It's our oil - a new Scotland

Once more I watched that fantastic BBC programme A History of Scotland, presented by the wonderful Neil Oliver.


Last night's episode was on Scotland 1920 - 2000, and was on Scotland's economic decline under various Westminster Governments, mass emigration to foreign lands to seek a better life and industry. It is an embarrassment that few Scots will know anything about these things (myself included). However, last night's episode was an extremely fair, but political, hour.

Towards the end it focussed on "Scotland's oil" and how the benefits it could offer increased the pro-independence/Home Rule feelings throughout the country.

I apologise for sounding like an SNP blogger, but having watched it...we got screwed. I now understand Salmond's ramblings about Norway, about what we could have achieved and could still achieve if we owned our own oil. To become independent on the basis of North Sea oil supporting us is, however, no longer realistic. There isn't enough left, we've missed out on the chance to use it while it lasted to invest in our country and will run out before the full effects would be realised. However, I strongly believe that we can have our own new oil in renewables.

Yes, yes, it's been said before, "we can be at the forefront of renewables technology, leading the way and reap the economic benefits blah blah blah". My suggestion is more focussed.

You may have read the story about the proposed Nigg wind farm being delayed. You may have also read the story about the Vestas plant on the Isle of Wight closing due to planning delays and no support from Government.

Planning delays are the biggest hinderance to any real progress and development (and therefore economic benefit) from the renewables sector. The UK has lost Vestas with jobs lost, and if we are not careful, KBR will decide that £100m could be put to better use elsewhere. We need to give them the signal that says, "No it wouldn't".

First of all, we need a faster, more efficient and more pro-renewables panel to decide the planning process. Aesthetics are, I'm afraid, not a valid argument against a wind farm. We need companies who want to invest in our country, bringing jobs to the remote communities to feel like they can do business here. We also need to make it more appealling and we would do that by lowering taxes for renewables firms. I don't know enough about taxation and I know (before anyone points out) that we currently don't really have the power to do it at the moment anyway, but renewables firms should be encouraged to come here as they would only have to pay minimal taxes, a couple of % each year, maximum. The more they invest, over the years, the better off as a country we would be.

Vestas wanted to make wind turbines, but were given no assistance. KBR wants to build an offshore windfarm and are currently reviewing this as a high-risk project as well as facing delay after delay. We need to do all we can, both for Scotland and the environment. Scots were denied a real voice at the Copenhagen table (and a real voice over our oil). But Copenhagen was never going to fix the problem. To do the right thing, to better Scotland, to be as green as we should and to right the wrongs of our oil, Independence may well be the answer to this sceptic as A History of Scotland has shown that Westminster rarely best serves our cold little country.

Political picture of the day...

As they always say...you should never work with kids or animals......ain't that right Fiona?

The BBC begins advertising...

Some of you may not be aware, but as of today, the BBC website has been including adverts on it's website.

The Beeb, paid for by taxpayers, has very quietly found a revenue stream outwith that of our pockets. However, if you go to the BBC News pages, you probably won't see it. That's because it is (apparently) advertising only "to visitors outside of the UK".

Apparently,

"We've introduced advertising to visitors outside of the UK because the new revenue created will allow us to further improve our journalism, our programmes and our website in the years ahead.

Impartiality is of the utmost importance to us at the BBC and for this reason advertising will be clearly separated from editorial content. Advertising will not have any bearing on the news, information or programme content or create the impression of endorsement by the BBC.

We guarantee that you will continue to receive the same high-quality independent content that has made the BBC website one of the most popular news and entertainment sites in the world."

(here's a basic mock up of how it looks - top yellow box: advert. Side yellow box: where adverts are now being placed also with the OTHER TOP STORIES being moved about 4 inches down, out of view when you first open the page)

But when I went on the website, from my office, in the UK, I could see those adverts as plain as day. That'll be the gap in the 99.96% accuracy then!

But my first big question is...if the BBC is now generating other revenue streams, whether outside the UK or not, will this affect the license fee? Nope - I'm going to guess not. (obviously this is not on the Frequently Asked Questions page, yet).

But my other question is...if the adverts are at the very top of the screen, pushing all the news content down by a few inches, and there is also an advert prominently at the top right where visitors are used to clicking for news links, how can they claim that this is "clearly separated from editorial content. Advertising will not have any bearing on the news, information or programme content". Clearly replacing, not separated. You have put an ad where a large proportion of the 'clicking' takes place on your page and the first view of the page now contains adverts when it didn't before and as a result...LESS NEWS at first sight.

What limits or controls will be put on what/who can advertise? There is nothing about this on the information pages. Is there an ethical list made up, so as not to support anything like the airline industry, the oil industry etc? Could David Cameron or Nick Griffin get an ad on there becuase if it's purely based on "who's got the biggest wallet" then there is a major ethical problem for the organisation.

I am a staunch fan and supporter of the BBC in general but the integrity of the Beeb is in question now. They are resorting to tactics which it is supposed to avoid and all with as little fanfare as possible and to be honest, in these hostile times for the BBC, it is, without realising it, looking for a fight that many will be happy to take it up on - and making me angry during lunch when I'm at work trying to read the news or about Rod Stewart as next Scotland manager.

(P.S. Does BBC Scotland get a cut of this money, I would like to know)

Dear Points of View...

Quote of the week...

"I think that Harriet Harman should run the country. Not THIS country. Some country where there is a possibility of a bloody military coup and she is violently dispatched to be watched on youtube."

Political Dissuasion agrees.

Sometimes racial stereotyping is unavoidable...

Sometimes the material just writes its self...

THE BITCH IS BACK

No, I am not referring to myself as "the bitch".

I am of course talking about the female Labour MP - who wakes up every morning, reaches down to her crotch, has a rummage about, finds she still has no testicles, then decides that this must be the only reason why she isn't/won't be Prime Minister - Harriet Harman.

I've recently given up swearing, so this is the toughest post I'll ever write. As you may or may not know, Harman (aka Harperson) is my least favourite living object on earth. Wayne Rooney? Nope. Nettles? Nope. Joseph Fritzel? Not even close!

Harriet Harman, to quote Edwina Currie, is "on a different planet" and "mad, that is now clear". I've posted before about this crazy lunatic, here and here for example, but yet again, I just have to sit at my keyboard and give my red mist a voice.

Any form of positive discrimination is just a bad idea. It makes one group look pathetic (like the guy who only got the job because his dad owns the business) and makes the other group resentful. Do this in a business and you do not for a happy workplace make...do this UK wide and between the sexes (i.e. 100% of the population) and you're asking for a revolution that needs not occur and is a war against ghosts.

Women and men have the same opportunities in business, politics, sport...pretty much every area of British society. To insist upon having the two top jobs fenced in to the 'one man, one woman' split is so far removed from a) democracy and b) anything that can resemble an intelligent executive structure.

In politics, in the top jobs, I think we can all agree we want 'the best person for the job'. Well, seeing as the best people were smart enough to avoid parliamentary politics, we'll settle for the best MPs for the jobs. To then add another layer of filtering from the ability-criteria, that we must also have a crotch-check, is nothing more than gesture politics.

Would a woman be better than a man at running a Government, a bank or big organisation? No.Would a man be better than a woman? No. There's no such debate, that is what I find hilarious. There is no widespread (or even thinly-spread) field of discussion in society about a lack of rights or opportunities for women. There are no claims from inside or outside organisations that the recession was because of the hairy sacks containing sperm generators being attached to members of the boards.

Not once over the last few years (yes, she's been harping on about this for that long), have I heard her applaud, or acknowledge Thatcher being PM. Thatcher, the woman MP elected three times? Ring any belles? If she at least mentioned Thatcher in all of this, I might, just might, think she was doing this for some (albeit obscure) greater good that she thought worth fighting for. But her failure to even draw on Thatcher's achievements highlights, to many readers, that this isn't a "men/women in society" debate, it's a "Harriet/other leadership candidates in the Labour Party" debate.

And in her claims and belief that she is sticking up for the sisterhood...
Harman is picking a fight with the political ghosts of yesteryear. As in Edwina Currie's Times article, if Harman thinks she is representing woman by (in the loosest meaning of the word) "tackling" this issue, ask the women of the UK what they want a deputy PM, whatever their gender, to be focussing on? It's not this.

The state of UK politics - goodbye

Dear Parliament,

I've given up. I have finally lost all hope for a politics I believe in. This country we live in now, is a shadow of what it believes itself to be.

Every country is shaped in it's identity by those people that make the laws and control the money.

And the people in the UK with that power, with a very few exceptions, are a corrupt, morally empty, unashamed collaboration of moral terrorists. We could, and probably will, wail on about the MPs' expenses scandal. But there is no point. Fairness, decency, honesty, integrity - these are characteristics of our MPs that have now been stretched beyond repair and although it is not broken, it's shape will never be the same.

How any MP, party leader or party member could disagree that people like Jim Devine should be sacked is beyond me and most reasonable people. That he is not even expelled from the party does not even merit a response as it should not be the case. The fact that these people get to continue in their jobs, on what I regard as a significant salary receiving an equally significant pension, simply cannot be justified...but justify it Parliament does. This is one example which could easily fit into the bracket of almost every other party.

Safety in numbers, fraud en masse. If only one MP was found to have been "on the fiddle", every other MP, every party, would be clamouring to find a way for him to be removed form his post. There is no doubt he/she would not have lasted more than a month. So when the charges are there, for all to see, against half of parliament, it makes no sense to anyone that resignations are not as regular as daylight.

The back-scratching of politics has long upset many people, but even the "mother of all scandals in the mother of all democracies" is not enough to change the system, the culture of being above everyone and everything else. Not just on expenses.

Political parties are falsifying this country. MPs will vote against what they believe in, simply to please the party. How can an MP have any sense of integrity when he/she is elected (as an MP, NOT as a member of a political party) to vote on various issues, and he/she is knowingly voting for policies and initiatives that he/she thinks are detrimental to the nation? They are voting for things that they think are wrong but claim they act in their constituents' best interests. That nobody else in the blogospehere or political world seem to see the irony, juxtaposition or hypocrisy of any of this is startling.
The fact that nobody cares is what upsets me the most.

When your elected representatives are voting in favour of something they think is a bad idea, in complete opposition to what they do believe, there is no way this can be justified.

The people of this country do not hold the power, the parties do.

And to keep their members happy, dodgy rules and laws and promises are made to sweeten the members and MPs.

Next the parties will be, without recompense, strolling down the road to state funding for political parties - state-sponsored moral terrorism ripping a vaccuum through this country's future for many years to come.

Our Parliament and it's members have been exposed for what they are. Political parties have proven to us that they are not about decency, honesty or 'for the people'...they reward internal loyalty more than honourable characteritics.

But when you do what you think is wrong because the bigger boys told you to, then you are part of a system not fit to look in the mirror.

Some wonder why people don't vote. I don't. I know that no matter how I vote, it won't make a difference. I know that the corruption will continue, the self-interest will always maintain a murky presence and decisions will not always be made for the right reasons. I know that when criminals are deciding their own fate, and morally devoid groups are those making the rules there is no point in having hope.

I know that this country is not what it believes itself to be and, even during a time as blatantly scandal-ridden as this, change will never be significant enough to better this country.

PD