The cheek of it.

First you introduce a raft of illiberal, poorly conceived proposals and laws which turn your population into the most watched democratic society on earth.
THEN, one of your own comrades – His Highness David Blunkett MP, the Maharajah of Daily Mail headline driven reactionary policy-making, no less – comes out and suggests that this might be a bad idea!

I’m so glad that knowledgeable people take the time to upload and comment upon images of Glasgow’s relatively recent past. Otherwise, images like this would be meaningless:

Buchanan Street station area in Cowcaddens, Glasgow

It’s taken around the Cowcaddens area. The area as it’s shown here is totally unrecognisable from its current state: apart from the Hamish Wood and George Moore buildings of what subsequently became Glasgow Caledonian University in the centre-left and the distant high flats, very little of what you see here still exists.

I can’t find a modern photo taken from the same angle, but this shot gives you some idea of how the area immediately between the GCU campus and the towerblock on the left now looks.

This and other gems of past and present documentary at the Urban Glasgow site.

From BBC News:

China TV faces propaganda charge
“Chinese intellectuals have signed an open letter calling for a boycott of state television news programmes.

The letter says China’s Central Television (CCTV) has turned its news and historical drama series into propaganda to brainwash its audience.

The author of the damning letter told the BBC that the action should at least serve as a health warning to the susceptible public.

The authorities have been alarmed by the latest development.

They tend to accuse the Western media of biased coverage of China.

But this open letter accuses CCTV of systematic bias in its news coverage”

Three weeks ago today I moved to Zürich, or “downtown Switzerland” as the tourism bureau ads insist on calling it.

My previous visit to Switzerland was to the picture-postcard village of Lauterbrunnen in the Berner Oberland, a mid-summer holiday five years ago with a friend and his family. In Zürich I’ve seen another side to it. Most of these observations will be bleedin’ obvious to anyone who has been to the city, but never mind…

The typical things you expect of Swiss cities are absolutely true. Order and conservatism are clearly an integral part of life in Zürich. The public transport is superb, dense and easy to use. The chocolate is delicious and the mulled wine and roasted nuts are readily available from street vendors. Dozens of ‘private banks’ (the ones where the bankers come to visit you), emblazoned with chandeliers, stern receptionists and smoked-out windows, inhabit the lower third of the Bahnhofstrasse. Shops selling fur ply their trade with abandon. And yes, there are cuckoo clocks in the shops.

However, a few things have surprised me. The extent of the confederal system is one thing: it’s very rare to see any TV adverts, notices or announcements from the government in Berne. Rather, the canton of Zürich seems to have Amts (departments/bureaux) for a whole lot of things that in Scotland and the UK we might consider central government services. About the only thing the central government seems to advertise is military call-ups and exercises.

The prominence of Switzerland’s famous direct democracy is also quite remarkable. A couple of days ago, the people of the canton voted to outlaw smoking in workplaces (yay!). The turnout was low – 37% – but impressive given the phenomenon of ‘voter fatigue’ and other things they warn you about when talking about direct democracy in political science classes. The marketing for the vote was interesting too: the ‘against’ campaign attempted to portray the measure, which is fast becoming a pretty standard piece of legislation across Europe, as incredibly radical, and therefore dangerous. It gave me pause for thought on how socially conservative this state still is.

Another thing that seems slightly unusual, and perhaps impressive, to me is the extent of local media coverage of the city. There’s a TV channel called Züri-TV which broadcasts most of the day, and only covers stories from the city of Zürich. I was in New York City last month, and I can safely say that NY1 is far more parochial and embarrassing than Züri-TV, despite being the local channel for a city sixteen to twenty times as big. Still, the media here retain a hilarious degree of chocolate-box Swissness. By that I mean that train delays (what?!), people in Lederhosen, archery competitions for young boys, and yodelling folk singers are BIG news, even in the self-described ‘kleinste Metropole der Welt’.

Oh, and talking of the trains – they don’t always run on time. But with punctuality a matter of national pride, this circumstance is not taken lightly. When it happens I keep imagining the poor railway signaller who caused the delay getting bawled at in Schwiizerdütsch. Which is not a pretty sound, believe me.

Over and out.

Significant changes are underway in British politics, and Scotland has a crucial role.

Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Scottish politics is changing, and that it is having important implications for the assumptions that UK politics is based on.

The incumbent UK Prime Minister is Scottish and in a spot of bother* over the 10p rate of income tax, a poor showing in the local elections and a general impression of being out of touch (and other trivial matters**). As a traditionally strong source of support for the Labour party, the current troubles of the Scottish Labour Party are causing severe worries for the UK party.

In the past few weeks, the issue of a referendum on Scottish independence has come to the fore oncemore. The Scottish National Party, the largest party in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood and a minority administration, is committed to introducing a referendum in 2010. The Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander attempted to outmanoeuvre the SNP by declaring support for an immediate referendum (her mind, it is said, was changed during an interview on a BBC show). The threat was empty: Scottish Parliament legislative rules prevent private members’ Bills being introduced if the government of the day is planning to legislate on the same issue, so the SNP referendum bill would take trumps. Alexander’s move spectacularly backfired, leaving UK PM Gordon Brown having misled the UK Parliament about her views and the two sections of the party dramatically out of step, with the UK party opposed and the Scottish party committed.

And Alex Salmond (SNP First Minister of Scotland) looking even more smug than usual.

What can we say for sure? There will be a referendum on independence in 2010, after Salmond’s National Conversation finishes up. It is unimaginable that Labour could go back on that now. But the devil will be in the detail – wording matters greatly to the result, as does the selection of options present.

And the result? Anyone’s guess. Polls show anywhere between 25% and 75% support, depending on the questions asked. But an option is likely to be included offering greater powers for Holyrood – an option which would have overwhelming support. The presence of a Tory government in the UK Parliament might be enough to tip the scales toward independence.

Gerry Hassan from Demos provides an excellent summary of the issues leading up to the events of the past two weeks:

 

Gerry Hassan on The Unravelling of Labour Britain   (via Scottish Futures)

The advent of devolution created two different political systems in Scotland: the Scottish Parliament and Westminster. In the later Labour dominance still continues – the only part of Scotland still elected now by First Past The Post and the only part where Labour have a majority of the seats on their customary minority of the vote.

The Scottish Parliament is elected by a broadly proportionally system which means that all political parties are parliamentary minorities. From the first elections in 1999 which Labour finished as the leading party, the SNP established themselves as the clear challengers and opposition to Labour.

Thus, from the onset of the Parliament the dynamics of the two institutions and the parties within them have beat to a different pulse. The party sits in Holyrood in a Parliament where its main opponents sit to the left of them and unashamedly stress their Scottish credentials. At Westminster Labour have most often had to worry about losing votes and winning them from the right and a party emphasising its British qualities. Scottish Labour and British Labour have also had very different internal cultures and external strategies.

 Scottish Labour has had to emphasise its ‘bridge building’ qualities – stressing its Scottish qualities at Holyrood and its British at Westminster. It has had to do this with nuance and a deft touch: while being Scottish at Holyrood also emphasising the merits of the British union and at Westminster using its British agenda to sometimes stress the need for greater sensitivity to Scottish concerns. Pre-devolution the Scottish party under such titans as Thomas Johnston and Willie Ross managed this ‘bridge building’ strategy with great aplomb; it is the dynamics of the Scottish Parliament and devolution which have created the circumstances which have made this more difficult.

* Diplomatic license utilised

** And again