But the news, today, from Catalonia is that the Minister of Justice in Madrid, Jorge Fernandez, and the head of the 'Catalan Antifraud Office' in Barcelona, Daniel de Alfonso, had a conversation in 2013 that was secretly recorded. The tape has been released, and it is clear (a) that both men were searching for a way of finding leading pro-independence Catalan politicians guilty of fraud and (b) the Spanish President (Mariano Rajoy) knew that this was going on.

This news comes just 3 days before Sunday's state-wide election. It will not damage the right-wing Partido Popular (their voters seem immune to the corruption and bad government of their party) but it will finish any hope in the short term of a reconciliation between Madrid and Barcelona.

Anyone got a tape of Theresa May talking to MI5 about dropping a corruption charge on Alex Salmond, around late summer, 2014?

I want to vote Yes. Now.

I don't want the Scotland I know and love to be part of a Westminster War. This is not our, Scotland's, war. It is Osbameron's war. It is the Bullingdon Bombing Club bullying the public and the Opposition into a war that will kill us all, morally if not mortally.

I don't want the Scotland I know and love to be part of Westminster. Not when we are facing a generation of Tory terror. (It will take at least that long for a reasonable Opposition - the scrag end of Labour, and, with luck, a new socially-concerned opposition party - to form itself in England.) We are belted in to 20 more years of Osbameron.

But we are not belted in. We could be free. We could walk quietly away from Westminster and its wars, and build a Scotland that is at peace with the world. 

We could vote Yes. 

I want to do that. Now.

Smith Says Yes

The Smith Commission has published its interim analysis of 13,759 submissions from members of the public.
Just, ehem, 259 (1.88%) were “submissions requesting no further powers be devolved.”

4,800 of the submissions were petitions – meaning they were signed by more than 10 people. Of these, all (yes 100%) were for one or other mixture of further powers including devo max and home rule.
 
So, Lord Smith. Your big, big test: will you recommend what most people want? Or will you fudge the issue?

To the Smith Commission, with love from Catalonia

Dear Members of the Smith Commission

I live in Catalonia, one of millions of Scots living abroad.

Scots abroad are the ambassadors of Scotland. We talk about Scotland to neighbours, friends and colleagues. We support Scotland in debates about anything from football to fisheries. We promote Scotland, Scottish products and places. We welcome Scots to our homes, and help Scots in need.

We could not vote in the Referendum, but by goodness we care about the place we still call "home."

1          Current Situation in Scotland; Issues

1.1        Power, and Responsibility

There is little that links the people of Scotland to those in power in the UK.

Scottish affairs occupy very little of Westminster's time and appear to be of little interest. This lack of interest comes from the top: Prime Minister Cameron was absent from Parliament for debates on 6th May 2014: Wales Bill/Scotland Wales symmetry, 25 Mar 2014: Disenfranchisement debate, 29 Nov 2012: Scotland and the union, 15/3/2011: Scotland Bill and 7/3/2011: Scotland Bill. Between 2004 and 2010 he mentioned Scotland in the Commons an average of just three times per year, including two years in which he never spoke about Scotland at all (source: Hansard).

Local Government and local democracy is in a poor condition in Scotland. The abolition of the Parish Councils, the County Councils, and the District and Regional Councils has pushed democracy further and further from the people. Politics in Scotland feels (excluding the brief moment of sovereignty that was the Referendum) like a very distant place.

1.2        Poverty

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation showed us what we already knew - there is deep, widespread poverty in Scotland. People who live in Ferguslie Park, Possil Park or other deprived areas of Scotland are three times as likely to be unemployed and if they are unemployed, almost five times as likely to be sick and unemployed as folk living in the least deprived areas of Scotland.

Poverty needs local solutions, and the UK Government in Westminster has shown itself to be unable to deal with Scotland's poverty.

1.3        Peace Dividend

The Westminster Government has followed its US allies into a succession of wars, principally in the Middle East. It maintains and is about to renew its Trident nuclear missile system, based close to Glasgow. The cost of these adventures is awful in human lives. It is also economically destructive. The Trident Commission Final Report, July 2014, states that the cost of replacing Trident is "£2.9bn in 2012 figures, or 9.4% of the defence budget" over 20 years.

Scotland’s share of £2.9 billion per annum over twenty years (the Trident Commission predicts that the actual cash cost will rise to a maximum £4bn per annum) is money that could be going to education, health or the alleviation of poverty.

 

1.4        Oil, Gas, Renewables

The Scottish Parliament does not control licensing for oil extraction in the North Sea...nor for fracking under the Scottish Central Belt. The Scottish government does not control the tax revenues arising from these activities, meaning that it cannot use licensing and taxation to manage extraction, nor can the people of Scotland benefit in any way other than the direct or indirect employment these industries create. This is a situation very similar to the extraction of raw materials in the Global South, where nations are left in poverty despite the extraction of valuable mineral wealth.

1.5        Representation Overseas

Scotland is poorly represented overseas. We had direct experience of this here in Spain during the weeks before the Referendum when a group of Scots in Spain had to ask the British Ambassador in Madrid, Simon J Manley CMG, to cease tweeting comments against the Yes campaign. He replied that he "articulated Her Majesty's Government's views on this subject." [Source, letter from Simon J Manley, 24 June 2014]. He did not articulate the views of many in Scotland.

The distinctly Scottish voice on foreign affairs, including the Scottish orientation toward the Nordic states and the EU, and the Scottish thinking on a range of topics from energy to migration are not adequately represented by the UK’s Ambassadors.

1.6        EU and international

Catalonia and Scotland have much in common, including a positive view of the benefits of EU membership. This positive view is not shared by many in England and there is now the real possibility that Westminster could remove Scotland from membership of the EU, against its democratically stated will.

1.7        Migration

"We are all immigrants", the first line of The Scots - a Genetic Journey (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Scots-A-Genetic-Journey/dp/1780270321), reminds us that Scotland has immigration needs that are not shared by England. We have more universities per head than any other country in the world. Access to these wonderful universities is being hampered by the UK-wide single policy on immigration. Scotland has land that it could share and an ageing population that needs balancing with younger people; we have space, and the need, for more immigration.

2          Principles

2.1        Rebuild democracy in Scotland

People in Scotland should feel that they have a say in how their local area, their region and their nation is run. Those in power locally, regionally and nationally should know (not just morally, but constitutionally, and legally) that they are responsible to their electors

Only the powers that absolutely have to remain at Westminster should do so – the principle of subsidiarity. Westminster should retain powers over foreign affairs and defence, within the provisos below. All other powers - including all forms of taxation and State income generation, and all forms of expenditure - should be devolved to the Scottish people and their Parliament.

2.2        Poverty

Scotland’s government should have a constitutional requirement to reduce poverty. A simple threshold would suffice – for example, to reduce poverty to the levels experienced in a basket of Nordic states.

2.3        Defence

Scotland's defence needs are simpler and cheaper than those of England, with a focus on inshore patrols and no need for an A-bomb deterrent. Scotland should enter a military alliance with England and Wales, with an agreed level of participation by Scottish regiments, air force and navy units, and an agreed budget. Scottish taxpayers would not have to support Westminster's defence programme, and as a symbol of this new alliance, Westminster should remove its Trident missile system from Scotland.

2.4        Natural Resources

Scotland's wealth of natural resources should be used to benefit the people who live there. Oil and gas licensing including licensing for fracking, and all oil/gas taxation revenues should be managed in Scotland by the Scottish Parliament, with a proportion representing the English geographic share of oilfields in North Sea waters being paid to the Exchequer in London. Tax revenues from hydro, wind, tidal, biomass and other renewable energy systems should also be received and managed by the Scottish Parliament. The levels of tax and subsidy should be set by the Scottish Parliament.

2.5        Foreign affairs

Scotland's viewpoint is different from that of England or Wales. The UK should have formal structures through which Scotland's views on foreign affairs are expressed, including a Scottish Foreign Affairs committee in the UK Parliament, and a substantial, influential Scottish Foreign Affairs office within the FO.

Scottish High Commissions - a form of Embassy - should be established in countries with large Scottish communities and in countries such as India with large migrant populations in Scotland. Their role would be to promote Scottish trade and exports, promote Scottish interests in the country and region, and to provide a hub for migrant families in Scotland and migrant Scots abroad. Scottish High Commissions should be established in the USA, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Belgium (Brussels, EU), Spain, United Arab Emirates, India, Pakistan, China, Australia and New Zealand.

2.6        EU membership

The Commission could consider a settlement that allowed Scotland to remain in the EU even if England chose to leave. The relationship between the Channel Islands and England provides a constitutional model; one nation outside the EU, the other inside, and both linked together by the Crown.

2.7        Migration

Scotland's distinct needs should be reflected in different policies. Specific categories of permitted immigrant to Scotland should be created so that students and young economic migrants from outside the EU could live in Scotland. This is similar to the situation in Canada where individual territories set immigration policies relevant to their needs, within an agreed national framework.

3          Devolving powers and responsibilities

Devolving powers and responsibilities to Scotland would recover democracy there, and that in turn would mean a stronger society, a stronger civil society, and a greater degree of social cohesion. These are social goods with an economic value that will repay the investment in time and money required to build them.

The necessary first steps are in the fields of taxation and revenue generation, meaning that all taxation revenues from oil and gas, as well as income taxes, land and corporation taxes, and sales taxes would flow to a Scottish Exchequer. With this flow of funds Scotland could afford to build a stronger democracy and to tackle the many causes of poverty.

4          Conclusion

With power over all forms of taxation and the economy, with a peace dividend arising from a new arrangement for defence, and with a powerful say in foreign affairs, Scotland could thrive. Without these powers it remains, as now, at the whim of a Parliament focused on other issues, other places, and other battles.

Thank you for considering this submission.

1,617,989

Yes, Scotland.

1,617,989 of your people voted for the most radical change that you can have without a war. Voted to create a new country, with a constitution, with a socially inclusive programme that would at last include the poor, with a decent free education system and without the awful nuclear weapons that are the Sword of Damocles over Glasgow.

These brave but too few voted Yes against the will of the three main Westminster parties. These brave few voted Yes against the will and the might of all bar one of the printed media and all of the broadcast media. They did so against the interests and the statements of major employers such as Standard Life.

Why? There will be months of analyses by people far more expert than me. But I heard a clue yesterday, on a run down housing estate in NW Edinburgh. I had joined a rally of about 100 people, most women and children, led by a piper. We walked through streets lined with broken fencing, past houses that needed repair, with children whom, I knew from the statistics, would live seven and a half years less than people from my wealthy middle class background ( http://news.scotland.gov.uk/News/Wide-variation-in-life-expectancy-between-areas-in-Scotland-b89.aspx). The woman walking next to me said, simply, "This is our time."

She is why I have worked for a Yes for the last year. She, and the 742,200 others (http://simd.scotland.gov.uk/publication-2012/simd-2012-results/overall-simd-results/key-findings/) who live in Scotland's poorest areas, is the fuel beneath the fire that burned so brightly for Yes. And now she, her children and their children must swallow yet another defeat in a society in which all the cards are stacked against them.

This is not anger at the 2 million who said No. This is a democracy - the least worst form of government - and I knew the risks before I started to dedicate time and energy to this debate. I, and the 1,617,989 who voted Yes, knew we were taking the risky road to major change. The fall from the heights of yesterday afternoon, when we were whooping around Edinburgh in a Landrover decked in Chinese lanterns and Scottish and Catalan flags, was always going to be a long one. But by goodness it was worth it, to reawaken Scotland to its possibilities.

And although I don't believe a word of politicians' promises, just maybe we have tripped a change in the UK. Enough of a shout of pain and disillusion from Scotland that Britain will alter course, one degree to the left. Just enough to drag some of the goodies from the shopping bags of London's wealth. Just enough to give Scotland power to look after all of the people who live in this beautiful country.

If the efforts of all of us in Yes have been enough to save one life from the gaol of deprivation then they have been worth every sweated, tearful, joyful hour. To paraphrase Lesley Riddoch (http://www.lesleyriddoch.com/blossom-the-book.html) we have shown that there is love for people you never knew you knew, and that is the seed that will blossom in Scotland.

On the street

On the street it all makes sense.

I spent three hours tonight walking the streets of north west Edinburgh with the canvassers of Yes Scotland.

We walked along a cross section of Scottish society. At first the houses were single houses with wee gardens. The gardens, beautifully kept, neatly edged, ornamented with tiny statues. Well pruned roses in clear-wedded beds. Then as we headed north the houses became multiple flats in three or four storey blocks, each with a 'close', a communal stairwell. The stairwells had hand-written notices reminding tenants to keep the stairs clean and to do their cleaning according to the rota.

My canvassing buddy explained that these were all council houses sold off to private landlords under Mrs Thatcher's Right to Buy scheme. Now the private landlords don't bother with maintenance, so the houses gradually decay.

Further north still and the closes became increasingly decrepit, strewn with rubbish, smelling bad and looking broken. Many of the people in these poorer homes were first generation immigrants. Others were people with what the professionals would call 'multiple social challenges.' People with problems in work (the fifty year old man from Tarragona, whose poor English meant that the only work he could get was as a free magazine distributor, on a daily contact.) Or with addictions (the young, havering couple, him bone skinny, her too big.) This is poverty, in prosperous Edinburgh, where the well heeled bosses of the big banks have tried to scare us into voting No by threatening job losses.

On the way to the canvass, in central Edinburgh, I passed three men sitting on pieces of cardboard, on the street. Surviving on the street in Edinburgh, and especially as winter comes in, must be hard. Each of the men looked rough, uncared for, unkempt.

This is wrong. A rich society should not have people living in poverty like this. These are our people.

It is for all these people of Scotland, our people, that we are voting Yes on Thursday.

On the streets, Yes makes sense.

Get yer Grannie on the Yes bus

Ye got tae get yer grannie tae a Yes
Oh ye got tae get yer grannie tae a Yes
Ye got tae get yer grannie
Cause she's yer mammie's mammie
Ye got tae get yer grannie tae a Yes


Ye can shove yer ither grannie tae a Yes
Ye can shove yer ither grannie tae a Yes
Ye can shove yer ither grannie
Cause then ye’ll have baith grannies
Ye can shove yer ither grannie tae a Yes

More, more powers

If 'more powers' is good for Scotland [source: Gordon Brown]

Then more, more powers is better.

But why settle for second place?

Because 'all the powers' is best for Scotland.

Yes, Gordon

Dear N

Dear N

In your email yesterday you said you were 'totally confused' about the choice in Scotland next Thursday.

You are a clever, insightful, worldly woman with years of management experience. Perhaps you are looking for complexity?

Actually it's simple.

I focus on just one issue; poverty. How can we make the lives of poor people in Scotland better?

From this one issue flows almost all the arguments.

We can't make poor people's lives better because Westminster keeps on making them worse. The latest in a long line of examples is the iniquitous Bedroom Tax, imposed on poor families a twelvemonth after wealthy MPs were found to be claiming expenses on  second homes with third, fourth or fifth bedrooms.

We need the power to stop Westminster wrecking the lives of poor people. Follow that one line of argument and you have a case for a Yes vote.

But I can see that you are not yet convinced. So, take defence. Nothing to do with the poor? Or everything. Because Westminster runs a massive military spending machine in order to retain the aura of its old Empire. This includes Trident, the aging nuclear bombs parked 25 miles upwind of Glasgow. The A-bomb gets Britain its seat on the UN Security Council. And an "all-party" committee in Westminster has recently decided that Trident should be renewed. At an estimate cost of £4 billion. Each year. For 20 years. That 'estimated' £80bn budget represents about £8bn from Scotland, proportionately.

How many poor people could you help, dear N, with £8bn?

To help its poor, Scotland needs control over defence.

Since Mrs Thatcher invented the phrase, British politicians have believed that wealth will 'trickle down' to the poor. Cut back on government and cut taxes, allow the rich to get very wealthy and some of the gold dust will land in the poor woman's lap. All three main Westminster parties now subscribe, in one or other form, to this 'neo-liberal' philosophy. They do so despite the evidence. Because as the OECD has repeatedly shown, the wealth gap in the UK has widened continuously since Mrs Thatcher entered Downing Street. The rich get richer as the poor get relatively poorer. Wealth does not 'trickle down.' It floats up.

And yet, together, we are stuck with this three-party-no-choice. Scotland's politics has long been different - further left and, to date, remarkably untainted by the neo-liberals. Perhaps Scotland comes, as some writers have argued, from an older tradition of how to do right by society. Even my Dad is an old-fashioned decent Conservative. However we got here we are yoked to the neo-liberal policies of Westminster. While those policies exist we cannot help our poor people.

To unlock is poor people from no-choice Westminster, Scotland needs to govern itself.

Scotland's poor people are stuck in structural poverty. Too many are trapped in the poverty that their parents and grandparents also suffered. Some are stuck in poverty because of a disability. This is a human rights issue. The poor need the power to tackle governments, to secure rights over property or food or education. But England has no written constitution, so rights can be easily removed. (For evidence, look at Mr Cameron's new 'anti-terror' legislation.) As you know from your work with women in the Global South, poor, powerless people need strong protection from a state that is constitutionally required to protect their rights.

To help its poor, Scotland needs a written constitution.

Scotland's health record is a heart attack car-crash. Too many of us eat a poor diet, smoke, drink and don't exercise. Too few women breastfeed their weans. These are conditions of, and conditional on, poverty. The result is that Scots die younger than their English equivalents. Scotland needs to create its own solution to its terrible health record. We need to pull ourselves up by the straps of our exercise boots. Westminster MPs, with a couple of notable exceptions, are not interested. Their focus is on the slim, attractive, prosperous, joggers of London. Because London is where the power and the money are (which is why so many of us, me, and maybe you too? left Scotland to seek our fortunes in London.) Westminster's focus on London blinds it to the unhealthy northern hinterland.

To allow its poor people to help themselves into a better lifestyle, Scotland needs to break the London lock. By governing itself.

We need the power to stop Westminster taxing the poor. We need control over defence and the awful £80bn A-bomb, in order to release those funds for the poor. We need to break away from the neo-liberals. We need a written constitution to guarantee the rights of our least powerful citizens. And we need to look after ourselves.

It is in the end a simple question with a simple three-letter answer, on a slip of paper, next Thursday:

Can we make the lives of poor people in Scotland better?

Yes

The Lion of Scotland Roars Yes

I was reading the Catalan Lunar Calendar (the French original is at www.calendrier-lunaire.fr) with a friend this morning (it’s about gardening and astrology, for those who don’t follow such things).

We checked the 18^th and 19^th September.

The day of the vote is propitious for flowers – the Flower of Scotland, obviously. At midnight, we enter Leo. 

On the day that the results of the Scottish Referendum are announced we enter the time of the Lion.

The Lion of Scotland, who roars Yes.

I will shortly be checking my tea leaves, kissing toads and touching wood.