February 2008 Archives

So The Donald's plan to trash the Balmedie dunes will go to an inquiry. Great news for the community, although we will wait and see whether they choose Jack Nicklaus or Sam Torrance to oversee the inquiry.

Salmond's on record as saying they'd abide by an Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route inquiry rejection of the road, and hopefully the same applies here.

Patrick asked the question, and John Swinney answered it (I think) for Glenn Campbell. I'll see in a minute. The last lot had a shocking record on this kind of issue.

However, this also makes it much harder for Edinburgh's sleazy decisions over Caltongate to remain unchallenged. The local campaigners agree, and it's hard to see any inquiry there not demonstrating to a national audience the scale of opposition, the absurdity of the current plan, and the dubious financial practices of Labour in particular over this issue.

So Sir Richard Mottram thinks UK Cabinet minutes should be kept secret. Don't worry, Sir Richard, the minions never minute the really interesting stuff. One example is your landmark comment after the "good day to bury bad news" incident, widely believed to be the best swearing ever;

"We're all f*cked. I'm f*cked. You're f*cked. The whole department's f*cked. It's been the biggest c*ck-up ever and we're all completely f*cked." (quoted here)

Also, if anyone can tell me what difference those asterisks make, please do. This blog has a massive international and family audience, so I suppose I'd better, but really, what a waste of time.

Reports today suggest that people with multiple mobile phones should be considered potential terror subjects.

What other groups of people, beyond Al Qaeda, tend to have several phones? I mean press officers, not Hollywood starlets.

I'm nervous. I've got about seven phones in my house. But I am not a terrist. Seriously.

Many years ago, in the early 1980s, there was apparently a punk band from Corstorphine called Nocturnal Vermin. They released one short record, which was named after an STD.

No trace of them appears on the internet, and I would certainly love to find out more if anyone else knows about them.

The morning radio can be disorientating. Strange stories filter into my half-awake brain. Today it was Tory wonk David Willetts on the Today programme discussing community. Unless I imagined it, he used the example of vampire bats. They all go out at night looking for fresh blood, and apparently those that found some to suck then share it with those that were unsuccessful. Sounds like communism to me. Communist vampire bats as a Tory example to the rest of us.

Apart from the communism, perhaps he was pining for a lost Tory leader.

Of course they did. What else could I assume when, back in 2006, I got hand-delivered "Vote Trevor" leaflets late one night, bundled with "Caltongate to save Edinburgh" propaganda?

However, now it's in the Times that £4000 was provided to Labour by Mountgrange, which they then spent on a champagne reception. Ah, takes me back to when "champagne socialist" was something Labour hacks used to find hurtful..

Image taken from the Independent Republic of the Canongate - thanks!

Yesterday afternoon, politicalbetting.com alerted its particular section of the anorak public to an outstanding betting opportunity: 5/2 on Darling no longer being Chancellor by the end of 2008. Just 18 hours later and William Hill had pulled the bet. I wonder why?

So the SNP are going ahead with the M74 with indecent haste, which suggests a couple of things.

First, the review we were promised can hardly have amounted to more than a quick call to the civil servant who designed the failed procurement process. "Hello Sir Humphrey, still happy with this single bidder business? Yes? Good, thanks awfully."

In case anyone was wondering what Ministers thought about the complaint to the European Commission about the M74, here's chapter and verse from John Swinney. "Consequences for the timetable" of course means "delays". I remain hopeful that this utterly failed scheme will not go through.

"We have spoken separately about the M74 and the government's position in relation to the complaint that has made to the European Commission.

"Clearly Scottish Ministers are in a unique position. The Scotland Act specifies that we must at all times act within European law. We are therefore taking this complaint seriously. We will co-operate fully with the European Commission (EC) if they decide to investigate the M74 procurement process and must comply with any instructions or conclusions even if that has consequences for the timetable. 

"We are confident that the process in relation to the M74 has been properly conducted but to ensure that our processes are robust and sound I have asked for them to be reviewed ahead of any potential investigation from the EC. The tender will not be signed before this internal review has been carried out.

"If the EC do intend to pursue this complaint, which could be a lengthy process, we will be required to re-examine our position. I am happy to expand on these points, on the record, in Parliament."

Also, if anyone can decipher this nonsense, please let me know.

For those of you who've been confused by what the various parties are up to on the Trump application at Balmedie, here's a summary of the Holyrood positions:
SNP: we support the proposal, we support the process, and Ministers will make a fair decision even though everyone knows we'll bend over backwards to get it through.
Tories/Labour/Liberals: we support the proposal, but sense an opportunity to have a good square go at Alex Salmond over the process. (The Labour and Liberal Exec as was would also have done no better, incidentally, as we saw from McConnell's dealings with the Trump people).
Greens: we oppose the proposal in its current form, and believe planning law is being subverted for a rich bully. Bought and sold for Trump's gold, even.

Anyway, here's a couple of stories from another project elsewhere run by The Donald (depicted above left having his rug reinforced). Thanks to one of the staunch opponents of his Scottish plans for these.

Soho, New York. Local residents risk having to "spend their hard-earned money to try to force the city to enforce the law and treat billionaire developers by the same rules as everyone else." Sound familiar? The site is also (allegedly, my inner lawyer warns me to say) beset by accidents and shoddy workmanship.

Thinking of doing one of these? Just don't. Seriously, there are better ways to promote your causes.

Don't get the wrong one! It's like Cinderella and the Ugly Sisters in reverse.

All anoraks love a poll, and the best tracker of them I've seen is UK Polling Report (Scottish page). I'm trying to find the latest Holyrood voting intentions, and this looks like the most up-to-date. We're not listed in it, but must be a decent chunk of the 18% "others" (full YouGov data here). Frustrating. And curse the fact that System Three aren't doing a monthly tracker anymore.

Here's a round of idiocy and point-missing for you. Iain Smith (Liberal) calls on Stagecoach to reduce their fares now the tolls have gone. Now, he says he's worried about the increased car usage from this marginal change in costs, even though he joined his Liberal chums in voting to cut the tolls. We were told by them that a marginal change wouldn't affect people's habits, so that's why it was OK. If you look closely enough at the Liberals you will find inconsistencies everywhere, so no surprise there.

Check out Mike Rumbles' quote on the Wendy non-acquittal acquittal here. And then read Robin's immediately thereafter. Thanks to the Beeb for making them fit so nicely.

Now why would I circulate something like that? Particularly something as shamelessly negative as this? I'm afraid it's because it made me laugh out loud, as the internet people say.

Oh, but if I'd been doing it I'd have started at 42 seconds. There's a tip for free.

OK, this is most off-topic. I want one of these.

I have a lot of sympathy for the Electoral Commission, and indeed in the interests of full disclosure, briefly worked as an external PR person for them. Their role remains unclear, and they should definitely be given some more bite to go with their bark.

However, their decision to let an acknowledged breach of the law by the Scottish Labour leader go unprosecuted is peculiar, to say the least. Even the bark is absent today.

Their website was, when I visited it, headlined as follows:
Impremissible donation - leadership campaign of Wendy Alexander MSP

So does "impremissible" mean "illegal but not to be prosecuted"?

Those are two things I'm not going to have here on this blog. The Herald's estimable Douglas Fraser and Robbie Dinwoodie have both recently talked about this problem.

That referred to this story. Greens back local community. Liberals back grossly inappropriate development. No change there. 

So that's the Budget done for this year. A pretty poor debate, apart of course from Patrick, John Swinney, and Derek Brownlee, who had the second best line of the night with the jibe against Labour - "not even fit for opposition".