Sir Malcolm gets it, albeit a day late

Sir Malcolm Rifkind might just have managed to hang on in there if he hadn't commented on how difficult it was to live on a MP's salary. As it was, no-one in their right mind, least of all David Cameron, was going to support him after that gaffe. To suggest that £67k (plus expenses) is inadequate is just not politically or socially correct these days and the fact that Sir Malcolm didn't realise this shows what a dinosaur he is. The sooner he and his ilk become politically extinct the better. If an MP's salary is not enough for you, you are not the right sort of person to become an MP. End of.

They don't get it, do they?

Politicians just don't get it, do they? OK, so Alex Salmond is very magnanimously going to donate one of his salaries to charity if he succeeds in becoming an MP in addition to being an MSP next year. Big deal. The real problem with Alex and others like him, such as Cara Hilton (MSP and Fife Councillor), is that they are hogging two jobs when a lot of people can't even get one. They are also not giving the best service to the people they represent, who deserve an MSP who is not also an MP or a councillor. We want full-time elected representatives, not part-timers dividing their time between Holyrood and Westminster or Holyrood and a local council. If Salmond manages to get elected to Westminster he should immediately resign his Holyrood seat and it's high time Hilton resigned her position on Fife council. Her Labour colleague Alex Rowley did so as soon as he won his Cowdenbeath Holyrood seat. Perhaps Hilton is not as confident as Rowley about retaining her seat in 2016. Calton would have thought she was pretty safe but, it has to be said, Dunfermline has swung every which way but Tory in the last few Holyrood elections. Perhaps 2016 will be James Reekie's year. Oh hang on ... Calton has just spotted a pig flying over the other side of the Forth.

A good day for debtors

Today was a good day to be a debtor. First we had the news that Wonga is writing off the debts of 330,000 customers and then our First Minister used FMQs to announce that councils would be prevented from pursuing poll tax debts from 20+ years ago. No doubt there will be a lot of happy people tonight however there are also a lot of unhappy people, Calton amongst them, who don't take out loans they can't hope to repay and who do pay their taxes. If having their payday loans written off made people less likely to get into financial trouble in the future, that would be good, however Calton suspects the reverse will be true. The possibility that your debt will magically disappear due to your lender having their knuckles rapped must surely be an incentive to some people to take out a loan. As for Alex Salmond's poll tax stunt - it is a totally transparent attempt to continue stoking anti-Westminster sentiment and buy left-wing votes. It is also another example of SNP-led Holyrood arrogating local council powers. It should be up to individual councils to decided whether or not it is worth pursuing old debts, bearing in mind that the poll tax non-payment campaign left huge holes in council finances, which meant that those who did pay their dues ended up paying more than they should have done. Now, councils are facing a double whammy of the council tax freeze and a prohibition on recovering poll tax debt and our services are suffering as a result. It's time for Holyrood to butt out of council affairs and the only way to ensure that this happens is to vote out the SNP.

Better together

Calton would like to apologise to his regular readers (if he still has any) for the lack of posts over the summer. The truth is, he is suffering from chronic referendum fatigue. It has all gone on far too long and the only thing worse is the prospect of another couple of years of haggling between Holyrood and Westminster if the result is yes. A good reason to vote no if ever there was one, so that our parliaments can get back to dealing with more important issues, such as the rise of Islamic terrorism at home and abroad. The Middle East, which has always had the potential to be a tinder-box for wider conflict, is more unstable now than it has ever been, according to Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's Middle East reporter, and we are fools to think that it won't affect us. It seems petty for us to be arguing over how much oil is left in the North Sea and who it belongs to when the major oil-producing area of the world looks set to ignite in one massive conflagration. This is not a time to be going our separate ways - it is a time to unite against the killers of Lee Rigby and James Foley, to take a stand against the Islamic State and their murderous persecution of non-Moslems. We helped create a power vacuum in Iraq when we removed Saddam Hussein. We can't now walk away from the results. How can we expect Shia and Sunni to work together in Iraq when Scotland won't work with England? It's time the United Kingdom showed the world how distinctive, different nations can remain united whilst retaining their separate identities. We really are better together.

It's gone to their heads!

The Deputy First Minister is sticking like a plaster to the idea of a currency union because she believes that it is the "right position for Scotland and the rest of the UK". Now, Calton is not a psychiatrist but, in his opinion, Sturgeon is showing worrying signs of grandiose delusions. This isn't the first time that she has justified a political course of action by saying that it was the "right thing to do". The question is, right in whose eyes? The answer, it seems, is right in Sturgeon's own eyes because she is god and what she says, goes. Judging by her interview on Daily Politics with Andrew Neil she is absolutely convinced that Osborne et al are bluffing and so there is no need for the SNP to have a currency plan B. It didn't matter how many times Neil tried to rub her nose in the facts, she did not waver from her unsupported convictions. Is that not the very definition of delusional? Regardless of where the currency debate goes, Calton is now thinking that the real reason to vote NO is because he doesn't want to be governed by a bunch of nutters. The power of a majority at Holyrood has obviously gone to their heads. Maybe we should be asking Westminster to take some powers back off them!

SNP - losing touch with reality?

Calton is seriously concerned about the collective mental health of the SNP government. They seem to be increasingly losing touch with reality and are, instead, living in a world of their own making. Having tried to bully Westminster into accepting a currency union with an independent Scotland by stating that it would "make sense", they now accuse Westminster of trying to bully them now that Westminster are refusing to play the game. It seems that the SNP are so lost in their own assertions they are unable to cope when someone introduces a note of reality. Interviewed on Newsdrive today, SNP MP Stewart Hosie was completely unable to accept the fact that it looks like all three main parties at Westminster are going to give currency union the thumbs down tomorrow. He clung to the idea that it is only a bluff, like a drowning man clings to a plank of wood. Well good luck with that, Stewart. As far as Calton is concerned, Osborne, Balls and Alexander will bring some much-needed clarity to the independence debate if they rule out a currency union. Far better that we know where we stand before we vote in September, rather than believing all the SNP's assertions and Oprah-style positive thinking. It is now becoming crystal clear that the SNP are so convinced of their alternative reality that they have no plan B for an independent Scotland's currency. They cannot imagine anyone not agreeing with them. It seems to Calton that such an attitude is bordering on the delusional.

Scotland's deuxieme embarrassment?

When are the SNP going to realise that, if Scotland becomes independent, we will not be able to tell Westminster what to do. It may make sense for an independent Scotland to be part of a common travel area with the rest of the UK but, if Westminster decides to put up manned crossing points just south of the Scottish/English border, there will not be a lot we can do about it. Ditto if Westminster decides to withdraw British passports from Scottish citizens. We could, of course, indulge in tit for tat behaviour - oh, hang on, we're doing that already. Alex Salmond is Scotland's premier embarrassment, in Calton's opinion, but Nicola Sturgeon is running him a close second with her habit of slagging off the Scotland Office whenever they point out an inconvenient truth. It's certainly a bit rich for her to say that the latest paper from the Scotland Office "lacks credibility". Has she read the White Paper?

The bottom line is this: if we want the freedom to choose our own immigration policy as an independent country, we have to accept that the price may be border controls between us and England. That's what independence is all about folks.

Salmond's preening is premature

Is anyone else embarrassed by the First Minister's threats to walk away from the UK's debt if they don't let us keep the £ after independence? Now, he's crowing and preening himself as if he's done something great when, actually, his posturing has threatened to spook the bond markets and has resulted in today's announcement by the UK Treasury that it will guarantee all UK Government debt issued up until the date of independence. Salmond's blinkered brinksmanship in pursuit of his goal of independence is now threatening us all. If the UK Government has to pay more to borrow, we'll all have to pay more to borrow and, since even a small increase in the cost of borrowing at the moment will push many families over the edge, it's no surprise that the Treasury has acted definitively. To do otherwise would have been irresponsible. Would that our First Minister had a similar sense of responsibility to the people he governs. If we vote yes later this year (and Calton sincerely hopes we don't) the road to financial stability as an independent nation will be rocky enough without Salmond's threats and bully-boy antics. He has blown out of the water any hope of an amicable divorce in the wake of a yes vote and we all know what that means - the only winners will be the lawyers!

Things can only get better?

The SNP truly are deluded. Faced with negative comments from Wales over the Sterling zone and warning noises from Spain over EU membership, their response is to say, effectively, that the rUK would be mad not to include Scotland in a currency union and the EU would be insane not to want Scotland as a member. Well, which of them has lost their marbles is a matter of opinion - in Calton's opinion it's the SNP, not Wales or Spain.

The other common delusion currently doing the rounds is that things couldn't possibly be any worse than they are at present, under the Westminster government, so we would be better off voting for independence. Wrong. Things not only could be a lot worse, they will be a lot worse. You've only to look at the costs involved in some of the proposals in the White Paper (renationalised mail service, separate TV, new passports, separate tax system) to realise that Scotland will be the poorer if we go it alone. Divorces cost money and it's the Scottish people who will foot the bill for this one. Far from being a richer, fairer nation, we will be impoverished for decades and it's pensioners and the poor who will suffer the most. If that's scaremongering, Calton is guilty as charged but the vision the SNP have set out for Scotland is what is truly frightening.

(Oh, and by the way, Calton was half-asleep yesterday morning but he's sure he heard someone from the SNP say that "independence in Europe" is the only sort of independence currently on the table, and, of course, that is no independence at all. Nice to have that clarified by the Yes campaign.)

Time to grow up

What a bunch of chancers! Having secured Westminster's agreement that the result of the independence referendum would be binding, the SNP now seem to think that anything in their white paper, to be published tomorrow, will also be binding on Westminster. What planet are these people living on? They seem to think that things will happen, Oprah-style, just because they say so. Calton sincerely hopes that they will be brought down to earth with a bang and the sooner the better. If a nation could be built on airy assertions Scotland would certainly be well-equipped to become independent. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that - the hot air from Holyrood doesn't even manage to warm Calton's eyrie never mind build something of substance. Westminster have agreed that if we vote yes, we get independence. Everything else is up for negotiation and the Welsh have quite rightly said that they want a say in any agreements which affect them. We would do the same if the positions were reversed. It's time the SNP grew up and realised that you don't always get something just because you want it - that's childish thinking. If we are to have any hope of going it alone as a nation we need mature leaders, not big kids.

It's not the immigrants who are the problem

Calton has never disputed the fact that most immigrants to this country are hard-working and make a positive contribution to our economy. It is no surprise to find that, in recent years, they are less likely to be in receipt of benefits than Brits. The problem is, the ready supply of skilled people with a good work ethic has allowed us to ignore the fact that many of our young people are unemployable and many of our unemployed do not want to work. If we did not have uncontrolled immigration from the EU, genuine jobseekers would find it a lot easier to find a job and the work-shy would find it a lot harder to hide. We would not have such a huge problem with youth unemployment and business owners would be putting a lot more pressure on the government to sort out our education system so that it turns out employable youngsters. As it is, the influx of Eastern Europeans is masking a growing problem within our society. It is also fuelling resentment because, now, they are not just doing the jobs Brits don't want to do - they are doing jobs that some Brits do want to do. Recession has made us less fussy when it comes to a job, which would be no bad thing if the jobs were available. Given the announcement today of up to 1000 job cuts at BAE Systems yards north and south of the border, it is time for both the Scottish and Westminster governments to take a serious look at whether we can afford a further influx of Eastern Europeans at the end of the year, especially when we have no idea how many will come. We should let in the immigrants we need and the ones who need asylum but call a halt to unrestricted immigration from the EU.

SNP energy policy - getting warmer

Well! They say a week is a long time in politics. It's less than a week since Calton said don't hold your breath for the SNP to remove unfair subsidies from consumer fuel bills. Now Nicola Sturgeon has announced just that, at the SNP's conference in Perth. Perhaps they've been reading this blog. Whatever the reason for today's announcement, it is very welcome in Calton's opinion. It is manifestly unfair that poor people should be paying more on their fuel bills in order to help even poorer people, especially now that we know that children of working parents are more likely to suffer poverty than those of unemployed parents. Some of the people struggling the most to pay their bills are now people who earn just enough to stop them receiving benefits but not enough to cover the rising cost of living. Calton is not against helping those in fuel poverty but the help should come out of general taxation, not through our fuel bills. Subsidies for home insulation should also be means-tested. In this respect, Nicola is thinking what Calton is thinking. Now all we need is for Westminster to take a lead from the SNP and the SNP to remove subsidies for windfarm builders. Calton is still not holding his breath.

SNP energy policy - turning folk blue?

So, let's just see if Calton has got this right - not only are hard-pressed consumers paying 9% of their energy bills to subsidise green energy, the taxpayer is paying £725,000 to councils up and down Scotland to help them cope with the avalanche of wind farm planning applications which is threatening to bury them alive. More than 2500 in the last 18 months. If building windfarms is so popular, why are we subsidising it? You only subsidise things which need encouragement. It's time this scam scheme was stopped, before it pushes even more families and pensioners into fuel poverty. If removing the subsidies results in fewer planning applications, so much the better because then councils will be able to cope with them. Councils should also be left to make the decisions on individual planning applications without Scottish Government interference - Calton does not believe that the Scottish Government is able to strike the right balance between providing green energy and the need to satisfactorily address the impacts on communities and the environment, due to its over-ambitious green energy targets. If the SNP/Greens have their way, you won't be able to see Scotland for a forest of turbines and we can wave bye-bye to our tourism industry. Forcing price freezes is not the way to go - governments can't rig the market - but removing unfair subsidies is within the control of the Westminster Government and would be within the control of an independent Scottish Government. Don't hold your breath if it's SNP. Your face will turn as blue as your frozen extremities.

SNP - listening for once

Calton is pleased to see that automatic early release is to be scrapped for violent/sexual offenders in Scotland. About time too. Nice to see the SNP actually listening to the concerns of the electorate for once. It would be even better if they scrapped the same-sex marriage bill, now that over 50,000 people have signed Scotland for Marriage's petition against it. That's more than the combined membership of all political parties in Scotland. Who said single-issue politics was dead?

As to the rest of the rather uninspiring raft of legislation introduced today: Calton is in favour of scrapping the right to buy for council tenants. It should never have been introduced in the first place. He also hopes that changes to licensing of scrap metal merchants will bring them into line with England and Wales, thus making Scotland less of a safe haven for metal thieves. And he dearly wishes that Alex Salmond would stop blaming Westminster at every opportunity. It's getting boring. And we still have more than a year to go!

Tinkering while UKIP gains ground

It's a bit rich for Labour politicians to go on about companies recruiting more local workers when they (Labour) presided over an education system which has failed to get a generation of young people ready for the workplace and it would seem that they (Labour) deliberately encouraged mass immigration as a way of forcing acceptance of the philosophy of multiculturalism. And we all know how well that worked out. As long as companies can get cheaper, better workers from outside the UK they will do so - it's called capitalism. It's up to the Government to limit immigration if they want to keep jobs for British workers and that will not be possible as long as we remain in the EU. That is why UKIP are gaining support in many parts of England. Unemployed Brits are fed up of seeing jobs go to Eastern European immigrants and it is fuelling resentment, especially when getting a job means that an immigrant passes the residency test and can then get a council house. The three main Westminster parties all realise this but are not prepared to do what is necessary to sort it i.e. leave the EU. Instead they are all tinkering round the edges and fighting with each other rather than dealing with the problem. No wonder the voters are losing patience with them.

Time to count them in?

It really beggars belief that we just don't know how many people are coming into this country and how many are leaving. What is the point of setting immigration targets when we can't measure if we are meeting them? What is the point anyway, when we have no control over immigration from EU countries? Calton is not against immigration. He is against uncontrolled immigration, which is what we have got at the moment. How on earth can government and local authorities plan for housing, schools, medical facilities etc when we don't know how many people we are planning for? The UK has finite resources and a limit to the number of people it can support. Large numbers of migrants can stretch those resources to breaking point and cause tensions within communities. The Government needs to get a grip on the situation, not by setting arbitrary limits on non-EU immigration, but by looking at immigration as a whole and obtaining accurate statistics on which to base its decisions. Anything else is just empty posturing.

Alex oils out of the tricky questions

If Calton remembers rightly, it was not so long ago that Nicola Sturgeon was calling for positive debate on the independence referendum. She must have forgotten to tell Alex Salmond, who spent a large part of his slot on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme this morning slagging off Westminster. The man really doesn't do himself, or us, any favours. One minute he's saying that we don't really need the oil revenues - they are just a nice wee extra - and the next minute he's talking about squeezing every last drop of oil and gas from Scotland's waters, or so it seems. We'll certainly need every last drop if we're to see anything like the figure of £300k for every man, woman and child in Scotland. When pressed on when we would start saving into an oil fund, post-independence, the First Minister would not be drawn, presumably because he knows that, although it sounds like a good idea, it is not without its problems, and he would not comment at all on the issue of fracking. What Calton really wants to know is why we are covering our mountains with windfarms when there is still lots of oil and gas out there which the Scottish Government has every intention of using to the max?

Not so expert independence experts

Nicola Sturgeon has rolled out Hollywood film producer Iain Smith, award-winning chef Roy Brett and events expert Prof Joe Goldblatt to back her argument that Scotland would be better off independent. Unfortunately, Brett seems to be confused between Westminster, which is in charge of VAT, and the EU, which determines our fishing policy. Under the SNP's plans, an independent Scotland would only be able to control the former - the fishing policy would still be out of our hands. Maybe he should stick to cooking. Calton also has his doubts about Goldblatt, who thinks that an independent Scotland would "become one of the most successful tourism destinations in the world". Not once the SNP have covered it with windfarms it won't. It will also not be so attractive to film companies for location shoots once the landscape has been industrialised on a grand scale (unless the next Bond film has a helicopter chase though a windfarm as its opener). Scotland does have a lot of assets and a lot of great businesses. We are being hampered by Westminster's restrictive immigration policies, brought in because they have no control over immigration from within the EU. The answer is not "independence within Europe" but for the Scottish Government to work with Westminster to help businesses by reducing red tape (much of it from the EU), and to agree an immigration policy which takes account of Scotland's needs. Unfortunately there is not much sign of that happening between now and next September.

Pensions - no laughing matter

It is a well known fact that we are not saving enough towards our retirement in this country, however it is a miracle that anyone is bothering to save for it at all, given all the current uncertainty surrounding pensions. First, we had the Westminster Government moving the goalposts (and Calton is still trying to work out exactly how many years National Insurance contributions he has) and now we have the possibility that a yes vote in the independence referendum will throw another huge spanner in the works for Scots. Does anybody really believe the SNP's line that it will all be alright on the night? Not Calton. He wants to see the figures, especially since part of his retirement income is going to come from a UK-wide company pension scheme. EU insistence that cross-border schemes be fully funded is a) going to prove a major headache if Scotland becomes independent and b) could scupper a large number of company pension schemes and, indeed, companies, not to mention the pension expectations of their employees. At the risk of being branded a clown by Ken Clarke (pot? kettle?) Calton sees this as yet another good reason for us to leave the EU (and stay in the UK).

Ahm no playin wi you

It doesnae matter how much you want to play - if the other team grab the ball and walk off the pitch, you're scuppered. If the other team are the rUK with George Osborne as manager, they'll probably take the goalposts as well. OK, so John Swinney can throw a strop and refuse to pay oor share o' the debt. Nah nah ni nah nah! (Thumbs nose.) Or the SNP could grow up and realise that they can't always have things all their own way. That would be a good starting point for negotiations in the event of Scottish independence, instead of all the current assertions from the Scottish Government which seem to completely ignore the fact that, if rUK don't want to play ball, there's nothing we can do about it. If Swinney is genuine about having a "rational and considered discussion" with Westminster, it's time he actually put his mouth where his money is and got on with said discussion. At the moment there's far too much rhetoric and not nearly enough reality.