So, is the Honeymoon Over?

..... or are the Scottish people just distracted by the porn video that is the UK’s economic crisis?

Honeymoons end.
It’s natural that they do, thank god, or else we’d all be dying from combinations of heat exhaustion, weird foreign bugs picked up when abroad, and indeed from overdoses of champagne, chocolates, oysters etc, etc..
So is the honeymoon between the SNP and the Scottish voter truly over?

Indeed, was there ever a honeymoon at all, or did Scotland just suddenly have it’s eyes opened to what could be?

Its’ worth exploring this, because if the Scottish people have fallen out of love with the SNP, where is the evidence?
In the loss of Glenrothes?
Are we truly defining a failure to win a solid Labour ex mining seat next door to Gordon’s own constituency as something bad?
If so, it’s symbolic of our own expectations and aspirations that we do, not of a national trend.

The opinion polls since then don’t show any great swings either way, so that cock won’t fight either.

And meantime, all the opposition in Holyrood can do is jump up and down and try to pressurise a rather weak convener into holding indeterminate enquiries, which will be a waste of time.

Iain Gray isn’t pinning the Eckmobile down, neither is Goldie, and Tavish, appearing on the Politics Show on Sunday, completely failed to plant the ball in the government’s pokey.

The Scotland Act, bless it, has a list as long as your arm of things the devolved government can’t affect.
And that’s why the onus is falling firmly on London’s Labour chappies and chappessses to sort out the economic car wreck that is at least partly of their making.

I was not very convinced that Gordon’s strategy of chucking hundreds of billions at the bank was really the master stroke it was spun as.
It was, if anything, a return to the pre 79 policy of spending to cover up for errors and inadequacy.
Jim Callaghan could have done the same, and did.

The drop in VAT was not big or significant enough to stir up the economy, and the banks were not muscled into giving borrowing and credit guarantees before the dosh was handed over.

So, the cuddy being well and truly over the horizon, it’s now announced that an extra £100bn with strings attached, is to be handed over.
Tough government?
Nope, just tough shit for the taxpayer whose going to be repaying this till kingdom come.

On that score, remember how it was going to cost each of us £5k if the SNP took power?
Wonder what happened to that argument?

However, I digresss.

Is the bubble burst?
I don’t think there ever was one, just a perception that Scotland was being governed better.
Not scientific, but my perennial Embra taxi driver is of the opinion that the government’s still doing pretty well.

Sure, there will be problems ahead, but seriously folks,….
Would you swap Salmond for any of the other leaders?
Swinney for Kerr?
Sturgeon for ....... who is it, again?
Alex Neil for David Whitton (heh heh – stop it Andy, you’re being naughty.

We’re comfortable in government now.
It’s not that fine first passion of post May 2007, but it still feels pretty good.

A Taint which Can Never be Erased?

Consider the situation Crawford Beveridge now finds himself in.

Having headed up Scottish Enterprise for 9 years, quite successfully, he then made the Great Error which disqualifies him from holding any public position again.

He donated £10,000 to the SNP.

In political terms, this is a minor sum.

Beveridge has a track record of success.

He has political beliefs – this has never been a problem for Unionists before, unless of course the person in question has happened to be a Nat.

I have to say that for sheer mendacity and dishonesty the weekly prize has to go to Harriet Harman, who has now asked that Jack Straw approve a measure to continue secrecy over MP’s expenses, despite the proven dishonesty and corruption of some in the past.

Interestingly enough, the Sunday Times’ Jason Allardyce has a squawk about the Beveridge situation today.

Not a surprise; he is, after all, paid to write this junk.

What is interesting however, is that at the bottom of the article are the words ‘Jenny Hjul, p20’.

Jenny doesn’t have anything to say about Beveridge; she’s having a rant about the size of the public sector and the number of consultants used in Scotland (evidently it’s the SNP’s fault again).

So, why does the Thunderer need to pop in a link?

Can it be for the guidance of the rather challenged green inkers who need to be pointed to the next bit of anti SNP rhetortic?

Or maybe it’s just to let Labour’s spin doctors get to check their own press releases more quickly.

Darling, the Horse Has Bolted.

Today, on the Politics Show, John McFall, Chair of the Treasury Accounts Committee, got it exactly right.

When discussing the failure of the cut in VAT to instigate economic ‘green shoots’ (oops, there i go again, maybe I should be in the House of Lords), he also pointed out that the monies given to banks to date by the government had been given without any attached strings.

He didn’t seem to think a lot of this, and stressed that the banks should be forced to comply with certain requirement s before a further handout was given.

And so say all of us.

McFall has always impressed me as being one of the more realistic and tougher minded Labour members, who takes the part of the customers and ‘victims’ rather than being intensely relaxed about defending the corporations.

So, when he comes out with this, it is significant.

Not because it is implicitly critical of the rather naive approach of the Chancellor, but because it is an indicator that in the Labour party, someone still has a vestige of the morality and sense of social justice that was that party’s raison d’etre.

Many, many, years ago.

I have to say that this was a pleasant change, as just last week I heard the Prime Minister declaiming that the current annual deficit was £37bn..

Now, this is an interesting figure, because despite all the billions spent in shoring up the banks –

the deficit hasn’t really altered at all.

Strange, you may think, but never fear.

Here we have the prime example of a deus ex machina – an artificial rule applied to allow a specific result to be achieved.

In this case, the uncomfortable truth behind the payment of the debts of UK banks has been disguised by a treasury rule which allows for the non inclusion of extraordinary expenditure (see where I’m going yet?) from the deficit figures.

That is precisely what has been done with regard to the sums given to the banks.

The results of their and Gordon’s incompetence has been granted the use of Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak.

It doesn’t change the facts, however, not least the one that since the depoliticisation of the Bank of England, and the removal of the Banks imperative to regualate the financial services industry, risk taking in banks was positively encouraged.

And now we have the results.

For what it’s worth, the closest parallel to an independent Scotland, namely Norway, has over £380bn in it’s oil fund, and is expected to ride out the recession quite handily, whereas the UK still can’t see the bottom.

Yes, yes, I know our wee Unionist freens will point to a nation of 300,000 people with no oil industry as a rebuttal of that.

For some reason.

Or other.

That’s Iceland you’re talking about.

We are Scotland, and it's a bit different.

But whatever the reason, you can be sure it’s not a comparison offered in the interests of accuracy or reasoned argument.

Question: If you chuck enough cash at a problem, will it go away?

On the answer to this hangs the date of the next election.