CIRV

I was invited on Wednesday 30th September to go along to the CIRV football awards; what makes this particularly interesting is what makes this football project different from you and your friends having a bit of a knock-about in the park. This celebration of football and sportsmanship was actually a very significant step in reducing violence in the east of Glasgow, and saving the lives and futures of young people in the area.

Partners from the agencies made clear to me afterwards that actually bringing together the young men from these gangs in the one room was a real achievement. Having them celebrating each other's success and leaving afterwards without any threat of violence was remarkable. I was told that at the start of the project, many of these young men couldn't be in the same room together without violence breaking out. This change in behaviour had been achieved through a lot of hard work, investment, support and a focus on positive alternatives.

I was impressed by the description, but keen to find out more.

I've attended presentations by people from CIRV, and readers may already be familiar with CIRV through Cherie Blair's Dispatches documentary on Channel Four. It's certainly worth watching to get a handle on what is being done. The discription on their website reads thus:

The Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV – pronounced ‘Serve’) is a multi-agency initiative designed to reduce gang violence across Glasgow. CIRV aims to reduce the impact and incidence of antisocial behaviour and violence, the involvement of young people in crime and the fear of crime – there will be other positive outcomes that are supplementary to these aims.

The staff who work on the programme invited me along to a gang 'call in' at the Sheriff Court a week ago last Friday. The Evening Times carried the story yesterday. I found it deeply moving on many levels.

Court 8 had been set up in such a way that 30-40 young gang members were on one side, and all the staff and speakers on the other. Each speaker in turn would rise, and move over to the side of the court the young people were on to make their points.

A number of speakers related the options open to the young people in the room - prison, death, or changing their ways. Two surgeons from Medics Against Violence showed graphic pictures of the damage a baseball bat, a knife and a gun can do. People who had committed crimes in the past, including murder, spoke movingly about how this affected them. Karen, a very strong and brave mother, described the impact on her life and family of her son's stabbing. The police were firm and made it clear that the law would catch up with these gang members, one after the next, if they chose not to get out.

All the way through, there was a emphasis on the alternatives and the chance for each of the young people to be supported and to make something of their life if they got out of the gang culture.

The young people were given an opportunity to sign up there and then, and given a card away with them should they want to think it over and come to the programme later. It's clear that breaking from the people you've grown up with and spent your life with is difficult, but all the speakers were equally clear that those people who hold you back in life are not your friends, and that better things lie ahead. The choice is in their hands.

Clydeslide

I'm sure you'll all be glad to know I safely completed the Clydeslide a day later than scheduled on Sunday morning. I was supposed to be sliding on Saturday, but the gale force winds meant that it was postponed.

Thanks to everyone who has sponsored me online and in person - I really appreciate it and I will put up a wee roll of honour later on once all the pledges have come in.

In the meantime, I've put up a few photos so you can see how scary it was! I'm working on uploading a video too.

SNP: learning from the past

Clearly 1975 is further back in history than the 80s, but I believe learning from the past is pretty important. Councillor Owen Thomson just popped an article up on facebook which reminded me why.

Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor of the Telegraph, brings news of recently released details from the National Archives of Scotland.

Records from 1975, just released, show Government officials admitted that the discovery of oil had transformed the economic case for separation.

They calculated that Scots’ average income would increase by up to 30 per cent per head and it could be “credibly argued” that repealing the Act of Union was to Scotland’s advantage.

I would love to have the time to nip through to the capital and have a look through the papers to see what other gems are there; it sounds from the article that the team of eleven civil servants in the room had quite mixed views on the matter.

It also makes you wonder - if Labour and the Tories could both conspire to hide this from us then, what are they hiding now?

Labour: living in the past

It's quite remarkable that Labour have slipped to third place in the polls, behind the Lib Dems. This article in the Scotsman claims that this is the first time this has happened since February 1982 - before I was born. A different world in many respects!

I made mention yesterday about Labour's tendency to fall back on dark days of Thatcher rhetoric. It's getting increasingly tiresome, and less relevant every day. The other side of the '80s coin turned up in the Scotsman article, reminding the world of part of the reason why the Tories were able to dominate for so long. The fault was in the Labour party, as much as the Tories.

The poll result can be partly written off due to the Lib Dems conference bounce, yet it demonstrates just how far Labour have fallen in a UK context. Labour's momentum has completely abandoned them, and they have no idea where to go next. Patching up and repairing the party is no good - it needs gutting and re-building.

The article acknowledges also that the situation in Scotland is different, and I wouldn't expect the Lib Dems or the Tories to have a strong enough foothold here to make significant gains.

This does highlight the slight difficulty of the UK media prism which will determine how Scottish voters see Election 2010. Jim Murphy refered to this prism when he

"warned that a vote for the SNP could usher in a Conservative government through the back door.

He suggested the campaign slogan could be "Vote Salmond, Get Cameron", adding: "But we will put Vote Labour first.""

Lously slogan of course, but the issue for me is that while the UK General Election is of course important to Scotland, the 59 MPs we elect are unlikely to be a decisive factor in who forms the UK Government.

I see in my mind's eye the computer graphic of the seats in the south of England tumbling to Labour in 1997, and wonder if these voters will now return to the Tories. I think about middle class English voters in their thirties and forties, whose working life has been largely under a Labour Government, and wonder if they have an ideological reason not to switch to the Tories. Are the Lib Dems a factor to them? The British Election Panel Study believes that Lib Dem switchers were a significant factor in 1997, and I suspect they may be again.

These large swathes of voters in middle England will determine the colour of the UK Government. It's blatant self-interested scaremongering by Murphy, Gray and co. to suggest that those who vote SNP are ushering in a Tory government; Labour are almost certainly out of office regardless. I believe Scotland's interests will be better served by SNP MPs, who will fight to put Scotland first rather than continue the bickering Labour-Tory tribalism as Government and Opposition swap places.

Labour are, of course, doing their best to hang on in there and fight to the last. Events Dear Boy, Events, highlights that Bloomberg have got their mitts on 'the plan', which "gives activists specific tasks to perform on every day, granting them 17 days off between Oct. 1 and March 31." I don't see it, frankly, but I'm sure many of their MPs will have the opportunity to have a nice long rest aftert the results come in on election night next year.



PS Alistair Darling, also in the Scotsman article, gave me a wee giggle:

"The next election, he said, would see Britain facing a choice – "maturity and experience against the politics of the playground"."

This from the party of "bring it on" and "I dare you"....

A dreich, Gray speech

There's a report on the BBC website today about the effectiveness of subliminal messaging. The Professor behind the study states:

"We have shown that people can perceive the emotional value of subliminal messages and have demonstrated conclusively that people are much more attuned to negative words."

I've just been reading Iain Gray's speech to the Labour party conference, and suspect he had an advance copy of the report...

David Cameron has come a long way. He isn’t hugging hoodies and huskies any more. He is embracing Europe’s extremists.

In Scotland we are not surprised at the company Tories keep. We have watched them nuzzling up to the nationalist government from day one.

Not so subtly conflating the left of centre, social democratic party I'm proud to be a member of in this way is wrong, misleading, and deeply dirty. It upsets me.

I'm more deeply disturbed though that the leader of Labour in the Scottish Parliament would use the tragic death of a child as a stick to beat the Government with.

My Scotland would not be a country where two year-old Brandon Muir dies at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend and the First Minister says “everyone did all they could.” My Scotland would be a country where we would not give up on the 20,000 children living as Brandon Muir lived.

Other tragedies have occurred in England, but I don't believe that I heard anyone saying Gordon Brown or Tony Blair, or even previous governments were directly accountable for these. There has been an investigation, and responsibility taken. There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that in Scotland we are 'giving up' on vulnerable children, and it's irresponsible for Iain Gray to suggest so.

Next, on to the spectre of Thatcher. Spooky stuff, especially for the 18 year-old first-time voters weren't even born when she was in office.

"The SNP believe that the unemployment, the social division, the fractured lives that the Tories would bring are all a price worth paying for their campaign for separation."

Utter rubbish. For one, we work for the betterment of Scotland's people and would never be so cynical and cruel. Secondly, there's no proof that this will actually happen. Thirdly, and most significantly, the widest gap between rich and poor in this country has opened up under a Labour Government. This following quote comes from the Guardian, and the figures are drawn from the Department of Work and Pensions own figures. I don't think I need say any more.

"The data shows that the second poorest 10% of households has also had to make do with less since 2005. Overall, the poorest 20% saw real income fall by 2.6% in the three years to 2007-08, while those in the top fifth of the income distribution enjoyed a rise of 3.3%. As a result, income inequality at the end of Labour's 11th year in power was higher than at any time during Margaret Thatcher's premiership."

What would Labour do differently?

"We began to heal the Tory legacy in places like Ravenscraig."

Oh really? My grandparents live in Motherwell and Wishaw, the place their MSP Jack McConnell described as a "pigsty". I don't see any evidence of healing on the part of the Labour Council in North Lanarkshire. I see my grandparents struggle to get their choice of food in towns with fewer and fewer quality shops - neither town now has a fishmonger, and Wishaw's post office is now at the back of the Spar. It used to have an additional one at the bottom of the town, but this was closed under the last round of Labour's cuts.

What have the SNP done? I don't have a complete list to hand, but Motherwell and Wishaw should see some benefit from the £2,745,000 awarded to North Lanarkshire Council under the Town Centre Regeneration Fund which certain Labour bloggers have claimed is a cynical ploy. Money has also gone to social housing, and to support local businesses.

Mr Gray then moves on to the politics of the playground. Oooooh, go on. I double dare you...

"Alex Salmond refused to debate with Jim Murphy – because, he said, he debates with me, every Thursday.

What’s so special about Thursdays Alex? How about St Andrews day? Clear your diary. Debate my vision of Scotland against yours. Tell us which side you are on. I dare you."

The First Minister is on Scotland's side; Mr Grey on Jim Murphy's.

The parting shot by Mr Grey is really something. Having given no evidence through his speech of what Labour are really for - what they would do differently, what their movement is about, he completes his speech thus:

"Last year conference, I said that Labour MSPs would stand shoulder to shoulder with MP colleagues, and with our Prime Minister in the Glenrothes by election and we would elect Lindsay Roy the new Labour MP.

We did.

And together we can do the same in Glasgow North East and make Willie Bain a Labour MP. And then we will make Gordon Brown Prime Minister again.

Together we will defeat those whose sole creed is self interest, whose sole purpose is division whose sole principle is expediency. Whether they are Tories, or Nationalists."

Nothing about what Mr Roy has achieved, nothing about why Willie Bain would do a better job in Glasgow North East than Michael Martin, and nothing about why Gordon Brown should be allowed to drag the UK further into the mire. It's for their own self interest, power for power's sake.

It's not for nothing that he has, peppered liberally through the speech the phrase:

"That is what happens when Labour loses power."

Iain Gray has seen it, and is at Labour conference to warn his colleagues how frustrating it is to be there.

Clydeslide - one week to go!

I've got a week to go now before I do the Clydeslide for Action for Children. I'm looking forward to it, and would like to thank all the friends and colleagues who have sponsored me so far, both online and in person. It's not too late to donate! I intend to list all the nice elected people who have been so generous.

I've not yet received the exact time and place for the slide, but it'll be on Saturday. I'll let you know!

Photo

I've changed my photo. The one I had was from early 2007 and I was getting fed up looking at it! The new photo was taken by the very talented Stuart Crawford.