It was interesting to watch a typically earnest John Swinney on Newsnicht being grilled by Isabelle Fraser on the Scottish Government's due diligence as regards its funding of the Edinburgh trams to the extent of a cool half billion pounds or so.
Of course, the finance secretary now intends withholding part of those funds on the basis that the project's remit has changed significantly, but as things stand his government has in effect handed over hundreds of millions of pounds to the City of Edinburgh Council only to see it flushed down the lavvy.
And the Scottish Government's scrutiny as regards this largesse? In essence, as long as the funds are spent on the intended project then that's effectively the extent of central government due diligence, according to Mr Swinney.
Thus as long as the money is spent on the trams - and not on, say, a couple of new schools, a battery of nuclear weapons, or several hundred million packets of Gypsy Creams for councillor meetings - then all's well and good.
And according to Mr Swinney, the reason the government and the likes of Transport Scotland don't get more involved is because, "where there are more than one party involved in the governance that can lead to real project uncertainty, so the control of the project rested exclusively with the City of Edinburgh Council".
Voila! Thanks to the finance secretary's devastating insight it's all becoming clear now. Instead of the uncertainty in governance that would have resulted from others becoming involved, the governance has resided exclusively with the council, hence all that certainty in governance that's clearly characterised the project.
All hail 'certainty in governance'!
And if such 'reassurance' from our finance secretary isn't enough to disabuse some of the notion that the SNP government should ride to the rescue and put the trams fiasco to rights, it should be recalled that they couldn't even organise a glorified Highland games in Edinburgh without it collapsing into insolvency, subsidy and subsequent political machinations, thus not unlike the trams project itself.
Oh aye, and councillors Dawe and Cardownie were implicated in that little mess as well.
Indeed, perhaps a Highland games organising committee could have been asked to deliver the trams. They presumably couldn't have performed any worse, indeed they'd have probably made a better fist of the whole thing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I think I was getting towards furious watching that last night...
It wasn't Swinney's ability to not answer a question, it was more everyone's eagerness to blame someone, anyone for the whole fiasco, rather than accept their own shortcomings in handing over £450 million in public money before anything is done. This was quantified by the appearance of two Edinburgh concillors. No offence, but two boozed up Glasgow jakies would have shown more inteligence than these two.
No wonder the Frankie Boyle gag about setting your watch back 25 years when you fly into Glasgow is so apt.
BTW, Depeche were great. The only thing i kinda wish I could have done while there was a wee pilgramage to Palpatine Road.
Allan is bang on here. The blame game is what everyone is interested in.
True, it was Labour and Co that wanted it, but was there no way in the last government, despite a majority, that Swinney could have somehow put the brakes on the whole project until the plans and contracts had been scrutinised?
I think the SNP have just fallen into a trap.
Off topic, Stuart, I'm the same Barbarian but using my gmail name (some bugger has Barbarian unsurprisingly). I've got my blog running (sort of!), is it ok to put a link here or do I need to do something else?
Last night's Newsnight was the first I'd seen of Jeremy Balfour. He's very special. He even made Lesley Hinds look good, and I'd never have believed that was possible if I hadn't seen it myself. But what really worries me is that the more I get to see of other Edinburgh councillors, the more competent Jenny Dawe appears. That can't be right.
"No offence, but two boozed up Glasgow jakies would have shown more inteligence than these two."
ROFL.
But that's a bit insulting to Glasgow jakies.
But you're bang on Allan - it was all about the blame game rather than taking responsibility or trying to make the best of a bad situation for the greater good rather than partisan advantage.
(BTW, not a huge Depeche fan, but I've got a couple of CDs - Violator and a greatest hits - which I've never really listened to. Problem is that I've got a huge pile of such CDs so who knows when I'll get round to them!!)
Barbarian
I've added your site to my blogroll - if that's what you mean - so I'm hoping for a reciprocal link ;0)
Angus
Indeed, but it certainly hasn't really changed my view of anything ;0)
Strikes me as particularly ironic that the strongest argument against Scottish independence seems to be that the unionists are total ars** when it comes to large projects-the risk being that in the fullness of time they might get their turn in government.
The big screwups have been the cost of the Holyrood building and the trams-both unionist projects whose primary purpose was to stick it to the SNP
Think I've managed to add it without bringing down the Internet :p
Was there no way that the SNP could have put the brakes on the tram project?
Not really, no.
If you think back to when the SNP Government was first elected in 2007 it only had a majority of one MSP over Labour. At the time, no-one would have bet money that the SNP Government would have lasted its first 100 days.
In his first statement on government priorities the new First Minister Alex Salmond said that the SNP intended to fulfil its manifesto commitment to scrap both EARL and the trams project and re-alloocate the money to other transport projects.
The other parties latched onto the trams as the central issue and determined to force the SNP to back down. And they succeeded -EARL was scrapped but the funding which had been committed to the trams project by the previous Executive remained in place, though as John Swinney made clear when the vote was taken on 27 June not a penny more would be released.
If the SNP Government at that point in time - just a matter of weeks after they had been elected - had defied the will of the Scottish Parliament the most likely outcome would have been that they were brought down and Labour & the Lib Dems would have formed the 2007 - 2011 administration. And they would - of course - have proceeded with the trams and probably committed additional monies as well.
Looking at it from the point of view of the other parties, I can see that it was important to clearly establish that the SNP could only govern with the support of parliament - that they would not be able to over-ride a parliamentary majority which was opposed to Government proposals. It's just a pity that they chose the trams as the issue on which that principle would be tested.
Post a Comment