Biased Broadcasting Corporation scorns Christian license fee payers

This morning's discussion on BBC Radio Scotland's Morning Call was on whether or not the TV licence fee was worth it. After having heard yet another instance of biased reporting on Radio Scotland's Newsdrive this afternoon, Calton would have to say no, the licence fee is not worth it. (Not that he pays it, the eyrie thankfully not being on TV Licensing's database and him not having a TV anyway.) In a item about a proposed conscience clause for Northern Ireland's equality legislation, both presenter Laura Maxwell and interviewee Eamonn Mallie were clearly opposed to any attempt to accommodate strongly-held religious beliefs within NI's equality law and no other viewpoint was put across. Mallie is entitled to air his views but he should have been balanced by another interviewee who supported the clause. Maxwell, as newsreader, was not entitled to air her personal views. Newsdrive should not be a vehicle for presenters to put forward their personal opinions. They are there to present the news in a balanced, non-biased way, bearing in mind that they are being funded by over 90% of households via the TV licence and not all of those households agree with their trendy-lefty PC views. Mallie should have been challenged on the very slanted and inaccurate way he presented the story. Instead of doing this, Maxwell was only too happy to support him in his biased report which was, quite frankly, bigoted against Christians. The sooner supporting the BBC financially becomes a choice for viewers and listeners, the better.

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.

An hour in the sun

The SNP got their majority in Holyrood, they got their referendum, they lost it and they are now showing themselves to be constitutionally incapable of accepting the result. Alex Salmond couldn't do his speech accepting defeat without inserting the words "at this stage" and now his probable successor Nicola Sturgeon, while ruling out Eck's more fanciful idea of independence without a referendum, is talking about another referendum some point in the probably not too distant future if it's in the SNP manifesto and they get another majority. Calton would have thought that that was one sure way of getting kicked out of Holyrood but the DFM's chutzpah is such that she may well go for it. One can only hope......

Meanwhile the SNP leadership non-contest is looking very like the succession of Gordon Brown to the Labour Party leadership and post of Prime Minister after years in Tony Blair's shadow and we all know what happened then. Nicola should enjoy her hour in the sun because Calton predicts that it won't last long.

A lost opportunity

Calton thinks that MP Andrew George's Affordable Homes Bill is eminently sensible and is glad to see it making it through to the next stage in Parliament. If the measures contained within George's bill had been included at the start, much of the controversy over the "bedroom tax" would have been avoided. Calton has always said that he doesn't see why taxpayers should be paying for people to stay in homes with more bedrooms than they need, however, cognisance should be taken of the fact that the disabled have special needs and also of the fact that we are in rather short supply of one bedroom council houses in some (most) areas of the country. It is hard to understand why all but one Conservative MP voted against the bill given that, if it succeeds, it will spike one of Alex Salmond's guns i.e. the promise that, in an independent Scotland, the "bedroom tax" will be abolished. The reason the spare room subsidy legislation is so hated in Scotland is because it is seen to penalise the disabled and those who are unable to find a smaller property in their area. Sort those problems with the legislation and it becomes altogether more reasonable. It's a pity that the Tory Party seem unable to put their hands up and admit that, in this case, they got it wrong. (And it's even more of a pity that, after all their criticisms of the "bedroom tax", only 2 SNP MPs were at Westminster to vote for today's bill.)

Independent, defenceless and broke

Calton listened to last night's debate rammy on the radio while simultaneously trying to follow it on twitter. Not being very good at multi-tasking, he therefore missed some of the finer points of the argument but he couldn't help noticing the persistent use of the phrase "sovereign will of the Scottish people" and the word "mandate" by Alex Salmond. The First Minister is obviously trying to strengthen his negotiating hand on the currency union he so desires if there is a yes vote. He was also very clear that, if he doesn't get a currency union, he will walk away from Scotland's share of the UK's debt. Now, turning his argument on its head, if an independent Scotland were to refuse to take a share of the debt, what's to stop the rUK hanging on to all the assets? The roar of RAF Typhoons as they pass overhead on their way south over the border would be matched by the cheers from the workforce at Portsmouth and the corresponding wails from Rosyth. Starting life as an independent country with no debt may seem like an attractive option but we would also have no air force, no navy, no embassies, no central bank and just you try getting credit without a credit (i.e. debt) history! Salmond managed to score points off Darling on child poverty but he would have little chance of making a better fist of it in an indy Scotland with no money. In terms of shouting down his opponent, Alex won last night's debate but in terms of providing real and realistic answers, he lost.

It's crystal clear

It is now crystal clear what voting yes in the independence referendum really means, in spite of all the assertions to the contrary. It means a return to the banking system of the 1700s, with no central bank and no bank bailouts. The Adam Smith Institute seems to think that this would encourage banks to be more responsible. Sounds a bit like putting a fox in charge of the hen house to Calton. Would you really trust a bank with your hard-earned savings in those circumstances? They may tell you that they have enough English banknotes in the vault to guarantee the Scottish notes they are printing but could you believe them? Would you? Meanwhile the SNP continue to cling to the idea that they will get a currency union with rUK in the event of a yes vote, while rumours circulate on twitter that today was possibly Alex Salmond's last FMQs. Oh, that it were true! Calton would jump for joy.

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.

HOW much?

Why are the Scottish Government spending taxpayers' money on a report which will only kick in if Scotland becomes independent? Talk about pre-empting the referendum result! Sounds to Calton more like a bribe to vote YES - if you are on minimum wage - and this from the selfsame government which refused to mandate the living wage for government contracts in the recent procurement bill. At the time they used the EU as their excuse, which is a bit rich from a party committed to an independent Scotland remaining in the EU.

The scourge of the working poor is one which Calton would like to see removed from our society but we need to be careful that hiking the minimum wage does not cost jobs. Trying to mitigate the hike by reducing employer's NI contributions will not always work, particularly for the likes of cleaning employers who typically employ people on part-time contracts where the hours are so low that they do not pay NI.

As for the rest of the report, the only positive measure is the proposed increase in carer's allowance - the rest is just a return to the bad old days of a bloated benefit system where many were better off on benefits than in work and, as usual, it is unclear how the Scottish Government would pay for it all. Calton is just thankful that it is unlikely to be implemented as, even with blatant bribes such as this, the Yes campaign are still failing to make any headway in the polls. They just don't get that canny Scots want to know how much something will cost before committing themselves! And, while we're on the subject, how much did the expert group on welfare's report cost us?