Your Every Move is Being Watched

We have become used to CCTV cameras everywhere these days, even although we may not be too happy about them.    Our mobile phone logs into the nearest base station every so many minutes, effectively tracking its location.    As we drive along roads, number plate recognition is used to monitor traffic flows, but increasingly to track criminals.    Our supermarket knows exactly what we buy.    How we choose to live our lives is becoming more and more in the public domain.

But now the government in its Communications Data Bill is proposing that ISPs have available all of our e-mails for the past 12 months as well as how much time we spend online and a record of where we go when online.   

This is really a step too far.    It is exactly equivalent to the government asking the Royal Mail to open, photograph and have available for examination, every piece of mail we receive (or send too).    There should be a massive fuss about this.

Fuel Shortages

Ineos, the people who run the large oil refinery at Grangemouth are in a dispute with the Unite union over pension rights.    The Union have called a two day strike next week, but the problem is (so the employer says) that you can’t just turn a refinery off for two days - it takes a week to close and more time to open again.    Ineos say that Scotland could have no fuel next week and shortages for a whole month - because of the two day strike.

I realise that there is some ‘positioning’ going on here, but yesterday’s headlines said ‘Don’t Panic’.   This predictably produced queues of motorists at forecourts, as pictured in today’s papers.    I expect that tomorrow we shall see a picture of a forecourt with a ‘no petrol’ sign.    It has been irresponsible behaviour from the parties involved and the Press in particular.

You see, even with Grangemouth closed for a month, there is enough fuel to go round.     We have 70 days stock.    Grangemouth produces 10% of the UK’s fuel, and with early mobilisation and transport arrangements of fuel from elsewhere, it should be possible to maintain fuel supplies.     It is a message that the Government needs to publically support.

During the last fuel protests, as we watched the supermarket shelves thin, and as we began to drive everywhere much slower than normal to conserve fuel, I think we were 24 to 48 hours away from serious civil unrest before the protest was called off.

I hope that it does not come to this again.    Ineos and the Unite have been urged to keep talking by the Scottish Government, who themselves have started early contingency planning.

Carol Hogel - A Note of Thanks.

Carol Hogel is an American who has been living in Scotland for the past 25 years.    She has been a major sponsor of the arts in Scotland and the UK - to the tune of £20 million through the Dunard Fund which she set up.

She has contributed to the RSNO, most UK opera companies, the National Galleries of Scotland, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and lots more.    It is a big list, and adds up to a lot of money.

For Scotland, through her generosity, she has allowed us to be genuinely ambitious with artistic projects, like the building of the Playfair project at the National Gallery, like bringing Peter Stein’s Parsifal to Edinburgh, and so much more.      She helped rescue the Edinburgh International Festival from a financial black hole.   In short, she has made a major contribution to the UK arts, particularly in Scotland.

But now, faced with what she sees as a tax for bringing her wealth to the UK - the Brown/Darling  non dom tax of £30,000 pa, she has announced that she is moving to California, where philanthropists giving to the arts are appreciated.

Shamingly, it was not the tax itself which tipped the balance, but a chippy article written by Robert McNeil in The Scotsman which concluded by saying “The rich are leaving, and good ruddy riddance to them”.   Hogel wrote a letter back accusing McNeil of “taking ethnic cleansing to a whole new level” and calling him “destructive, spiteful and philistine”.    

A civilised country is measured in part by its artistic and cultural status and aspirations.     A vibrant arts sector contributes to the high quality of life we enjoy in Scotland.    It encourages others to visit, and it provides many jobs.

So, this is to say thank you so much to Carol Hogel for her generous contributions.      I am so sad it had to end like this.     NcNeil and The Scotsman should be hanging their heads in shame.

You are now free to leave Dundee - no tolls.

Today is the first day that sees tolls being lifted on the Tay and Forth Bridges.    

There used to be a charge each way on both bridges, but economics showed that tolling just one way produced similar results, so while Dundee has been free to enter for a while, you have been charged to leave ………. until today.

We actually crossed the Forth Bridge at 10.30 last night, and there were armies of people in yellow jackets sorting out cones.    One yellow jacket was taking a photo of the last toll collector in her booth.    It is a bitter-sweet moment because although traffic now flows free, I imagine most of these people won’t have jobs today.

I am just old enough to remember the old ferry across the Forth which we used to cross to see our grandparents  in Edinburgh.    I remember my grandmother saying at the time that the people who worked on the ferries (which stopped in 1964 immediately the bridge opened) were to be given jobs as toll collectors.    They collected half a crown each way - that’s 12.5 pence in today’s money.

It really is the end of an era.

Police Cordon

We had a bit of excitement in our village this week.   A police cordon appeared with cones and tape blocking off the whole pavement on one side and parking on both sides of the street.    A white boxy trailer thing (mobile incident room) appeared, and there were a series of rather chilly looking policemen standing guard in rota.     Then a minibus of the white suited brigade rolled up to get stuck into forensics.    It was the whole works.  

Like everywhere else, we get our share of vandalism, and we had a stabbing in the 1970s, but being good the Taggart watchers that we are (supporting Scottish acting talent of course) it looked all set for the big man himself to roll up, climb out of his car and announce ”there’s been a murder”.

Well, not exactly.    A cannabis factory had been discovered - a whole house growing cannabis plants.    500 plants, according to the local paper.    Apparently these places are springing up all over the place these days, but to be honest, we did not expect it in our busy Main Street.

The Police set up the cordon on Monday night, and it was only lifted late on Thursday afternoon.    To the layman like me, that’s a long time to deal with 500 cannabis plants and get a few fingerprints.    It was very disruptive to the shops round about and casued significant loss of business.

Still, the law must take its course.   Currently not sure if anyone has been arrested for this.

Trump’s Golf Course

Donald Trump wants to build a massive golf course resort north of Aberdeen.    The golf courses would also involve a big hotel and a few hundred houses to pay for it.     The trouble is that the site is environmentally important.   To cut a very very long story short, Aberdeen Council threw out the plans on the casting vote of the Planning Committee Chairman.     Normal procedure from that point would have been for Trump to appeal, and after that for the Government to call it in for determination.    What actually happened was that the Planning Committee Chairman was sacked and the decision has been reversed.   

It is not good.    Elected representatives should be allowed to get on with their job, and the democratic process respected.   The project would have been called in by the Govermment in any case, and Trump should have been more patient instead of throwing his rattle out of the pram and threatening to decamp to Northern Ireland.    There are also accusations of sleaze by MSPs interfering behind the scenes.    And one law for the Trumps of this world and one for the rest of us is not a good way forward.

Having said that, this application should never have got to the point of entrenched positions.    Faults on both sides I think, and Trump appears to have been riding roughshod over some local opinion to get what he wants.    There should have been more allowances made for local views, and planning compromises offered.

Compare the project at St Andrews Bay, where new golf courses and a big hotel have been built.    This did not need to rely on hundreds of houses to make it work, and was a ‘pure investment’ in golf.    So why couldn’t Trump do a similar project at Aberdeen?   

The Trump golf course development is one that Scotland and Aberdeen in particular really needs, although the location is perhaps a bit remote and prone to haar off the North Sea.    It is good news that the project has been called in, and hopefully it will be given the green light, but quite appalling for local democracy.    How the MSPs come out of it remains to be seen.

And of course, there is the scruffy farmer holding out against a Trump takeover from the middle of what will be two golf courses, despite being offered a generous sum to move  - but that’s a whole other story.

Glasgow - Scotland With Style

I had not come across the Glasgow City branding before, and I am very impressed with what has been going on here.    Glasgow as a city is getting things together in a way that will make Edinburgh  rather envious.      As Edinburgh quietly drops its pathetic three wavy line logo, Glasgow has moved on from the ‘miles better’ campaign and has come up with this Branding Video. 

OK, I know that there is another side to the coin in Glasgow, but this is upbeat and positive.   Coupled with the successful bid for the Commonwealth Games in 2014, this is a city going places.

Oh, and in case you are reading this and chuckling to yourselves about the old Glasgow vs. Edinburgh thing, working together with Edinburgh is very much part of where Glasgow sees itself going.

Edinburgh Inspires - Logo

 

The logo and brand for Edinburgh called “Edinburgh Inspires” which is basically three curvy lines is being “quietly dropped”.     It cost £800,000 to create and the project has had a further £120,000 spent on it.

While I realise that a brand is much more than the logo we see, to scrap it so early looks a hideous waste of scarce public funds at somewhere over £300,000 per wavy line.

There is probably an element of the “New Council” inheriting the brand from the “Old Council”.    General Elections have more cost implications than are immediately apparent.   And remember too that since May “The Scottish Executive” has become “The Scottish Government”.

Carbon Offsetting

Carbon Offsetting is a murky world, and a tricky concept to grasp.       Every week the Sunday Times Travel section sends its journalists all over the place, but every week, they print how much they have paid to offset their carbon use.     There is a certain smugness to all of this which I find distasteful.

Many businesses are aspiring to become Carbon Neutral.    Apart from “saving the planet”, it is a great marketing tool.

So that’s OK then?

No, I don’t think so really.   On a number of counts.      Firstly, carbon offsetting should be a last resort.    Businesses should have reduced their carbon footprint to as low as possible before offsetting the rest, and I am not sure this happens.    Secondly, who regulates the projects which benefit from the carbon offsetting money?   Nobody, it seems.   Stories of treadmills in India and the rest make for a deep uneasiness in the whole concept.    Thirdly, and linked to this, is how can businesses, organisations and individuals making carbon offsetting payments be certain that their cash is being used efficiently and in genuinely carbon-beneficial ways?

In Scotland, a new scheme is being launched in November for tourism businesses called Climate Change Scotland where projects are Scottish and vetted for suitability.    Evidence of carbon reduction by businesses intersted in contributing is required.     Perhaps this is a good way forward.

Flooding

When Perth flooded last, people whose houses were damaged were out of them for 6 months while their homes were dried out and put back together.     So my thoughts are with the huge number of people who have had to leave their houses in the flooded areas of England - they face long haul to get things back to normal.    It is a truly appalling catastrophe.

The plight of people and their homes, traffic trying to manage and boats sailing down High Streets is always first to hit the TV screens, and rightly so.     But the vast areas of countryside underwater represent acres of spoilt crops and grass.   The crops will be unharvestable, and the grass too waterlogged for grazing, meaning that livestock may have been brought inside into farm buildings and already consuming their ‘winter feed’.   Quite apart from the effect on individual farmers’ livelihoods, the flooding is bound to push up the price of food in the shops.

Like all farmers in the UK, I have to ’set-aside’ some of my farm to take it out of production.    Set-aside has never been popular with farmers or the public, except possibly the environmentalists.    Farmers hate it because they know that they should be using their land for producing food, not weeds;   the public hate it because they see farmers being paid ‘to do nothing’.   (Actually set-aside does have management costs).   

Happily there is talk of set-aside being fixed at 0% for next year - although there is a tremendous amount of European red tape to get through to ratify this (and we are in the summer recess apparently).    Already the environmentalists are worried.

Actually, we have incredibly cheap food at the moment.   Food as a percentage of the family spend is much much less than it was 25 years ago.    We could be in for quite a shock as the damage to the countryside is added up over the next few crucial weeks as the main cereal harvest approaches.