Lord Young, the Pope and Scottish Taxation

Scottish Taxation powers

It has been widely reported here in Scotland that the current SNP Scottish Executive has allowed Scottish tax powers to lapse by failing to fund the various complex databases required for HMRC to be able to levy the variable Scottish income tax. This power was granted following the second question in the Scottish devolution referendum, allowing the parliament to vary income tax on Scottish-linked citizens by 3% in either direction.

This is nonsense. The power to render the tax is still very much valid; indeed, the only problem now is a technical one. Creating a new tax always takes time, the Scottish Executive has, by its actions, simply prolonged that period of time. If it genuinely believes that it can find better use for its funds than maintaining a database which - let's face it - is unlikely to be used, then I see little problem with that.

The central question seems to be one of accountability, which is raised in an excellent article in the Herald by Ian Bell. There are issues over whether anyone, the Finance Secretary included, even realised this situation had developed before announced by the Secretary of State for Scotland. Moreover, as taxation is a power of the Scottish Parliament, not the Executive, one wonders why this was not subject to parliamentary approval, or at least consultation, back in 2007.

Lord Young

It appears Lord Young has his defenders, albeit from an unlikely corner. As with so many things in politics, his comments have been a matter of interpretation: what was insensitive was no so much the sentiment, but its application to the 'vast majority' of people. Huge numbers of people, particularly the least well off and most effected by the economic downturn, are not home owners who are sure that they will still have a secure job in a few months.

Whether it was intended or not, Lord Young's comments seemed to marginalise the least fortune, and for that it is perfectly reasonable that he be told to clarify his remarks or apologise. He should not, however, have been hauled before the public in sackcloth and mocked relentlessly. In a specific area, he was accurate - and he is not the only one who is frustrated with the endless cynicism which seems to have become attached to our economic problems.

The Pope and Condoms

Whilst not a Roman Catholic, the Pope's comments justifying the use of condoms in certain situations has perked my interest from a theological perspective. To illustrate the situation, the Pope commented on male prostitution, suggesting that condom use in this area would be sensible.

This is not a matter of faith, but one of science: it certainly is sensible in such circumstances to take measures to prevent infection. This much ought to have been accepted by the Roman Catholic Church a long time ago. However, from a moral angle, it is still very questionable: prostitution is still considered immoral by Catholics, as indeed is any form of sleeping around.

I cannot fathom why the Pope would believe that people who had chosen to reject his church's teachings on sexual activity would then care a damn about his church's teachings on contraception. Are we seriously to believe there are Roman Catholic male prostitutes out there who forego the use of a condom on religious grounds?

Combined with its prohibition of extra-marital sex, the church's position on contraceptives was perfectly acceptable except when they strayed into technical areas: apocryphal stories of priests suggesting that condoms simply do not work are widespread. In that regard, there is no particularly need for clarification, but perhaps a reminder that faith involves a holistic, not selective, approach to morality.

The Last Days of Labour

A lot of details seem to be spilling out regarding the final days of the last Labour government. One of Gordon Brown's last acts, it seems, was to give David Cameron a paycut - a politically childish act of the highest order. The salary of the Prime Minister was reduced from £194,000 to £150,000 - just £5,480 more than every other cabinet minister, and indeed the Leader of the Opposition who is paid an official salary for his position. As the Conservatives had pledged paycuts for ministers in their manifesto, the salary was then reduced further to its present level of £142,500, lower than David Cameron's former salary as opposition leader. Still, Conservative PMs have a good history of cutting their cloth: Margaret Thatcher only drew the salary of an ordinary cabinet minister in a vain attempt to encourage others to take lower salaries in order to save jobs and fight inflation.

Today we discover, via Lord Mandelson's soon-t0-be-released memoirs, that Nick Clegg informed the former Prime Minister to his face that he could no longer continue in office should any sort of coalition deal be considered. It was Nick Clegg's position that to retain Gordon Brown following an election defeat would have been unacceptable to the British public. Tony Blair, of all people, apparently supported this position in private discussions with Brown.

In true fashion, the former Prime Minister did not give a response to Mr Clegg, but soon after hopped in this car and went off to resign. He is quoted by Lord Mandelson as saying "I have been humiliated enough".

This particular line sums up for me the problem with Gordon Brown's premiership: that he was always on the defensive. He was portrayed as doing little more than begging Tony Blair to pass the job on to him in the later days, and when he received it the suggested General Election to add a little legitimacy to his appointment was taken firmly off the agenda. Since then, virtually every innovation and change contained the faint whiff of compromise, of attempting to appeal to someone: when he decided to smile more on camera, it was perceived as a weak act quite simply because he felt he had to. Whether he did in reality or not, Gordon Brown seemed to lack courage in his convictions and even the most basic courage to display his own personality; in a Nixonesque manner, he seemed incapable of realising that he was now in the highest office in the land, that he could enjoy having satisfied his ambition. All slightly ironic for a man who authored a book on the subject of courage a mere few years earlier: one supposes his fascination with the subject must have been that of a detached observer.

I do not seek to criticise the former PM unduly; I certainly think he was a fine and decent man, yet it seem to me that he failed to ever truly become 'Prime Ministerial material'. Following the election, his departure was dignified: now, it seems, he has disappeared into obscurity. One cannot help but wonder what comes next for a man who cannot help but see himself as having failed at a job he was never quite suited to.

The last refuge of a scoundrel

I cannot help but read anything other than desperation into the Health Secretary's attack on now-infamous Tory MEP Daniel Hannan today. To accuse a politician of being 'unpatriotic' for refusing to adhere to a certain political view point or defend certain politicised institutions must truly be seen as the very worst sort of mindless nationalism. How far, I wonder, does this government-sponsored appeal to ignore logic or opinion for the greater glory of the country go.

A Hannanite I am not, although I do identify as being broadly within the liberal wing of the Conservative Party. Whilst I cannot be as strident as Hannan in calling the NHS a 'sixty year mistake', I can certainly see significant flaws not only with delivery but the model on which the service is based that should be addressed. We do not have the best healthcare system in the world, and the presumption that it should not be improved for fear of upsetting the lieges is nothing short of arrogance. Whether you agree with them or not, Mr Hannan's views on health are far from half-baked: they are consistent, well thought-out and very adequately defended in his blog response to the media hoolah.

The nationalistic angle, however, is rather new - at least to London. In Scotland we have unfortunately been faced with a governing party who accuse others, including the UK Government, of being unpatriotic and even actively 'anti-Scottish' at the drop of a hat. Mike Weir MP tell us that raising the pension age is anti-Scottish because of the marginally lower life expectancy in Scotland; the same insult is trotted out for Ken Livingstone when he dares to suggest that London subsidises Scotland - before Mr Weir goes on to suggest Scottish oil subsidises the rest of the UK! Pete Wishart MP applies the same epithet to the Conservative immigration spokesman for suggesting Scotland is not the most attractive place in the UK for immigrants to settle, whilst Bill Kidd MSP takes it one step further calling the entire Conservative Party 'fundamentally anti-Scottish', with John Swinney capping it all off by stating that the same is true of all 'London-based parties'. Alex Salmond too wades in, applying it to the European Union for cutting UK fishing quotas, and restates Pete Wishart's attack on London's former mayor; although the impact is somewhat lessened by his accusation that the measures would also be 'anti-fish'. SNP's CND group calls trident anti-Scottish too; an SNP councillor uses the same accusation against a Scottish local authority for flying its own flag on most days of the year.

This sort of nonsense is completely unworthy of anyone with half a mind and should be dispensed with from British politics immediately.

The Demon Drink

It has been an interesting few years for the drinks industry in Scotland. An abundance of headlines and television reports make it seem that the raising of the wrist, that most ancient of sports, has slipped out of fashion as political parties vie to obliterate Britain's 'booze culture'. In reality, our relationship our private relationship with alcohol has changed little in the past decade, in spite of all levels of officialdom uniting to regulate its consumption beyond all recognition.

David McLetchie's latest offering is, however, wrong - and counterproductive. The Scottish Executive's proposals for minimum drinks pricing will not materially affect the Scotch whisky industry: whisky is simply not that cheap. What Conservatives, and anyone else with a remotely liberal mindset, should be attacking is the very substance of this proposal, and indeed the continuing Labour/SNP moral panic over alcohol.

Let us first dismiss the health argument against alcohol. Volenti non fit injuria - to he who consents, no harm is done - is a fundamental precept of human liberty. The government has no standing in a free society to justify force against a reasonable person 'for his own good'. The issue of crime, disorder and, to use the modern terminology, anti-social behaviour relating to alcohol is rather more complex, and a matter with which the public is legitimately concerned.

In its most literal sense, these proposals are prejudicial. Alcohol pricing does not significantly affect the wealthy, so the question must surely arise - why target the less well off in society? Why should a person's financial standing determine their standing to drink? Perhaps I am a bitter old idealist, but I consider alcohol an ordinary part of my weekly shopping budget. As a result, I am generally of the opinion that low prices are a positive thing. No doubt defenders of this policy will suggest it is aimed at young people, rather than bluntly suggesting that the poor are somehow unable to hold their wine. Putting aside the ridiculous fallacy, which causes a great deal of our country's social problems, that the youth of Britain are a bunch of potential hooligans, it simply fails to add up. This is the same group of people who the local, Scottish and UK governments have already gone to extremes to prevent having any access to an alcoholic drinks - local licensing boards insure that shops and bars are incredibly strict not only on selling to underagers, but selling to anyone who has the slightest chance of then passing alcohol to underagers.

Yet still, even the underage drinker is no great threat to anyone: I should imagine most cabinet ministers enjoyed a drink or two with their friends before reaching their majority. Arriving as I did at university aged a mere 17, I certainly did - and I, like the vast majority of today's young people, managed to consume without feeling the need to assault anyone or damage private property. Indeed, on balance I would say that drinking is a positive thing: of course, some people overdo it on occasion, but even the average binge-drinker (that most derided of creatures) ends his evening with buying a kebab, stumbling into a taxi without causing a riot and returning home to bed without committing some gross act of domestic violence en route. Guess what - they will probably have enjoyed themselves too, hangovers notwithstanding.

The truth that dare not speak its name is that the Scottish Executive, and the UK Government, don't much care for individual liberty. Since they have both failed miserably to make a dent on crime in this country, being seen to do something, anything, is the next best thing for their electoral prospects. Resorting to the age-old collectivist thinking that suggests people should be vilified for their lifestyle, age and income, and that the freedom of the many should be sacrificed to control the criminality of the few is to prejudge them, to penalise the innocent as an act of desperation because the truly guilty cannot be controlled.

But of course, they can be controlled. Violent criminals belong in prison, something

our society seems to have forgotten. 'Common' assault tends to earn an offender - who, of course, most often is not caught - a police caution or a fine of a lesser sum than that handed down to someone who failed to pay his TV licence. Violent offenders, particularly those who attack victims at random, are serious criminals and must be seriously dealt with. You can almost certainly wager that it is the same tiny minority of criminals who are committing these same offences every weekend, and who will continue to do so with increasing brutality until someone ends up seriously ill or dead unless the State intervenes.

My conclusion, therefore, is simple: punish criminals, don't criminalise the innocent.

The Trendy Vicar

I have just finished reading Alex Massie's recent article in The Spectator amusingly entitled 'John Bercow: Garden Gnome or Trendy Vicar? Or Both?'. To give a quick summary, he dismisses the Speaker's suggestion for removing the proper forms of address for MPs as demonstrating a juvenile understanding of how to reconnect Parliament with the people.

One of the online commenters, rather perceptively, highlights the trendy vicar comparison - pointing out the failure of 'modernisers' in the Church of England (I had a friend at university who bemoaned the same in the Roman Catholic church, condemning everything since Vatican II as 'watered-down silliness') and remarking that 'of course, all the polling shows that the public aren't bothered about dodgy, badly thought through "approachability" reforms.'

Well, give that man a coconut! A nail has been hit on the head.

The trendy vicars (trendy ministers and rectors in Scotland, of course) that have plagued the church since the 1960s have continually failed to connect with their parishes. The same fate awaits the Speaker if he insists on continuing down this path. Whilst not wanting to delve into the realms of discussing religion, I feel church attendance is a fairly good analogy for politics: in both cases a public interest still remains, they are simply not being engaged.

The public want reforms to be meaningful, rather than surface changes to how MPs are addressed, or whether the Speaker chooses to wear in the morning. The British public is, frankly, not that foolish. Those so-called modernists who remain within our once-noble institutions are looking increasingly tired and old fashioned, trying to justify their outdated dogma by applying it to any event that comes along.

When people criticise harmless tradition, it is not often the tradition which they are attacking, but the pomposity, or indeed hypocrisy, of a poorly performing institution glorifying itself. When these same institutions succeed, their pomp is earned. To posit a controversial idea, how about a little more tradition? Could we not gain from reviving the tradition of the town and village hall at the centre of a community? Imagine: MPs' surgeries connecting with the public rather than remaining the preserve of those constituents with a lost cause, or a completely barmy one, who shuffle along with little hope of accomplishing anything. Or how about MPs addressing public meetings of their constituents? Rotten vegetables may well be thrown, but it's a damn sight better than our parliamentarians of old who were 'peeble[d]... wi' stanes when they werena gude bairns'.

If the Commons want to learn from the Scottish Parliament, hailed as an example of where members are addressed by name only, it should not examine surface differences, but rather seek out ones of significance.