Gray's Theorem, or, The Identification of a Need Creates the Finance to Meet It.

A few years ago, Wendy Alexander marched into a meeting of telecomms providers in Scotland, and stated that they should be able to cable the Highlands for £5m.

Given that the cost per metre for cabling broadband links was in the region of £130, there was a lengthy pause in the proceedings, whilst everyone tried to find a way of explaining to Wendy that her decimal points were in the wrong place.

Now Wendy meant well; her heart was indeed in the Hielans, it's just a pity her head was otherwise engaged.

Now, in the middle of a financial bollocks which was overseen in large part by his own Labour chums in Westminster, we get Iain Gray demanding that everyone in Scotland gets a broadband service delivery guarantee.
No mention, you'll note, of cost.

Indeed, Iain seems to have an imperfect grasp of the constitutional situation.
He indicates that telecomms should be viewed as a necessary utility, along with gas and electricity.
Both of the latter are reserved to London, Iain.
Where the money is.
Broadband is devolved to Scotland, where the money isn't.
In fact, the money isn't here to the tune of £1bn over the next two years.

I hope the sunsets are pretty on the planet that Iain is currently inhabiting, but maybe he could indicate what services should be chopped to make way for his latest piece of rhetoric.

The Anaconda Principle

Fans of that glorious piece of cinematographic hokum "Anaconda" will be familiar with the legendary scene in which the titular hero, having devoured Jon Voight whole, regurgitates him to make room for a more toothsome ScoobySnack, namely Jennifer Lopez. (see right for the ins and outs of the process).
And who could possibly blame it.
Now, Anacondas do not, in real life, have the ability to choose between meals on the basis of the victim's acting abilities or sartorial attractiveness; rather, they regurgitate nosh when they are in danger, and need to scarper sharpish.

So it is (thanks for bearing with me on this by the way) with the Lloyds Banking Group.

Following the incredible carve up of the HBOS group when it was sold on the cheap to Lloyds, the EU competition watchdog has cried "enough, Lloyds. Ye have now got your mitts on way too many Scottish high street outlets, it's time to flog a few of them".
So, ironically, Lloyds is being forced to sell off its TSB branches.

You remember the Trustee Savings Bank, of course.
It was a Scottish bank, ostensibly in the control of its' members, until that is it merged with Lloyds in 1995, following a high court decision that the members didn't really count that much after all.

The EU decision is indeed a handy one for Lloyds, as, having bought HBOS for £12bn in the recent fire sale, they got themselves deep in the gumbo due to the Halifax's debt mountain.

Hence the forced sale, and the regurgitation of the previously immolated TSB, followed by the sight of Lloyds wriggling disconsolately off into the undergrowth.

Sometimes nature's ways are the best, after all.

Al-Megrahi Fails to Croak - "Scotsman" Demands Explanation.

One of the greatest hostages to fortune that a human can utter is;
"they can't sink lower than this, can they?"

Unfortunately, the 'Scotsman' newspaper(!) seems determined to explore strange new boundaries of bad taste with alarming frequency.

And so it is, today, with Tom Peterkin's article on al-Megrahi, who it seems has had the temerity, nay the sheer damned insolence and lousy breeding, not to die according to some timetable which Peterkin has previously arranged.

I hope that al-Megrahi, through the mist of pain killing drugs which he is probably full of at the moment, experiences a sense of real shame in this regard, and promises never to offend the 'Scotsman' again by failing to meet a deadline (definitely no pun intended).

It's Time.... For Negative Campaigning...... Is It?

At the Donaldson Lecture at National Conference, Gordon Wilson urged that negative campaigning is an option to be considered by the SNP in the forthcoming campaign.

This resonates with a chat I had after a fringe meeting with no less an august beastie than Prof John Curtice of the Yoonie of Strathclyde, on the topic of what defined negativity in political argument.

The prof and I performed a less than elegant quadrille around each other until we managed to agree on a definition of terms.

My contention, which had originally escaped him, was that personal abuse is wrong; that it is quite acceptable to criticise an opponent's policies and voting record, as long as you put forward your alternative; but that the best way to campaign was to punch your message, your achievements, hard, to offset negativity from your opponents.
His view was that negative campaigning began with criticism of an opponent's policies.
Quite wrong, in my view; to refute an opponent's point, you first acknowledge it, then you rebut; then you provide an alternative. That's not negative; it's positive, but it seems that rebuttal, for Professor Curtice, is negative, and therefore taints the dialectic; world without end, amen.

In 2007, I lost count of the number of people who said that they were sick of politicians slinging mud at each other (mud wasn't generally speaking the word they used, but you get the drift).
So, we went 'positive', increased our vote by 90%, came from 4th to second, and turned Iain Gray's seat into a marginal.
Now, you could argue that if I'd been wholly negative, we might have done better, but all the evidence I have points to the converse.

So, I won't be following Gordon Wilson's advice; Number 10 is indeed unscrupulous, but Labour's tactics in Glenrothes are not worthy of duplication.

SU No More

Well, he's aff, it seems.
Now, given that I've had a well documented spat with the lad in the past, in which I didn't perform at all well, you might expect that I'd be, well, pleased, that such a committed unionist blogger is no more.

Well, not exactly.
You see, whilst I viewed his ability to quote selectively and argue in an intelligent if virulent manner as being occasionally repellent, I can sympathise with his desire to expand his horizons.

Let's face it, one and all, the blogosphere is a weird place, and it can get very unpleasant indeed if you decide to adopt an aggressive and provocative tone.
So, I suppose it wears you down eventually, and when that happens it's good to take a break.

The one thing I have to say I really objected to about SU was his anonymity.
If you're going to be so contentious as to provoke threats from the loonier bloggers, then you should perhaps review whether it's really bright to deliberately provoke these reactions.

For me, his anonymity undermined the effects of his often intelligent (if infuriating) posts.
It isn't admirable in my view to insult people, whilst hiding from accountability.

A bit more openness and a bit less hatred (yes, yes, I know there are some strange creatures on the Nationalist fringes as well) would have done him no harm, and improved his credibility beyond belief.

Still and all, I wish him and his family all the best, and we should all remember this;
When you lose the ability to laugh in politics, it's time to get out of Dodge.