Eadie’s Law

Eadie’s Law

According to Godwin’s Law, as an online discussion continues the probability of a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1. Many regard this as so cheap a debating point that it is widely held to signify an argument lost.

Today, during an overly long debate on amendments to the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services Bill I believe that a similar law was once again demonstrated, and I now propose a name:

Eadie’s Law (as I suggest we call it) states that as the time wears on during a Parliamentary debate, the probability of one Member accusing another of “shallow political point scoring” also approaches 1. The first adjective is entirely at the discretion of the speaker.

This is usually done in such a pantomime voice, and after so many political points have been scored, that it should equally be regarded as an indication of a debate well and truly lost.

Dude, where’s my bus stop?

I met with Stagecoach this morning to discuss the appalling proposals for Buchanan Bus Station, and I left the meeting even more opposed to the plan than before.

I knew of course that there had been no attempt to discuss the plan with bus operators before it was agreed in principle at the City Council. I knew that the construction would hugely disrupt just about every bus route in the city centre, and most of the rest of the traffic too. I knew that it would deprive the city of one of the best-used public spaces, the concert hall steps.

But one aspect I hadn’t quite twigged was how the new concrete-encased bus station would work once it was built. Apparently the plan is that each bus would be allocated a stance as it arrived, with the result that passengers would turn up for their bus without having a clue where to wait. You might know where you’re going, which bus to catch and when it’s due to leave, but you’ll need to be super-nimble to get yourself (along with shopping, children, buggies etc) to the right place in time.

This scheme tends to work OK with many railway stations, where all the platforms lead off the concourse as at Queen St or Central. But at a bus station you often need to walk right round the outside to get from one stance to another.

For a comparison, imagine that the bus stops along Hope St and Renfield St kept swapping around every five or ten minutes – you turn up in the city centre for your bus and have to keep wandering around in the hope of finding the right stop. Next time you’re looking for the same bus there’s no point going back to the same place – you just have to start the hunt all over again.

If anyone wasn’t convinced that this plan was a nonsense, surely this settles it. Never mind going back to the drawing board – this whole scheme should simply be scrapped if the city is remotely serious about public transport.

The untold budget story

As happens every year, many column inches have been filled with talk of budget negotiations. John Swinney is once again entertaining visitors from all sides of the Chamber up in the ministerial towers.

We’ve been as clear as ever about our position – we’ve already won £10m of support for marine renewables, but we also need to see meaningful action to cut CO2 emissions and fuel poverty if we’re to vote for the budget. Other parties have their own red lines, and the debate will continue for the next fortnight.

But one worrying concession looks likely to be offered, at least in part – the Tory demand for online publication of every detail of public spending above £25000.

To many people, this will sound fine. Transparency. Accountability. All in the good tradition of Freedom of Information, right? Wrong.

If this demand is accepted in the terms suggested, the result will be to turn the Scottish Government into nothing less than the research arm of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. You know, that group which speaks only for tax cutters, and which seems to have an ideological hostility to any and all public services.

We can all see the headlines, surely. Day in and day out we’ll see story after story turning any element of public spending into a matter of shame. I’m sure you can even pick the targets too – single parents, sex education, asylum seekers, young offenders, and pretty much anyone who fails the conventional standards of your journalistic moral guardian of choice.

In the months to come, when a probable Tory government in London will be wielding the axe with glee, this policy could be a disaster in Scotland.

NEWS RELEASE – Green progress on the budget

Following commitments given by Scottish Ministers on marine renewables and home insulation, the Green MSPs today voted not to block the Budget at Stage 1, and to seek agreement with Ministers on further improvements in these areas ahead of the final vote a fortnight today.

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“The draft Budget Ministers put before Parliament this month did not provide the boost to the green economy and the cuts to household bills we have argued for. In particular, it read as though the Climate Change Act had never been passed, but today we have seen a welcome willingness by the SNP to move in the right direction.

“In particular, we have urged Ministers to consider a new fund to support marine renewables, and today the Cabinet Secretary has pledged £10m towards this objective. This is a significant step in the right direction. With the grid upgrades approved earlier this year, the priority now is to help Scottish companies get wave and tidal power devices into the water. We have a chance to claim global leadership in these crucial industries, and this is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

“Ministers haven’t been ready to adopt the ambition of Green plans on energy efficiency, which would have insulated every home in Scotland over ten years, tackling fuel poverty and rising fuel costs, reducing pollution and waste, and boosting jobs. They continue to rely on failed New Labour-style means tests, an approach they have rightly rejected with school meals and prescription charges. It will be vital to change this mindset and cut bureaucracy, just as it will be to move faster and get the job done more quickly. These will be our objectives in this area over the next two weeks, and John Swinney has said he is prepared to consider them both.

“Ministers have the opportunity now both to improve their Budget and support Scottish households and low carbon businesses. Further discussions on both these issues will be required before Stage 3, but I remain cautiously optimistic that Ministers are listening and that they understand the issues.”

NEWS RELEASE – Scottish budget not fit for purpose

The Scottish Green MSPs today set out the party’s concerns with the SNP’s draft Budget ahead of Parliament’s first vote on it next Wednesday. The draft Budget, Greens argue, fails to deliver on a range of key economic and environmental issues, including jobs, transport and renewables, as well as home energy efficiency, the issue which led to the collapse of the last Budget process in January 2009.

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“Last year we encouraged the Scottish Government to bring in a nationwide insulation programme, the most cost-effective way to tackle fuel poverty and climate change, cut people’s bills and simultaneously boost jobs. Unfortunately, SNP Ministers did not listen. As a result, many more people will have suffered through this bitter winter in damp, cold and unhealthy homes, homes they can’t afford to heat and can’t afford not to heat.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that this is a life and death issue. Earlier this week I met staff who run a helpline for people worried about their energy bills, and the number of calls they have taken during this winter has gone through the roof. I’d urge John Swinney to spend a day on the front line, listening to these calls. I’m sure that experience would be enough to bring him round on the issue.

“As it stands, this Budget continues with the SNP’s piecemeal, bureaucratic and means-tested approach to household energy costs, tinkering at the edges not tackling the problem. Ministers have left Scots facing an alphabet soup of inefficient schemes instead of a coherent and successful approach, using the expertise of business to deliver on the political priorities the SNP say they share with Parliament.

“This Budget looks like it was drafted before the recession and before Parliament passed the Climate Change Bill. It pays for transport projects which will make climate change worse, and neglects Scotland’s wider needs, like tackling poverty and unemployment, supporting public transport and renewables, and helping build the kind of successful low-carbon Scottish economy we need for the future.

“If Ministers again hold out against substantial change, this is a Budget which is not fit for purpose and a Budget we will oppose next week. However, it is still not too late for Ministers to make changes, and we have meetings scheduled with them and with other parties. If the SNP want our support on Wednesday, it would be best for them not to leave it to the last minute again. That approach cost Scotland dear last year.

“The other opposition parties, who represent the clear majority in this Parliament, would also be well advised not to let this flawed Budget go through on the nod. There must be a majority for a better Budget than this, whether it includes the SNP or not.”

Notes

1. The Stage 1 debate on the Budget (Scotland) Bill 2010 will take place on Wednesday 20 January.

Snow joke

Perhaps predictably, those of us who have been campaigning on climate change over recent years have heard a good few quips about the current cold snap. More or less every winter, there are a few cold days when people in Scotland enjoy a joke about whether they’d welcome a bit more global warming.

Most people who make the joke know that’s just what it is. They’re happy to share a joke without deluding themselves that a bit of snow puts climate science on thin ice. But there are some who actually seem to think that today’s weather is the same thing as this decade’s climate.

This week I spent some time on Radio Scotland making the case for the Beauly-Denny power line, and heard callers making the case – apparently seriously – that a period of cold weather in northern Europe proves that global climate change isn’t happening.

Later, I watched Ann Winterton MP at Westminster making basically the same nonsensical argument during Prime Minister’s Questions.

And countless times today I’ve heard people – including one or two MSPs – trying to turn this idea from a wee joke into a serious point.

It really does make me wonder if they understood Fact 1 about climate change when they agreed the Climate Change Act last year. Nobody with the slightest grasp of the subject would think for a moment that a variation in the jetstream, moving cold air our way for the last fortnight, tells us anything about long term global climate trends.

But sadly the cold weather gives a little extra media space (as if it’s needed) to those who are continuing to marshall a simplisitic media argument against the action we need on CO2 cuts.

This will be just the beginning – there’s a strong and growing anti-science lobby which sees 2010 as it’s year, after the failure of Copenhagen. I know that tens of thousands of people in Scotland campaigned for a strong Climate Change Act – and every one of you will be needed over the coming year to ensure that the consensus on intent not only holds, but is followed by consensus on action.

NEWS RELEASE – Boiler scrappage scheme

BOILER SCHEME: SNP RISK FALLING FURTHER BEHIND WESTMINSTER

Scottish Ministers were today urged by the Green MSPs to follow the lead set by UK Ministers, who announced the details (1) of their boiler scrappage scheme for England and Wales this morning. The scheme was a response to the Reheat Britain campaign, backed by Greens across the UK. (2)

The SNP administration will receive £11m in new funding as a consequence of the additional spending on green energy measures elsewhere in the UK. (3) However, this money is not ring-fenced, and, just as in last year’s Budget negotiations, SNP Ministers must decide whether or not to prioritise acting on fuel poverty, climate change and rising household fuel bills.

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“Labour in London aren’t doing enough to tackle rising household fuel bills, fuel poverty and climate change, but the SNP are doing even less. John Swinney is getting a multi-million pound windfall because UK Ministers decided to fund a boiler scrappage scheme, and the SNP simply must put this money into a similar scheme to help Scots replace inefficient and expensive old heating systems.

“Older people and poorer people are particularly at risk during the kind of cold snap we’ve been experiencing this winter, and it is a disgrace that so many still have to choose between heating and eating. Scotland’s shivering while the SNP are just twiddling their thumbs.

“Last year we made the case that boosting home energy efficiency was the most urgent and cost-effective change the Scottish Government needed to make to their draft Budget. Unfortunately they still don’t seem to get it, and Scots in draughty, damp, expensive and unhealthy homes are paying the price.”

Notes

1. For information on the UK Government scheme, see:
www.direct.gov.uk

An additional £200m was allocated to energy efficiency and fuel poverty in the Pre-Budget Report. See:
www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

2. http://reheatbritain.org.uk/

3. The devolved administrations receive additional resources, known as Barnett Consequentials, when additional spending is allocated to services in England by UK Ministers. The £11m figure has been calculated by the Scottish Parliament Information Service, and is based on information provided by the UK Treasury.

New term, new decade, same old problem

So there go the “noughties”. The decade in which we saw domestic and global politics fall further under the spell of the free market ideologues, then watched as those markets failed spectacularly, and finally saw politicians who had handed away such power respond with a publicly funded bail-out of historic proportions.

What’s astonishing is that the debate then moved so swiftly to the question of which public services to cut first; across much of the ‘developed’ world there was a brief moment of opportunity when the unaccountable power of markets could have been fundamentally challenged. But instead of taking this opportunity, most political parties fell into a squabble about who was most committed to re-floating the failed economic model which they had spent so long serving.

The shallow and selfish culture fostered by consumerism could have been challenged too, and a commitment made to a more humane and sustainable future.

The immediate harm inflicted when a growth-obsessed economy goes into recession hits hardest on those who are already poorest of course, not on those who had caused the problem. But this only added to the grotesque inequality which had already infected our society.

The ecological crisis grew deeper too, not only climate change which has never had a higher profile, but countless forms of pollution, over-harvesting and environmental degradation.

Yet while there’s almost universal consensus about the problems we’ve made for ourselves, we see almost nothing in the way of change. Leaders on the world stage give not the slightest impression that they’re serious about agreeing cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and remain fixated on short term economic growth without regard for economic equality.

At home, Labour and SNP Ministers alike continue to promote unabated coal-fired power, build capacity for growing road and air traffic, indulge the whims of deregulated markets, and of course promote the annual christmas consumer frenzy. You’d think that nothing at all had changed, and that the world wasn’t facing either a climate crisis or an energy crisis.

It’s more vital than ever to bring this central challenge of the 21st century into the political arena. Far too many politicians are still telling, and perhaps even believing, the lie that everlasting growth can be sustained on a planet of finite resources. It is becoming abundantly clear that it can’t, and that continuing to chase it will result in untold human suffering. At Holyrood, even two Greens can make this case. At Westminster, there is best chance ever that Green MPs will take their places and make the same case there.

It would be easy to feel pessimistic after the failures of our political culture over the last decade. But to give in to pessimism would only add to that failure – it’s vital that Greens continue to offer a positive vision not only of human survival, but of a humane and livable society. That vision can’t be defeated by the failure of others; indeed in the decade to come it will only grow clearer when seen against their inaction.