Schools of thought
On your behalf, I have been adding to the workload of civil servants within the Scottish Government.
You'll remember a rumbling rammy over whether the school construction programme is vibrant or stalled.
In essence, Labour has accused the SNP of failing to commission a single school during its time in office.
In return, Alex Salmond says umpteen schools are under construction, nearing completion or already open to receive the happy, smiling offspring of voters.
Ah, says Labour, but those projects were started when we were in office. You've just benefited from our foresight. Have not. Have too.
Now, this is a complicated business. Does a school project start when:
• The heidie fancies a new building - and says so to the council
• A business plan is prepared
• Planning permission is granted
• Contracts are signed
• Funding is signed off
• Work begins
In search of clarity or, at best, a little less obfuscation, I asked the Scottish Government to provide examples of school projects where both the decision to proceed and construction had commenced under the present administration.
Civil servants laboured mightily, poring through their records and those of local authorities.
The Government returned to me with an initial - I stress, initial - list of five schools which met those criteria. They are as follows:
Dunning: decision to proceed, Oct 2007. Construction commenced, Nov 2007.
Kingspark: decision to proceed, Nov 2008. Construction commenced, Jan 2009.
Inveralmond: decision to proceed, Jan 2008. Construction commenced, May 2008.
James Young: decision to proceed, Jan 2008. Construction commenced, May 2008.
St Kentigern's: decision to proceed, Jan 2008. Construction commenced, Feb 2008.
In order, those schools are in Perthshire, Dundee, Livingston, Livingston and Blackburn.
Before publishing this list, I thought I would check this morning to see whether any more had emerged. More, indeed.
The Scottish Government has now broadened the definition somewhat to cover schools where the contract was signed under the present team. It includes the five above.
The new information this time features: South Lanarkshire, phase two of £850m project to replace 108 and refurbish 16 of 124 primary schools by 2016.
In other words, this is a continuing scheme, crossing the election. School contracts signed during the present administration are given as:
Our Lady & St Annes: contract date, June 2007
Craigbank: contract date, June 2007
St Blanes: contract date, June 2007
St Athanasius: contract date, June 2007
Loch: contract date, June 2007
St Ninian's: contract date, June 2007
Douglas: contract date, July 2007
In Glasgow, the list features those which form part of phase four of a pre-12 strategy involving 16 schools.
The list given to me features the last five of those 16, presumably on the basis that their contracts were signed or due post May 2007. Here they are:
Tinto: contract date, Feb 2008
Govan Riverside: contract date, July 2008
Ruchill: tbc
New Notre Dame: tbc
Hill's trust, Copeland and St Saviour's replacement campus: tbc
And herewith a few more. Firstly, in Dumfries and Galloway:
Cargenbridge: contract date, March 2008
Troqueer: contract date, March 2008
Lincluden: contract date, March 2008
And in Angus:
Seaview: contract date, Nov 2007.
So there you are. Responses welcome, as always.
Update at 1526 GMT:
Didn't have to wait long for Labour's response to the post re the school building programme.
Again, as you'll recall, this has frequently been the source of controversy between Alex Salmond and Iain Gray.
Labour notes, firstly, that the Scottish Government has signally failed thus far to make any use of the Scottish Futures Trust in the schools programme.
Ministers counsel patience.
Now to detail. With regard to the opening list of five schools, they note that these are "traditionally procured" - and thus commissioned by local authorities.
Further, they say that Dunning and the three West Lothian schools were approved by the relevant council before the SNP took office.
Second batch
Further still, they say that Seaview in Angus was approved by the local authority in November 2006, before the Holyrood elections.
Kingspark in Dundee, they concede, was commissioned in November 2008 - but they argue, again, that this was an endeavour by the local authority, not central government.
Other than that, they say that the second batch are PPP schools.
Given the SNP's intrinsice dislike of PPP, Labour argues that means these were "carry-over" projects from before the election: projects, they argue, which were too far advance for the Scottish Government to stop.
Quote: "They are Labour schools."
Again, I pass all this on purely in the interests of information - and without comment.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~12~RS~)
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Brian, the whole school contract programme is a mess, and blame cannot be entirely blamed on central Government, but on local.
South Lanarkshire where I live, and one school had a direct effect as a my son goes there.
A few problems:
Capacity calculations made by the local council are basically mince. We have 3 schools replacing 6, and one is a faith school which restricts access for non-denominational pupils.
They are fast approaching capacity, since the council decided to sell off the old school and for housing.
There were massive delays, to such an extent that contractors were taken off one school to ensure that another was built on time, since there was nowhere for the pupils to go.
Transport - only now are school transport plans coming into effect - 2 years late. Actually, this was accepted as part of the plan.
And one school has been built slap bang in the middle of a housing estate where the roads could not deal with the parking for the residents, never mind the school.
The school my son attends had numerous problems once opened: heating, lighting, water....you name it it went wrong. The school was opened because it HAD to open.
The science rooms have lovely fume cupboards for experiements......but could not be used as they were not supplied with instructions.
So, I would find it unfair to blame the Goverment entirely. The focus should be on local government who produce the plans.
Most, if not all, councils planning is headed up by a councillor, and in most cases the aforementioned councillor has no professional qualifications or commercial experience.
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I am afraid that including those contracts signed under the current administration is being charitable to the SNP. If the contract is 80% agreed and there is momentum behind the project then clearly backing out requires a decision, but allowing "nature to run its course" barely does. Clearly a decision to cancel a project where contracts are under negotiation will aggravate voters. My interpretation of these data, and my own local experience in Portobello, is that there are now 5 schools under construction, but without a doubt there has been a considerable hiatus arising from the SNP's electoral success. Hardly surprising given their clear failure to deliver the pipe-dream that is the Scottish Futures Trust. This hiatus means that my own children will never see the inside of the replacement Portobello High School, even though my son is only in S1.
In fairness to the SNP, children in this situation have really been failed by all politicians who have held power in recent years, right back to the Conservative Government in Westminster. A sad reflection on all politicains.
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Brian
Why so amazed that the sky didn't fall in just because we had nats in Government?
Are they not people just like the rest of us?
However they really ought to do better at singing their praises for what they are doing, even if the meeja are agin them as they all claim. Yourself after this must be an honourable exception!
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The numbers seem about even.
But as ever its easy for politicians to say 5 schools in year before election, 5 schools year after election.
But it could well be the case that those built post election are smaller, or before; ah the fun of statistics.
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I live in Dumfries, and the suggestion that the present administration had anything whatsoever to do with the new schools in Cargenbridge, Troqueer and Lincluden is completely laughable!
Those schools, as well as 2 others in the town, and at least half a dozen others in Dumfries and Galloway are progressing well towards completion thanks to money from and the determination of the previous Government.
It is no surprise that the SNP will scramble for anything- moving the goal-posts so much they might as well be on a cricket pitch- to claim they've delivered something because their real record is one of failure and broken promises (don't really need to list them 'cos everyone knows but I will anyway, scrap council tax, dump student debt, police numbers, class sizes of 18).
In Dumfries and Galloway there are more schools that need rebuilding or refurnishment. Guess we'll have to eagerly await delivery of the SNP's Scottish Futures Trust for that to happen- think we'll be waiting a long time...
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With a rolling program like this, it is probably not fair to take one snapshot and attribute everything before as a Labour triumph (and local government of all hues will have had a hand in these too). It should probably be viewed over a period of decades not just fouryear terms.
The school renewal program was undertaken to correct decades of neglect of both central and local government. The Labour/LibDem Execs were right to do so, but splashed out with the 'giant credit card' of PFI which will still come back to haunt us all.
Conveniently missed out is that the current administration is underwriting the ambition of the previous administrations with some of the sharpest budgetting for years. This necessarily hamstrings any grand plans for the near-future.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
After seeing Mr Gray's awful display on this last week in parliament, I had to feel sorry for him and those on the labour benches.
For a brief moment, he facial mannerisms replicated that of Wendy, then he steadied and keep his head down waiting for the awfulness of the moment to pass. Bless!
When it comes to double counting and reannouncments of announcements of budgets, labour is in a field of its own.
TDBs
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Ref the 5 schools on the initial list.
These projects were almost certainly kicked off under the previous administration - the work involved in getting to the stage of just starting construction is considerable (planning permissions, consultation with communities, completion of design, tendering & selection of contractors), and can take at least 2 years to work through.
So, the answer to the question on how many new school projects have this administration initiated, appears to be zero.
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Annabel Goldie's attack on the proposed reduction in prescription charges seems a curious position for a Tory.
First point - the Government has NO MONEY of its own; it simple spends taxpayers' contribution.
Reducing prescription charges will allow 'the public' (or, at least, that portion which would have had to paid higher prescription charges) to decide how to spend the amount of money in question; the Tories' stance suggests that they believe that politicians and/or civil servants should be deciding how to spend that money.
'Big Government' is not typical Conservative territory, and opposing a policy which reduces taxation (particularly, taxation of the sick and ill) will do Goldie's Group no favours at the ballot-box.
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I'm not particularly bothered who wants to take credit for building work currently underway or imminent.
What would be nice would be a journalist who decided to take a closer look at PFI throughout Scotland and let us know whether figures suggest that the SNP were right or otherwise to distance themselves from this scheme.
It is one thing shouting that you have built. or were responsible for building, schools. It is quite another to look at the financial cost involved and then ask whether short term gain has led to long term pain.
One other thing:
As far as I can see there is no mention of the 1000 extra police story in the two 'quality' papers. The Scotsman does however have an article that seeks to compare the Scottish governments cabinet decision on LIT with the Labour cabinet meetings that led us into the Iraq war - propaganda isn't the word for it, disgusting is closer.
BBC Scotland did have it (1000 police) on their web page but I didn't see any news items last night so do not know if it made it onto any broadcast news.
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Interesting interview with Glen Campbell on the slopping out story.
You may (or may not) recall that an SNP minister informed Holyrood last week that despite a plea to Westminster about the urgency of this that nothing had been done.
Within hours of the statement Westminster took fright and the wheels began turning.
Today it was announced that slopping out compensation would be limited to one year.
Glen Campbell in his interview decided that the individual who should be given credit for this quick resolution was none other than - JIM MURPHY !!
Where was Murphy when the SNP were desperately trying to get Westminster to do it's job?
Wee Glen just can't help himself.
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The whole Holyrood Labour stategy of "oh no you didnt2 is so utterly depressingly daft. (quiet sobbing).
Is it reall all that much to ask for labour to function as opposition parties should and actually offer forward constructive alternatives to the encombants proposals, you see this is contructive opposition, what labour are doing by hammering on about "we comissioned this or that but not you" smacks of a spoilt child being told no for the first time. (In labours case its no, you do not run the country anymore. Theu general public ejected you two years ago).
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However, just a thought- the whole schools programme in Scotland does seem to be in a bit of a quantry over what to do now that Public Private Partnership has been cancelled with nothing replacing it.
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11. At 12:39pm on 19 Mar 2009, greenockboy wrote:
"What would be nice would be a journalist who decided to take a closer look at PFI throughout Scotland and let us know whether figures suggest that the SNP were right or otherwise to distance themselves from this scheme.
It is one thing shouting that you have built. or were responsible for building, schools. It is quite another to look at the financial cost involved and then ask whether short term gain has led to long term pain."
Seconded - It would be interesting to know which of these schemes were PFI and what the terms were.
Some have equated PFI contracts to taking out a mortgage on a very expensive credit card.
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#5 SKaufman
Not everyone will be happy with the SNP, are you don't seem to be, and I not arguing that you are wrong.
But, you needn't like the SNP to be in favour of independence of course. They would have to be re-elected in the general election, and if most people think like you, they wouldn't be!
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I don't particulary care about who did what and when. What is important is that these schools are being built/modernised. If it was Labour,then good. If it was SNP then good also.
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This Glenn Campbell thing is getting beyond a joke: if the man continues to showcase his anti-SNP pro-Labour bias on the air, sack him.
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afternoon. as greenock boy and sparklet may know , as of April all ppp & pfi projects must come out of hiding and be shown on the governments balance sheet.
the problem is will the Scottish media report how much this con is costing us now and in the future? or will they continue as they are, with their tunnel vision & their collective heads in the sand?
anyone who thinks the figures are bad just now should get themselves ready for some excessive spin and a very interesting diversionary story to come out at the same time.
who's going to take over from Fred the shred as the diversion?
over to you Brian
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@ 16
How they are built is also important- as i'm not sure about anything else other than the fact that PFI has created a signifcant level of long term debt in Scotland.
But yes, if they are built its good, but value for taxpayers is essential. (unless your Scottish Labour that is)
@ 15 Aye_write:
"They would have to be re-elected in the general election"
The polls for Holyrood are not encouraging, but surprisingly they have held up in Westminster voting intention on 27% (I for one had predicted a Tory, labour and SNP fall in % share as a Liberal comback began. How wrong I was)
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I'm suprised at greenockboy, does his area not have one of the most ambitious school building plans in the country? They have just opened the new Inverclyde Academy and have another 4 schools, including two secondary schools starting to be built.
I wonder if he has not mentioned this because in is a Labour run minority council.
Is the real question here not the total failur of the Scottish Futures Fund.
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@ 20 "Is the real question here not the total failur of the Scottish Futures Fund."
Partly, but its really about the wholesale indebtedness of the PPP / PFI Labour legacy.
But yes, the Scot Futures Fund has been demonstrated as wanting.
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Yet again, Brian, you have shown that you can prove anything with statistics.
Instead of just concentrating on the "magical" number 16, could we have that figure expressed as a percentage of school projects completed (or on-going) since the SNP came to office, or would that send the Tartan civil service into a fatal tailspin ?
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# 19 deanthetory
I'm not disagreeing with you as to how the funding is acquired for the schools; this is important. What I was trying to say is that it would be nice if our childrens' education was taken out of the political arena (some hope). Their education is far too important for it to be used as a political football. This ridiculous attitude that all children are the same and, as such, will all learn at the same time and speed is verging on the ridiculous.
I hope that the Scottish education system never gets itself into the mess the schools in London have. It is not the fault of the teachers as they have a severe problem, in some schools here, of there being too many foreign pupils who arrive here and don't even speak English. This leads to an artificial lowering of the marks that these schools attain. Instead of flooding these schools with teachers of English to improve the childrens' learning capacity they, the local authorities and government flood these schools with inspectors and chastise the head teacher. I'm not saying that there are some head teachers who may be lax in their duties, but what we see down here is the local authorities and government panicking. It doesn't take a blind man to see that if the children cannot speak English then it is highly unlikely that the children are going to able to proceed normally in their lessons. It is politically expedient to lay blame instead of sorting the problem.
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In an attempt to inject some information into the debate I did a bit of digging around on the SFT and came up with the following:
Firstly an interesting quote from what appears to my untrained eye to be a reasonably balanced (albeit from what appears to be a PFI lawyer!) article from January 2008:
"Statistics recently released from the Scottish Government have revealed that the legacy debt inherited from those PFI/PPP projects that are now up and running, or are committed to, is around 4,500GBP for every Scottish taxpayer."
4,500GBP! Ouch! A useful benchmark against which to judge SFT perhaps?
Secondly, as of last May the timetable for implementing SFT was as shown here. Looks like a fairly lengthy process, although for something this complicated I guess it has to be.
Thirdly, the latest word I found from the government was here. It seems SFT is progressing, albeit slowly. A bit more here from a recent parliamentary debate - look out for Andy Kerr calling John Swinney the First Minister near the end!
Fourthly, the 2007 SNP manifesto states:
We also propose a new system of infrastructure funding as an alternative to the costly and flawed PFI/PPP. Over the first term of an SNP government we will introduce a not-for-profit Scottish Futures Trust, which will provide lower cost borrowing opportunities. We expect the Scottish Futures Trust to emerge as a more attractive source of funding for both national and local projects which will effectively crowd out PFI/PPP over time.
Current PFI/PPP contracts will be unaffected and it will be open to local authorities and other public bodies to choose between PFI/PPP and Scottish Futures Bonds for planned and future projects. In particular, we will match brick for brick current plans for improvements in our schools and hospitals.
Interesting stuff. The bonds idea got scuppered as I recall. Notwithstanding that this seems to indicate that local authorities and other public bodies would be free to choose between SFT and PFI/PPP. Anyone know if that has been the reality in the last 2 years?
If local authorities and public bodies have decided not to use PFI/PPP while the SFT is slowly gestating, then that surely absolves the government of the charge of holding up construction projects while the SFT is sorted out. If so then the SNP might want to think about getting that message across a bit better!
Less constructively (pun intended!), I might just add: Who let our nation's schools decay and crumble on such a grand scale?
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#5 of course, the SNP does have everything to do with there still being a meaningful university campus in Dumfries, increasing the prospects of keeping the educated young there.
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#23. gedguy2
If I may say, as long as we have unionist parties and the SNP fighting over who controls Scotland, the 'political football' will never end.
Better to get rid of the problem and proceed to independence, where the governing of Scotland can at last take priority.
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Why are new faith schools being built at all? Phase them out, they're a relic.
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Maybe it is me, but is the whole idea of PFI, SFT whatever is to remove responsibility away from Government?
if it is cheaper for the Government to cotnrol a project - preferanbly with a professional in charge - then they should do this.
But if you want true figures, try reading Private Eye. Slightly scary.
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#23 gedguy2
It seems it's also expediant to blame foreigners.
It could also be that sometimes our children and teachers aren't as bright as we may wish or believe, with out just blaming foreigners and head teachers. Everyone has a right to the best of education, without looking at class, ethnicity or nationality.
Not all children are the same, but they should all be given a chance to be the best they can be, at what ever stage they take off.
The first bud to flower isn't always the prettiest!
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Brian,
Your blog may be a wee bit previous, but ultimately prescient, nonetheless!!
Some posters have already alluded to this, but I think the forthcoming fiscal revelations of the true cost of the Lab/FibDem deals on PFI costs for schools will absolutely destroy any remaining credibility of these parties at the next Scottish Election (wee devil smiley!)
Good job on the digging so far, but can you please up the pace!!
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@ 24
"Less constructively (pun intended!), I might just add: Who let our nation's schools decay and crumble on such a grand scale?"
Labour councils, Tory governments, and a general obession over comprehensive education systems. (Which needs to be replaced with a network of ability focused schooling).
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This reminds me so much of elections in the 50's and 60s when Labour and Tory both concentrated on which party had "built" more houses.
The same nonsense about ignoring/stressing commissioning dates, and aggregating private, council, and national housing into one number.
Additionally, it wasn't unknown for both Labour and Tory councils to delay/accelerate new build depending on whether it was their own, or the other, lot in power.
Both of these parties were complicit in creating the "nanny state" that neil_small referred to on an earlier thread - building the expectation that central government would solve all the problems.
As with their opposition to the Covenant with COSLA, Labour are still obsessed with the centralisation of power. The SNP started off down a road of decentralising authority to councils. It needs to continue on that road, and not be drawn into an argument over who can best maximise power at Holyrood.
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What was interesting this morning was that in the Toady Programme on radio 4, John the hardman interviewed (very, very softly) a rare ministerial individual from NuLabor.
What was rare was that he admitted that there had been a major cock-up in school and university building in that the government funding programme had run out of money, and that billions of part-finished work was left without finance.
Hey, you could not make this up.
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#25 Pattymkirkwood
Last time i checked the university in Dumfries wasn't soley Glasgow, and that the campus would have remained even if Glasgow had decided to leave and it would still have been meaningfull. Unless of course you are wishing to put down the other institutions which make up a larger proportion of the campus
I'm unsure of how you think the SNP contributed to the success of the Crichton campus, is this through the cuts to the university budgets they made that have seen scottish universities slipping down the rankings.
If you could explain to me what direct influence the SNP had on this i would be very grateful.
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Whatever one thinks of the SNP's record in building schools, the foul up in England over local colleges - a wholly owned NuLab disaster - is going to take some beating as an example of how to mismanage an education building programme.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7951457.stm
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# 26 aye_write
If I were of the religious persuasion then I would pray that you are right. Having been an SNP supporter since voting age, and one time activist, I sincerely hope that you are right, but my experience with politicians is similar to my father's viewpoint; never vote for someone who wants to be a politician. I suspect that politicians, being the beasts that they are, will always want to play politics with everything.
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# 28 Neil_Small147
Never give a politician the chance to spend your money. They'll waste it on their own pet projects and then come back to you for more.
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# 29 SKaufman
If you'd care to re-read my posting then you will find that I am not blaming foreigners but the politicians for their reaction to a problem that we have in some schools in London. My girlfriend works as a teacher in one of those schools and I have the absolute pleasure of listening to her moans for 30 minutes each night when she returns from work. By the way, my girlfriend is a foreigner too. So please don't insinuate that I am in any way being anti foreign.
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#27 Anaxim
"Why are new faith schools being built at all? Phase them out, they're a relic."
Anaxim, I have to lie down.....w...w...we agree!
Phase them out. In Scotland the church and state are separate.
Religion in school is brainwashing (I see it with mine in their wee country primary - scary). It goes against teaching thinking and understanding.
It should only be taught as a subject of study - and of religionB. To open the mind, not close it.
Otherwise there is plenty of time on the "Sabbath" to indulge, should you or your parents wish. I'm not against that. There is plenty of merit in many of the after school clubs.
If, as is reported, faith schools (I'm thinking RC) perform better than others, then surely we should take what's successful about them and incorporate it into our schools in general. I don't like an unfair system.
Agreed Anaxim, we want to have a forward looking not backward Scotland.
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Brian,
Your update has stolen my thunder somewhat but I offer some tedious but neverthless important facts (my previous attempt above was ruled out to have breached the house rules as it included the weblinks to actual documents.)
As you point out, all of the first schools (Dunning to St. Kentigerns) bar one were approved by the respective Councils before the SNP took office in May 2007. Kingspark in Dundee was approved in October 2008 but, as tradionally procured, it is by definition commissioned by the local Council, not the Scottish Government.
All in the second list (Our Ladys & St Annes to Douglas) are all contained in the South Lanarkshire Schools Modernisation Programme, again pre-dating and approved before the SNP's election.
The next bunch are part of Glasgow City Councils pre-12 strategy, the fourth and final phase of which was approved in February 2007. Again before the SNP took office.
The ones in Dumfries and Galloway were also all approved by the previous Council administration prior to May 2007.
Seaview, as you note, was approved in 2006.
So every single one of those schools except Kingspark in Dundee was left over from before the SNP took office and, as a traditionally procured school, by definition Kingspark was commissioned by Dundee City Council, not the Scottish Government.
Fact: the SNP Scottish Government is yet to commision a single school since it took office nearly two years ago. Not one.
So much for "brick for brick".
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#33 cassandrina:
That interview was priceless. As you say, even the softly, softly approach left Sion Simon floundering. I suspect he won't be allowed anywhere near the Today programme for a loooong time!
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#36 gedguy2
I take your point. Like mine, your father is/was clearly a wise man!
But I meant that that one all dominating issue will be gone. I think it is that, rather than the politicians, who while that game is in town have to play, that is strangling Scottish politics.
We have the advantage over Westminster of PR and minority govt.
Once Labour and the LibDems get the hang of it, and stop doing like Westminster, and oppose for show (as the opposition there can have no effect on a typically large majority), I can see by contrast the benefits of consensus led govt. (where if you don't play, and don't have good reason, you look bad.)
My view anyway.
As with independence in general, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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#38 gedguy2
I hope your girlfriend doesn't read your #97 on "Half and Half"!
My daughter taught in London for a year (mainly Bangladeshi girls), and her experiences confirm yours.
Her complaints were largely round the bureacratic nature of inspection in England, massive over testing leading to a significantly reduced curriculum, and managerialism run mad. She was glad to get back to Scottish schools.
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# 27 Anaxim
I tend to agree with that statement. There should be no room for any religion in schools. If the parents want to bring their children up to believe in an invisible superbeing then that is up to them. It should not be the job of schools to brainwash our children into believing in any spurious and imaginative being. Might as well teach them to believe in fairies as well.
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#39 aye_write
We won't get secular schools until ALL religions butt out from our schools. The reason for having RC schools in the first place, was that the dominant Kirks (CoS and Free Kirk) used schools (and prisons and most other aspects of public life) to proselytise the RC community. It was a massive step forward in 1919, when the RC community were allowed to bring their schools fully within the state funded system.
There are still far too many supposedly "non-denominational" schools, whose chaplains are wholly from the Kirk, and whose mandatory religious services (introduced in the 80s by the Tories) are wholly Presbyterian.
Until that happens, it's not good enough to say that the RC schools should disappear. They currently are a protection for the values of the RC community, and they have a right not to be exposed to propaganda from institutionalised Presbyterianism.
Deal with the Kirk first, then the need for separate RC schools will wither.
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32. At 4:43pm on 19 Mar 2009, oldnat
This reminds me so much of elections in the 50's and 60s when Labour and Tory both concentrated on which party had "built" more houses.
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Dont knock MacMillian Oldnat. I respect you a considerable deal, however MacMillian and the Tories of that era were (arguably) more pregressive then than now.
Been reading the 1959 Tory Manifesto "the next five years" (disctinctly planned...love it)
I especially loved the bit advocating a mixed economy- specifically on housing "The local authorities will continue to play a big part along with private enterprise ... to re-house at least another million..."
I think it was all rather progressive, back then. Todays apporach is who can be the best free market party. Its all rather depressing.
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Interesting comment from a poster called 'cloch1', not least because he may be someone I know from growing up in Greenock.
Larkfield or Nairn Drive ring a bell cloch1?
Anyway, cloch1 suggests I haven't listed the new schools projects in Greenock because it is a Labour run council.
The point has been missed on cloch1 that I don't care who runs the council in Inverclyde or any other area for that matter. The point is that PFI is a millstone around the necks of those yet unborn.
I could have mentione the PFI school in East Crawford street that had to have major repairs to it's roof and windows due to sub standard work.
The Inverclyde Academy that you mention is indeed a newly built school. However it was built on the only playing fields in the area and has an unfortunate tendency to cause Cumberland road to flood when the rain is heavy.
That said, the school appears to have the approval of those who attend, my niece and nephew being pupils there.
The Scottish Futures Trust is currently, as has been explained, still at planning stage. When ready it will offer a much needed alternative to the now discredited PFI model. Indeed, it may well be the only funding mechanism available.
One other question to cloch1;
Who was responsible for allowing Tesco's to wreck the road network as you travel through Port Glasgow on route to Greenock and Gourock?
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I note not many of the Schools are in the north half of Scotland, more inclusive government.
When coupled with the reductions in health spending planned for the Highlands we are getting a raw deal. But hey thats what happens when you vote Lib Dem
Aye Right -
I agree on faith Schools, if we are to be rid of our Sectarian monster this is a necessary step.
All we need is a politician that has the courage to do what the majority of Scots think is right.
Religion should not be taught in School it can and should be taught at home.
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Having dallied in the world of the editors, I suppose I should be making the most of this soon-to-be 'old style' blog.
My skin is still crawling...
To schools and education however:
As with the health service, the education provision in Scotland would benefit from "not starting from here."
Where is the 'blue skies thinking'?
Over and above the
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#39, aye_write:
'... there is plenty of time on the "Sabbath" to indulge...'
Just as well you didn't identify which day you consider the 'sabbath' to be, or you'd be denounced as bigoted by some other portion of the populace...
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I think that we are losing an important point in the fight over numbers. In East Dunbartonshire the Lib Dems agreed to build some new schools and upgrade the others. They were thrown out at the last election to be replaced by a Tory Lab coalition who continued with their PFI building program that entailed for Bearsden Academy a huge loss of playing fields as they moved to the St Andrews College site and worse still the demolition at the new site of a good swimming pool to make room for private housing. Now the council have found their planning was not that good as fears of cost over runs and extra expense have meant that the other schools in the area that were not being rebuilt but upgraded have had their budgets removed to pay to produce a few basic PFI schools.
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#40 Maurice_Minor
The Lab/Lib Government commissioned no schools either. All public schools in Scotland are commissioned by councils.
After the disastrous lack of investment in the school estate under the Tories, the Scottish Government produced their strategy for the school estate BUILDING OUR FUTURE: Scotland's School Estate. Since local authorities had no clear picture of how good or bad the school estate was, each had to "prepare initial school estate management plans during 2003 and submit a summary of these to the Scottish Executive by December 2003. These will inform national thinking and decisions about the school estate across Scotland.
It is likely that local authorities will want to update their plans annually, with a more fundamental review every 3-5 years."
A serious flaw in the process is that the commonest tool for estimating future numbers of pupils suffers from significant inaccuracies, and draws on assumptions about new housing and pupil movement which date from the 1970s. Another was that the "consultation" processes with staff were frequently inappropriate. This example from Argyll and Bute is not untypical.
"The initial RDS (Room Data sheets) period of consultation was too ambitious. It took much longer for the RDS to be distributed to staff and for comments to be collated than originally envisaged. Issues such as teaching classes, preparation for external examinations and other day-to-day school issues shortened the time available for staff to examine, discuss and respond. School holidays during February and Easter also slowed down the process. In hindsight it would have been useful to agree a more detailed framework of consultation time with schools prior to this aspect of the project's development." NB the planners were concerned that teaching classes! got in the way of planning.
Since PFI was the major source of funding, and there was a central drive for this to be used quickly, many schemes were ill thought out (see above), and the cost implications were far from clear. We will be paying for these bad decisions for many years to come.
What would be far more relevant for Brian's investigations would be to find out how many applications for funding new schools have been received from councils since 2007, and what is their current status? How much money has been allocated for traditional procurement practice would also be a relevant question.
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#34, the fact that the Glasgow element to the campus is not closed down (as was wanted by Sir Muir Russel and the Glasgow Uni board).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/6357263.stm
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2416203.0.crichton_campus_rescued_by_governments_cash_lifeline.php
"Crichton campus rescued by government’s cash lifeline"
Professor Ted Cowan, the director of Glasgow University's Crichton campus, said the move will halt the "brain drain" of young talent from the region. He also praised the SNP for salvaging a facility that one local MP had previously said would take a "miracle" to save.
"The SNP have to be given full credit for following through on their election promise to keep it open," he said.
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#41 forfar-loon
Seems silly for anyone to argue that the quality of politicians is higher at Westminster than at Holyrood after hearing that interview.
Of course, if we were to discover that Westminster were planning new Trident subs, in which the US missiles didn't fit, we might have to decide that even more NuLab Ministers were incompetent.
Now, if that were ever to happen ;-) then that would be even more expensive than 79 English colleges suing their Government!
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deanthetory
I'm appreciating your posts over on MM's blog. Even though we will disagree on many things, I sometimes wonder if you and I have more in common politically than you have with your southern brethren!
Time, I think, for you guys to create a separate Scottish Conservative Party (with Auntie Annabel as leader) through which you could co-operate (if appropriate) with your English colleagues on reserved matters (unless it would be bad for Scotland - Michael Forsyth was a master at that game), but could be utterly distinctive on everything else.
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Just a wee point about Neil_smalls post at
1.
He states that faith Schools restrict access to non-demonination children. I don't think that is strictly true I think it would be up to the parents to apply for a place. I did with my son, we are "protestant" but wanted my son to go to the local catholic school as it was nearer. There was no problem whatsoever.
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This is a simple situation, who do we allow to take the credit for the new schools?
Labour, who introduced the schemes.
or
The SNP, who not only finalised the arrangements but are also the same people who will be forking out millions for the school schemes.
Now I personally believe that the party who pays the bills should be allowed to take credit, and Labour fails here on this one.
Labour never has paid for the vast majority of her projects during their time in power.
It was a cheap political move to help free up funds during the short term, by paying a smaller fee over many years rather then paying the lump sum in full.
It's unsustainable, especially during this recession and whoever backs Labour's method of buidling new schools and hospitals have to be the biggest plonkers in the world.
How is creating an enormous debt a benefit to our children?
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Iain Gray and Labour are just so unbelievable in their continual negative criticism of the current minority government.
If its not schools, it's police numbers, or just about everything the government does. I am frankly tired of a party that fails to be a contructive opposition.
8 years they had in Government here and behaved as if infaliable, they believed that no matter what they did they would still be in power come hell or high water.
The media are just not doing their job exposing Labour's lack of responsibility in opposition. Glenn Campbell need to decide what he wants to be a politician or a broadcaster!
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#45 oldnat
Em, I wasn't having a go at RC schools in particular.
If you remember I said my boys' little primary has too much religious brainwashing, of the supposed non-denominational type you pointed out.
It's from the local CoS minister who butts into assembly and school life in general far too much for my liking - as I say, scary.
And their school is called "[village name] School" - no religious reference!
So, I was in fact saying get all religion like that out of schools.
I agreed with you. I didn't think otherwise.
I don't care who's church, just have no church.
And re your story. What a farce/mess.
Then we need to sort it.
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All this issue is establishing is that Labour gave the go ahead to build lots of schools on the never -never and left the next generation to find the money.
They paid for none of the schools they built.
I didn't see any headlines when the SNP organised a second year of freeze on Council Tax
I don't see any headlines on the abolishing of commercial rates for small businesses.
I don't see any headlines on the increasing police numbers in Scotland (when the numbers dropped annually under Labour and were dropping as the SNP took power).
I don't see any headlines about Police numbers plummetting in England right now.
I don't see headlines about the LibDems supporting moves for a stop on cheap booze in England but opposing the same SNP plans for Scotland.
;
The Scottish media (and that includes the BBC) is now a national disgrace.
The so called "Scottish" Daily Express even mananged to attack Alex Salmond today IN ITS EDITORIAL for not backing Sandi Thom on some tiddley wee dispute or other.
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As the well-worn McLeishe goes, Henry McLeish was no Donald Dewar, and Jack McConnell was no Henry McLeish.
We are now exposed to the plumming of new depths with Ian Gray, who has lived up to his early promise by proving himself as the dullest and most ineffective Labour leader to date.
There appear to be no straws at which this desperate clown of a man will not clutch to try to misrepresent his party as resembling a coherent political force.
Initially citing his personal life experiences - which read like the ramblings of a wandering gap year student - as evidence of his self-deluded "suitability" to be first minister, he holds up Bendy Wendy's "Bring It On" stunt week as a mark of Labour principle, and in his recent party conference speech, resorted to regurgitating the 30-year-old smear about the SNP bringing down Labour to usher in Thatcher, while his own leader openly worships her!
The playground accusations over schools are but another cheap shot from a lame opposition with an inherent instinct for self-preservation and underhand tactics, but no honest or effective argument against the vision, ambition, and competent performance of the SNP Government.
Clearly, Ian Gray is no Wendy Alexander!
Meanwhile, there is a distinctively suspicious pattern emerging in the deeds of 'people's hero' Jim Murphy, who apparently only has to step in to any long-standing impasse between Holyrood and Westminster and - Lo and Behold! - the dispute melts away as if by magic.
The esteemed Mr Murphy proclaimed at Scottish questions this week that the SNP Government had singularly failed to grasp the requirement for "efficiency savings".
However, Alex Salmond's demonstration of efficiency savings, as money reinvested in an institution which has successfully made savings through increased efficiency of performance - rings a sight more true than Murphy's crass defence of Westminster's £500 million cut to the Scottish economy at time when additional economic investment is critical.
That's Jim Murphy, folks! No smoke or mirrors required!
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# 43 oldnat
I was safe as she wasn't back from work. It's not that I'm frightened of her; petrified would be a more apt description. She might increase her moans to an hour instead of a barely managable 30 minutes.
I feel sorry for the children who come over here and don't speak English but I feel more angry at the local authorities and government for not having the right priorities; which is giving the kids the best education that we can furnish them with. Too much politics in education.
I assume your daughter worked over in the East End.
# 42 aye_write
Ity would be nice if the Scottish government (whichever party is in power if we get independence) would withdraw from using education as a political football. However, I'm not holding my breath.
Time to draw the blankets over and drift off into slumber.
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56 rickyross3359
Your post confirms what my research in Ayrshire showed. The old divisions are fast disappearing, and frequently the postcodes of pupils attending RC schools indicate that one or more of the following must be true
1. Housing Department allocation procedures send RC families to social housing near RC schools
2. An excessive amount of RC families buy private housing in areas close to RC schools
3. Most families are unconcerned about the religious divisions that used to be so dominant in (at least) the West of Scotland, and send their kids to the most appropriate school to where they live.
My analysis suggested that No 3 was the most appropriate explanation!
However, Neil_Small's point remains valid, in that the intake procedures for the new generation of RC Secondary schools, tend to restrict intake to pupils from RC Primaries, with remaining places being subject to placing requests - as opposed to the previous practice in the West of Scotland, where any pupil could go to either the ND or RC school serving their area.
PFI may have actually increased religious segregation - what a proud record for Labour!
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55. At 9:26pm on 19 Mar 2009, oldnat
"Time, I think, for you guys to create a separate Scottish Conservative Party (with Auntie Annabel as leader"
------
I believe that you've floated this idea before, a while back.
I understand the logic, and your right about most of it. However, I'm just not willing (or is it ready) to agree that a one-nationist pro-european Conservative vision is dead across the whole British Isles.
Perhaps one day such a seperation might happen as you describe. But, things just aren't that bad- and surely if anything is true...the tories are a broad church...
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#58, "good news" is people tend to tune out unrelentingly negative oppositions. Most of the Labour leaders are simply to dense to know or realise this.
When given a stark choice between Salmond or Grey (assuming the current Holyrood Labour pretendy leader survives that long) the Grey man will get a pasting.
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#61 Dougie-Dubh
"Ian Gray, who has lived up to his early promise by proving himself as the dullest and most ineffective Labour leader to date."
Sorry, but I have to take issue with you on your factual error.
"Ian Gray" : "Labour leader"
Shurely shome mishtake! Labour follower would have been more accurate!
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Just to note a good development in Holyrood:
A new law widening the definition of hate crimes to include attacks on gay or disabled people has been passed in principle.
Its a good step in the right direction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7951504.stm
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#62 gedguy2
"petrified would be a more apt description"
After my 40 years of marriage, that sounds like a good basis to lock her in!
Don't you think she already knows how to google your username, and see what you write?
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Lot's of factual blogg's, I'll sum it up (get it) Jist anither complete dug's dinner, brought to you by the captains of whatever politics!
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Is it not the case that while SNP schools have already been paid for, while Labour schools have not been paid for, and we will be paying billions for them over the coming years.
It was easy for Labour to sign us up to anything and everything (trams, schools, Scottish parliament building, whatever), while putting off the payments over future years, at an extortionate rate of interest.
Is that not what PPP/PFI is all about.
An absolute rip off, but a convenient way of funding things while not actually getting the current generation of voters to pay for them.
Just like GBs fiscal stimulus plans all over really.
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Surely they are not Labour Schools or SNP schools but Scottish schools the idea of Political parties claiming ownerships of a school is to me a frightening idea.
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#23 gedguy2 -
"It doesn't take a blind man to see that if the children cannot speak English then it is highly unlikely that the children are going to be able to proceed normally in their lessons"
There is an answer to this - one that was suggested to me by the Head teacher at the local school of which I am a Governor - schools should be assessed, ranked, scored - whatever - on the performance of their teachers not their pupils.
Teacher's performance/lessons are already assessed internally by heads of year/head teachers and externally by OSTED/SIP etc. I would like to see these assessments built on to become the basis for a school's performance grading.
A school with pupils who don't have English as their first language or which draws its intake from a 'disadvantaged' area will still be seen as a good school if its teachers perform well.
This should add some consistency, it will encourage teachers to stay on in notionally more 'difficult' schools if it's recognised that they are doing a good job there and it will also mean that schools will compete on a more level playing field because factors like the relative affluence of parents/background will have less impact on the schools 'league table position.'
At the end of the day; a school should be considered 'good' because it has high-quality teachers not a high-quality pupil intake.
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Despite being a nationalist i must point out that seaview is not a new school, i went to nursery school there 20 years ago.
All thats happened is they sold off their original buildings which were pre-victorian mansions and moved 100 yards up the road.
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67
A good development from hollyrood? dont tell the unionists or they will kill it like they kill everything else thats in Scotlands interests rather than their london puppet masters.
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#1 Neil_Small147
"(...) the whole school contract programme is a mess, and blame cannot be entirely blamed on central government, but on local."
While scanning the posts on the subject of school building in Scotland, my attention fixed upon a remark in one of yours (not least because you got in first), which led me to do a little investigating of my own, as this is not a subject in which I have previously taken a great deal of interest, important though it no doubt is.
The Scottish Government is being criticized as if it were primarily responsible for the financing and building of all schools in Scotland, but this does not appear to be the case, or, at least, the situation may not be the same in every case and is unclear and more complex than the opposition may present it as. Lines of responsibility for school building are either not clearly drawn or at least are not clear to the general public, leaving ample scope for confusion, "obfuscation", as BT puts it, and misrepresentation, which he has manfully been endeavouring to address, or, as he would no doubt feel obliged to say, personfully (with apologies to bighullabaloo).
I wondered how difficult it would be to find out where responsibilities lie in this field of public provision elsewhere. So I checked with the French Ministry of Education, as you will not be surprised to learn, where I discovered, as one might expect, clarity: a definitively stated utterly definitive delineation of responsibilities at the various levels of government. This can be gone into at great length, of course, but for our purposes it may suffice to observe that there are clear and apparently invariable lines of responsibility and that they are easily discovered by the citizen. You just go to the ministry's website, and there they are. You can see who always does what in connection with building and maintenance of all types of educational establishment even if you have never given the matter a thought before. This is as it should be, I venture to suggest. If the citizen is to understand and monitor the activities of politicians, as one would expect in a republic, s/he should not have to be an investigative journalist or a political anorak to know or to find out who is responsible for what and how it all works. A very brief summary of the division of reaponsibilities follows, in case it may be of interest.
While the central government is responsible for administering educational policy and the staff engaged in carrying it out, the various levels of local government are responsible for financing and building the establishments in which this takes place at the primary and secondary levels.
The commune, which is the smallest administrative unit, builds, rebuilds, extends, maintains, equips and operates the primary-level infant-school and primary-school teaching establishments in its area. Similarly, administrative units above that, the departement and the region, have their financing and building responsibilities clearly set out for the other types of teaching establishment, the details of which I shall spare you.
In this way central government retains control over delivery of educational policy at every level but devolves responsibility for provision of the buildings needed for this to local government in a precisely regulated and centrally monitored fashion, the detail and rational consistency of which is transparent. Needless to say, incidentally, as I see that the question of religion in schools has been raised in some posts, there is no place for religion in French state schools, although private ones are free to provide a faith-based education.
So far as the structure which has been established for responsibility for school building in Scotland (and indeed for implementation of centrally-determined educational policy) is concerned, the somewhat unsatisfactory situation, where inconsistency and lack of clarity appear to be a problem, is such that the Scottish Government might wish to consider reforming it, as the relatively muddled set-up that it has inherited from the UK is arguably not fit for purpose, which should come as no great surprise to anyone.
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Now I have absolutely no problem with a government (or executive) led programme of school contstruction.
Not only is this valuable injection into the economy through work creation (and reducing unemployment must be a primary aim, as it helps create one nation through reduction of social hardship) but it also helps to expand the Scottish school system-
and if we want to have smaller public sector school class sizes then we must expand the system.
Now my point (among many squeezed in here) is that Labour made the mistake of carrying forward with school construction but did it through private enterprise rather than a mixture of public sector management and private capital injection ON GOVERNMENT DICTATED TERMS, labours PPP is not a partnership it is the public sector selling itself short to appease a private sector which is actually incharge of the whole programme.
Thank goodness Big Alex and his party ended the whole mess. What we need now from the SNP is a clear five year plan for school construction.
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Ach, fantastic, early end of week finish, all work done and dusted, a lovely West of Scotland day, with only one cloud in the sky. And yet my thoughts turn to politics, as it should be, I should think.
Don't get me wrong, I am well aware of the old adage that when one is in a competition then one shouldn't interrupt one's opposition when they are making a mistake, but even I am finding Labour's rather wearying opposition terribly wearisome. Wendy Alexander made an absolute beginner's error by going in too early and going in too strong regarding the lack of ring-fenced funding going down to councils. She had a decent enough little point-scoring opportunity if, at an opportune moment, she had employed this accusation at the right moment then people may just have listened. Instead, Labour began to wrap themselves into a rather convoluted and indulgent moral hightone that began to sound very shrill and very, well, as if we had heard it all before, and before, and before. Politics is nothing if not about effective communication.
For some reason Labour are at it again with this schools business. And, once again, they are beginning to wrap themselves up in an untidy package. It's not to deny, per se, that politics is not about small details, but sometimes oppositions simply do not have the luxury of indulging in bit-by-bit analysis of every ticky-box and number-crunch.
I do wonder, though, if we will begin to hear more about some in Labour in Holyrood's dissatisfaction with Gray. The back benchers seemed rather subdued yesterday, only Pauline McNeill glowered at the SNP with any real sense of conviction. I have to say, if I were sitting in Labour's ranks I would begin to worry about the next Holyrood election. I quite liked McConnell in a sort of 'he's alright, he's a guid bloke' sort of way, but I have yet to see anything from Gray that makes me think he could carry Labour on his coat-tails anywhere, never mind back into government. It makes me wonder, if, and who, currently at Westminster, they have lined-up to parachute into Holyrood to take over. I really don't know, I'm sure there must be conversations ongoing regarding dropping a big-hitter into the next Holyrood parliament, presumably assuming Labour will lose thus allowing the big-hitter to take over the party in Holyrood and attempt to properly challenge Salmond. I wonder who, though? And are there any of the Labour Westminster crew willing to take on seemingly Mission Impossible?
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Insane spendaholics are mortgaging our future
2nd last paragraph.
"It is a moral imperative that we rethink the State, as well as a financial one. But the media must play its part. John Humphrys elegantly savaged a minister on the Today programme yesterday because 70 further education colleges have been told they will not get the money they had expected for new buildings. I would rather he had asked why a further 250 colleges are being built. Can that be a priority?"
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SKaufman an acknowledgement that the SNP saved the Glasgow element of Crichton campus would be nice sometime soon.
Go on ... the man running the campus can say so in the faces of Sir Muir Russel (and other Labourite appointees at the Uni) so why can't you?
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# 68 oldnat
I never thought of that (google).
Did I ever tell you how wonderful she is?
# 72 Bandages_for_Konjic
Wouldn't that just be the answer; if only that were true.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/cartoon/
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A question no one in Scotland seems to be asking at the moment; Where will happen to Labour at Holyrood when Brown is replaced?
A new UK Labour party will surely purge itself of career Scots like Murphy and Alexander. They do not endear themselves to floating voters and, in the case of Murphy, are there only as a means of creating an anti SNP soundbite.
Darling will also disappear with Brown spelling the end of the high ranking, high profile Scottish Labour MP for quite some time.
Iain Gray simply doesn't have what it takes to lead a party into any sort of election. Even the Scottish media's kid gloves approach will render the man a quivering twitching wreck.
I predict a disintegration of Labour in Scotland as internal feuds break out and a natural resistance to non Scottish rule from London.
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http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2496626.0.Independent_thinking_but_Holyrood_just_a_sideshow.php
Ian Bell – "The First Minister of Scotland is either slightly mad or slightly stupid. You pick."
"But seriously, back in the grown-up part of the universe, Mr Nationalist was toying with Mr Labour yesterday in the chamber of my Holyrood parliament. Nothing happened.
Mr Snip won, more or less, in pure debating terms, but so what? Iain Gray is a lousy leader for any sort of a Labour group. Mr Salmond has him for breakfast, lunch and dinner (plus snacks) weekly. But Mr Salmond should be asked to explain himself, now and then.
No chance of that, I think. Instead, you get the Who-Did-What? of Holyrood. In reality, yesterday, nothing happened. The news-in-full from your parliament yesterday was an enormous zero."
"Mr Salmond had words with Mr Gray yesterday.
Ho hum. Then Ms Goldie had some words with Mr Salmond. Then Mr Scott had extra-posh words with an almunus of the ancient university of St Andrews. And are we, truly, done, yet?
The First Minister, to his credit, spoke yesterday as though we are living through an extraordinary crisis. Bankers, like him, know about such things. The Tory then spoke like a Tory; the Liberal like a Liberal; and the new Labour bloke parsed - look it up - the verses like a born liar."
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#82 greenockboy
Interesting question!
Let's start with the premise that Brown and Darling will be the last Scots ever to hold any of the major offices in the UK state, and that no Scot (unless representing an English constituency - but even then they'd have to be spectacularly good!) will ever again have Cabinet rank in charge of an English Ministry.
Now that the English have woken up to the reality of the West Lothian question, any party with Scots or Welsh in their leading roles is going to be unacceptable to the majority of English voters and, therefore, unelectable at Westminster.
I'd be amazed if Cameron doesn't take the opportunity to pass legislation requiring that only English MPs could vote on English matters. That way, even if they only had a small majority, they could have a huge majority on English issues. No Labour Government could reverse that without a massive backlash from England.
So what do current (and hopeful) Labour MPs do then.
For some of the natural backbenchers, Westminster would be the choice - larger salary and pension, less work (no responsibility to represent constituents on Scottish issues), laxer scrutiny of their expenses so that they make even more money.
But for the better ones, who are in politics for power not the money, the choice is harder. If, they opt for Westminster, the highest they could aim for would be a minor Minister in a UK Department - no power, no promotion. Holyrood would seem to be a much better choice for them.
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Interesting question indeed.
But the Sec. state for Scotland will always be held by a Scottish MP. This is slightly higher that a mere 'minor minister in a UK dept.' And I'll tell you who my money is on for the next sec. state for Scotland- Mundel (and believe me, saying that pains me much more than it does you....)
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#85 deanthetory
I was actually talking about the future of Labour MPs.
I think Cameron is far cleverer than to appoint Mundell.
Option 1 - A single Secretary of State for Scotland Wales and NI - probably going to a Welsh MP (where polls suggest the Tories might do well), or one of the "new" Conservatives from the Ulster Unionists.
Option 2 - Continue the present structure with Goldie as SoS for Scotland (even if he has to ennoble her to do so).
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And the problem will arise that some legislation that is called "English-only" may in actual fact affect Scotland and Wales. If they are barred then there will be trouble. Of course ultimately this proves the logic of independence yet again but one wonders in the interim.
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Whatever the problems with the school building programme, the current Scottish Government can prove they are a modern political party fit for the 21st century by scrapping publicly funded faith schools.
You want a faith school? Then go private. The only place for religion in school is to teach tolerance of others - not promote yours.
There has been a case in South Lanarkshire where e RC priest publicly stated in the local newspaper that non-denominal pupils were having an adverse affect on those of the Catholic faith. Don't believe me, then contact the editor of the East Kilbride News.
It is this thinking that is continuing to fuel bigotry which is detrimental to Scotland. How can we promote the "One Country, Many Cultures" etc when we cannot even join together.
I have nothing against religion, but I do not see why education choice should be restricted based purely on the choice of religion based in the main on parents' beliefs.
We have enough trouble with football, and the current division of schools does not help matters.
I welcome comments, especially from those who have been teachers and have a better understanding of the issues than me.
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#88 Neil_Small147
Haven't you read what I posted earlier? My research suggested that increasingly school choice was being made on the basis of convenience rather than religion.
I'm presuming that your children go to "non-denominational" schools. They will have religious services (as required by the Tories in the 1980s) and chaplains.
Are the services your children attend really "non-denominational", or are they taken by the chaplain(s). Are any of the chaplains in your children's schools RC or rabbis or Muslims?
When I was managing a school, I introduced the "Kirking" of the school - not for religious reasons, but because I thought that the kids needed to learn the social norms of behaviour in church, when they went to weddings, funerals etc. However, I was unable to persuade other staff that the kirking could take place equally as well in the local RC, Episcopal, or Congregationalist churches - it had to be in the Kirk of Scotland.
While "institutionalised" sectarianism applies within nominally "non-denominational" schools, I would oppose the ending of the RC school system.
You could make a start on ending the separate structure by demanding that your children's schools appoint an RC chaplain.
Will you do that?
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#88 Neil,
I absolutely agree with you and others (including Anaxim!) on the future of faith schools. However, they are often seen - for little reason, in my personal opinion - as superior to other schools in their localities; and it would be political suicide for any Scottish Govt. to move against them.
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Can't remember where I first came across this ... maybe someone else will know?!
"Religion is like a giant dog,
When it is yours, it is very comforting,
But it scares the hell out of everyone else,
The best you can do is keep it away from children."
Personally, I fail to see much difference in the behaviour expected in Kirk/Chapel etc ... or that in a normal school assembly.
Although there is something to be said in institutionally introducing the kids to the norms of the wider community, whether via "Kirking" or something else.
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#89 oldnat
If the Tories legislated them in, could successive governments not then legislate them out?
Then we have our case for phasing out faith schools?
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#91 pattymkirkwood
It's obviously a very long time since you attended a school assembly!
I still remember being on police duty in my first Ayrshire school, trying to identify the culprits throwing eggs at the Head Teacher at assembly! (considering how bad he was, it might actually been teachers!)
However, my main point was that school is an effective agency in practising social norms, but must not limit these norms only to an assumed "normality". Until we can alter the assumption that non-denom schools are really Presbyterian then I will continue to oppose the end of RC schools.
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#92 aye_write
"If the Tories legislated them in, could successive governments not then legislate them out?
Then we have our case for phasing out faith schools?"
Of course they could. However, legislation would be needed to prevent bigoted Head Teachers from creating chaplaincy "teams" that were uni-denominational.
I speak as a former DHT who ran the school while the HT wrote up the Presbytery minutes, and appointed an extremist Presbyterian as the chaplain!
We need to ensure that the "non-denominational" schools are actually that, before we require the RC community to join in.
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#93,
Not that long ... really. (It was an Ayrshire school too). There is a false division in many minds between non-denom and Presbyterian.
But the wider message of separating religion and schools is correct for my money; even if I don't expect to see it anytime soon (due to the potential for electoral suicide of whoever attempts the changes, as I already mentioned).
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I'm all for representatives of all religions to be attached to schools.
I've attended a number of equal opportunites / racial equality / religious tolerance courses over the years, and they are very interesting. It is surprising just what you can learn.
Look at East Kilbride. We had six secondary schools, two of which were RC. Now we have three, and that restricts choice.
We have seen the debates, albeit from some more extreme views, of having schools for other faiths.
I know things will not change overnight, but people in this country criticise certain countries for having extremist religious views and laws, yet we still have divisive legislation slap bang in our own education system, bringing up children in that environment.
On a different note, totally off topic, someone at work pointed out something interesting:
To buy a Euro Lottery ticket costs 1.50 sterling, but was this not based on the exchange rate at the time? Should we not be onyl paying a pound? (obviously I want an extra chance at winning!)
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Religion, morality and politics - none should have any place in education, other than in terms of specialised comparative STUDY (not observance).
Home-life (and, indeed, life in general outside school) is the correct forum for such doctrinal (and indoctrinal) subjects.
There are not many aspects of the American way of life from which I believe that we have much to learn, but an explicit constitutional separation of church and state is certainly one.
NOT ONE PENNY of tax revenue should go towards the establishment or maintenance of any establishment which is faith-based.
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Hello all,
I'm just catching up on the events of the past week.
Can anyone tell me about Margo's point of order at FMQs?
She was clearly irate about something relating to Maxwell's questions on slopping out compensation. I didn't pick up on anything unusual during the exchange. Certainly nothing that would cause anyone to scream "point of order" and not use the wee button thingy to get the PO's attention!
Thanks
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Neil_Small147 (96):
"To buy a Euro Lottery ticket costs 1.50 sterling, but was this not based on the exchange rate at the time? Should we not be onyl paying a pound?"
In fact, if the price had followed the exchange rate, the price would have INCREASED - close to the euro price of EUR2.00 per ticket!
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99. At 10:46am on 21 Mar 2009, Old, Bald, Fat and Ugly wrote:
Neil_Small147 (96):
"To buy a Euro Lottery ticket costs 1.50 sterling, but was this not based on the exchange rate at the time? Should we not be onyl paying a pound?"
In fact, if the price had followed the exchange rate, the price would have INCREASED - close to the euro price of EUR2.00 per ticket!
---------------
Oops!! Sorry, I was using the Labour Guide to Economics.........
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@ 98. fencesitter1
I think she disagreed with the discussion on that particular issue proceeding without a pre-statement by the relevant minister involved.
She interpreted the way things proceeded as technically against statutory rules of proceedings I believe.
I'm happy to be enlightened if wrong on this point however.
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#96 Neil_Small147
"I'm all for representatives of all religions to be attached to schools."
I'm not.
They can come in and do a talk during religion class maybe, but religion should not be "attached" to schools.
We are not indoctrinating our children, we are educating them.
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88: I agree with everything you say. In my opinion religion should be kept out of schools completely. Should parents want their children to have religious teaching then that should be arranged after school hours and at weekends.
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#103 Florence0131
I don't disagree with you, aw (I wouldn't dare!) or any others who advocate secular school education.
My only requirement is to purge the so-called "non-denominational" schools of their religious practices first. As recently as the 1970s, West Lothian advertised jobs in "Protestant" as well as Catholic schools.
Once the "non-denoms" are actually that, we can look at the RC schools within the state system, but not before.
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The Sunday Papers
SoS
Salmond fury at Calman plan to give powers back
Foreign Office has 'culture of clones'. A Union dividend?
What will we try next, after Blue Labour also fails?. Any answers deanthetory?
Sunday Herald
FSA 'could have saved Dunfermline Building Society six months ago'.
Ooops ... Gray’s ‘unemployed’ poster boy has a job.
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The separate schools issue is a delicate and complicated one.
If we were starting from here we would probably set up a secular school system. But the universal free education system enjoyed by every Scot from the 17th Century (and over 200 years before England managed the same thing) was the greatest triumph of the Church of Scotland
I believe the responsibilty for religious education should be with the parents and the religious organisation they belong to. However there is a history to this issue which seriously complicates it. When Scotland's RC community is comfortable and confident in Scotland there will be no need for Catholic schools.
Sadly we have not completely reached that point yet and until we reach that point any party who interferes with the rights enshrined in the 1918 Education Act of Catholic schools for Catholic children is facing electoral suicide.
There also is I believe the right to religious education of parental choice enshrined in the constitution of the EU but I may be wrong on that.
Oldnat makes some telling points and they are particularly apposite in the West Central Scotland context.
We've had this discussion before but I will point out again that I now live in an area of Scotland where everybody goes to the same school. We have had fairly regularly sectarian battles in the street nonetheless following matches between two certain football teams. Sectarianism is from the home and from the community and not from the school. I have taught in two Catholic secondary schools. Incidents of a sectarian nature are not tolerated.
And religious schooling does not cause bitter bigotery anywhere else in the world. We have to take on board that we are dealing with the shrapnel from troubles in Ireland on this issue and not on anything engendered in separate schools.
The arguement that sending all children to the same school may help to cut sectarianism which already affects them is another arguement altogether and may be true to some extent.
And the US secular schooling system has not done anything to prevent huge shoals of right-wing religious bampots dominating the political process in many parts of America. They probably would have been better served getting their religion in school.
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Another day at the office for Labour's Gray man, another embarrassment.
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2497088.0.ooops_grays_unemployed_poster_boy_has_a_job.php
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#104 oldnat
I don't disagree with you, aw (I wouldn't dare!)"
You don't need to. I agreed to that. De-church the lot!
How would you de-protestantise the supposed non-doms? Introduce particular regulation?
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105. At 00:29am on 22 Mar 2009, oldnat
"ant answers..deah the tory?"
Yes, a fundamental rejection of new rightism (read thatcherism) and a return to One Nationism.
Achieved through a rejection of the mantra of small state and cutting taxes and public services to be replaced with:
1. social spending increases per quarter (i.e. above inflation) matched with:
2. return to tackling unemployment through-
* industrial expansion program and modernization (utilising the same methods of MacMillian)
* increased state investment in fiscal construction programs to tackle recessionary pressures - civic engineering programs and infrastructural development.
To be paid for through:
1. reduction in new trident warhead numbers (retained albeit reduced so as to have a bargaining tool to achieve multilateral disarmament of these vile weapons.)
2. greater involvement in the EU
3. increased taxation on the wealthiest (and a special tax just for Sir Fred.. no joking..)
4. closure of tax loopholes and more importantly tax havens,, most of which are under UK crown dependency status.
All of this 'beefing up' rather than 'watering down' of the economy and social spending (NHS welfarism etc) so as to step closer to One Nation at home and the end of class poverty seeing opportunity equality at birth for all.
Therefore a return to super-Mac Tory policy and Keynesian economic approach.
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#106 sneckedagain
The right to religious education was enshrined in article 14 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
It reads
"1. Everyone has the right to education and to have access to vocational and continuing training.
2. This right includes the possibility to receive free compulsory education.
3. The freedom to found educational establishments with due respect for democratic principles and the right of parents to ensure the education and teaching of their children in conformity with their religious, philosophical and pedagogical convictions shall be respected, in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of such freedom and right."
The state does not require to fund such schools, but may not ban them, unless they act outwith the laws of the country (eg a religious school can be closed in Scotland if it fails to provide an adequate level of education).
I would have no problem were all schools to be secular, but allowed religious groups to be given free access to accommodation within schools, after normal school hours, to provide religious education to those pupils whose parents wished it - while respecting the right of the child - at least those of secondary school age are entitled to reject their parent's views.
These post-school classes would have to be subject to inspection, however, to ensure that they did comply with the democratic principles required by the EU Charter.
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#108 aye_write
"How would you de-protestantise the supposed non-doms? Introduce particular regulation?"
I think one has to repeal the Tory legislation requiring schools to have religious services (see my #110 for an option for those individuals who want them), and place an absolute ban on any mandatory religious practice in any school. HMIs would need to be charged with inspecting schools with this in mind - HTs can be very devious in getting round legislation.
I once worked in a school where the HT was totally against any gender equality. He got round the requirement that both boys and girls should have equal access to all subjects (in this case Tech and H/E), by bringing all of S1 into the Assembly Hall on Day 1, and seating the boys on one side, the girls on the other.
He then announced that this side (boys) would go to Tech, while the other side (girls) would go to H/E - however, they had a totally free choice. All they had to do was to leave their seat and sit with the opposite sex!
So yes, an absolute ban on school organised religious activities, until the mind-set of teachers has changed.
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Are the Treasury breaking Dunfermline Building Society in the belief it will help Scottish Labour?
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5950170.ece
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#109 deanthetory
I admire enthusiasm amongst the young. You have just discovered One Nation Toryism - I lived through it.
Yes it was infinitely better than Thatcherite ideology (the Tories really screw up when they are ideologues, rather than pragmatists).
However, I think you may be a little confused over the big/small state issue.
McMillan was definitely on the big state side. Total support for increased defence spending (google "Blue Streak missile"), boosting the NHS, competing with Labour as to who could build more houses, huge investment in road construction etc.
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#109 deanthetory (continued)
You also have to understand that the world of the 1950s was very different to today.
Then my bisexual MP was having a long term affair with MacMillan's wife, but that was never referred to publicly.
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#105 oldnat &
#107 pattymkirkwood
Thanks for an early smile - the only problem for Salmond with the Gray story is that he may not be able to wipe the tears of laughter away before the next FMQs.
On the Calman story, the unLib unDems will likely have much to regret.
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/politics/Salmond-fury-at-Calman-plan.5096633.jp
Calman again, just to re-emphasise the point.
I am looking forward to the referendum question, as the current settlement was decided on by a referendum of sorts. Presumably alteration (especially clawing back power) requires a similar popular mandate?!
Q) Do you want to transfer energy planning powers back to Westminster from the Scottish Government?
A) No.
Anyone think Gray is willing to stick his neck out and risk the wrathe of his political maker, by opposing this move? Or is he too much of the loyal little soldier?
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morning all . another story in the Sunday herald today about senior councilors pay increasing 4 fold despite the depression.
great move , get your pals to set your pay - great idea!
a pity they cannot get the basics right first.
at least we understand now why money is tight at our councils
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so calman is getting us ready and paving the way for brown to ride roughshod over Scotland again and build new nuclear power stations in Scotland whether we want ,or need, them or not.
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#105 oldnat - Interesting part in the SoS brief was the following paragraph:
Note, it's the UK's energy needs here, not Scotland's. That's because Scotland doesn't need nuclear to meet her energy needs yet this unsurprising turn of events (Calman has always been about a Westminster power grab rather than what's in the best interests of Scotland) will mean a couple of nuclear plants up here to feed England.
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A few things here.
Firstly, McNulty claiming housing expenses at his parents home - EIGHT miles from his own! That defies belief. Apparently it helps him with his constituency business. Total hogwash! About time that Westminster bought a block of flats and forced MPs to stay there if in London. Safe, secure and a damn site cheaper. McNulty is an arrogant man - about time he was under the spotlight.
A bit more on the Forest Leasing (ie privatisation) that was thankfully dropped. Having a read of Private Eye, it seems certain parts of the original planning cannot be released into the public domain due to confidentiality. It appears that a banker (spivs and speculators?) was driving the policy. Mr Salmond needs to be very, very careful. I thought the SNP were here for the people, but it appears that the decision not to go ahead with the privatisation was made on political (ie popularity) decisions. The inital annoucenment was that it would provide a lot of income for Scotland, so why drop it then?
I'm being a little bit nasty maybe, and I am glad they dropped the idea, but they are opening little cracks here that may be exploited later.
Back to Labour and the Unions, another interesting article in PE again, this time on alleged voting and expenses irregularities, some based around Glasgow.
#116 patty & #118 sid
It's all well and good denouncing nuclear power, but when you ask the voters, you have to come up with a viable alternative.
Energy is probably one area where you need a definitive answer. If you decide against nuclear power, then you have to answer at least the following:
1. What can be used that is currently in place?
2. If we require to import energy, will we accept that generated by nuclear power?
3. What is the cost to me, as an individual?
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#120 Neil_Small147
Neil,
A point here.
Why, when you raise points, do you not steer away from cherry picking your favourite sensational bits for inaccurate effect, instead of building your opinions on suggestion, assumption and spin - which you then you present as fact?
Other posters then have to employ logic and impartiality in an attempt to create the whole picture, and reply.
In your attempt to let facts speak for themselves, they speak for you!
Like an anti-spin doctor for all the parties???
(There is fun in that I suppose ;-)
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Speaking of schools and all, aome lessons in writing about money, ££££££
Slainté!
bae
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Neil,
Scotland is extremely unlikely to ever need to import energy. We have some of the best wind and wave resources in the world and a population density approaching sanity.Unlike UK/GB, we are pretty nearly self-sufficient in food, we already export electricity (admittedly some of it nukular), and, if we're careful, we may be able to prevent the re-importation of the bulk of the politicians we've successfully sent South.
Interesting times
;-)
ed
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#120 Neil,that's all fine and good but surely the first thing required here is for everyone in the country to be furnished with the FACTS. not spin , political use of stat's , nice soundbites,or downright lies. so;
1. Scotland is a net exporter of power right now.
2. I believe none of the nuclear power stations we already have in Scotland are running at 100% capacity
3. I believe none of our existing nuclear power stations have run 24/7 365 days of the year for a while.
4 uranium is even more scarce than some would have us believe, oh and we need to import it , so no guarantee there won't be a war about it soon or at the very least we get held to ransom over getting what we need.
5. i wonder where they plan to bury the waste? no doubt calman aka the labour party have already picked the spots!
6. what is wrong with using tide & wave or hydro or wind ? for goodness sake we get more than our fair share in Scotland we might as well put it to some use.
and as#119 forteanjo points out it is not Scotland who requires the surge in energy it is the UK.
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121. At 12:17pm on 22 Mar 2009, aye_write wrote:
#120 Neil_Small147
Neil,
A point here.
Why, when you raise points, do you not steer away from cherry picking your favourite sensational bits for inaccurate effect, instead of building your opinions on suggestion, assumption and spin - which you then you present as fact?
Other posters then have to employ logic and impartiality in an attempt to create the whole picture, and reply.
In your attempt to let facts speak for themselves, they speak for you!
Like an anti-spin doctor for all the parties???
(There is fun in that I suppose ;-)
------------------
Are you saying that no-one is allowed to criticise the SNP, only other parties?
The Forest Leasing issue is pure privatisation, partly planned by a certain well known banker. The idea that it will raise x millions is short term vision. If the forests can already sell renewable timber under public ownership, why does it require to be leased to a private company for 75 years? I'm pleased the Scottish Government retracted the decision, as it shows they at least do listen. But why did they not see what the reaction would be beforehand?
I also selected the McNulty story as it is current news. It is another example of politicians milking the system. Labour and Tory MPs seem to be experts on grabbing what they can. Even Alex is at it (to be fair a much lesser extent), holding two positions in Holyrood and Westminster. Politicians should only be allowed to be a member of one parliament, not two or more.
123. At 12:31pm on 22 Mar 2009, Born Again wrote:
Neil,
Scotland is extremely unlikely to ever need to import energy. We have some of the best wind and wave resources in the world and a population density approaching sanity.
We have the resources, but only as limited amount is currently being tapped. How many years will it take to have reliable and affordable systems in place?
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#125 Neil_Small147
"Are you saying that no-one is allowed to criticise the SNP, only other parties?"
No???
How do you arrive at that conclusion??
I'm not being tarred with that tired old brush, thanks! :-)
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#122, ed:
Found the link to insertion of accented characters useful, so hopefully the final two words will not appear as gibberish, but will instead be considered trés drôle!
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#120 Neil,
1) Scotland produces around 120-125% of its own energy needs currently and exports the remainder south over the grid. Hunterston and Torness only account for roughly 35-40% of that, and will now both be running until at least 2016.
Giving energy powers (in full) to Holyrood, rather than just limited planning aspect, would be a huge start as it would allow such innovations as the (Westminster rejected – for political reasons) carbon-capture plant at Peterhead.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2007/06/22081711
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/north_east/6685345.stm
2) Importation is importation, you cannot separate out the grid like that as you will know.
3) Even hypothetically accepting Scotland were unable to produce sufficient power without nuclear (undoubtedly it could), it would cost substantially less to import (especially if one factors in "waste disposal" costs, as well as the massive construction subsidies nuclear plants always require).
Considering all of this, how can we invest in a nuclear future when,
1) There are more countries building nuclear power stations all the time and the world is rapidly running out of uranium and plutonium.
http://news.mongabay.com/bioenergy/2007/03/lack-of-fuel-may-limit-nuclear-power.html
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/nuclear+energy-investing-uranium/402
2) We still don’t have a plan to dispose of the waste other than to sling it in a concrete lined hole in Scotland (part of the reason Westminster is so keen to have a nuclear plant in Scotland … it looks bad just dumping the waste on us, alongside the WMD otherwise).
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7504-secret-nuclear-waste-disposal-sites-revealed.html
http://www.scottishgreens.org.uk/site/5840/NUCLEAR_WASTE_REJECTION_OF_DEEP_GEOLOGICAL_DISPOSAL_IN_SCOTLAND_WELCOMED.html
Remember the problem with disposal is that you need to remember where it is and keep accurate records for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. The closest comparison we can make, is that we (or more accurately Mubarak’s Government) would still be responsible for knowing where their storage sites were and maintaining such nuclear sites … had the Ancient Egyptians (somehow) built them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/aug/09/energy.nuclearindustry
Additionally new reactors actually produce more waste than the old ones did. Essentially, the reason for this is that, "hopefully, in the future we will have mastered new processes", which mean we could use such waste as fuel … at the minute it is just another storage problem.
3) Setting aside the issue of waste for a moment, Nuclear energy brings no benefit whatever in reduction of Carbon emissions. While it reduces the amount that non-producers such as ourselves emit, it is in fact a very carbon expensive process to extract, "package" and transport the fuel to where it is needed in the world. It would be a convenient way to "outsource" our carbon emissions, hit national targets and feel good, but it would do nothing to reduce the amount of total carbon emitted into the atmosphere.
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#120. Neil_Small147
voodoo-economics
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Testing as a result of my #127 -
è not é
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good points patty, especially the one about keeping accurate records for thousands of years .
our politicians are unable to keep a record of a bi-election for a couple of weeks.
he he Sid
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This should be dropped before we waste anymore money or energy.
Carbon capture and storage
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#132, good points cynical. Again, god help the poor politician who lays a fingure on Longannet!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
128. At 2:45pm on 22 Mar 2009, pattymkirkwood:
Patty, I'm not sitting here supporting nuclear energy. What I am doing is asking what do we have in the meantime?
Removing coal and nuclear from the energy sources leaves a problem at present. The renewable technology certainyl exists, but there are problems and also nowhere near sufficient resource in place.
One of the greatest obstacles has to be environmental groups. On one hand they want green technology, but then on the other they decide that the impact of such technology actually causes problems!
Everyone is aware of the arguments against nuclear energy. Everyone also knows the benefits of renewables. But they are not yet in place to allow the full conversion away what is currently available.
That is the core argument. I want to see energy cleaned up. But I want concrete proposals for alternatives in place.
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#135 Neil_Small147
Did patty not just say,
"Scotland produces around 120-125% of its own energy needs currently and exports the remainder south over the grid."
Why are you determined to make some negative spin out of this.....
It's a bit like Labour.
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#135 Neil_Small147
The "problem" of renewables at present is the lack of power storage. We can pump up hydro, make hydrogen or charge batteries and we have insufficient capacity in power storage to either accept all the potential from our renewables going full blast or to smooth the load and keep the lights on if the wind stops blowing all over Scotland.
Nuclear doesn't help us as you can't just switch a nuke on or off; it just sits there producing electricity whether you need it or not, and in our case not as the equivalent of the actual output of our 2 nukes gets exported South.
Wave + tidal power will help to smooth the gross imbalances created by the dash to wind but power storage is the crux.
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Nuclear is perhaps not entirely neccessary because apparently the EU is bringing forward the cash for a major wind farm development off Aberdeenshire coast (?) and big Alex seems to (thankfully) be maintaining the commitment to invest in clean coal technologies- all of which when matched with the hydro power stations we already have further up north (I mean further north than me in Stirling) we can plug any long term energy gap through these mixed approaches.
And as Alex Salmond pointed out, the UK (or more Accurately Scotland) is an energy exporter not just to the UK but the EU!
There is no need for Scotland to have a nuclear power program I feel, but might the recession endanger the possible SNP executives aims for major fiscal investment in clean coal techs, espeically when Dunfermline building society is going up the spout and Alex needs to save that as a more immediate priority.
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136. At 5:52pm on 22 Mar 2009, aye_write wrote:
#135 Neil_Small147
Did patty not just say,
"Scotland produces around 120-125% of its own energy needs currently and exports the remainder south over the grid."
Why are you determined to make some negative spin out of this.....
It's a bit like Labour.
---------------------------
I can read. I asked what the alternatives are. We may be a net exporter, but that is not renewable based.
#137 handclapping has it right - it is all about power storage. Although slightly incorrect about nuclear producing electricity all the time. It is the turbines which produce the electricity, much in the same as conventional power stations. You cannot simply light up the boilers.
We now have "clean" coal technology. How clean it really is I don't know, but the UK has hundreds of years reserves of coal. We should be using that as the base level for energy production, with renewables contributing as much as possible whenever available.
One other thing, since we are a net exporter, then why are out price so bloomng high?
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#135, Neil,
Believe it or not I may be slightly "off line" on this one as I would not be opposed to extending the lifetime of either Hunterston or Torness ... were that necessary. (Despite the above list).
But I really believe that such projects as tidal (predictable, reliable, base-load) and hydro-electric (in a country like Scotland - predictable, reliable, base-load) can take up the slack.
The Moray and Pentland Firths have been collectively described as "the Saudi Arabia of tidal energy" by international experts in the field. Here is a small piece by the Hootsman from just last month,
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/alternativeenergysources/39Saudi--Arabia-of-tidal.4971819.jp
Even during financial times like these, "dozens" of energy firms are scrambling for the rights to develop this resource!
Also, notice the "Crown Estate" is responsible for this opening up due to the, frankly Medieval, way in which the UK is still governed!
http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/our_portfolio.htm
"The marine estate includes more than 55% of the UK’s foreshore, tidal river-beds and almost all of the seabed within the 12 nautical miles limit – including rights to all minerals but excluding hydrocarbons."
The problem is at the minute the Scottish Government only has planning (grant or deny) powers (on land), and the Westminster Government, which retains the remaining electricity powers, is absolutely "fixated" on nuclear come what may.
If the Calman Commission really wants to break this deadlock and allow energy policy to develop sensibly in Scotland it should recommend the hand-over of ALL electricity generation powers over proposals, oversight and subsidies to the Scottish Government.
Rather than seeking to "claw back" rights for Westminster (as they undoubtedly will), allowing them to build another X nuclear power stations in Scotland: whether the country needs it or not, or the people want it or not.
Re-export and prices (privitization - it is a cartel), and also electricity doesn't transmit along the grid very efficiently (hence the lower rate paid for electricity produced in "far off" Scotland), again the companies probably wouldn't cut prices anyway.
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#139. Neil_Small147
"One other thing, since we are a net exporter, then why are out price so bloomng high?"
Try and look up the link to "voodo- economics" and it will tell you it is to subsidise the nuclear industry, politicians and their corporate friends.
We don't provide links just for fun its for you to explore and learn rather than constant "spoon feeding". rant over.
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Brian
All this stushie about who did what with our money, present or future. I'm sure it's very kind of the Executive/Government to allow councils to spend our money. However its not the buildings that give you an education; it's your parents and the quality of the teaching, first, last and always.
However there is still the question of where the money comes from. I think the LIT is wrong. It is moving taxation from consumption to income when all our problems are too little income and too much consumption, particularly of housing. The answer has to be to remove all the exemptions from the council tax and, if necessary, increase the benefits to those that can't pay. They should also rename it as the Property Tax and stop any pretence that it pays for council services except at the margin; so Holyrood would set the basic rate and each council could add its wee bit on for swimming pools etc.
As for the mess that is the benefits, that will need to be high on the priorities for Holyrood when it stops being reserved.
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The "honorable member" for Edinburgh South!
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/230378/Gordon-Browns-pal-Nigel-Griffiths-cheats-on-wife-with-brunette-on-Remembrance-Day-in-House-of-Commons.html
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Re 128 PMK
I normally do my best to ignore your baseless rantings but this is total rubbish.
By your own skewed calculations you admit we require nuclear power. Yet you offer nothing beyond the life of Hunterston and Torness. New build nuclear will produce a fraction of the waste first generation reactors did. Technology and understanding has improved. The safety record of nuclear power is unrivalled amongst other power generators. None comes even close, nuclear is significantly better than renewables.
Carbon Capture is not carbon removal. It is not a tried and tested technology and may not work. It will be very expensive as most new technologies are. There is no garuntee of long term sucess either.
The nuclear power generation process generates no carbon emmissions. If we count the cost of fuel extraction and processing nuclear comes out well, in that nuclear reactors require less fuel than conventional stations.
I don't think nuclear is the answer for ever but just now envronmentally it is by far the best choice until renewable energy is developed. What is required is a look at facts something you seem unable to do.
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Re PMK
Also you don't seem to understand the tidal situation. Extracting the power rightly requires an environmental assesment. That is going to take time so no progress for a little while.
But the main hold up is power trnsmission. The bit the politicians do. Not the crown estate. There is currently no plan to sort this out, needs a bit of political courage. More than a bit lacking in Scotland. Not something we can blame on Westminster. Independance wouldn't sort planning issues, we are already responsible.
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Another name to add to Labour's Hall of Sleaze,
60,000 pound expenses fiddle by McNulty,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5954926.ece
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Also indulging in a nationalist favourite, nuclear bashing takes the focus off the SNP building programme and the white elephant that is SFT?
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#144 northhighlander
The safety record of nuclear power is unrivalled amongst other power generators. None comes even close, nuclear is significantly better than renewables.
Windscale, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, THORP, beach patrols at Dounreay; really?
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#149 nh
Better a white elephant than a lifetimes money for your banker friends with PPP?
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#144, I did not admit nuclear is needed, I admitted it may be if power is not devolved to a more appropriate level.
Carbon capture is not tried and tested, but if we had adopted your baseless logic we would all be using flints to light fires outside our mud-huts.
As to expense: it take it nuclear power stations (and the massive subsidies paid to them are cheap as buttons!?
"nuclear comes out well" if you count extraction and transport of fuel.
Evidence please.
northhighlander your posts are a string of baseless assumption ... as usual. Congratulations, your have found yet another topic on which you apparently know nothing!
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#144 northhighlander
"I don't think nuclear is the answer for ever but just now envronmentally it is by far the best choice until renewable energy is developed. What is required is a look at facts something you seem unable to do."
More of your presumed assumptions, I am still waiting for your percieved assumptions of its benefits!
You say you have looked at the facts can we have them please as they seem wanting from here. Honesty is the best policy it is less stressful on the conscience. "Facts dear boy facts, facts" as a past teacher used to say.
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#145 nh
Isn't Beauly-Denny ongoing right now? If they can actually produce significant power from your Pentland Firth then its just a question of there to Beauly.
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#147 northhighlander
Just out of curiosity - when did Highland Council request funding for a replacement of Wick High School, and what was the response?
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#144,147. northhighlander
Scotland: Exposed: scandal of nuclear leaks at plant
White elephants! a ha.
voodoo-economics
download the file if the captain of the union boat allows. Life is a lesson in learning, try it.
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Nuclear power is less desirable than clean coal, hydro and wind / wave tech.
It's safety record for me is less of the issue, as it probably has moved on significantly (and Cherny was due to Russian malpractise of duties than actually latent reactor dangers).
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148. At 9:27pm on 22 Mar 2009, handclapping wrote:
#144 northhighlander
The safety record of nuclear power is unrivalled amongst other power generators. None comes even close, nuclear is significantly better than renewables.
Windscale, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, THORP, beach patrols at Dounreay; really?
----------------------
Hang on, Chernobyl was caused mainly by a bunch of idiots deciding to experiment.
Look at how US scientists first played with radioactive materials when developing the first atomic bomb - they used screwdrivers!
We are talking about modern reactors, not ones designed in the 1950s.
Oil refineries are dangerous as well: Grangemouth is a rather large bomb waiting to go off. And it's not exactly pollution free either.
Back on renewables, it is planning that is holding up many projects, and you cannot blame Westminister as stated earlier.
When we do get renewables, can we possibly try and own them rather than selling off to the highest foreign bidder?
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#156 Neil_Small147
Take a look at the alcohol fuelled idiots coming out of the clubs at 3am and ask yourself is it only the Russians that have a) a drink problem and b) idiots. We are just as good as the Russians?
The statement concerned power generators; are you saying we should be counting Grangemouth along with Longannet and Glendoe? What is its output in MWhpa?
As for modern technology the new EPR in Finland is now 33% above budget and 2 years late and the French have already made modifications to the one they are building. It all sounds a bit "still in the experimental stage" to me. Scary!
You don't get people doing idiotic things in modern uptodate countries like us? How about Flixborough or Buncefield? Which way will the wind be blowing when Sellafield next goes up?
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#156 Neil_Small147
When we do get renewables, can we possibly try and own them rather than selling off to the highest foreign bidder?
When Global Brown has finished with us we'll be lucky to own the clothes we stand up in. The renewables will have to be sold to pay off our debts and then we'll be gouged for buying our own electricity back from them. Welcome to your Union dividend, courtesy of the Scottish Labour Party.
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#156. Neil_Small147
"Hang on, Chernobyl was caused mainly by a bunch of idiots deciding to experiment."
Is that not what the PM Brown is doing!
The whole trouble with the electricity business is that they have never sat down together to iron out the most efficient way of transporting or producing electricity to the benefit of all. The easiest way is DC as it maintains its efficiency no matter how far it has to travel, but that calls for joined up thinking not allowed in a capitalist society, as it would be called collusion.
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I see we are back to the sterile nuclear argument again.
The UK,due to massive incompetence of successive UK governments running what is basically a failing state there is a looming power problem for the South of England in particular.
As has been pointed out Scotland, which presently produces a surplus, is exporting 25% of its power.
It should also be pointed out that when Scotland's nuclear plants are closed down we still produce a surplus as reserve hydro power is then switched on (Cruachan etc). The reason hydro is used as the back up is that it can be switched on and off almost at will unlike nuclear which is very inflexible.
We are currently building several extra hydro power stations which further strengthen our position.
What we are looking at is the fact that England may need nuclear power and they would like to build some of the plants in Scotland.
The second major point that should be factored in is that from conception through planning and building it will take ten years to get one new nuclear power station built.
By that time we will be producing tidal,and wave power in increaing amounts and with increasong efficiency.
The third point is that nuclear generated electricity is bar far the most expensive way to genersate electricity and can only work with huge government subsidy and the decommissioning costs kept out of sight.
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I see we are back to the sterile nuclear argument again.
The UK,due to massive incompetence of successive UK governments running what is basically a failing state, there is a looming power problem for the South of England in particular.
As has been pointed out Scotland, which presently produces a surplus, is exporting 25% of its power.
It should also be pointed out that when Scotland's nuclear plants are closed down we still produce a surplus as reserve hydro power is then switched on (Cruachan etc). The reason hydro is used as the back up is that it can be switched on and off almost at will unlike nuclear which is very inflexible.
We are currently building several extra hydro power stations which further strengthen our position.
What we are looking at is the fact that England may need nuclear power and they would like to build some of the plants in Scotland.
The second major point that should be factored in is that from conception through planning and building it will take ten years to get one new nuclear power station built.
By that time we will be producing tidal,and wave power in increaing amounts and with increasing efficiency.
The third point is that nuclear generated electricity is by far the most expensive way to generate electricity and can only work with huge government subsidy and with the decommissioning costs kept out of sight.
Next point is that we are running out of usable grade uranium.The proposal that it should be replaced by thorium is only a theory at the moment. No way has been found yet (in over thirty years of experiments)of preparing thorium as a nuclear fuel without using as much power in the preparation as it can provide. This only becomes an option if electricity can be sold at about three times its present price.
There was some idiot point made about Grangemouth being a target for potential terrorist attack somehow trying to equate the damage that would cause with the generation of death and destruction that would be the result of a nuclear power station being bombed. People are still dying and being born deformed in their thoudans because of Chernobyl.
The fact is thast if we had spent even a fraction of the billions wasted on nuclear power generation on building up our renewable capacity we would be sitting pretty now. Nuclear has never provided the cheap electricity that was expected from it andnever will. Sadly China and India (which has most of the world's thorium) are going big time for nuclear in the hope they will catch up on us economically.
A point rarely metioned is that nuclear generation means we are dependent on sourcing fuels controlled by others
Meanwhile I have no doubt we can be producing 10 times as much energy as we need by renewable methods with in fifty years.
What we face in Scotland is a fifth column of
Labour/Tory suporters who are happy,as they always have been, to put UK's interests in front of Scotland's interests. We meet them on this blog pretending not to be Labour hacks, pretending to be reasonable and treating the rest of like idiots.
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Totally off topic, but have you read the story from Australia regarding fake nude photographs of a politician, and they were published prior to an election. The paper concerned also owned by the proprietor of the Sun.
About time laws were passed that if a paper publishes demeaning pictures or stories, then the editor gets jailed.
Unlikely to happen, but it might help get some real journalism back into the media, rather than focusing on long range grainy shots of some two-bit celeb.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/matthewd_ancona/5028963/Gordon-Browns-G20-summit-agenda-is-already-unravelling.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/20/northern-rock-mandelson
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Neil,
A lot less time than building nukes and a lot more reliable, affordable, and safer, too!And, as others have noted, supplies of nuke fuels are distinctly limited and foreign.
Nukular Power?
NO, thanks!
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Neil (156),
On this we can agree!The wind farm going up offshore about eight miles from here has only £18,000,000 of British money involved, and that's a grant from us!
Welcome to the Third World!
Slainté
ed
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Brian:
I am very glad that you were able to work the civil servants
For a well thought-out endeavour in response to the definition of working in progress on projects in this case: Schools....
And, it was nice, for you not to comment...
~Dennis Junior~
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Then based upon the light sneckedagain has provided upon the whole debate, surely the nuclear question is not really that?
Clean Coal is to be tested within the nexzt ten years both here in the UK and in Continental Europe, and most likely it shall suceed.
Then there cannot be any debate about the finer points of nuclear safety if other real and more cheap and expedient options are opten to us?
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#163 pattymkirkwood
If I didn't know you better, I'd think that these links suggested that you might have some idea that Gordon Brown and his Government were a bunch of incompetent self-serving charlatans!
Naturally, neither of us hold that view, since we would never pass moderation by the impartial Beeb again if we did.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
#162 Neil_Small147
"About time laws were passed that if a paper publishes demeaning pictures or stories, then the editor gets jailed."
So open to potential abuse by the powers that be that you must be joking. Not sensible.
#168, #169 and #170 oldnat
A point well made.
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Re 153
Last year considerable pressure was put on the SNP government by both Highland Council and local parents to fund Wick High in light of its apalling condition. Mr Salmond was in Caithness for a photo opportunity and was invited to tour the facilities for himself while waiting for his flight south.
What we got was classic Salmond arrogance, he wouldn't visit and said building schools was a highland council issue and he could not possibly interfere.
But hey all the new schools are SNP triumphs! Classic spin even nulab would be proud
Incidentally soon after £1m was found for "improvements" when all the figures indicate to take to a basic compliance standard will cost £5-6m.
So really a million wasted as it will sort out only a very few problems.
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Re 150
Carbon Capture is untried, untested and requires huge amounts of energy to work. More energy created by burning fossil fuels.
Its long term benefits and contribution are completely unkown. It really is a shot in the dark.
We need sensible long term planning of our base load generation capacity. Which always needs to be more than 100% of our requirements.
If consideration is given to the likely increase in energy requirements then sensible long term strategy isrequired. Nuclear does provide dependable base load generation.
I would love to believe that renewables would replace nuclear, I believe in time they will. I live in the area that will benefit most from exploitation of renewables. However that requires so many things to happen. The Beauly Denny thing is a good example, it has taken years to get to the end of the enquiry, years of no more renewable development. The Pentland Firth will require even more radical distribution solutions if it is to be developed.
Hydro is at its limit, there are only very small scale developments left. Wind is unreliable and doesn't make as big a contribution as some would like to think.
So nuclear is a real option that works. The cost of not having power would be a lot more.
The fuel argument is a complete red herring there is ample uranium.
I can quote facts for ever form websites that paint the opposite picture to those you post but it is pointless as you can use google as well if not better than I can.
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#172 northhighlander
What we got was classic Salmond arrogance, he wouldn't visit and said building schools was a highland council issue and he could not possibly interfere.
You really don't believe in democracy, do you? You elected Highland Council to run your education system and they don't see your problem as a priority. Boohoo, I'll ask their boss. He, quite rightly, turns you down. Have you taken it up with Jaimie Thurso? Gordon Brown? Don't you think it is terrible that other people should interfere in how you would like to spend their money? We have a democracy of a sort here and if you are unable to persuade enough others of the worth of your plan you don't get. This the SNP will find with their referendum; do you think they should be allowed to ignore it and declare independence anyway?
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#172 northhighlander
That wasn't what I asked.
When did Highland Council make a formal request for Scottish Government funding for Wick High School? That's a very different thing from saying Highland Council exerted "considerable pressure"
The latter is often a front for covering up their own inadequacies. I'm not saying that the Scottish Government has acted correctly - simply that I don't know whether the responsible body has acted correctly in the first place.
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#168 oldnat, careful what you say, I see someone has now taken it upon themselves to refer your 169 and 170!
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#171
Don't think I was clear. What I meant was if proven that the publication was false, and there is sufficient evidence to show that the editorial staff did not check the facts properly, then they should be jailed.
I'm not into suppression of the press.
#161 snecked
Stop jumping to conclusions. I did not mention anything about a terrorist attack on Grangemouth, I as talking about an catastrophic accident. There certainly is the potential for a large scale explosion at any refinery. Nor did I compare it to a nuclear explosion.
For pete's sake I was only pointing out that any form of energy production carries inherent risks: it is what is acceptable that counts.
And accusations of Labour/Tory fifth columnists is purely childish. About time you grew up and stop accusing everyone who makes the slightest criticism of any SNP policy, however tenuous the link.
What will satisfy you? Undying devotion to the SNP and full independence regardless of cost and consequences, sworn at midnight on a moonless night in summer?
I do support a lot of the SNP policies, but don't dare accuse me of being some sort of undercover closet Tory.
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#176 pattymkirkwood
I'm not really surprised. I was pushing my luck with them!
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Re 175
The Highland Council definately had discussions with the SNP administration on the reprovision of Wick High. They were told no additional funding was available.
I think this can be regarded as a request for funds?
Re 174
My point that you convieniently ignore is that when it comes to taking the credit for new build the SNP ministers led by Alec are happy to take credit for every nail and screw at every photo opportunity. So in my world they should answer for the unfunded as well. That would be taking responsibility.
Who is Jamie Thurso?
Highland Council are no longer allowed to raise more cash by local taxation so what can they really do?
What about some objective thinking?
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#177
????
I didn't accuse you of anything at all.
Maybe I touched a raw nerve.
Methinks you protesteth too much.
Davcid
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#179 northhighlander
Sorry, read John Thurso MP.
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#179 northhighlander
Thanks for the response. The "school estate" is an area in which I have done some work, so have done a little digging.
Naturally, the good folk of Wick don't care how the problem is solved, as long as you get your new school, and I support your campaign to lobby everyone to get it.
However, you do have to recognise that it is not the job of government in Edinburgh to decide which buildings get replaced at the expense of others. That would be the type of rampant centralism neither of us wants.
It is the job of Holyrood to ensure that resources to local government are allocated fairly, and I simply don't know whether the Highlands get a "fair share" or not - or even how "fairness" is calculated. Highland's capital allocation this year is 81.6 million pounds, How has the Council allocated this?
But I was appalled by how badly Highland Council have run their school estate!
The Audit Commission was pretty scathing in their 2006/7 report, that Highland didn't even have a consistent strategy for assessing its assets, and planning for change, although that had been required since 2003!
No wonder that out of such chaos, Wick was merely graded by Highland as a C, rather than a D building - and, of course, was not going to be prioritised.
What on earth were your local councillors doing not scrutinising the assessment of the school estate? - sitting around drinking coffee?
Also the Audit commission criticised Highland's inability to properly plan for and commission best value maintenance. Did the Council not include penalty clauses on the contractors who wrecked your swimming pool?
It seems clear that Highland Council has to shoulder much of the blame for the condition of the school. Any additional money from the Government would have to come from some other council's budget. I'm not sure that there is much of a moral case for that.
I presume you voted out all your existing councillors in 2007?
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#173
northhighlander, I'd love to see your source for that. I've used google and not one reputable source supports your assertion. Some estimates think we may have as much as 80 years worth of fuel left, some as low as 30. None estimate more than 100 years, and those who make estimates approaching 100 years are relying on as yet unrealised refining techniques that they hope will drastically improve on the current state of art.
Far from being a red herring, fuel is very, very relevant. As it becomes more and more scarce, and therefore more and more expensive, countries will stockpile the ore in their own territories. Can you guess how much ore is within UK territories? Well, let's just say it wouldn't run the average plant for even a week or two. So, after a planning and build stage of 10 years (at a cost of billions), we'll get a couple of weeks of power before a 30 year decommisioning programme at a cost of several more billions.
Look, I used to be as pro-nuclear as the next man. It was an exciting, futuristic technology that to promised to meet all of mankind's energy needs, cheaply and cleanly. Unfortunately, that promise is hollow. Nuclear is expensive, never fully realises the energy expenditure required to build, maintain and decomission it and, although having a decent (but by no means excellent) safety record, when things go wrong, they go catastrophically wrong. Add in the fact that it won't be just your kids, or your kids' kids, or your kids' kid's kids, or your kids' kids' kids' kids (you getting the picture yet?) that will left cleaning up the mess created to provide not you but someone over 700 miles away with power, you have to stop for a moment and actually think about how good a solution nuclear actually is.
As has been said plenty times before, even a fraction of the money required over the lifetime of your average nuclear plant would accelerate a renewables programme no end. Nuclear is a dead end, why buy into it when we in Scotland don't need it, but will be left with the clean up bill for somebody else's mess?
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#175
So the Highland Council is incompetent then?
No surprise there. The "independent" councils routinely fill the lowest places in the Audit Commission's annual reports and have done so for years.
Highland Council faces exactly the same problems every council faces. How to maintain services and its estate on a finite sum of money and they are judged at election time on how well they do so. There are no provisions for "extra" monies except for emergency provision.
What councils do is negotiate with central government for their annual disbursement and how well they make their case determines how well they are supplied with funds. Sadly the big political councils are much better at this (though there is also a suspicion that Labour run councils got a particularly good deal for many years till recently).
It is entirely possible that Highland Council suffers from what my council suffers from. Michael Forsyth slashed the rate support grants for a number of council, mainly the weak ones, when he was Sec of State and the ensuing shortage has compounded annually for many years in some of them.
I suspect the economic realities are beginning to bite after several decades of indisciplined and profligate spending on schools, very little of which did anything to improve the education offered in them.
As I have said before I would be happy if the Scottish Government announced it was not going to build any more schools we cannot afford and took steps to redirect some of the educational silly money into simple essential maintenance.
But the responsibilty for the condition of any school rests firmly with the council and not the government.
It's the teaching that counts.
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172 NORTHHIGHLANDER: And the appalling state of Wick High School occurred only since May 2007? The authorities had 8 years in which to tackle the previous Labour administration and publish photos of the crumbling building - well, as I recall they weren't of the whole building but selected parts for the benefit of a good story. All I can say is that it is quite disgraceful that Labour and Highland Council failed in all those years to carry out the necessary repairs. I have no doubt whatsoever that "considerable pressure" was put on the SNP. Considerable pressure on the previous administration years ago would have been a much better option. You know what they say "a stitch in time" and all that.
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#183 ForteanJo
I gave up as he doesn't even understand that baseload is the energy required to supply the minimum requirement not the 100% that he advocates, some people will never learn and grab the nuclear spin machine with open arms and closed minds. The Derek Draper of Labour all talk and...
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Re 182
Much of what you say is true. I don't for one minute say the Highland Council is without blame in this. The school was in a poor state over 25 years ago when I was there. It is a catalogue of incompetence from start to finish. Labour and Conservative governments allowed it to fall inot that state.
The decision making on the schools included in the Highland PFI scheme stunk more than a little.
Politics in the Highlands is a little different from the rest of the UK, turnover of politicians is low, the advent of PR is likely to lower that rate!
However while I appreciate the point that you make re council priorities there are a couple of issues that complicate this. Highland has a lot of geographical issues that are never fully recognised by Edinburgh. It costs a lot to provide the same level of services across a rural area.
But my point and this is what sticks in the throat of parents more than any other is that when school building is unfunded then it is a council problem, when a new one is to be opened no councillor will get near the camera for government ministers! More than a little hypocritical. And completely unnacceptable. It just doesn't stand scrutiny by any measure.
Also local government funding has been centralised completely by the SNP, the council tax freeze means that all council funding is controlled by Holyrood, it is fast becoming a branch of Central government.
So when additional funding was being dealt out to stimulate the economy Wick High could have fitted the bill. Local construction companies are paying off so it would have been very welcome.
But the government, not the council decided to spend elsewhere. So really that more than muddies the water.
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Re 185
I completely agree with everything you say.
But is doeasn't solve the problem by looking back. What has happened is a classic story of incompetence. complete incompetence.
But we need to go forward. Not back.
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Re 184
Your opinion of Highland Council is one you are entitled to and many would agree with you. But that is democracy in the highlands and it is not going to change fast.
What amazes me is the Libdem performance, they take no responsibility for the situation and are allowed to walk away unchallenged.
I also agree with what you say on the subject of waste in education, it is obvious to many. But no-one has the courage to deal with it. the Machrone deal was an appalling deal for tax payers and has not delivered the improvement in the class room. So on this subject we are agreed we just need someone to do something in government.
Also Wick needs more than maintenance i am afraid. It would not be cost effective to maintain or refub most of the school.
But the changes needed here need to be led by the government.
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#189 northhighlander
"But the changes needed here need to be led by the government."
No the changes needed here need to be led by the voters in the Highlands!
I've heard a lot over the years about how wonderful it is to be free of the party system, and have independent councillors. In theory, I would agree.
However, it seems to have resulted in you guys electing a bunch of incompetents, then running to central government when they consistently mess up!.
There may be a case for a one-off intervention by the Scottish Government to help clear up the mess (at the expense of the rest of us) - but only once you elect people who can run your local government properly.
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RE 190
Rather predictable nat, stick to Alecs position. If the highland council find the money, I am sure a SNP minister will be there to open it and take the credit. I am sure it would have been on Brians list.
Woeful, truely woeful. Objective nationalists seem to be as rare as a SFT funded project.
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#191 northhighlander
Whereas your own objectivety is beyond question.
People in glass houses, etc. If the SNP started handing out 10 pound notes, you'd assert that the fact Rabbie's face appeared on notes was proof of Salmond's attempt to brainwash us all into voting for indepedence.
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