Rights, or right

People chose political parties for all sorts of reasons. But when a country chooses, massively, one political philosophy it is saying something about the core beliefs of its people. This is nicely illustrated by yesterday's Pink News.  This reports a survey by Scotland's Equality Network which finds that Scotland is the leading country in Europe for LGBTI equality and human rights legislation.

In Scotland 50% of voters chose the SNP, a party embedded in beliefs in equality and social justice.

In contrast, most voters in England chose Tory-UKIP, the right wing grouping which garnered 55% of voters in England, 14,194,922 people. These parties are not built on a foundation of equality and social justice - for evidence check the Tory party manifesto, which included a pledge to repeal the Human Rights Act.  Instead they focus on the rights of the individual to do as he (normally, he) wishes in the hope that this will benefit society.

Two very different philosophies and increasingly two very different countries. 

If England wishes to head out of the door on the right, then let it do so. Scotland now needs the powers to enable it to grow a fairer society - fairer for LGBTI people, for migrants, for "minorities", for people living with disabilities, for the poor...

Fairer, in other words, for all of us.



PS: For a more educated, knowledgeable and generally better view on all of this, read Lallands Peat Worrier. For a laugh on the same topic, take a walk with the Wee Ginger Dug.

The Price of Everything

How can we value our governments? What is the value of running the country one way, or another?

Since Margaret Thatcher came into power in 1979 we have been running the country one way. Her way was neoliberalism, the belief shared by Labour and Liberal parties that by allowing the rich to get richer the wealth would 'trickle-down' to the poor.

It probably sounded good at the time - free markets and privatisation, after years of planned and before that rationed economy. Across the Thatcher reign 1979-1990 GDP grew from £3,000 to £3,097 per person, inflation adjusted. The economy looked OK, and economics - the science that knows the price of everything - was supportive of neoliberalism.


But while the suited economists in Whitehall were celebrating, the woman on the Craigneuk omnibus was finding it harder and harder to find her fare. Because over that same period the poor were getting poorer. At the start of her reign, one in five people in the UK was poor [1]. By the end it was one in three.



And now, 36 years later we discover that while economics knows the price it does not know the value. The OECD report Focus on Inequality and Growth that Nicola Sturgeon pointed to when she launched Scotland's economic strategy last week shows that letting the rich get richer means that all of us get poorer - in OECD words "income inequality has a negative and statistically significant impact on medium-term growth." Specifically, the UK lost 9% of growth because of inequality. Why? Mainly because inequality makes it harder for poor people to get a decent education.


So the neoliberalism that Thatcher imposed and that David Cameron and Giddy Osborne still favour made us all poorer.


And now it might be about to cost Westminster a whole lot more.


Imagine (it's not hard) that the revitalised SNP wins this election in Scotland, and the next. It cannot be long until we get a second go at a Referendum on independence. If Scotland were to vote Yes next time, Westminster would lose about to one tenth of the people under its dominion, one third of its land area, the launch platform for its horrible WMD and its oily cash cow.



What then is the value of neoliberalism? It made a few people very wealthy. Nice for them. It has left one in three Britons living in poverty.


Why could economists not tell us that in 1979? Why could they not say 'Watch out Britain! You are being hypnotised, and robbed?'


What use, finally, is economics? 

OECDstats don't perfectly match the period - but in 1975 the poverty rate - the number of people earning less than 50% of the median wage - was 18% and by 1990 it was 29%.

Don't Read if you are Poor

A clear, well-argued paper from the OECD shows why poverty is bad for your economic health.

Federico Cingano and Michael Förster explain in straightforward terms what happens when countries allow their poor to get poorer. They show that increasing income differences (the overall measure is called the "Gini Coefficient") by one Gini point lowers GDP per capita growth by 0.1%. The cause? Mainly, lower educational achievement amongst the poorest people; more inequality means that poorer people spend fewer years in school, and that means lower literacy and numeracy. Poor people are not reading.

And where does Scotland come in all this? 

Guess...and you'll be about right. In the UK "...the cumulative growth rate would have been six to nine percentage points higher had income disparities not widened..." over the last 20 years. Our unique position as the European country with the widest differences in income - i.e. the worst wealth gap - has been bad for all of us, not just the poor people who have suffered as a result. 

Scotland, as we know from SCVO amongst others, suffers  from some of the worst poverty in the UK; the Scottish economy is being held back as a direct result.

Time to take Scotland out of this stranglehold on growth.

The Quine's Speech

Nicola Sturgeon, first of the quines of Scotland, has drafted her government's programme for 2014-5. The detail is interesting.

The programme has two axes - business, and equality. On equality, the Government is planning to do battle with poverty and to emulate by 2020 what the First Minister has done in her Cabinet - require 50:50 representation by women in the leadership of organisations across the nation.

The economic strategy is written for the long term - productivity, increasing labour market participation, and a focus on making Scotland a good place to do business.  The steps include good practical stuff, so parents in the workforce (and without) will get more and better childcare: that will help businesses directly.

The government is promising more Modern Apprenticeships too. For many young people an apprenticeship is a great way to get a solid start in work, and much better to get hands-on work than spending years in a classroom.

The equality programme is wide and varied. From cradle to grave it includes continuing protection for the NHS, more free child care for 1-3 year olds, help for people caring for others, payment of the Living Wage in public-sector contracts, and a thoughtful proposal to analyse how best to legislate specifically against domestic violence. There is to be a fund to recompense people for the idiotic Westminster "Bedroom Tax" -  a bizarre example of one government digging a hole and the other filling it in.

The Government purposes legislation on human trafficking, a horrible source of exploitation that especially affects women. Human trafficking is the dark underside of the sex work trade and legislation will have the beneficial effect of shining a light on the (mainly) men who traffic their sisters.

The Government proposes the end, finally, of Mrs Thatcher's 'Right to Buy' scheme under which our best social housing was sold off to private landlords. This might protect the tail end of social housing in Scotland.

Land reform - the subject of much of Leslie Riddoch's Blossom (and today's front page at The National)- will also be tackled. This is going to be a land war, but one worth winning. Scotland, as Riddoch argued, has millions of acres of unproductive land held by unaccountable land owners. The reform proposed will include transparency so that we can see who's who, and a shift in business rates (tax) so that 'game' estates - those that occupy thousands if acres just so that folk can shoot grouse or deer - will pay their proper share of tax. Expect loud bangs when the gun lobby reads about that.

Land reform with power sharing with local communities is the environmental part of this programme. There is more - legislation on landfill and work on fisheries, as well as support for renewables through the "Offshore Wind Accelerator" programme (a pun of a name.)

So what's missing? There is stuff that this Government can't do. It uses the phrase "short of the power to legislate, the Scottish Government is committed to…", or "...within the limits of our current powers…"  to signal those places where it cannot overcome those of Westminster. Amongst the most horrible of the things they can't do: they can't get rid of Trident.

There is little on the non-profit sector apart from support for culture and reforms in the way that universities are governed. But the huge focus on inequality will please many in the sector.

The first quine's speech is a series of promises to do her best to shepherd all this good stuff through the Scottish Parliament. This is how she would like the future to be - but it's a plan, not an audit report.  Some of it might not make the final cut. Today's report by the Smith Commission and next year's Westminster election might open new doors, or close others. 

But as a manifesto for building better lives for people who have little, or nothing, it gets my vote.