Aye, so that happened

Scotland voted.

Scotland voted No, to be precise.

With a ten per cent margin, 55:45, Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Do you see what I did there?  I accepted the result.

I could list the actual turnout, and so on, I could break it down by each individual count, but I accept that this was the vote.

I am disappointed, as are many (a little over 1.6 milllion, not to mention all those who weren't allowed to vote for reason of residence or age) by the result, but because at least some readers will, by the end of this short piece, probably be trying to label me as in denial, I will reiterate one more time:  More people, by a substantial number, voted for Scotland to remain in the UK than voted for it to be Independent.  I do not deny this, and, indeed, predicate much of what follows on this fact (possibly the third time that the word fact has been used to mean a fact rather than a nebulous possibility that the writer places hopein in Scottish political discourse since 2012).

I have seen some people asserting that the count or the vote themselves were in some way rigged.  Having had friends at the Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee counts that I trust implicitly, none of whom have suggested any foul play, I am happy to accept the result as stands.

The referendum is a snapshot of public opinion and will at a given moment in time.  Up until the tail end of 2013, I was formally undecided, with a preponderance towards a No vote, my movement away from which I have detailed previously.  People change their minds.

The binary nature of the Referendum question posed polarised the campaign massively, and the idiot fringes of both sides did much to try and drag the debate into the dirt.  From my perspective, the Scottish Secretary and a few other BT high heid yins were rather terrible for presenting gendered hate speech directed towards JK Rowling as being official Yes campaign policy, while the many sins carried out in their name without their request or support, Yes were less likely to attribute to BT.

The majority of the debate wasn't abusive, wasn't aggressive, and was in fact an exposition of just how much everybody cares about Scotland.

And people will go on caring about Scotland.  A good number will believe that Scotland and her people would best be looked after through Independence.  I don't think, and never have thought, that Independence is the only way the poor people of Scotland could attain better lives - that is palpably not true - but I worry that the triangulation of politics towards the interests of a minority of the population in swing seats in England means that it will be harder for this to happen than if we were independent.

In the tail stages of the Campaign, Better Together received a boost when the leaders of the three main Unionist parties made a vow to offer faster, better change (or some similar form of words) in the event of a no vote.

What this means is still foggy, but implied in it was massively increased fiscal control for Scotland, whilst retaining the Barnett formula.  A change which could, if also applied to Wales, be massively to their detriment  possibly, given their differing economy.

The referendum, in which a majority of people voted No (still not denying it, notice) took place after this vow was made.  We are now seeing Westminster frantically trying to work out what fater better change is and how it is delivered.

If it is not delivered, won't some No voters feel very aggrieved?  And wouldn't it be understandable for yes voters to feel like they possibly lost as a result of a lie?

In such an event, if a party, or coalition of parties, were to present themselves to the Scottish Electorate with a priority manifesto commitment towards running a further referendum in light of that failure to deliver, would that really be denying the previous result?  I would argue not.

H

Bob

I was going to say that I didn't know Bob Crow personally,  that I knew him in a comradely but distant way ("professional" is so much a bosses' word that I could never say it here,  but it was in our working lives that we met).

But then I thought about it,  and I knew as much about him personally as I needed to know.

As a 24 year old first time delegate to the TUC,  at an evening Reception that I had not exactly been invited to,  the best known General Secretary in the Trade Union movement broke off a chat he was having with someone I didn't know to tell me how much he had enjoyed my maiden speech to Congress.

He spoke to me about what I had said,  and told me that I had said it well.

That means a lot. He was in his own time,  I wasn't part of his Union,  but he felt it was important to talk to me. That is all I will ever need to know to know that Bob was special.

In an era where the media decry trade unions as an archaic irrelevance, they could never say that about Bob. His force of character and strength of belief,  backed up by an amazing membership who understand solidarity like no other made him the target of opprobrium, yes,  but never accusations of insignificance.

Bob and the RMT had a symbiotic relationship, each strengthening the other,  and in an age when few Trade Unionists are household names,  Bob was a brand of his own,  the conscience of a class and a nation, unassailable and erudite without softening his diction or doffing his bunnet.

We still have fine leaders in the movement,  and Bob,  who was never one to steal the limelight in my experience, would say that he was only who he was because of the organisation behind him,  but the loss of the one household name in the movement will leave a gap.

RIP,  Brother Crow.  You fought the good fight.

From Yes (before the question was being asked) to No and back again

To put in context my attitude to the referendum on Scottish Independence later this year, you really have to understand my life as a nine year old.

That year, my primary school class undertook a project on the Scottish Wars of Independence, and I met my first English person of an age with me.  We didn't get on.  At all.

The combination of these two things, and a trip to the old Bannockburn visitors centre, at which I emphatically took brass rubbings and felt massively ripped off by a statue of Robert the Bruce that looked nothing like as impressive as he should have done, and a 1987 election in which Scotland's votes yet again were not reflected in the UK Government we got, fed into a very xenophobic, anti-English form of Nationalism, which it took me some time to overcome.

For all that my mother will tell you otherwise, I was a pretty horrible child.  Well, certainly to the girl who would grow to become Dr Catherine Birchmore.

It took me a while to grow out of that.  Not just the being mean to Cathy thing, the general sense of grievance.

I identified firmly on the left from my mid teens, but didn't really question my Nationalist notions, even as I grew fonder of Cathy, and it wasn't until my early twenties that I really started to think a bit more about concepts of Nation and identity.

I developed at that time an aversion to borders - selectively permeable membranes dividing working people while allowing the rich to pass through at their leisure, and like most who consider themselves leftists, came to realise that those who struggle to keep a roof over their heads the world over have more in common with each other than they do with those who rent them that roof at exorbitant price.

I felt this to be incompatible with my previous desire for an Independent Scotland - that by seceding from the Union we would be (if not necessarily in physical practice - I wasn't that gullible, even as a Unionist) creating a new border, and separating ourselves further still from working people elsewhere.

From a position of ideological purity, I still adamantly dislike borders - were I to be handed the keys to the world and told I'm driving tomorrow, the world would move to a planned economy based upon need, with adequate resource shared the world over obviating the "need" under capitalism for border control.  If people wherever they are have what they need, people would not feel the pressing need to migrate for any of the reasons that currently compel economic migration and encourage workers to be set against each other in a  race to the bottom.

I'm entirely open to being handed those keys, but just in case that doesn't happen, I've had to think about how things might be made better for others using what limited power my individual vote gives me, and quite frankly, an individual vote in an independent Scotland would be proportionately more powerful than an individual vote in the UK currently is.

One individual vote is still a tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of votes cast, but it is still a bigger fraction than my vote in a Westminster election, and that amplifies when you consider the effect of engaging with friends and colleagues on issues of importance - the small circles we move in are suddenly proportionately ten times or more bigger in their clout than they are in a UK context.

I want a fairer world.  I don't think an Independent Scotland will instantly result in that, but I do think it will be easier to make Scotland fairer.

There are no facts about what WILL happen if Scotland votes Yes, other than that negotiations on what happens next will commence, and they won't be easy.  If you think that we'll be living in a land of free heavy beer and pie suppers in the sky the minute we vote yes, you're an idealist whose naivete I can honestly say I envy.  We can speak of probabilities, but the one hard fact is that if we vote yes and become an independent Nation, the votes of Westminster constituencies outwith Scotland will not directly determine the party make-up of the Government with responsibility for all those matters currently reserved to Westminster.

But likewise, anybody convinced that there are more facts about what WILL happen if Scotland becomes Independent is just as naive - there are probabilities, just as there are probabilities if we vote Yes.  But what WILL happen, we don't know now - there could be a thermonuclear war two days after a No vote (not as a result of one - correlation does not imply causation) that wipes us all out.  Improbable, but not impossible.  We could stay in the EU, we could secede from that Union.  We could go to war, the banks could collapse again, the NHS could be sold off lock, stock and barrel to the highest bidder.

There's a lot more I could say, but I want to keep it short.

I'm voting yes, because much as I respect many of my friends and comrades who advocate a No vote, I see the probability that the very best we can hope for if we vote no is an ongoing cycle of Westminster being marginally less evil and marginally more evil.

I'm voting yes, because I have hope for an independent Scotland that I don't have for the UK as it currently stands or is likely to stand.

An analogy about language

I posted this on someone's facebook status when they made a comment about a report that Tayside Police had issued a diktat that Officers could no longer talk about "manning" the phones, but now had to refer to "staffing" them.  


Once again, a reading of the first (and while negative, this is still the closest to a balanced report the story got, seemingly) story published, indicates that this isn't in fact an instruction (or, as at least one tabloid report suggested, a "law" for the police), but rather a suggestion of best practice.


Which is a little less sinister, really.   Anyway, this analogy was my take on it.  I welcome any comments, but they're probably likely to go unread because I'm rubbish at checking back on here, so tweet or FB me instead.

The English language, as it stands, is the linguistic equivalent of a farmhouse built up over a vast period of time - the original stones were borrowed from older structures, and every year a new lean-to is fixed onto the side, made from a mixture of new material and stuff that is imported from further off.

Its mode of construction - the different materials, the clumsy joins - mean that it lets in drafts and creaks and groans at night. In parts it has rusted and some fine carved detail has worn away in wind and rain.

If someone were building a new farmhouse on the spot from scratch, it would look very little like it does, but the energy required to knock it down and start again is massive when, for the most part, it serves its purpose fine. So every year, whilst adding on lean-to structures, repairs are also carried out to try and ensure that where there are leaks and drafts these are minimised, or better still, stopped entirely.
 

PCS National Ballot

A short video outlining the reasons why I voted yes to both questions in the PCS National Industrial Action ballot today.

Today was very productive, right up until the point I finished this.  then, I just flumped out.  Sadly I have an unfortunate amount of homework this weekend - redrafting the Revenue & Customs PCS Campaign pack in conjunction with my good friend John Davidson, and doing Trades Council stuff preparing for our half day pensions conference on the afternoon of the 27th of June [plug plug]

Bed beckons...

Sometimes 140 characters aren't enough

This morning I've read a lot of different reactions to news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, and to the response there has been in America.

I neither revel in his assassination nor decry the fashion in which he met his end as murder, which at least a few have done, and more likely will as today rolls on.

Someone tweeted bemoaning that 'now we won't get to hear his motivation'. (I Don't attribute the quote, as I hope it was written in haste, rather than the product of great reflection)  in the opinion of your humble correspondent, there are likely relatively few of us who have not seen one of the video messages, or heard one of the audio messages, in which the 'motivation' for attacks on the West was set out.

The 'Great Day for Freedom' line taken by Iain Dale, Guido et al (which I'm happier to reference as being consistent and unlikely to be retracted at any point in the near future) doesn't appeal to me particularly, though. 

I'm flying (a domestic flight, I'm afraid to say) twice this week, and while I won't be changing my plans, I am slightly more apprehensive after this news than I have ever been before about doing so.  This doesn't smack of freedom to me.

Bin Laden was the leader of an active terrorist organisation, who had claimed responsibility for atrocities around the world.  The movement he led was not one of freedom fighters, and the indiscriminate attacks he assumed responsibility for paid no attention to the political nuances of those who died.  He should neither be considered a hero nor a martyr.

His assassination will not herald the end of terrorism of this type, but that does not mean that it was immoral to move in for the kill - some innocent lives will be saved as a result, and that is a good thing.  On a utilitarian basis, the greater good has been served. 

However, the deaths of innocents will not stop with his death, and so the triumphalism evinced today is naive.

Bin Laden was, in order to fit with a narrative that is friendly to dumbed down news and a cinematic storyline, set up as the big bad guy at the end, ultimately responsible for all the evil in the world.  The actual situation is infinitely more complex, and for as long as there is oppression and injustice in the world, there will be conflict, and none of us will be free or safe.

Bin Laden's death may be one I am willing to countenance, but I cannot countenance the countless deaths of innocent civilians and working soldiers that have been caused by Governments desperate to be seen to be doing something. 

The continuing presence of occupying forces in the Middle East serves to foment the kind of hatred that Bin Laden felt, and while the loss of a leader may create a vacuum that temporarily unsettles the operation, new recruits to that cause are created every day, some of whom will have the abilities to take Bin Laden's place.

Today's news may bring some succour to families here, in the US and elsewhere, that the objective that their loved ones died trying to achieve has now been accomplished. The strategy was wrong, however, and unless there is a radical rethink and a withdrawal of troops, the killing will sadly never stop, in either the Middle East or in the West.