Glum Councillors

Esther has just pointed me in the direction of this blog: http://glumcouncillors.tumblr.com/

I know I've posted some grimly boring pictures of bits of road in the past, and I feel I should apologise if these made you lose the will to live. I tend not to feature in the photos as I don't drag someone around with me to take the picture! My husband suggests I'm a bit tragic... he may well be right!

Savings on a rainy day

I read with interest this article on the BBC website about David Cameron's plans to make savings by cutting back on MPs privileges. He has various proposals, including decentralisation, cutting quangos, increased transparency, reducing the number of MPs and cutting back on what it costs to run Westminster. This is all laudable stuff, and it should be done. I hope that the special interests who would oppose many of these can be defeated.

I would like to make clear at the beginning that I wouldn't mind at all (and apparently, neither would some of his own candidates) if David Cameron wanted to reduce the number of MPs by 59 and remove the unnecessary Westminster tier from Scotland altogether.

Anyway, what caught my eye in Cameron's speech is this:

There are currently 169 government ministerial posts and 3 opposition party posts that receive additional taxpayer funded salaries, on top of the standard MP salary.

These ministerial salaries range from £26,624 to £132,923.

It's only right, at a time when the country has to share in financial pain, that they make their sacrifice.

So we will cut all Ministerial salaries - that's the money they get on top of their MPs' salary - by an immediate five percent.

This means a pay cut of £6,500 for the Prime Minister and a £4 ,000 pay cut for Cabinet Ministers.

169 government ministerial posts is an eye watering number. What do they all do? Do we need them? Who are these people, because this clearly isn't all of them. Why not as well as cutting their top up, reduce the number of ministerial posts? If scrutiny is to be applied to the worth of all quangos, why not to ministers?

Forgive my if my calculations are off (percentages were never my thing), but I think that 169 out of 646 is an incredible 26% of the UK Parliament who have posts. Compare this to the Scottish Parliament, which has 16 Governmental posts, (18, if you include the Lord Advocate and Solicitor General). This is only 12% of the Scottish Parliamentarians.

Cameron also wants to cut the number of MPs - given the scale of the constituencies, I'm not convinced this is a great idea; he also wants to cut back on staff, which would make covering these huge areas properly far more challenging.


On another matter entirely, there's also a slightly odd comparison in his speech with the Electoral Commission and India's Election Commission which I'm not entirely convinced is fair. Cameron points out that India has "twice as many people to oversee sixteen times as many voters". For a start, the difference in salaries and the cost of doing business is somewhat lower in India. While I don't doubt the numbers quoted in the speech, I'm sure national officials will be working with many thousands of local officials in India to make sure the biggest democracy on earth can pull off fair and free elections.

Cameron also seems to conflate decreasing turnout with the work done by the Electoral Commission, rather than disillusionment with politicians... The Electoral Commission isn't perfect, but the work they do in trying to encourage voter turnout against rising apathy can be innovative and is definitely important.

While I find all this interesting from a theoretical viewpoint, I don't believe that the Westminster system has much to offer Scotland. Our devolved Parliament already has a better set up, and is surely evolving yet further. A real Parliament in Scotland with real powers to improve the lives of our people is a far better prospect for the future.


Update: I have found a better list of Ministers! http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page19564

Weekend of football

I've had a pretty enjoyable, if busy, weekend of football. Saturday of course was Hampden - for me, every Scotland game is a huge must-win game. Macedonia was particularly so.

I love going to Scotland games, and can't stand watching them on the tv. The atmosphere can be breathtaking, and I had a weird feeling as the team ran out, and as we sang Flower of Scotland, that everything would be ok. It took an agonisingly long time for the goal to come (and yet longer for McFadden to find the back of the net), but I was satisfied with the result. I can't wait 'til Wednesday night.

I got back home, and watched some of the England game with my husband, then went out for dinner with my mum and auntie Carol at Celinos on Ally Parade. I love going there, and I'm delighted they've started opening late Thursday - Sunday. I watched the second half of the Denmark - Portugal game when I got back.

This morning, I decided to forgo a Sunday morning lie-in to head out and see my Gran in Wishaw. My Gran White served in the Wrens in the Second World War, but had never been in contact with them after she was demobbed. An item in a Committee paper had led me to discover a contact for the Wrens Association in Glasgow, who had kindly dropped off some info for my Gran. She was very excited to find out they were still going, and I hope to take her along to their meeting on Thursday.

After a quick pit-stop back home for lunch, I headed down to Glasgow Green Football Centre, where I had been invited to the unveiling of a plaque dedicated to the memory of the founders of Rangers FC. The plaque was unveiled by Heather Lang, the grand-daughter of Peter McNeil.

Speaking to some of the attendees, it was interesting to find out that relatively little had been known about the roots of the club and that even Heather wasn't aware of her family connection. The investigative work of journalist Gary Ralston and club historian David Mason had brought a lot of the history to light, culminating in a book and the beautiful plaque itself. The plaque is obviously engraved metal, but this should give you an idea of what it says!



Later in the afternoon, I attended the finals of the UK Asian football championships at Celtic Park. This event was organised by the Scottish Ethnic Minority Sports Association, and was contested by Sporting Bengal and Punjabi Wolves. The very competitive match ended in a 1-1 draw, and went to penalties. Sadly for Punjabi Wolves, their final player to take a penalty missed his second of the afternoon, and the trophy went to Sporting Bengal.

It was a really nice event, well assembled by Dilawer Singh, President of SEMSA, and Culture and Sport Glasgow. To give the players even more credit, many of them were fasting for Ramadan and had also played in the preliminary games yesterday and Friday. Not many professional players would cope with that! There are so few players of ethnic minority origin in Scottish (and English) football, but given the talent on show today, I'm sure there will be plenty coming through.

Just the ticket!

I booked tickets for next week's Scotland - Netherlands match yesterday morning with some trepidation. I usually go and buy football tickets in person, or get someone I trust to buy them for me.

I wasn't confident that my £1 booking fee would allow the tickets to wing their way to me before kick-off, and had a vision of me stalking my postie all week.

I'm very chuffed to report that my worries were completely unfounded!

When I got home tonight, there they were, two crisp and lovely Scotland tickets. Hats off to the people at ticketlink. Simple service, done correctly. I wonder though, if I'd paid £5.50 for the special delivery option, would James McFadden have dropped round to hand them in?

Clydeslide!

My colleague David Turner has persuaded me that hurtling to near-death on a 1000ft zip slide across a river for charity is a great idea, so we will be doing the Clydeslide on the 3rd of October for Action for Children.

I'm not particularly scared of heights, but the Clyde is a) cold and b) deep! Anyway, we both hope to survive without need for a by election.

If you'd like to sponsor me, I've set up a link on justgiving. Thanks!

Reconviction rates

I use Google Reader to manage news and blog feeds, and noticed today a lot of news on re-offending figures from the 2005-2007 cohort of offenders. Kenny MacAskill is quite clear that short term sentences are ineffective, and I would tend to agree.

The figures show that of those who have served a sentence of six months or less, 70% are likely to be re-convicted of another crime within two years. Somewhat shockingly, this cycle applies disproportionately young people.

Labour and the Tories are very keen on locking people up, but it seems to me that six months will achieve very little by way of rehabilitation. I have heard that many schemes in prison to help give offenders a better chance in life are oversubscribed, and by the time comes for release, the offender will not have had a chance to access them. It's expensive to keep people locked up for six months, and gives little meaningful benefit to the community.

Locking people up for six months gives communities a bit of respite, but as my constituents have told me, when someone comes back after serving a short 3-6 month sentence it's like a slap in the face. They will come back to the same place and often start to wreak havoc all over again. If there is no change in behaviour or attitude, what has been achieved?

Judges must have the right to decide on appropriate sentences, but they should really take the community impact into account as well. The police tell me that they often recommend longer sentences for offenders, because they know the impact short sentences have on communities.

Interestingly, For those sentenced to a Community Service Order, the reconviction rate fell from 47 per cent for the 1996-97 cohort to 42 per cent for the 2005-06 cohort. I don't believe that this is appropriate for every offender, but at least this means that there can be some benefit, and a sense of 'working off' the sentence. This should be balanced of course with public safety concerns and be closely supervised. If it allows for a better route back into employment or training, picking up some practical skills on the way and getting into a routine, than this surely must be more effective.

It's clear that prison has become a revolving door for many offenders, and that does society no justice at all.

Kenny was right

I've been following the Lockerbie coverage, and have had discussions with a few people over the past weeks, political and non-political about Kenny MacAskill's decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds. The consensus is that a) he was right to do so and b) it was an incredibly difficult decision given the intense pressure and scrutiny placed on him.

Like Anne, I wasn't sure what members of my own family would think. This wasn't because of their political views, but because they're a different generation. They had seen war, they had seen terrorism, they knew of capital punishment. They welcomed the decision and accepted that compassion was important and the dignity of a dying man could over-ride a sense of vengeance.

I was disappointed but not surprised by the way the opposition MSPs (Malcolm Chisholm aside) conducted themselves. They asked the same tired questions again and again, all eager to get a piece of the action. As Ian Gray himself admitted on Newsnight last night, they came out of the session with no further information than when it began. What purpose did that serve? Calling on the Justice Secretary to change his mind was hardly likely to be successful either. It was a bit of show; Ian Gray, Tavish Scott and Annabel Goldie trying to show that they had opinions and would have acted differently, when in reality, it was impossible to have done so. I have spoken to some Labour people, and they do support the position Kenny took; their party loyalty of course prevents them from saying so.

I hope that now everyone can move on - I hear that there's likely to be another debate in Parliament next week, and I hope that those involved yesterday will think hard about what they wish to achieve. The decison is made; Megrahi will die, and it's time for the opposition in Scotland to put away childish things.