Rioting and reflections from society's broken window

Much has been and, I'm sure will be, written about the causes and response to riots which have broken out in towns and cities across England. The killing of Mark Duggan may have been the trigger, but clearly there are underlying tensions which any trigger would have released.

Firstly let me address the police response. It has been claimed that the response to the Tottenham riot was too soft and a more 'robust' approach would have sent a clearer signal that violence will not be tolerated. Whilst perhaps true, the police were caught in a very difficult position. Anything seen as disproportionate on their behalf would have been cited as a catalyst further disturbances and individual officers must be acutely aware of the risk of charges being brought against them.

Monday night's problem was that rioting broke out in many different areas of London and the logistics of dealing with a fast moving problem across a very large city with limited trained officers are very demanding. It's easy in hindsight to say what should have been done, but I think a more robust approach to the afternoon disturbances in Hackney would have helped.

At this point, quite literally, the Riot Act should have been read. This was not a peaceful student demo which got out of hand due to a minority of infiltrators bent on violence. The streets should have been closed off and a clear warning issued through megaphones and the media that people had half an hour to leave. Anyone leaving after that point would be searched and, if found to have committed an offence, charged. Those acting unlawfully or violently could expect more 'robust' attention. Yes, many would leave and direct their attention to other areas, but similar attention elsewhere by the police would have sent out a very strong signal.

I also think that those arrested and subsequently found guilty should be given community service orders which focus on working to improve the communities they have devastated - their own communities. They need to spend many hours working with community leaders; clearing graffiti, painting, repairing and generally improving the local environment. This needn't be a soft option; 200 hours of backbreaking work for no money is something most, I imagine, would not wish to repeat.

However, that doesn't address the underlying cause. Deprivation? Perhaps, but deprived people can't afford Blackberrys. Lack of opportunities and hopelessness? To a certain extent, but some of those charged have been found to have jobs. Most are still at school.

Many people are blaming the current government's policies for cutting back opportunities, apprenticeships, and forcing local councils to close facilities, and I think there is some truth in this. However, if this were so, the focus of the mobs would have been the police. Apart from a few stones and the odd petrol bomb, the police were being avoided rather than attacked. No, the objective was looting, initially opportunistic, then it appears more organised.

My belief is that the seeds of this discontent go back to the last Conservative government - the culture of 'greed is good' and a move away from community involvement towards a 'what's in it for me' mentality. When people see the likes of Wayne Rooney 'earning' £100,000 a week and paying minimal tax, failed bankers awarding themselves millions of pound bonuses, calls for a removal of the 50% tax rate, executive salaries increasing sharply year on year whilst they are on a minimum wage, and Vodafone avoiding £6 Billion in tax, is it any wonder they feel somewhat discontent and that we're not all in it together?

The government talks of a 'Big Society'. Every voluntary organisation I've been involved in over the last few years has struggled badly to attract volunteers. I gave up being a cub scout leader several years ago as none of the parents wanted to help, or could find the time, and all the work fell on few shoulders. Our community council is now down to seven members, from a maximum of 15. When the market dictates that Tesco should open 24 hours a day, someone needs to staff the checkouts, and families and communities suffer badly from our craving for convenience and 'must have now' attitude.

We need to re-appraise what we want our society and our communities to be. The free market will not build a social structure and we need to sacrifice some of our materialism for what really matters in life.

And one final thought. Don't condemn out of hand the looters of Croydon, Enfield or Birmingham. What they have done to their local shops, we have been doing to the planet for years.

Where the only thing being parked is the truth

My earlier post on the Bonnyrigg Rose car park issue left off with the council's audit report being released in private to its Audit committee. I have since managed to see the report and it does not make pleasant reading for the council, or I imagine for Audit Scotland who I understand are taking a keen interest. It is now almost a year since the original investigation started and the public is still no nearer being told the truth, with the council continuing to decline to comment "while an investigation is under way".

Parts of the report cover the handling of contractual, financial and tendering arrangements, the release of which may potentially prejudice the ongoing police inquiry, so I will avoid commenting on that. However, much of it does not, focusing on the council's failings and the withholding of this information is not in the public interest.

The report not only criticises the handling of this particular grant application, but slates the council for its overall management of the Gourlaw fund, stating "controls over the administration of the Community Fund and in particular the award of £37,500 to BRAJFC were inadequate". Not only did the council break an agreement whereby adequate publicity should be given to all successful grant applications but it basically hasn't got a clue how much is in the fund or how much is due in from Scottish Coal. Adequate reasons were not given as to why requests were approved or declined and technical advice was not sought in arriving at the decisions. The council should also have received funds relating to the extraction of fireclay, but no records exist for this.

On the car park itself, a good part of the car park area is owned by neighbours Bonnyrigg Rose Social Club, which the report says "were never consulted on any developments regarding the car park and on checking their title deeds it appears that they should have been consulted on any developments to any of their land".

The car park is deemed "not fit for purpose" by the council, not least because it fails to meet the requirements of the 1995 Disability Act regarding access and markings, and the total value of work completed amounts to little over £40,000. The appendix compiled by surveyors for the council on the technical appraisal of the car park is scathing, although it doesn't take a professional to conclude that what we've got falls far short of most people's idea of a public car park. It describes the surface material as of very poor quality and too contaminated even to be used as sub-surface material.

An interesting aside to all this is a flurry of letters in the Midlothian Advertiser (including one with 'Address withheld', from someone those connected with the club have never heard of) which have a common theme, accusing 'critics' (i.e. me) of continually attacking the club. Anyone who has followed this closely will know I have not attacked the club anywhere, but have so far focussed my attention on the council, in the light of the evidence I have. The letters all point to the work having been done (clearly not true, according to the report - with the main access point currently barred), or "other work carried out, within the grounds of the club" - an irrelevance according to the council's report, which says they were not detailed in the invoices they have obtained.

This is not  the first time my political opponents - or opponent to be precise, as I know exactly who he is - have played this game. A few years ago, a remarkably similar set of letters appeared in The Advertiser when I criticised the council for its very short public consultation period on the Bonnyrigg town centre improvements. The letters uncannily all accused me of wanting to stop the project in its tracks.

Why such pains are being taken to try to discredit my investigation is not clear, but someone is certainly trying hard and I want to know why. Politics is a dirty business in Midlothian, as I found last year at the receiving end of an abusive phone call from a councillor, and during the course of my investigations, associations and links have come to light which belie claims which have been made in public.

Perhaps one day the truth will out. Perhaps it won't, and maybe that's as it's aye been in these parts.

Scottish Government's one track mind

One transport project costs £700 million, three times the original budget, is 3 years late, generates pollution and experts now say will not cut congestion. Another transport project costs £750 million, 50% over the original budget, is 3 years late, cuts pollution and is known to cut congestion. Which one does the SNP Government support and which one does it say is a waste of money?

If I tell you the first one benefits motorists (M74 extension) and the second benefits public transport users (Edinburgh trams), anyone who knows the SNP will know the answer.

The SNP does not have a good history of encouraging people out of their cars. Whether it's promoting big road projects like the M74, Aberdeen Western Peripheral Road and A68 Dalkeith bypass, or it's removing Forth and Tay Bridge tolls. It wants to spend around £2 Billion on a replacement road bridge when the tests on drying out the existing bridge's cables are not complete.

The SNP has always been lukewarm on the Borders Railway ("The Scottish Government has always been clear that this project must deliver value for money", Stewart Stevenson in 2008) whilst supporting airport expansion.

But what of the trams? Alex Salmond has ruled out increasing the Scottish Government's £500 million contribution.

Dublin's Luas system was a year late and cost €728 million compared to the original budget of €250 million. Road works during construction led to the same level of unpopularity as in Edinburgh, yet once implemented became so popular that use and income exceeded expectations and extensions to the network were demanded by Dublin residents.

Cost overruns on large projects seem inevitable - bizarrely given there are so many precedents worldwide for each project to be judged against. Poor project management, as displayed by both the Edinburgh tram project and the building of the Scottish Parliament building, is also inexcusable for the same reason.

However, we are where we are. Surely it's time for the Scottish Government to take control of the tram project from Edinburgh City Council and deliver at least a basic system which can be extended over time. Perhaps if the cost ends up at 'only' £730 million as opposed to the reported £750 million, the Scottish Government can claim it came in under budget. After all, that's how they are presenting the M74 extension.

Harmed Forces Day

Saturday 25th June is designated Armed Forces Day, with events principally being held in Edinburgh. Forgive me, but I will not be attending.

I am not a pacifist, and indeed I have tremendous respect for the servicemen and women who are prepared to lay down their lives for their country's freedom - whatever country. I also believe that we need armed forces for the day we may need to defend our shores - but I don't  think that's what it's all about.

On the web site promoting the events, it states "The UK Armed Forces defend the UK and its interests". So what exactly are the UK's interests in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya? Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction, we were assured, but against whom? The major UK interest seemed to be that British bases in the Mediterranean could be attacked 'within 45 minutes' (unless you count Iraqi oil as a UK interest). Afghanistan hosted some Al-Qaeda training camps, arguably part of a wider terrorist threat (unless you count the country's importance as a conduit for oil pipelines as a UK interest). Libya is about protecting civilians from attack by its government forces (unless of course you count Libyan oil as a UK interest).

What starts as a simple operation so often gets bogged down (Iraq - Mission Accomplished) and the remit is widened, then things start to go horribly wrong. So why do we keep on doing it?

In all the above cases, UN resolutions were gained or sought and were part of an aim for international agreement for action. International agreement does not imply protecting UK interests unless those interests are shared by others in the international community, so the 'UK interests' bit is starting to get a bit murky in my view.

If it's about acting with others as the world's policemen, let's be honest about it, and dare I say, more even handed. Why not Zimbabwe, North Korea and China, home to some of the worst human rights abuses in the world?

Liberating the people? Whether it's Afghanistan, Libya, or anywhere else, you cannot impose democracy upon a people, it has to come from within. If we are so intent on opposing oppressive regimes, instead of bombing them, let's start by not giving them the means to oppress, like selling them arms.

Unfortunately, our armed forces are caught up in all of this. They signed up to 'defend the UK and its interests', not to act on the whims of politicians keen to strut the world stage, yet Armed Forces Day reinforces the link between legitimate defence and politically motivated military adventures.

My heart goes out to relatives and friends of soldiers every time another coffin arrives from Afghanistan; lives wasted on a lost cause. I will also continue to attend our local Remembrance Day commemoration each November as I have done for as many years as I can remember, but I will not be celebrating Armed Forces Day.

Perhaps it will be used as an opportunity for those in power to reflect on their cavalier abuse of the bravest sons and daughters in the land. But somehow I doubt it.

Edinburgh gets what it voted for

It comes as no surprise to me that Edinburgh has made it into the top ten list of congested cities.  That was, after all, what Edinburgh's Labour councillors, supported only by the Greens, said would happen when the referendum on congestion charging in the capital was so soundly defeated in 2005.

People's attitudes to congestion charging bear many similarities to those with the council tax freeze, which I posted on recently. If you ask people if they want to pay £2 to drive into the capital, they will invariably say no. Ask them to consider the alternatives and perhaps a different answer would have been forthcoming.

Yet that detail was what was so clearly missing from the debate at the time. Would people mind deaths resulting from emergency services being gridlocked? Did businesses appreciate the financial benefit of cutting half an hour off a cross city journey? No, it was all about a £2 charge - with opponents omitting to remind us that it would only operate during weekday peak travel periods. One stark example of the level of debate I recall was the alleged disincentive to visit restaurants in the city; yet during weekends and evenings when people would wish to do so, the charge would not have operated. And even if it did, would £2 added to the cost of a meal really have put people off?

It was also clouded by political parties which saw the way the popular vote was swinging. Congestion charging was Liberal Democrat policy, but true to form, they opposed it in this instance. Even the Scottish Socialists sided with the Tories on this one.

Midlothian's Labour councillors, in their usual nineteen sixties mindset, opposed their Edinburgh colleagues, but were at least consistent in their desire to encourage as many of its residents to drive into Edinburgh as possible, helped along by the A68 Dalkeith bypass.

There is no doubt that the Edinburgh trams project has been badly mishandled. It could have and should have been built in its entirety and within budget, as other cities throughout Europe have ably demonstrated. However, leaving the mismanagement aside, congestion charging would have provided a financial boost to extend the network out to Midlothian, or even with the current scenario, allowed it to be completed without risking the independence of Lothian Buses.

Instead, we have no trams, impending gridlock, and a consequent threat to the economic well-being of the city and its environs.

Even so, is congestion charging the answer to congestion? Especially as London, with its well established scheme, is still ahead of us in the congestion league. Using financial incentives to change behaviour only changes the behaviour of the less well off, and perhaps they have a better reason to drive into Edinburgh that the rich. Allowing, say, only vehicles with odd/even number plates into the city on alternate days doesn't hit those who can afford two cars.

In the light of this, and a clear dislike for the public to delve more deeply into debate, perhaps the answer is to restrict everyone's access by banning all cars from certain areas and pedestrianising more widely.  Forcing people out of their cars in this way would encourage greater use of an already excellent public transport system in the city, whilst ensuring all car owners are treated equally, whether rich or not.

The alternative it seems, is that we steadily move up from seventh in the league, and people are eventually coaxed out of their cars, quite simply because it's faster to walk.

Council Tax freeze and local democracy

Much was made in the Scottish election of the various promises to freeze Council Tax and specifically the SNP's five year pledge, seen as a major vote winner.

It's not difficult to understand why this was popular.  Ask anyone if they want taxes to rise and the answer is usually no, but give them a range of options on how else to raise the required revenue and I suspect a Council Tax freeze would not seem so attractive. The problem is the options were not spelled out by the SNP (or Labour) and I think that was deliberate, for reasons I'll go on to in a minute.

Firstly look at the figures. It's estimated that the current saving for a Band D householder is around £1.20 per week. Those with bigger houses save more and those with smaller houses or on housing benefits a lot less. That's not the way I like to see tax changes to apply.

Compare this to other changes to household budgets. A teacher or other public service employee on around £30,000 a year and with inflation running at around 5% will lose over £40 a week following a 2-year pay freeze. Yet I wonder how many voted SNP for £1.20 a week saving?

The total cost of the freeze over the 8 year period from 2008/9 to 2016/17 is expected to be £3 Billion - hundreds of millions of pounds each year which have to be found from somewhere, and by all accounts not from those with big houses.

The real problem I have with the Council Tax freeze though is the erosion of local democracy. Currently about 80% of councils' income comes from Government funding, with the remainder from Council Tax. So if our councillors wanted to increase the council budget by 1% they would need to raise Council Tax by 5%. Is it worth it?

And this is where I think the MSPs in parties which aspire to Government want us to be. Not just to make it a no-brainer that councillors will not bump up the tax, causing embarrassment to their own party hierarchy, but also to keep a firm Holyrood hand on council budgets.

Whilst the last SNP administration in Holyrood reduced ring-fencing to around 4% of the central government grant, which was a step away from centralisation, the tendancy has been continually to foist more and more statutory responsibilities, like care of the elderly, on to councils, leaving them little lee-way in how they manage their budgets.


Local councillors are becoming more and more administrators of budgets handed down from Holyrood, and thereby becoming less and less accountable to their electorate for how that money is spent.


So should we change the system? My own party's preference is for Land Value Tax, which has a major advantage of discouraging land banking and speculation, but what of the Local Income Tax? I suspect the SNP has looked down that hole and stepped back, so is keen to retain Council Tax whilst keeping local councillors on a short leash, and the Council Tax freeze helps them do just that.

Why the winner under Alternative Vote is a cool cat

A comment often made by those opposed to electoral reform is that voting systems isn't something they hear about 'on the doorsteps', and no it isn't. However, the voting system used to elect our MEPs, MPs, MSPs or councillors affects every one of those issues that do exercise the minds of voters.

That's because in many cases the voting system used can encourage us to vote for people who are most likely to keep out those we don't want, rather than vote in those we do. Take for example, the current debate ahead of this week's referendum, on whether to change the current First Past The Post (FPTP) system used to elect MPs to Westminster to Alternative Vote (AV).

Now I don't think changing the system will greatly alter the number of MPs of each party elected. What it will do though, is to remove the tactical vote so often encouraged by candidates who came second in a particular constituency last time ("It's a two horse race", "a vote for x is a wasted vote", "Winning here").

There is a humorous, but excellent video of how AV works, using the example of how cats, which would never consider voting for a dog, would find their votes split under FPTP - letting in the dreaded dog - but not under AV. Any voting system which encourages voting for a candidate other than the one you really want is flawed and deciding who others are likely to vote for shouldn't be part of the decision making process, but under FPTP it is - otherwise you may find your vote is wasted.

A move to AV would encourage more candidates to stand, particularly those with similar views. Take for example the far left - SSP, Solidarity, Socialist Labour, Respect, SWP to name but a few. In some places, a candidate from the far left may be preferred by the electorate, but if all these parties stand against each other, under FPTP the Tory may even be elected, despite being generally disliked (a single dog up against many cats). With AV, that simply won't happen.

In the cats and dog analogy, supporters of FPTP maintain that the cat which wins under AV is less popular than the dog. I doubt if many would agree. They also argue, erroneously, that under AV, voters whose votes are transferred get more than one vote. What actually happens under AV is that there are several rounds of voting - and those who voted for the dog also get to vote in each round - it's just their vote isn't transferred.

Another argument the No to AV camp uses is the cost of switching to AV (which is also flawed as it includes the cost of the referendum itself - money already spent - and the use of counting machines, which aren't needed). However, if we had a voting system (as in Scotland) which reduces the likelihood of a single party gaining an overall majority on a minority of votes, we could dispense with the House of Lords, an unelected body set up to act as a moderating influence on the House of Commons. We get by without such a chamber in the Scottish Parliament, so why not at Westminster?

Ideally, we should have a fully proportional electoral system for Westminster, and the Single Transferable Vote is my choice for that. Although AV is an improvement on FPTP, AV is not proportional. However, moving from AV to STV is simple - just merge constituencies together and hey presto! As far as the voter's concerned, there's little change - just mark your preferences 1,2,3, etc in the same way. Even Casual Cat could approve of that.