Scotland

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Tackling the far right

The English Defence League marches are heinous, but tolerated by the English authorities. Not so in my homeland, where the Scottish Defence League have been told by Edinburgh council that they cannot hold a march where they’d hoped to be joined by 200. Part of me welcomes this news: Scotland has its social ills (mainly sectarianism) but racial tension has never really flared. As Alex Salmond says, there are many colours in the tartan. Then again, banning the march may serve to give credibility and a cause to the crackpots who call themselves the Scottish Defence League. Their march would probably have been a tragicomic affair, and they’d have disappeared

Thursday

Alex Massie

Gangs: The Strathclyde Model

I suspect that the idea that opportunistic looting can be explained by organised gangs is, no matter what the Prime Minister said this morning, a questionable premise. Nevertheless, it was interesting and encouraging to see him reference the work done by the Violence Reduction Unit at Strathclyde Police. Interesting because their approach to gang-related violence demonstrates just how tricky the problem is and how “traditional” policing and criminal justice approaches fail to have much, if any, useful impact. Here’s a terrific and freshly-relevent Prospect piece that explains how the project has worked in Glasgow and, before that, in Boston. Karyn McCluskey is a very impressive person and, in my limited

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Salmond on the Riots: Ned In Our Name!

The great traditions of journalistic hyperbole justify this magazine’s cover image this week (Subscribe!) but that doesn’t mean we must take it literally. “Britain” is not “ablaze” even if the riots we’ve seen in London, Birmingham and Manchester might make it seem as though the entire country is on fire. So a little perspective might be thought useful. Is the situation serious? Yes, of course it is. Is it crippling? Of course it is not. So one can see why Alex Salmond – and his allies –  have been determined to point out that these are not “UK riots” but “English riots”. In one sense this is correct. There have

Saturday

Friday

Alex Massie

The East-West Divide

Perhaps it is time for Glasgow to become a Charter City: More than a third of people in Glasgow North East have no school qualifications. A table published by the University and College Union (UCU) showed 35.3% of those of working age left school without passing a single examination. The result gives the area the lowest rating in the UK. Every Edinburgh constituency was placed in the top third for educational achievement. Every constituency in Glasgow was below the British average. No matter how many allowances you make for Glasgow’s peculiar circumstances – post-industrialisation, redrawn city boundaries that exclude middle-class suburbs and so on – this is depressing stuff. If

Sunday

James Forsyth

Stephenson kicks Cameron on the way out

Sir Paul Stephenson’s resignation statement contains three paragraphs that hand plenty of political ammunition to Labour: “Now let me turn to the reported displeasure of the prime minister and the home secretary of the relationship with Mr Wallis. ” The reasons for not having told them are two fold. Firstly, I repeat my earlier comments of having at the time no reason for considering the contractual relationship to be a matter of concern. Unlike Mr Coulson, Mr Wallis had not resigned from News of the World or, to the best of my knowledge been in any way associated with the original phone hacking investigation. “Secondly, once Mr Wallis’s name did

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Now Sir Paul Stephenson resigns

This story just keeps speeding up. Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Met, has now resigned because of his links to Neil Wallis. Wallis is the former News of the World journalist arrested recently as part of the investigation into phone-hacking; he was hired by the Met to offer media advice from autumn 2009 to 2010. The New York Times today claims that Wallis was reporting back to News International during this time. Boris Johnson and the Home Secretary will now have to agree on a replacement for Stephenson. Given what we have learnt about the Met in recent days, I suspect it will be an outsider. Bernard Hogan-Howe, the former chief

Saturday

James Forsyth

The spotlight moves onto the police

Tomorrow’s New York Times contains more revelations on the overly cosy nature of the relationship between the police and News International. The paper alleges that Neil Wallis, who was acting as a media consultant for Scotland Yard from autumn 2009 to 2010 and was arrested this week in relation to the phone hacking case, was ‘reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case.’ It should be stressed that this allegation has not been proven. If The New York Times’ allegation is correct, then the police’s decision to hire Wallis becomes—hard, though, this is—an even more stupid one. I suspect that the actions

Sunday

James Forsyth

Major proposals on the future of Scotland

There have long been suspicions in Westminster that David Cameron uses John Major as an out rider, the last Tory Prime Minister advances an idea that allows the current one to gauge opinion on it. Certainly, Major and Cameron are close. Remember how Major was used by Cameron in the days following the indecisive general election result. So there’ll be suspicions that Major is out riding for Cameron with his speech, covered in the Sunday Telegraph, arguing that the Scottish Parliament and Executive should be handed powers over everything apart from foreign, defence and economic policy. In exchange for this, the Scots would accept a reduction in the number of

Friday

Alex Massie

Small Election in Inverclyde; Not Many Bothered

Sorry Pete, but I don’t think there’s anything hugely ambiguous about the result from the Inverclyde by-election. This was a pretty solid victory for Labour and another reminder – if these things are needed – that Westminster and Holyrood elections are played by different rules. Labour and the SNP ran neck-and-neck in the gibberish spin stakes last night as some Labour hackettes, preposterously, tried to claim that the seat “was the SNP’s to lose”; for their part the nationalists tried to suggest they’d never been very interested in winning Inverclyde at all. More weapons-grade piffle. Then again, without this stuff how would anyone fill the weary hours of television before

Peter Hoskin

Labour’s ambiguous victory in Inverclyde

Amid all the union sturm und drang yesterday, it was easy to forget about last night’s Parliamentary by-election in Inverclyde. But a by-election there was, after the death of the seat’s previous Labour MP, David Cairns, in May. And the result was in some doubt, too. After the SNP’s strong showing in last month’s corresponding Scottish Parliamentary election, there was a sense, beforehand, that Labour’s majority could be whittled down to naught. But, in the end, it wasn’t to be. Labour won with a comfortable majority of 5,838 and a vote share of 53.8 per cent, albeit it down on the 14,416 and 56 per cent they secured in last

Thursday

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond Retreats to Sanity

Sometimes changing course is the prudent option. The SNP’s grim plans for their Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill have been put on hold for the next six months. The government still wishes to legislate on this matter by the end of the year but at least we are saved the unseemly scramble to rush this rotten bill through Holyrood before the next season begins – god help us – next month. For that recognition alone Salmond deserves some credit even if he’d have more left in the bank had he never embarked upon this reckless enterprise in the first place. Doubtless this will be spun as the

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Subsidy Junkies!

Meanwhile in happier news for Alex Salmond and his merry throng, the latest GERS figures are out and you can expect to see the Natiionalists trumpet them to all who care to listen: Government and Expenditure Revenue Scotland 2009-10 figures show that, including a geographical share of UK North Sea oil and gas revenues, Scotland contributed 9.4% of UK public sector revenue and received 9.3% of total UK public sector expenditure, including a per capita share of UK debt interest payments. Including a geographical share of North Sea revenues, Scotland’s estimated current budget balance in 2009-10 was a deficit of £9bn, or 6.8% of GDP – stronger than the UK-wide

Tuesday

Alex Massie

A Bill That Shames Scotland

Here’s a clue for politicians: when you’re asked if you’ve just criminalised the national anthem and all you can do is say “Er, maybe, it all kinda depends on the circumstances” the chances are you’ve produced a bill that tests even the patient, hard-to-exhaust, limits of parliamentary absurdity and you should probably put it through the shredder and start again. If, that is, you should even be legislating in these matters at all. We do things differently in Scotia New and Braw, don’t you know? So today the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee took evidence on the government’s planned and loopy and shameful and illiberal Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening

Friday

Alex Massie

Auld Selkirk: She’s Ancient But She’s Braw

How do you measure a place? A community? A spirit? It is a media-driven cliche that all communities, especially when struck by disaster, must be deemed “close-knit”. Politicians, meanwhile, give speeches suggesting that chaos is running amok and destroying these supposedly confident communities, leaving us with nothing better than an atomised society in which the ties that bind have been loosed with depressing consequences. This seems something Ed Miliband believes. He should be in Selkirk today. This is the first Friday after the second Monday in June and that means it is Selkirk Common Riding day. This is the most important, grandest day in the town’s calendar and one reason

Thursday

Alex Massie

Abraham Lincoln: Tyrant! Unionist!

Hendrik Hertzberg has some fun with Rick Perry’s occasional suggestions* that Texas could secede from the United States of America. Doing so he quotes extensively from a message Abraham Lincoln sent to Congress on July 4th, 1861. It is, as you would imagine, good stuff. But that doesn’t mean it solves everything and nor is it the case that Lincoln is an anti-Godwin whom you need only quote to prevail in any argument. In any case, you might also think that there’s a difference between what was true in the Civil War and what must be true – legally or politically – now. Meanwhile, some of what Lincoln has to

Thursday

James Forsyth

Building a yellow-beating strategy

If the Tories are to win an overall majority at the next election, they are almost certainly going to have to take some seats off the Liberal Democrats. Given that the Tories have problems in Scotland and the urban north, the party needs to win seats like Somerton and Frome.  This fact is why Tory MPs are paying such attention to a piece by Rob Hayward on Conservative Home. Hayward, a former Tory MP who has advised the party on the coming boundary review, points out that where the Lib Dems had an MP, their vote in the local elections pretty much held up.  This implies that removing Lib Dem

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Problem of the Supreme Court

Readers in England and other less-fortunate lands may not have been following the latest stushie in Scotia new and braw. This time it’s the law that’s the problem. Or rather, the UK Supreme Court’s ability to rule on Scottish appeals on Human Rights and other EU-related business. Last week this led to the conviction of Nat Fraser, imprisoned for the murder of his wife Arlene, being quashed on the not unreasonable grounds that the Crown had failed to disclose vital evidence that cast some doubt on the most important part of the case against Mr Fraser. Kenneth Roy, sage of Kilmarnock, has an excellent summary of the affair. Cue much

Thursday

Alex Massie

Thought Crime in the Brave New Scotland

It cannot be said that Alex Salmond’s ministry is off to a good legislative start. Not when its immediate aim is, apparently, to rush through ill-considered, illiberal, speech-curbing legislation that asks the public not to worry about the detail and trust that the legal authorities will not actually enforce either the letter or the spirit of the Offensive Behaviour in Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill. According to Salmond: “I am determined that the authorities have the powers they need to clamp down effectively on bigotry peddled online. The Internet is a force for good in so many ways – but it can also be abused by those who seek to spread hatred. That’s

Wednesday

Alex Massie

A Vanished Scotland

Speaking of a Scotland that is no more (or largely no more), here’s video of the Reverend Dr Donald McDonald addressing the crowd at the disbandment of the Cameronians in 1968. You don’t see stuff like this very often these days and I’m enough of a Tory to recognise that whle improvements bring many blessings they come at a price that’s paid in poignancy too. Perhaps one should not be too sentimental about these things, though the crowds who flocked to the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Black Watch will recognise the pathos of these video clips. Nevertheless, the style or temper on magnificent display here has largely vanished.