Spontaneous Monotony

Just when you thought that ‘Scottish’ Labour might have finally realised they do not have a divine right to run Scotland, their new leader comes out with this at her coronation:

That’s the road on which I will lead Scottish Labour and it is the road back to power,

Aside from having fewer personality flaws, one thing about the SNP is that they actually care about doing the job, case in point the Crichton Campus

Glasgow Uni: We’re making an 800k loss on the Crichton Campus, we can’t afford that
Labour Executive, pre-election: Tough
SNP Executive: Here’s the necessary money to not only maintain the Crichton, but make it even better.

Let’s hope that nobody actually listens to Wendy Alexander - it’s only when we have a proper government in power that we begin to realise what a complete dog’s mess Labour have been making of our country for the past ten years.

Today sees the launch of Alex Salmond’s campaign for a ‘national conversation’ (Worst. Title. Ever.) on the future of the country. The general idea seems to be that the public will be overwhelmingly convinced by the words of El Salmondo and the naughty unionist parties will see the error of their ways and back a referendum. When you’re finished ducking to avoid airborne pork products, perhaps you might see the reason why a referendum would be a good idea.

As the unionist parties have been crowing for the past few days, a poll conducted for that well-known bastion of objective journalism. the Daily Mail, showed that support for independence had dropped significantly. Leaving aside the strong possibility that this does not reflect the actual responses in the poll, even a well-conducted opinion poll generally proves to be as accurate a reflection of public opinion as if I threw two gerbils in the air and waited to see which landed first. Previous polls have shown a majority support for independence. Remember the poll that predicted an SNP-Green-Socialist majority government? The only way to really find out what the public want is to ask them, in a proper referendum.

This is what leaves me so baffled by the position of the unionist parties. They confidently proclaim that ‘the majority of Scots do not want independence’. So why are they so worried about the prospect of a referendum? The cost of holding one would be about £7m - that’s approximately 2 hours’ worth of Iraq War (based on the total dollar cost of the war to date), or approximately one seven-hundredth of a trident submarine (based on the official estimate of £20bn for 4 new submarines).

I would suggest that the constitutional future of our country is more important than illegal wars or illegal WMD, and I therefore fail to see the disadvantage in asking the question - the ‘independence issue’ would then be settled, one way or the other.

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Technorati Tags: Alex+Salmond, Independence, News, Politics

The BBC’s decision to offer its ‘iPlayer’ download service only to customers of Microsoft is facing referral to the EU’s competition authorities. For those of you outside the UK, I’ll give a bit of background:

The BBC is funded by the public through a tax known as the ‘TV licence’. Anyone who owns a TV is obliged to be a paying customer of the BBC, even if they have no interest in is content. Failure to pay results in criminal sanctions. As well as having to provide the service which members of the public have paid for (some under protest), the BBC is required by its charter to be impartial.

The company intends to use Microsoft DRM with its ‘iPlayer’ service, which results in the exclusion of all BBC customers who are not also customers of Microsoft (as the latter has not provided DRM players for other operating systems). This is despite the existing use of RealMedia for all of the BBC’s streaming video services - a DRM system which is available on most computer operating systems. This shows that there is no need to endorse one operating system vendor in order to ‘protect’ content.

EU law prohibits companies from concluding market-restricting agreements which harm competition or consumers. The Open Source Consortium (who I’ve never heard of, despite using a lot of OSS) plans to make a complaint to the EU authorities on this basis. Although I’m actually a Windows user myself, I think it is unacceptable for a publicly-funded broadcaster such as the BBC to refuse to provide its services to customers of companies other than Microsoft. What is worse is that the government has allowed this to go as far as the EU - this proposal should have been stomped on at the UK level.

Well Gordon Brown is now officially Leader of the Labour Party, and will become Prime Minister on Wednesday. I’m feeling much the same as people must have thought about John Major when he took over - he can’t be any worse than his predecessor.

Time will tell whether that is true, but let’s not pretend that all is well and Gordon Brown is the saviour of British politics - plenty of what he has been saying over the last few weeks simply does not tally with his actions in government:

• Gordon Brown promises more open, spin-free politics. So he goes behind Ming Campbell’s back and invites Lord Ashdown to join his Cabinet, after Ming Campbell had said he did not want any Lib Dems to do so. That’s precisely the sort of underhanded politics that people detest Bliar for (well, among other things), and if this is what Gordon Brown passes off as ’spin-free politics’ then things may get worse before they get better
• Gordon Brown says that the levels of child poverty and inequality in Britain are unacceptable. I’d bet that most of us agree. What he doesn’t explain though, is why after ten years as Chancellor the former still exists (to the shame of an oil-producing rich nation) and the latter has actually gone up
• Gordon Brown calls for increased personal responsibility. This is the chancellor responsible for the biggest raid on pensions - and, resultingly, the biggest pensions collapse - in living memory.

So there are certainly quite a few issues with Gordon Brown’s record as Chancellor, but for now I’m just glad to be (almost) rid of the smarmy, warmongering arse we’ve been passing off as a ‘leader’ for the last ten years.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War. It seems strange that some seek to criticise the conflict. The Falklands War represents what seems alien to many in post-Dossier Britain: a just war. The people of the Falkland Islands wished to remain British citizens, and 248 service personnel gave their lives to restore their right to make that decision.

As a left-of-centre Scot I am no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but she showed great political courage in ordering the recapture of the islands. If there is nothing else, let this be the one event in the Thatcher years that everyone in Britain can take pride in. Thousands of servicemen showed a more immediate, personal courage, and many sacrificed their lives for their country.

We should never forget those sacrifices, and we should never stop celebrating such an important victory. The Falklands War set down an important marker - the UK would not allow its citizens, wherever in the world they were, to be deprived of basic democratic rights.