Criminal statistics

Yesterday the Scottish Government announced a two per cent decrease in recorded crime for 2008-09, prompting one Nationalist blogger (who on compassionate grounds should perhaps remain nameless) to proclaim: "Gordon Brown makes empty promises at Brighton - Kenny MacAskill delivers the real thing."

But recorded crime fell by five per cent in England and Wales during the same period - even Richard Baker noticed that one! Indeed, in 2007-08 the Scottish figures fell by a significant eight per cent, but can this plausibly be attributed to the election of an SNP Government? Surely not: the administration only took the reins well into the 2007-08 period, and it's difficult to think of what it did during its early months in office that could have resulted in a drop in crime of this magnitude. Similarly, the headline 29-year-low claim is merely the culmination of a downward trend evident since the early 1990s - thus hardly attributable to the SNP - and reflects a pattern largely similar to that south of the border.

Thus the Nationalist slant on this doesn't really stack up, but are the statistics particularly useful in any case? Although the numbers clearly have some efficacy, on the other hand a few weeks ago I suggested that reductions in crimes such as vehicle theft may be attributable primarily to better security equipment being fitted by manufacturers - whereas any numpty with a screwdriver could TWOC a car twenty years ago, immobilisers and suchlike make the task significantly more difficult today - rather than to anything done by politicians or police, and that other crimes such as vandalism may increasingly go unreported.

Of course, if we're safer in our houses and our cars are less likely to get nicked then that's clearly good news, but much of the so-called low-level nuisance and anti-social behaviour which concerns so many people - and, indeed, makes the lives of so many so unpleasant - doesn't even register as crime and thus won't be reflected in the glowing statistics. A recent case in point is that of the Pilkington family, who suffered years of torment at the hands of youths in Leicestershire, and this culminated in the mother killing herself and her disabled daughter. In this case police effectively ignored constant complaints from Mrs Pilkington, and council anti-social behaviour officers and social workers were next to useless. No crime there then.

And, of course, as with Brandon Muir in Dundee, this kind of pompously termed multi-agency approach can clearly result merely in institutional buck-passing due to the diffusion of responsibility and communications breakdown, exacerbated, of course, by fawning politicians who hide with officialdom behind a pretence of accountability.

Another Grand Old Duke/rabble-rouser?

Alex Salmond's recent confrontational and perhaps counterproductive stance with regard to Diageo's restructuring plans brought to mind a local issue that created acres of news coverage a couple of years ago.

SNP MP Stewart Hosie took up numerous grievances with Dundee City Council on behalf of elements of the city's taxi trade, and this created not a little controversy. Strike meetings were called and this culminated in a go-slow by drivers in the busy streets of central Dundee.

However, all this seemed to achieve very little other than to raise false hope and create conflict, thus not unlike Mr Salmond's recent intervention.

Of course, in mid-2007 Mr Hosie's Nationalist councillor colleagues in Dundee at least had the luxury of opposition, while his MSPs had just taken the helm at Holyrood. However, an SNP administration is now firmly ensconced in City Chambers and the party has formed the Scottish Government - to which taxi licensing has been devolved from Westminster - for well over two years, and MSPs seem to have very little to occupy their time with apart, of course, for a Bill on an independence referendum that the Nationalists know they will very probably lose.

Not that the SNP can be singled out in this regard - the (then) Scottish Executive launched a consultation on reforming the taxi licensing legislation as long ago as 2002, with little progress since.

But Mr Hosie's initial involvement, coupled with a lack of subsequent SNP action when in power, conveys the impression that his intervention was little more than an attempt at rabble-rousing rather than anything particularly constructive.

(Published as a letter in the Evening Telegraph. For an interesting example of editorial sanitisation, compare the final paragraph above with that published! For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to rabble-rousing is not intended as a slur on either Diageo employees or Dundee taxi drivers; (Celtic) lions led by donkeys, and all that!!)

SNP successes in Courier country

A couple of good news stories for the SNP reported in last Wednesday's Courier. In Dundee the city council's £90 million schools building programme is running to schedule, with seven of the eight schools completed and occupied. SNP education convenor Liz Fordyce said:

I have been impressed by the quality of the new schools and the way these new environments are assisting in our pupils' learning.

Meanwhile, across the silvery Tay in Fife health secretary Nicola Sturgeon officially opened the shiny new St Andrews Community Hospital, waxing lyrically:

This is undoubtedly a fantastic day for St Andrews and a milestone for NHS Fife. Having had the guided tour, I am impressed with what I have seen and it is a real credit to everyone involved in making it a reality. This hospital is about much more than bricks and mortar, what matters is the range of services provided here. Services are integrated and available to people much closer to home and that is the triumph of this hospital. This is a community hospital as they should be. All the staff I have seen today had a smile on their faces, from those working in the canteen to the clinical staff . You can see this hospital is a real source of pride for St Andrews.

That'll be the PPP/PFI then.

The Jury Team's out?

This morning's Sun confirms the rumours that Glasgow Airport terror attack hero John Smeaton will contest the Glasgow North East by-election as an independent candidate under the Jury Team umbrella, and it's certainly an interesting choice.

'Smeato' is standing on an anti-sleaze ticket, and to that extent the Westminster Parliamentary seat vacated by discredited ex-speaker Michael Martin provides an ideal opportunity to channel public anger into support for a candidate likely to prove popular on the doorsteps - a sort of working man's Martin Bell.

However, the Jury Team concept has failed to make much of an electoral impact thus far - its European election results were derisory, despite some favourable publicity and a reasonably well-oiled 'party' machine. But, as I argued at the time, a high-profile candidate and particular local circumstances might achieve a different result, and these two elements are clearly present in the forthcoming by-election. On the other hand, the more recent Norwich North contest perhaps demonstrated that despite public disquiet with mainstream politics - particularly in the wake of the expenses scandal - it was business as usual with regard to the established party political juggernauts.

A lot will depend on how the media treat John Smeaton; Craig Murray argued that he was effectively ignored in Norwich, and the party political machines completed the steamrollering. But Smeato already writes a column for the Sun, and populist noises about crime, immigration and the health service are bound to appeal to voters.

But it remains to be seen how Mr Smeaton will stand up to the glare of the media spotlight, particularly under the intense scrutiny of a by-election; in that regard he's an unknown quantity. Moreover, although he's clearly an affable guy with a likeable personality, on the other hand he lacks a certain gravitas that's perhaps necessary to take on the big boys in politics. And the mainstream parties will be throwing all they've got at Glasgow North East in any case.

Indeed, it doesn't augur well for the supposedly principle-based rationale of the Jury Team that it has presumably abandoned its open primary selection method and instead pandered to personality politics - thus an open goal for Labour and the SNP.

Of course, the Jury Team concept per se is likely to be largely forgotten about in view of John Smeaton's profile, but it's a tall order for the ex-baggage handler and my money's on a repeat of Norwich North as regards the dominance of the mainstream parties, but nonetheless I wish him well.

Class-based rulemaking and breaking

In her Times column a gleeful Melanie Reid outlines a hoist-by-her-own-petard sort of argument in relation to the fine meted out to Baroness Scotland for the employment of an illegal immigrant - the Labour Attorney-General had helped frame the immigration rules that she has now fallen foul of.

Indeed, Ms Reid says that schadenfreude is entirely justified:

It’s enough to move you to tears, isn’t it? Fined, humiliated, misunderstood, made to feel like a criminal...In truth, the only tears being shed are ones of mirth. Beastly and base though such instincts are, there is nothing more delightful than seeing a high priestess of the Government done for breaking her own pettifogging rules. [...]

This is revenge, and for the millions of meek, law-abiding people who are increasingly found guilty of inadvertent middle-class crime every day, nothing could be more sweet. This is about the biter bit; about regulators shipwrecked on rocks of their own making.

Yes, but isn't this the same Melanie Reid who thought the smoking ban, ahem, the best thing since the last set of petifogging rules which she considers made us a more "up-market", "civilised" and "sophisticated country", presumably?

The reason for these double standards is perhaps provided by the mention in her current article of "middle class crime", the usual references to "real criminals" (ie working class) and the trials of finding someone "eager, reliable and willing to do one’s garden"; Ms Reid's attitude to rules is class-based.

A minor cause célèbre following the introduction of the smoking ban in Scotland was a £200 pound fine imposed on an off-duty taxi driver in Dundee for allowing his daughter to smoke in the vehicle, while the daughter was fined £50.

Of course, smoking in pubs and taxi driving are largely working class pursuits, thus no doubt Melanie Reid would justify transgressors of the ban being "on the receiving end of unforgiving, burdensome officialdom".

Indeed, the issues of class and Dundee neatly converged in an article she wrote earlier this year on the prospect of a branch of the Victoria & Albert museum being sited in the city:

But it stubbornly retains the feel of a backwater: a strangely charmless, insular, working-class city where one would struggle to find a Starbucks or a good restaurant. Or a citizen taller than 5ft 4in.

Thus perhaps the smoking ban hasn't quite succeeded in making Dundee more up-market, civilised and sophisticated at all!

What if Lockerbie had been Glasgow?

An interesting post and subsequent discussion recently on Ideas of Civilisation about how our perceptions of major events like murders differ in changing circumstances. For example, a Dunblane-style massacre today would have much more resonance than the actual school shooting in 1996 does now, while a similar shooting spree in the USA would generate less impact here. Meanwhile, a mass murder of this order in a third world country would barely merit a mention in the media.

In a similar vein, Courier columnist John J Marshall asked (not online) whether Kenny MacAskill's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds would have differed if instead of falling on Dumfries and Galloway Pan Am Flight 103 had in fact come down on a densely populated part of Glasgow, killing hundreds or even thousands of people on the ground. Indeed, imagine if the Boeing 747 had fallen in the Glasgow North East parliamentary constituency.

Of course, no doubt the justice secretary, being so uber-dispassionate about compassion, would have came to the same conclusion and released al-Megrahi to return home to a hero's welcome in Libya.

But would the SNP flock, unbound by the legal constraints of quasi-judicial decision making, have reacted with such uniform approval?

Votes for votes?

Whatever happened to the SNP's plan to ban alcohol off-sales to under-21s, a change supposedly required because the 18/19/20-year-olds who can currently buy a bottle of plonk and a few tinnies don't take a responsible enough attitude to drinking?

Of course, unlike the alcohol itself the proposal was watered down a bit and it'll now be up to "local licensing boards to consider whether the off-sales of alcohol to purchasers under the age of 21 has a detrimental impact on the local area", assuming that aspect of the Scottish Government's recently published Programme for Scotland comes to fruition. Which, given the current make-it-up-as-we-go-along, suck-up-to-vested-interest-groups, selectively-enforce-the-law approach of local authorities to licensing, doesn't augur well.

But the SNP's partial volte-face on its proposal perhaps signals that ministers don't consider young people to be increasingly irresponsible after all. Indeed, today's Scotland on Sunday reports that 16 and 17-year-olds are to be given the vote in the independence referendum, assuming, of course, that the Scottish Government gets its Bill through parliament.

Which all seems to suggest that the SNP can't make up its mind as to whether or not our young people are more or less responsible these days. Or perhaps the explanation for the paradox is contained in Scotland on Sunday's editorial on the voting proposal - idealistic and suitably flattered younger people would be more likely to tick the 'yes' box on the independence referendum ballot paper, ergo it's "gerrymandering", for "political advantage", it's "political cynicism" and "political opportunism".

Indeed, there's clearly a contradiction between the two stances regarding young people and alcohol/voting and both are probably best left well alone. But the alcohol proposal at least demonstrates that our young people are staying immature for longer, thus militating against lowering the voting age; indeed, consistency with the alcohol proposal would require the voting age to be raised.

And, from a wider perspective, letting kids run wild...er...empowering young people in the contemporary liberal manner has surely damaged many children irreparably before they even get a chance in life, not to mention the cumulative effect on society generally.

Controlled environment?

It's not clear what SNP MSP Joe FitzPatrick and MP Pete Wishart hope to achieve by highlighting the amount of crime in and around Tayside pubs and clubs, which is hardly a revelation.

Also, since the Scottish Government's intended strategy seems to be to raise alcohol prices to drive people away from cheap off-sales and into the so-called "controlled environment" of pubs and clubs, it's ironic that the MSPs' figures demonstrate a self-evident lack of control.

Indeed, Dundee licensing chairman Councillor Rod Wallace recently said that some revellers were already "out of their skulls" before reaching the pubs and that this subsequently caused problems for publicans, but this shouldn't be the case for responsible licensees who abide by the law - Mr Wallace should be more concerned with enforcing the law rather than preoccupying himself with the profitability of pubs and clubs, which seems to be the underlying reason for the widespread flouting of longstanding rules.

Of course, no doubt a minimum pricing scheme would reduce consumption and to that extent alleviate the problem of drink-fuelled disorder, but the evidence suggest that this extremely crude method will not address the problem of irresponsible licensees, not to mention the overarching issue of reactive rather than proactive policing, with the alcohol issue only exacerbating the lack of control in society generally.

The administrative chaos and lack of clarity over the recently introduced liquor licensing reforms perhaps tells us all we need to know, and that these measures represent little more than a bit of extra bureaucracy and expense for publicans is ably demonstrated by the SNP's pressing desire for more micro-management before the new rules have even been properly implemented.

(An abridged version of the above was published as a letter in yesterday's Courier.)

An unhealthy contract?

I was interested to read in the Herald that the SNP's Stewart Maxwell is concerned about the prospect of unlicensed vehicles being used to transport patients under a contract for taxi services with NHS Greater Glasgow, and that the MSP has called for this loophole to be closed.

In 2002 the (then) Scottish Executive issued a rather superficial consultation document on the relevant legislation, and in a response I pointed out abuse and enforcement issues in relation to the exemption from licensing for vehicles contracted exclusively to a customer for a specified minimum period, but the Executive's subsequent report concluded that the "status quo should remain" in relation to this matter, and no explanation was proffered.

Indeed, a similar loophole in England and Wales has since been closed due to some rather convoluted attempts to use the legislation to bypass the mainstream licensing provisions.

For example, a taxi business called Pink Ladies was set up with customers enrolled as members in order that a permanent contract was manufactured between the firm and a members-only club rather than the usual series of short-term contracts between the firm and its customers. This allowed the business to take advantage of the exemption in the legislation and thus use unvetted drivers and unlicensed vehicles. This was ironic given that the operation was set up with women-only drivers to combat the safety concerns of female passengers, not to mention that the firm was associated with the slightly dubious celebrity Kerry Katona.

It's now seven years since the original Scottish consultation document was issued, and little evident progress has been made, but our politicians seem more concerned with enhancing Holyrood's powers rather than addressing problems which relate to matters that have already been devolved.

(Sent to the Herald as a letter.)

Cross-party consistency

While the prime minister himself may have failed to acknowledge any blame for the credit crunch and subsequent financial crisis, surely only the most Brown-nosed of his supporters would consider his economic management to have been totally beyond reproach. While the problems didn't originate only in the UK, Gordon Brown cannot totally escape censure for his stewardship of the economy while chancellor of the exchequer, which helped contribute to the consequent world-wide crisis - the lax financial sector regulation, the emphasis on controlling consumer price inflation while ignoring asset prices, his contorted and eventually abandoned Golden Rule on fiscal policy, the "prudence with a purpose" soundbite which turned out to be anything but, and all neatly encapsulated in his one-time but now risible boast to have "abolished boom and bust".

But would the Tories have done any better? Well, self-evidently not in view of David Cameron's decision earlier this year to apologise for the party's failure to hold the Labour Government to account for its handling of the economy.

And in the Scottish context Alex Salmond said, a year before the Brown stuff hit the extraction device: "We are pledging a light-touch regulation suitable to a Scottish financial sector with its outstanding reputation for probity, as opposed to one like that in the UK, which absorbs huge amounts of management time in ‘gold-plated’ regulation."

Thus it seems unlikely that an independent Scotland would have fared much better than the UK has; indeed, given the financial resources needed to bail out RBS and HBOS we might well have ended up as a mere intangible asset on Qatar's balance sheet as opposed to our current status as a 'colony' of England.

Of course, this blog has been here before. Except for the elephant in the room, namely Lib Dem economic guru Vince Cable - at least one of the major parties would have kept the economy on an even keel if they'd been at the UK economic helm.

But would they? Perhaps not - a recent article in the New Statesman demonstrates that Mr Cable had a distinctly Salmondesque approach (well, they are both economists!) to financial regulation in an earlier life prior to his elevation to the status of Westminster economic oracle:

Then there is the matter of City regulation. It was, in the words of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, the "zeal for deregulation [that] set Britain up for a fall". Weak regulators allowed reckless bankers to take enormous risks with astounding sums of money. So one might have expected Cable the political prophet to have been arguing consistently for better, firmer and stronger regulation of the City from the outset.

On the contrary, in June 1999, speaking in a Commons debate on the Financial Services and Markets Bill, Cable endorsed "the liberal market" approach to the regulation of financial services. "No one," he said, "is arguing for an increasingly severe, more onerous and dirigiste system of regulation." Any regulation, he said, should be "done on a light-touch basis".

A decade on, once again with the benefit of hindsight, Cable calls for "radical safety measures" to be built in to a new regulatory architecture for the City. But this is too little too late. You cannot advocate light-touch regulation on the floor of the Commons but then, a decade later, pretend you were ahead of the curve in predicting the ensuing financial crash.

So there we have it - the blind* leading the clueless, the delusional and the partially-naked emperor.

*In the spirit of this blog's avowed aim to avoid ad hominem attacks, this particular word is used figuratively rather than literally!

The Grand old Duke of Kilmarnock

Like the Grand Old Duke of York, Alex Salmond marched Diageo's Kilmarnock workforce up to the top of the hill and has now marched them back down again: the hubris of his speech to a rally against the drinks behemoth's plan to close its Kilmarnock and Port Dundas operations - "We're not gonna stand for Diageo walking away from Kilmarnock", "We are going to achieve something for the workforces of Scotland" - has been replaced by the humiliation of the company's almost derisive response to the Scottish Government's rescue plan for the threatened plants.

At yesterday's FMQs Mr Salmond rightly refused to apologise for "standing shoulder to shoulder with a workforce in their time of extremity"; but what he should say sorry for is raising false hope among the threatened workers with a highly confrontational and anti-business approach which may in fact have been counter-productive, not to mention the matter of basing this ill-judged expectation on a blueprint effectively described by Diageo as financially illiterate. But, of course, this whole affair might hopefully cement in the minds of the people of Scotland that the SNP are yet another political party who unrealistically promise the earth but fall down on the actual delivery.

And Mr Salmond's Scargillesque demagoguery usefully underlines the policy faultline that lies at the heart of the Nationalists' approach to economics and business. For one audience an independent Scotland would be a light-touch regulation, low corporation tax, business-friendly environment to match Ireland's 'Celtic tiger' economy, but for another it's attacks on "London boardrooms", criticism of cost-saving and profit-maximisation, and with the emphasis on the impact on communities and corporate "social obligations". Thus one face of the SNP wants a Scottish Celtic 'lion', while another would clearly prefer a pussycat economy.

It's not just the business-friendly rhetoric either: contrast the tartan socialist approach to Diageo with the laissez-faire attitude to the arrogant and rapacious Trump Organisation. Indeed, Alex Salmond let both the lion and the pussycat out of the bag last year when he said, of Thatcherism: "We didn't mind the economic side so much. But we didn't like the social side at all." And the paradox inherent in that statement is increasingly reflected in the SNP's approach to governing Scotland.

Of course, all governments face the difficulty of striking the appropriate balance between the wealth creating abilities of unchecked markets and the social and redistributive impulses which can stifle enterprise and to that extent be socially detrimental.

Thus the first minister and his Nationalist colleagues need to address these contradictions, or at the very least tone down the anti-business rhetoric and socialist firebrand approach. Despite the tension between markets and welfare, Mr Salmond clearly appreciates that to a large extent commerce and social progress go hand in hand; it's just a question of striking the right balance. But idealistic tub-thumping and grandstanding ultimately achieves nothing other than to make Scotland look like a place not to do business.

Dundee 'loosing' the plot...or just an 'alarming' overreaction?

Dundee City Council has recently sent out the annual round of electoral registration forms, but typographical glitches mean that the city's denizens are warned, "Don't loose your right to vote," and advised that requests for Postal Votes and for exclusion from the Edited Register can be made "during telephone regestration."

Rather than returning the form as normal, voters with no change in details can register via a freephone number, and this, coupled with the spelling mistakes, led to some Courier readers thinking the form was part of a scam to induce calls to a premium rate telephone number.


Meanwhile, the "City of Discovery" has a shiny new slogan - "One City, Many Discoveries" - and logo, with the old Beano-style lettering being replaced by a spark "illuminating all that can be discovered about Dundee", with the "refreshed vision...focusing on its modern, multi-faceted make-up and its ambitions for the future", and all that.

But, shock, horror, it's emerged that a full TWO MONTHS later letters being sent out by the council are still being franked with the old logo, and this could continue for...readers of a nervous disposition should look away now...SEVERAL WEEKS!


And the Evening Telegraph quotes Councillor Kevin Keenan, leader of the Labour opposition, as saying he was "alarmed" to hear that the old logo is still being used, adding: "We need to be doing everything we can to promote Dundee across the world."

All of which has left me 'loost' for words!

An opposition party or a government?

On this afternoon's Politics Scotland presenter Catriona Renton made the point that the SNP have been acting more like an opposition party than a government in their ill-judged opposition to Diageo's restructuring plan, which will now go ahead and result in the loss of 900 jobs in Kilmarnock and Glasgow.

Indeed, to commentators well versed in the hard nosed, profit-oriented environment of a multinational business with profits measured in billions of pounds, the Scottish Government's efforts to persuade Diageo to retain these west of Scotland operations have always looked like ill-advised opposition-style politicking and posturing, even with the carrot of public money dangled in the company's face, and with the SNP likely to end up with egg on its face while unable to heap the blame on the government either in Westminster or Holyrood.

As Robbie Dinwoodie puts it in his Herald blog:

I honestly can’t remember the last time I read a rebuff couched in such unvarnished, brutal terms. “Task force proposals do not provide a sound basis . . . don’t deliver a business model that would be good either for Diageo or Scotland .. . no workable alternatives . . . embed inefficiencies . . . Diageo now regards the dialogue as closed.”

Ouch! It was painful stuff, but entirely unsurprising. I remember being invited out to the Diageo offices on the outskirts of Edinburgh a few weeks ago for a chat with a couple of the company bigwigs, and coming away after a polite but frosty encounter convinced that they were not for turning.

Of course, it's an ill-wind and all that, and the silver lining in this is the likelihood of 400 new jobs in Fife. But the fly in the ointment for the Nationalists here is the split that this east/west tension has created within the SNP and across the labour movement generally, with this morning's Courier reporting Unite's John Quigley as accusing Central Fife's Tricia Marwick of "supping at Diageo's table" and the SNP MSP retorting that she will not be "blackmailed or bullied".

But apart from the boost to the SNP's fortunes in the Levenmouth area, today's news represents a setback for the Nationalists, not to mention the possible damage to Scotland's reputation internationally as a 'place to do business', with the fallout over the al-Megrahi affair still reverberating in this regard, excepting, of course, the riches of certain Muslim countries sympathetic to convicted terrorists.

Love 'n' hate

The Scottish Government's recently released document on how an independent Scotland would conduct its foreign affairs says:

Small countries can and do take lead roles in international organisations and policy development. Key positions within the United Nations including that of Secretary-General are often filled by individuals from smaller nations. Small countries such as Sweden, New Zealand, Switzerland and Finland have all made significant global contributions to security, peace and reconciliation initiatives.

Although the Scotsman today suggests that the former part of this statement provides some insight into Alex Salmond's "grandiose retirement plans", the latter passage seems ironic in view of the newspaper's revelations earlier this week about the leaked plans of senior Scottish civil servants - supposedly merely reflecting the views of their Nationalist political masters - as regards Scotland's future dealings with the UK Government:

The operations of Scotland's secretive top civil servants have been laid bare in new documents that show they believe "conflict and confrontation" should be at the heart of their dealings with Westminster...

This contradiction brings to mind a verse from a song - perhaps appropriately titled Death or Glory - by 80s rock giants The Clash:

Now every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world
And ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl
Love 'n' hate tattooed across the knuckles of his hands
Hands that slap his kids around 'cause they don't understand

These words perhaps represent an apt political metaphor, although I suspect that this Nationalist blogger would disagree!

Civil servants?

It's meat and drink to SNP supporters that neither the UK nor the Scottish press are particularly sympathetic to the independence cause and, despite the obviously partisan - and thus hypocritical - nature of these criticisms, they are undoubtedly well-founded.

However, the lead story in this morning's Scotsman suggests that while the Unionists have the mere commentariat of the fourth estate doing their bidding, the Nationalists have gone one better, with leaked documents seemingly demonstrating that the upper echelons of the Scottish Civil Service are at least highly sympathetic to the independence cause, and a more radical interpretation of what's reported is that the tartan mandarins are as hell-bent on independence as Salmond, Sturgeon and Swinney et al.

Of course, Nationalists will retort that the civil servants are merely doing their duty in supporting and implementing the policies of the government of the day, but the leaked minutes do seem to suggest that the opinions expressed are those of the civil servants themselves rather than reflecting the views of democratically elected politicians.

Only yesterday I wrote about a Fife councillor's claims that reports prepared by officials are often merely rubber stamped by councillors, and in a similar vein politicians often complain about the difficulty of implementing policies against the wishes of obstructive civil servants. For example, a recent Times comment piece about Whitehall civil service reform said:

It will never happen, because no minister is foolhardy enough to take on the oligarchy and anyway, from what I’ve seen, our civil servants simply wouldn’t allow it.

Today's revelations certainly confirm that this spirit of government by officialdom is very much alive in Edinburgh as well, but the SNP ministers at Holyrood at least don't have to worry themselves about opposition from the bureaucrats.

Local governance: spin v reality?

An instructive article in last week's Courier about the Forth Estuary Transport Authority, which manages the road bridge and is governed by councillors from four local authorities. An ex-board member, Fife councillor Douglas Chapman, thinks FETA should be disbanded and the bridge management handed over to quango Transport Scotland because the abolition of the tolls means that the board's political purpose has disappeared. But board vice-convenor Tony Martin said:

"One of the things having a board helps to do is built good relationships between FETA and the government. There has been a really good job done by the board members to support staff since the tolls were removed and it is important to have representatives to maintain links with the public."

However, Mr Chapman's case was reported thus:

As a former FETA board member, Mr Chapman believes those sitting on the panel do not have the technical expertise required for many of the decisions and are simply rubber stamping reports prepared for them.
.
“If...the political board was to be abolished, I believe that would allow both bridges, existing and new, to be managed by professionals and I am sure that would be met with approval from the public.”

This surely goes to the heart of much that is wrong about politics and governance, not just in the particular case of FETA, but throughout the entire gamut of quangos, councils and parliaments.

Unfortunately Mr Chapman is probably only half right, however, since our non-elected quangocrats, council officials and civil servants often seem as clueless as the politicians. Indeed, today's lead story in Scotland on Sunday perhaps provides some indication as to where the real power often lies, with politicians often mere pawns in the game of government by unelected officials.

See you in court...if you can afford it

Having taken more of an interest in municipal politics in recent years, one thing I've noticed is the tendency of councils to sometimes play fast and loose with their legal obligations and, I suspect, rely on the fact that those disgruntled with the relevant decisions and policies are either ignorant of their rights under the law or can't afford the stress and financial risk of getting embroiled in a David v Goliath litigation process - local authorities use their legal resources and financial power to ride roughshod over members of the public.

Of course, they won't state that explicitly, but a recent (unguarded?) comment by Dundee City Council's education convenor perhaps let the cat out of the bag slightly. A primary schools merger in Dundee has generated much opposition, and a local activist has constructed a case against the council and threatened legal action. In the press Councillor Liz Fordyce responded: "If she has the money, go for it."

Whatever the merits of the case - and I wouldn't pretend to know much about it - the councillor's comment is revealing, and displays a certain imperious attitude, which has rightly attracted opprobrium in the letters page of the Evening Telegraph.

The advent of an SNP council administration earlier this year was heralded as a new start for Dundee. However, while the party labels may have changed, it's the same old contemptuous councillors.

Policing police perks

The recent reported disquiet over £65,000 of perks paid to Strathclyde's chief constable reflects similar debate relating to a performance bonus awarded to Tayside's police chief earlier this year. Although the sum involved was considerably smaller - Tayside Chief Constable Kevin Mathieson's payment did not include the relocation expenses and related perks awarded to Strathclyde Police's Stephen House - the £18,000 bonus attracted similar criticism regarding the efficacy of such payments to public servants for doing the job that they are already well paid to do.

Indeed, the system for awarding these bonuses seems far from transparent. For example, a near identical payment made last year to retiring Tayside Chief Constable John Vine was considered at a behind closed doors meeting of a Police Joint Board sub-committee, with the board convenor saying: "It is absolutely essential to have these things discussed in private as they involve financial matters relating to individuals and you can’t have that played out in public." But the salaries of senior police officers are a matter of public record, so why the secrecy regarding the bonus? Indeed, the Courier report said that neither Mr Vine nor Mr Mathieson - who received a £12,600 bonus as the then deputy chief constable - objected to the payment information being released.

Perhaps the opaqueness relates more to the methodology employed in quantifying the bonus - in both years the maximum allowable was awarded under the relevant guidelines drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers - which seems to rely to a large extent on an assessment by HM Inspector of Constabulary. This year HMIC described Mr Mathieson's performance as "exceptional" and that he "provided ample and convincing evidence of having exceeded in good measure the majority of agreed [with the Tayside Police Joint Board] objectives".

Quite what these criteria amount to isn't entirely clear, but perhaps some indication was provided by reports a couple of weeks earlier relating to "big falls" in Tayside crime:

Mr Mathieson said, “These figures represent the lowest crime reported within the Tayside Police area for at least a decade and our best ever detection figures. Our road casualty figures are the lowest ever on record and we are targeting and arresting considerably more drug offenders.”

Break-ins to homes across the region were reduced by a fifth, from 911 to 725, and the detection rate was improved by 3.8%, although it remains under one in three. There were also substantial reductions in car crime and vandalism and corresponding increases in cases cleared up.

Which begs numerous questions. How are the lower road casualty figures attributed to policing as opposed to factors like roads engineering, advances in medicine and car safety features such as ABS and airbags? How is the arrest of more drug offenders reconciled with Mr Mathieson's 2008 claim that "we have more drug deaths and overdoses, more people are becoming addicted, drugs are freely available and they are cheaper than alcohol", while at the same time this year as claiming credit for arresting more drug offenders he said that drugs was a problem that the Tayside force "could never solve".

To what extent are reductions in car crime due to things like advances in car security such as alarms and immobilisers? As for vandalism, it's surely fanciful to assume that reported figures show anything like the real picture, thus to that extent the statistics are far from definitive, and perhaps instructive is a more recent claim by a Dundee councillor that vandalism is "ruining our city", adding, "You can hardly drive a hundred yards without seeing it. It's costing the city a fortune."

Of course, these apparent conundrums and contradictions are all ignored in favour of the political-bureacratic imperative to convey whatever message suits the particular purpose at hand, whether it be the self-serving portrayal of statistics and performance, the backslapping and bonhomie that passes for democratic scrutiny and accountability, or a display of civic concern to impress voters.

However, the councillors awarding the chief constable his bonus did express some misgivings about the system, which is laid down by central government, saying "it is something we have to live with", it is "not our choice", Mr Mathieson himself "would prefer not to have a bonus system" and "I'm not convinced the chief constable is motivated by the bonus".

But they gave him the bonus anyway, and Mr Mathieson took it.