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.

The voters in Dunfermline deserve better

Surely it is more important that the various political parties, and the SNP in particular, tighten up on their selection procedures for election candidates to ensure that the electorate in Dunfermline don't get another Bill Walker, rather than discounting good candidates because they happen to be male. Apart from anything else, the people of Dunfermline are not daft enough to vote for someone just because she is a woman, as evidenced by the fact that Willie Rennie beat both Catherine Stihler (Labour) and Carrie Ruxton (Conservative) to win the corresponding Westminster seat in the 2006 by-election. There was a lot of feeling at the time that Ruxton in particular had been parachuted in, over local council leader Stuart Randall, at least partly because she was a woman, causing ructions within the local Tory party. Calton is all in favour of more female MPs and MSPs but positive discrimination and quotas don't work. Candidates have to be selected on their merits. Anything else is unfair on voters.

Would you give planning permission to this supermarket?

It's a dilemma. On the one hand, we all know about the Tesco effect on towns which, in the case of Fort William, might just kill off the High Street completely, however if they didn't offer convenient, competitively priced one-stop shopping with free parking, none of us would shop there. (Calton actually tries not to as much as possible but even he occasionally darkens their doorway.) Whatever the pros and cons of new out-of-town superstores, Fort William High Street has been granted a stay of execution with the recent announcement by Tesco that the Blar Mor store is not going to open until 2015 at the earliest. Not such good news for the residents of Caol, Corpach and all villages further west. It has to be said that Tesco has form on this - there is still no sign of a store being built off Carnegie Drive in Dunfermline in spite of the site having been cleared some months ago and surrounding roads rerouted. Some Lochaber councillors are calling for Tesco to release the site to a competitor. Perhaps they shouldn't have given the go-ahead to Tesco in the first place. Other towns may wish to learn from the experience of Fort William and Dunfermline.

A room with a view?

The red, yellow and blue tower blocks always did look rather out of place towering over Kincardine, and so Calton finds it hard to mourn their passing, but the fact remains that they provided 181 homes whereas now there will only be 81. 100 homes lost to a council which suspended the right to buy in 2006 because of a shortage of council houses. It may be that there were good reasons to demolish the blocks but Calton does wonder if we are missing a trick here. The towers should possibly never have been built in the first place but they seemed to be the solution at a time when there was a shortage of housing and we are still in that situation today. If Park Hill flats in Sheffield can be renovated, is there something we can learn from them? The architects of these buildings did not design them as cheap and nasty boxes for the masses - they genuinely tried to provide quality housing for the large numbers of families who needed it and it was welcomed at the time. Part of the reason why such housing fell into disfavour is not so much the design but the lack of maintenance and lack of will to deal with problem tenants. If we sorted those problems then perhaps we would not need to be quite so gung-ho with the demolition button. (Of course Calton may be biased - he does like a room high up with a view.)

The Scottish Tories get it

Labour won back control of Fife Council last year on a manifesto which, among other things, included a moratorium on all planning applications for land-based wind turbines pending a consultation. When they tried to fulfil their manifesto pledge, the Scottish Government blocked it. Yet more evidence, as far as Calton is concerned, that the SNP are not interested in the democratic will of the people. He therefore welcomes the new energy policy review paper produced by the Scottish Conservatives which majors on shifting control over energy policy away from central government and back to local communities. Their proposal to cut the current £350 million a year onshore wind farm subsidy is also welcome because it is manifestly unfair to expect people to subsidise this inefficient method of power generation from their pockets, particularly in a time of rising prices and fuel poverty. Nice to see that at least one of the major political parties has their head screwed on right and has seen through the windfarm scam.

PS. If you want to see a nice picture of Scotland's mountains sans windfarms, see @CaltonHillEagle on twitter.

Escape from Amazon

Allan Lyall, Vice President of European Operations, Amazon, has obviously been to the same school of question avoidance as Alex Salmond, judging by his performance on today's Business Scotland program. When asked about the recent criticism over Amazon's failure to pay corporation tax in the UK, Lyall sidestepped the issue, saying that he was "very, very busy" ensuring that customers got their parcels on time and was not the right person to ask about tax. (Amazon had £7bn sales in the UK between 2009 and 2011 but only paid £2.3m corporation tax.) Lyall also talked about locating their new 'fulfillment centre' in Dunfermline because of the people, rather than the £10m government grant they were given, however Calton has heard that Eastern European languages are as common as English on the warehouse floor over in Fife, making him wonder just how many locals have benefited from the behemoth on their doorstep. Mind you, if fellow blogger Middleschmiddle overheard right, they've maybe had a lucky escape.

The Young Ones

Calton has just been given a copy of Fife Council's advice about benefit changes. In it, they have an example of two unemployed young men, aged 22 and 23, who each live alone in a 2-bedroom rented flat paid for by the taxpayer. When the benefit changes come into force next April their housing benefit will be reduced by 14% because their flats will be classed as 'under-occupied'. If Calton had his way their benefit would be slashed by 50% and they would be told to move in together. If they want to have a 2-bedroom flat all to themselves they should get a job and put up with anti-social flatmates until they have saved enough money to put down a deposit on a home of their own, helped by the Government's new scheme. That's what Calton and many of his peers did when they were in their early 20's. Why should this generation be any different? How did we end up in the situation where guys that age expect to be given flats for nothing? Thirty years ago you counted yourself lucky if you had a room of your own in a shared flat! This benefit nonsense has to stop.

Local jobs for local people

Given that Burntisland was one of the places Calton highlighted back in February as a town where industry had been replaced by housing, it is heartening to hear that Burntisland Fabrications are expanding operations there and bringing new jobs to the town. For too long now Fife towns have been dormitories for Edinburgh because of their cheaper houses. It's good to see that trend being reversed.

Killer blades

Regular readers of this blog will know that Calton is not a fan of windfarms. One of the reasons is the fact that, as far as Sea Eagles are concerned, they are killers. Although the blades of a large turbine may not seem to be going round all that fast, their tips can be travelling through the air at 150mph. How would you like to be whacked on the back of the head by the equivalent of an express train while innocently going about your daily business? Sadly, lots of Norwegian Sea Eagles, and one which had been introduced into Ireland, have had just that experience with fatal results. Calton is just hoping that the youngsters which are soon to be released into the wild in Fife will have the sense to avoid the monstrosity which FMC Technologies has erected on the edge of Dunfermline.

The youngsters have landed

Some of Calton's young cousins from Norway are flying into Fife to help boost the Kingdom's tourist industry. Sea Eagles have brought £5 million to the economy of Mull and it is hoped that they will do the same in Fife, which could do with a boost after the collapse of first the mining industry and then the electronics industry. The youngsters will be let loose in August so anyone wanting to catch a glimpse of a rare bird should head over to Dunfermline then and camp out in ASDA car park, which is where one of the last lot of eaglets decided to hang out for a while, perching on a spotlight. He was presumably looking for something to get his beak into - pity Willie Rennie didn't happen along at the time.

It's raining!

Peter Grant's sour comments were obviously the last thing on happy man Jim Leishman's mind as he was elected Provost of Fife today. Quite right too. Leishman is well known over the water not only for managing the Pars but also for his charity work in the years since his wife died. He will be a popular Provost. In Highland Council it's the independents who sound like they've been chewing lemons after being ousted from power by an all-party coalition. Never mind guys - it probably won't last. Meanwhile, in the Capital, the new council not only have the trams fiasco to contend with but also a storm of protest over the new cameras policing the bus lanes. It truly never rains but it pours this side of the water!

Oooooooh - sour grapes!

This week's award for sour grapes goes to the SNP's Peter Grant, as his coalition with the Libdems which has run Fife for the last five years is replaced by Labour in cahoots with the Tories. He attempted to cast some doubt on the deal but then went on to comment "...it looks increasingly likely that Labour's enthusiasm for Tory policies will be enough to secure the votes of the rump of Tories left over from the drubbing they got in the elections." Ooooooh - bitter or what! Meanwhile, the joke is on Calton, who didn't seriously think that Labour would get into bed with the Tories, especially in Fife. Will the Conservatives manage to moderate Labour's spending plans? That is the question.

Bye bye Libdems - hello Labour!

So, Labour has replaced the Libdems as the SNP's partner in the Capital, although the Libdems have managed to hang onto power in a 3-way coalition in Highland Council, in spite of losing a councillor just days after the election! An SNP-Libdem partnership in Fife would give them a majority of one, provided none of the Libdems do an Isabelle Campbell, however, at time of writing, nothing has been announced. (It is just possible that Labour will hold their noses and get into bed with the Tories in Fife or else persuade the independents to come onside.) Elsewhere, adding to the embarrassment of being pipped by a penguin in Edinburgh, the Libdems were also beaten by the Scottish Christian Party in two Glasgow wards, indicating that Glaswegians are perhaps more conservative than politicians give them credit for.

France, Greece and Fife

There's an old adage that says when you are in a hole, stop digging. Similarly, when in debt, stop borrowing. That message has not got through to the voters of France and Greece. They have, fairly predictably, voted against austerity. In the same way, the voters in Fife have punished the previous SNP/Libdem coalition for council cuts by swinging to Labour - the party of spend. Never mind where the money is going to come from. It just goes to show that, although democracy is probably the best political system we have, voters will ultimately vote in their own self-interest, which is not necessarily the country's interest. Looks like the Eurozone is in for some stormy times.

Pipped by a penguin

A month ago, Liberal Sellout asked Edinburgh Libdems if they wanted to die. Looks like the answer was yes, although they probably did not imagine even in their wildest nightmares being beaten by a penguin! Calton doubts whether they will ever live that down. Meanwhile, Labour has managed to hold on to Glasgow and has had a resurgence in its traditional stronghold of Fife. After flirting with first the Libdems and then the SNP, Fifers have gone back to Labour, making Jim Leishman a happy man. It's going to be spend, spend, spend over the water unless the SNP do a deal with the few remaining Libdem councillors in Fife. In the capital there's all to play for with the Green Party's six councillors holding a strong hand as the talks begin. That's three more than the Libdems!