Why will there be no real public outcry over the SNP‘s latest attempt to fix the independence referendum in their favour with the inclusion of secessionist teenagers in the vote?
Perhaps Scots actually agree with Labour – we all know there are much bigger fish to fry.
Blinking into the sun for the tenth astonishing day in a row, Scots need no reminder that we are teetering on the brink of disaster. So many impending disasters it seems, that we are accelerating towards not reversing from our collective fate.
A tanker has just sailed the “north-east passage” along the Arctic coast of Russian and Norway from Yokohama to Rotterdam thanks to the lack of summer ice. And yet most Scots are using cars as often as we did ten years ago and cheerfully pumping more carbon emissions into the atmosphere not less. At least Scots are now aware of global warming. So aware – according to a new think tank report – that we’re queuing up to shoot the lecturing, smug, self-righteous Green messengers instead of embracing change.
The financial services sector almost single-handedly caused the current recession, but the banks are paying out mega bonuses and it seems no-one can stop them. Again. Likewise the power companies who’ve decided not to pass on a halving of wholesale gas and electricity prices to customers. It certainly is nice to be in control.
Massive cuts in public spending are looming and yet many government departments and projects are overspent. We need more, new, affordable well-insulated homes but the supply has dried up because many were built as a percentage of new commercial developments. Now John Swinney has applied the tin-lid, announcing big cuts in the social housing budget, and though he may be playing politics so Whitehall will let him spend next year’s housing money now, it’s a big gamble.
Will he get £300million brought forward or won’t he? The housing sector must sit on the brink, and wait.
Swine flu may be a non event like Avian Flu or may cause massive disruption this winter -- which will it be? The NHS is quietly checking up on “old” nurses, trying to recruit anyone who’s left the wards but kept their hand in over the last 5 years – just in case. Cardboard coffins have been recommended for any mass outbreak rather than mass graves. And in France laws are being changed to allow remote courtroom appearances. Good contingency planning that will probably never be needed? Or signs that the authorities have seen the future – and it isn’t good.
Even without swine flu, trouble’s brewing. Infections that resist all antibiotics are on the rise. According to one Aberdeen microbiologist the proportion of such cases has risen here from zero to 20 per cent with no new remedies on the horizon for the next 10-15 years.
Even when nature smiles, there are difficulties. Thanks to the good weather, farmers are (almost) happy. Grain drying machines have been on for days – not weeks. But farmers will get no more for their grain because prices are rock bottom - £65 a tonne and £85 for hay. No-one seems to understand why.
We’re not alone facing epic struggles. President Obama is trying to shift the national health spend from wealthy whites to poor blacks. But while Obama labours to introduce European ideas of fairness, prison technicians in Ohio have laboured to administer American idea of justice by jabbing a condemned prisoner 18 times before abandoning execution by lethal injection. The man was guilty of raping and murdering a 14 year old girl 25 years ago. Should the botched execution change his death sentence? America is on the brink of major social change.
In Italy only 5 of a boatload of 75 illegal immigrants from Libya were rescued by the authorities – two women made pregnant after traffickers raped them were the first to die of thirst and exposure. Illegal immigration became a criminal act in Italy earlier this year, so boats passed the dying Libyans but didn’t help. Now a public opinion poll suggests 70% of Italians think the survivors should be sent straight back. Italy is experiencing its own social revolution.
The actor Robert Carlyle is off to Vancouver saying the experience of working on projects that never get off the ground has drained him long enough. The BBC has reportedly used London crews to film new programmes made in Scotland, raising questions about the commitment to spread wealth and decision-making BBC clout beyond London. STV wants to produce its own “Scottish Six” with a mix of Scottish, UK and international news, ending local news opt-outs around Scotland. Meanwhile the main Scottish newspapers including this one, will bid to supply that news to STV instead. Top-slicing the licence fee to pay commercial operators for public service programming may be around the corner. With it – and more dramatically without it – the shape of the Scottish press and media will change forever.
Change is racing towards us as quickly and surely as autumn and winter – but no-one knows precisely when the first leaves will fall or how severe a winter lies ahead. No-one.
Perhaps this is why the SNP government is managing to maintain public support despite u-turns, unpopular budget decisions and exposure as bit players in recessionary times. Cocky doesn’t do them justice. They are dancing like nobody’s watching -- still aiming for a referendum on independence as if they have a hope of holding or winning it. Adding crafty, headline-grabbing proposals like the inclusion of 16 and 17 year-olds – as if the vote can possibly happen. Tossing aside the unassailable arithmetic of Holyrood as if they have a secret Joker card to play, the SNP government has become the master of suspended disbelief. The Derren Brown of the political world.
Are they driven by confidence, bravado, madness, blind ambition -- all the above? Right now, the public may not really care. In the land of the blind the one-eyed person is King. And if that person has a plan, so much the better.
Sympathy comment.
Posted by: Vivas | September 24, 2009 at 12:18 PM