Scottish Politics
I watched with interest the apologies of the Scottish Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson. Well I say apology I really mean denial, well I say denial I really mean blame someone else, well I say someone else I really mean everyone else. He flapped about, read statistics about weather reports. The BBC contradicted his report of no warning as did all the other Political Parties. However only the Labour party Called for his resignation. He started by saying he was responsible and then passed the buck to every one else involved. He is as Brian Taylor would say on a shoogaly nail. He has to go now.
The Wicki Leaks web site has “leaked” information about the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi the UK Government is “alledged” to have been afraid of reprises from Libya. They also say that Scotland was offered “Treats” to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. There was also the contents of a conversation between Jack Straw and Alec Salmond where he indicated that if Megrahi was to be released it would be “his decision”. Now I read with Intrest (as I always do my fellow blogger Joan McAlpine’s Blog “Go Lassie Go” on her take on the Wiki Leaks story. Which was a a straight analisis of the information released. Joan says that it vindicates the SNP, I am not sure how her logic works on this as If the leaked information is true, which everyone believes then it does not vindicate the SNP. I am not saying that they took any “treats” from Libya. I am saying that Alex Salmond wants to distance himself from the decision and that decision was nieve (as I have said all along).
Let it Snow, Let It Snow, Let it Snow
Well if nothing else it has given us all something to talk about. Yes you guessed its the weather. Its only the Start of December and already we have had School closures, trains cancelled, roads needing gritted and very low temperatures all major talking points for British people as they are all things we can complain about.
Yes the British love to complain about the weather and this week it has been well worth complaining about. The Coalition must have been in their element it gave the country something else to talk about other than Cuts and Tuition Fees.
Given that the forecasters forecast this you would think we would have been ready, but no. The roads failed to be kept open as they weren’t gritted, the trains didn’t run north of the central belt. The Councils don’t seem to be able to prioritize the gritting. In Hawick today (Sunday) they were clearing the snow from the side of the pavement (which was clear) onto the road which up to that point was clear and had been gritted. They were then loading the snow onto trucks and dumping it beside the river Teviot (the same river which has flooded on a number of occasions over the past two years. Meanwhile the back streets had not even been gritted. The housing estates including Burnfoot (the largest housing estate or small community in the Borders). The Elderly are stuck in their houses but the main street is cleared. It’s all about perception it’s not about the council tax payer.
I agree with the main “Roads” being clear, however the excess snow is not a priority. I would appreciate if you posted what your local council was doing to clear the snow.
Simon Hughes Hero or Opportunist ?
So Simon Hughes has stated that the government will not get approval from parliament for their current Housing Benefit plans. This is not the first dissent but it is the one that may gain momentum. Simon Hughes has been in parliament since 1983 the same year that Tony Blair came into parliament. He is a well liked MP particularly among the grassroots of the Lib Dems. Now what the government plan is to cut Housing benefit by 10% for claimants who have been on Job Seekers allowance for more than 12 months. Now the effect of this is that people in this situation will move from the higher cost housing in such as central London. The question is where are they to move to the budget for Social Housing has been cut by 50%.
So the Government intend to force the long-term unemployed out of the city’s. This seems to have been the last straw for Simon Hughes. For a long time Simon Hughes whose own constituency has the highest level of Social Housing in England has been vocal that more Social Housing is required and I agree with him. The question I have is will Mr Hughes follow through with his under lying threat of rebelling. He voiced concern before about the budget but voted in favour of it. We will have to wait and see. I for one would like to see some Liberal Democrat MPs voting with their principles and not just doing what Nick tells them to. I can see Simon Hughes leading a party of “Real Liberals”. The flip side is that Mr Hughes may not be happy with just Deputy Leader he may be looking for a post in the Government. That of course is conjecture. However I would like most of you not have expected the Liberal Democrats to have agreed to the policies that are being pushed by the Coalition.
Local Authority Cuts
I was at a meeting on Tuesday Night in Hawick Town Hall of the Teviotdale Area committee On the agenda was the discussion of a report commissioned by Scottish Borders Council about the future of Sport and Leisure in the Scottish Borders This report was carried out by Kit Campbell Associates of Edinburgh who are a management Consultancy Firm. Now present at this meeting were all 6 local Councillors who are all worried of course that this will be an election looser if the Local Leisure Centre is lost to Hawick. The political set up of the Hawick Councillors is very unusual there are two wards which are on either side of the River Teviot each ward has one Independent Councillor One Lib Dem Councillor and One Tory Councillor. This makes for strange set up on the council the councils political set up is a Rainbow alliance with a number of independents tho how you can be independent nd part of a group is surly a contradiction in terms. The management consultant started by saying that the Border Towns should not be so centered around them self but think of the big picture. Now I know we live in a “Global Village” but people still need to have certain things on their doorsteps. You still need leisure centers and they can’t just be based on profit and loss.
Benefit Fraud – is Detection Working ?
I recently wrote a post on Benefit Fraud and how it was less than Tax fraud. However I wanted to prove the point by looking at one Local Authorities Benefit Fraud Figures for the last 5 years. In order to show that Local Authorities are taking Benefit Fraud serious and are dealing with it and have dedicated hard-working staff who are working to catch the culprits. Therefore this needs support but not changed as it is working.
I did not choose my own Local Authority as it is rather large and covers mainly a rural area of the Scottish Borders. Instead I chose a local Authority I used to work for. Midlothian Council which has a population of 80,941 (2001). This is a Local authority south of Edinburgh it therefore has a large commuter community as well as new industries such as biotechnology and old industrys such as agriculture. The Mining industry has long gone. However there is the Scottish Mining museum and It also has a tourist trade from Roslin Chapel which was in “The Da Vinci Code”. Midlothian is the Second smallest authority in Scotland.
As Midlothian is quite a varied area I felt it was a better place to look at the Benefit fraud. The figures I have are from 2005/06 – 2009/10. In 2005/06 there was £221,696.14 of Benefit Fraud discovered. This was for Housing and Council Tax Benefit. This was for 74 cases of a case load of 14,415. In 2006/07 the Fraud rose slightly to £227,108.42 this was 79 cases of a case load of 18,442. While in 2007/08 the fraud dropped to £176,066.54 this was 67 cases of a caseload of 18,194. In 2008/09 there was a drop again this time to £118,975.58 this involved 56 cases this was of a caseload of 17,855. In 2009/10 there was a substantial increase to £259,277.19 this was for 70 cases of a case load of 20,228. This shows an increase in Benefit Fraud Detection not necessarily an increase in fraud. The number of cases may not be large but the amount of fraud involved is. Credit must surely go to the investigation team. These figure show that fraud is happening however it appears the method of detection is in place and working.
While looking at the benefit fraud figures I also requested the Rent increase figures for Council House rents as Midlothian unlike a number of other local Authorities in Scotland has not created a Housing Trust. The rent increase were on average 5% each year. Council Tax did not increase over the 5 years you will note I sated the number of Benefit cases per year they don’t really have any bearing on the amount of Fraud Cases and the Rent increase and council Tax have no bearing either.
My conclusion after looking at the figures is that the evidence speaks for its self the current set up for Detection Fraud is working. However given the fact that COSLA estimates that 60,000 Jobs are estimated to be lost due to Government Cuts how long this service will detect all the fraud is the only question I am left with.
My Thanks to Midlothian Council Communications Team for Compiling the figures I have used.
Why MPs should vote against the AV Bill
The Bill to introduce a Referendum on reforming the voting system from First Past the Post to Alternative Vote does not just contains the legislation to introduce the referendum but it also contains legislation to arbitrary reduce the number of seats in Westminster to 600. This is why this bill must be voted against. Gerrymandering with the constituency is wrong for may reasons the main one being the amount of people not on the electoral roll and I know the argument that why didn’t labour do anything about it. Well they did there have been many campaigns to encourage voter registration but at the end of the day this is a responsiblity of Local Government.
However given the fact that the missing number could be as much as 3 Million people this has to be corrected first. So until the Voter registration is fixed you can’t consider changing the size of constituencies . It is also my option that we should not be looking at reducing the number of constituencies but increasing them making MP’s more accountable and less remote to the electorate. You can’t set a figure on the size of a Constituency it has to be based on natural and historic boundaries.
The question over voter registration and the missing numbers is how can this be corrected. The answer really depends on who we are talking about not being registered. Is it home owners or tenants, If it is the simple answer is to use updates from the Council Tax register to also update the electoral roll. In my opinion this should be the case anyway. This would leave non dependants within households ie children and other adults other than the home owner/tenant. In theory you could deal withy this in the same way. Housing is rented on the basis of how many bedrooms you require so therefore an application contains a list of the people who will live in a household with dates of birth the Housing association need only pass on the names and dates of birth. The same can be done when a registering the purchase of a house. Private landlords would have the same requirement. This should make the register more up to date and accurate.
Now to get back to the AV Bill the Conservatives have played a blinder here they know that the Labour party will oppose the gerrymandering with the constituency boundary changes and thus vote against the Bill. It thus creates an opposition to a bill on AV that they do not want passed. They also put Labour in the position of voting against a policy that they were the only party to support prior to the General Election. The Conservatives have also ensured that the AV Vote will not unite the Labour Party and Liberal Democrat Party in a Yes vote at the referendum.
The date they have chosen for the Referendum has also caused controversy. This is due to the fact that it will be held on the same day as Scottish parliamentary elections, English Local Government Elections (excluding London) and Welsh Assembly Elections. In theory the fact that there is already an election in these areas this will mess with the turn out. This will distract from the issue of the vote. Personally I believe that this is another way the conservatives have in ensuring that the referendum is either a No vote or so harmed by the inconsistent results throughout the UK and is questioned for its validity.
Sunday 15th February 2009
We have had the “U T.urn” by Alex Salmond and the SNP this week over a Local Income Tax. So at First Ministers Questions all the Major Parties had a dig and pointed out that the Next thing to go would be a referendum on Independence. More on that later the one point that was raised was what we do about the Council Tax now. The idea behind a Local Income Tax is unworkable and the SNP knew that and that they had no chance of getting the reform passed.
So do they now look at fixing Council Tax and if so how. It’s been tinkered with already around the edges. What sort of reform will work? The benefit system is not under the remit of the Scottish Government so it can’t amend that. It will be interesting to see it the opposition parties let this go or keep at them to go for reform of Local Government taxation.
Anyway back to the referendum on independence how do they plan to get his passed it has no support from the opposing parties but this is one they cant drop at the moment as they will be seen as the one policy party they are cant even though they got power as a minority party they cant get there main policy passed.
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