Slainte George!

At last - a budget for savers! About time too! There is something perverse about a society which rewards those who are up to their necks in debt while punishing the prudent (and by prudent, Calton means those who behave responsibly and put something by for their future, not the Gordon Brown "boom and bust" definition of prudent). There is no point in having an economic recovery if it is based on debt-fuelled consumer spending. We've been there and done that and, while it felt nice at the time, it didn't last. We need a recovery based on more manufacturing and greater exports and Calton is pleased to see that heavily energy-dependent industries are to be given a helping hand. Scrapping the planned fuel duty rise will benefit not just families but businesses and is also a welcome decision. All in all, Calton sees very little to complain about this year and a lot to be happy about, including the fact that there is no extra tax on his favourite malt. Slainte George!

Alex Neil - right on symptoms, wrong on cause and treatment

Calton has some sympathy with beleaguered SNP Health Secretary Alex Neil, who is being lambasted on twitter for blaming Scotland's drink problems on Maggie Thatcher. There is some truth in him saying that the loss of jobs for men in traditional heavy industry left them turning to the bottle. Where Neil goes wrong, and loses Calton's sympathy, is in blaming Thatcher for a) the demise of the coal and steel industries and b) not providing decent replacement jobs. Thatcher may have hammered the last nail in the coffin of coal and steel but the corpse was already dead and embalmed - the industries were uncompetitive, uneconomical and hampered by unions like Unite who, unlike Unite, could not see the writing on the wall and adapt to save jobs. There is a limit to how far any government can go in propping up ailing industries with taxpayers' money just to keep a few people employed. Similarly, there is a limit to how much government can do to provide new jobs. How many times have sweeteners been offered to firms to locate in Scotland, only for them to pull out the minute the money runs dry or penalties no longer apply? How much public money was spent on the infrastructure for a semiconductor plant at Halbeath, Dunfermline which never opened and has now been demolished? We need to create an attractive tax and infrastructure environment for businesses to operate in Scotland, yes, but sweeteners are bad for Scotland's economic health.

Alex Neil is also in trouble for saying that checkout jobs in shops or working for McDonald's are not "good jobs". Well it depends on how you define a "good job". Working at a supermarket checkout is better than being unemployed but it will never make you rich. It might not even pay the bills, given that some retailers do not offer staff full-time contracts. McDonald's does have training schemes which could lead to a better job however many of the chain's UK workers are on zero-hours contracts. Perhaps Neil could have phrased his comment somewhat better but, the truth is, if you want to have any hope of achieving at least the national average wage of £25k and have some prospect of advancement, you do generally need to have "training, education and a qualification" as Neil said, otherwise a McJob may be all that is open to you.

Give them a bike

In the 19th century, people moved from other parts of Scotland to Glasgow to find work. Now it seems that a reverse migration is needed, with the news that Glasgow has the highest number of workless households in the UK, never mind Scotland. Unfortunately, the sluggish state of the housing market and a general lack of affordable rented homes in most, if not all, parts of Scotland makes moving to find work very difficult. It also seems to Calton that the welfare system does not encourage relocation. Moving costs money, something which the unemployed do not have. It also requires motivation - the confidence that a move will bring an improvement. The sad thing is that Eastern Europeans are more motivated to come and work in Scotland than some Scots are to move to the other side of the country to find a job. Instead of taking the initiative, many unemployed seem to expect the state to provide for them, both in terms of benefits while unemployed and also by subsidising companies to set up businesses in areas of high unemployment. Instead of moving to find work, people expect work to come to them. Sadly, companies which receive large amounts of public money to locate in Scotland quite often leave when the subsidies dry up. The Scottish Government would be better advised to spend the money on improving public transport and providing affordable rented homes in areas where there are jobs. Grants to enable unemployed families to relocate to areas where workers are needed might also be a good idea. The Government needs to encourage mobility but there's no point in telling people to get on their bike when they don't have a bike to get on.

Farage and Amazon

So, let's see if Calton has this right - Amazon were given £2.5m by the Scottish Government to expand their operations in Dunfermline and Gourock and, in return, the company has paid £2.4m tax. That does not sound like a very good deal. OK, so they have created some jobs, of which quite a few have gone to Eastern Europeans. The arrangement seems to be that Alex Salmond, that well-known supporter of the EU, says that we need more immigrants to fill the jobs which his government is paying companies like Amazon to create. Here's Calton's idea - we leave the EU, stop paying companies based in Luxembourg large sums of money to provide jobs for non-UK nationals and use the money to improve the employability of our young people instead. If Amazon don't like it, they can take their low-paid jobs somewhere else. If we didn't have an open door to any EU national who wants to come and work here, we wouldn't need them. (Calton realises that he risks being mobbed a la Farage next time he visits the Canons' Gait for daring to air such views but, tant pis, someone needs to say it.) The bottom line is this - subsidising industry to locate here doesn't work in the long term. Improving the skills of our workforce does.

Boot out the blacklisters

There is no place in Scotland for companies who blacklist workers for speaking out about health and safety issues or for belonging to a trade union. Calton fully supports the workers who held a rally in Dundee today against the practice of blacklisting. Their requests that companies that use blacklists are banned from getting future government contracts and that a full inquiry into the practice is held are entirely justified. The Scottish Government has said that it is opposed to blacklisting. It now needs to put its money where its mouth is and make sure that companies tendering for government contracts are properly vetted to ensure that their hiring procedures are above board. Just saying that they are 'not aware' of any blacklisting taking place is not enough. Men have lost their livelihoods just for raising concerns in their workplace. This then deters others from speaking out for fear of suffering the same fate in this time of recession. The result is that health and safety in the construction industry becomes the casualty. Our workers deserve better.

QE costing Scottish jobs?

Not only is the Bank of England's policy of keeping interest rates low hitting savers hard, it now seems that their policy of quantitative easing (QE) may be partly to blame for the collapse of Dawson International last week. The BofE itself admits that while QE "has a broadly neutral impact on a fully funded defined benefit scheme", "schemes that were already in substantial deficit before the financial crisis are likely to have seen those deficits increased". Quite. Exactly what has happened to the Dawson pension scheme, resulting in the company going into administration and putting 180 Scottish jobs at risk. The idea of a Scottish bank, based on old-fashioned values of thrift and probity, and our own currency should we become independent, is becoming more attractive by the day.

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.

Green steel - shop local

Calton would like to congratulate Ross County on their well-deserved promotion to the SPL. It is a real shot in the arm to the Dingwall economy. It was also good to hear that Ardersier may be following Nigg's lead in being reborn as a hub for the green energy sector. Hopefully the emphasis will be on wave and tidal, not wind. Elsewhere, there was celebration on Teesside as the Redcar blast furnace was relit two years after being closed down. It is just a great pity that there is nothing left to relight at Ravenscraig. Looks like we are going to be importing steel from England to make the blades for all the wind turbines planned for our countryside. Maybe we should see if they can do the steel for the new Forth crossing too, instead of getting it from China, with all the transportation costs which that involves. How on earth can it be green to ship steel half-way round the world? Explain that one Alex!

Justice for asbestos sufferers

Calton is pleased to see that the Supreme Court has ruled against insurers who were trying to get out of paying compensation to thousands of workers who have been exposed to asbestos. Ideally, no-one should be injured through their work and where they have been, compensation should be paid promptly to them or their surviving families, not dragged out through the courts. Asbestos-related conditions can take years to manifest themselves but that should not mean that a claim for compensation cannot be made. It is good to see this being recognised in today's judgement.

Shooting ourselves in the steel-capped boot

The Scottish Government is missing a trick, according to last night's File on 4. Unlike their Welsh counterpart, they are playing too literally by EU procurement rules and Scottish firms are losing out as a result. Instead of using steel from the Dalziel works in Motherwell for the new Forth Bridge it is coming from Spain and China and that is just one example. Yes, we need to ensure that we get value for the taxpayer's money when putting contracts out to tender but surely, we should also be trying to support our own indigenous businesses. Other EU countries do so by specifying that tenders meet criteria such as providing apprenticeships as well as being competetively priced. The Welsh Assembly has learnt to do likewise, however it seems that Alex Salmond is too big-headed to learn from them. If the SNP are so keen on Europe, why can't they learn how to use EU legislation to best advantage for Scotland instead of giving away Scottish jobs to EU nations and getting sod all in return?

Too much green tape

On one of his forays south of Edinburgh yesterday, Calton spotted yet another former industrial site being redeveloped for housing - the old Curtis papermill at Dalmore, Auchendinny. Granted, there are new industrial developments at the Bush but Calton doubts if they employ as many people as the mining and mills used to employ in years gone by. Penicuik has become yet another Edinburgh commuter town. The Scotsman on Saturday had an excellent article on the need for us to do something about our manufacturing industry. Scrapping some of the red tape imposed on us by the EU would be a good start. It is EU legislation that is shutting down Cockenzie coal-fired powerstation, in spite of the fact that it is one of the cheapest ways of generating power that we have right now. It's all very well being green when you're in the black. We're in the red and the emissions from Cockenzie are a drop in the ocean compared to all China's coal-fired stations. Time to stop this nonsense and look after our own interests for once.

Building up a head of steam for 2013

The Scottish Government has said that it is using "every lever available to support Scottish businesses, secure new investment and create and safeguard jobs". Every lever that is, except the lever of certainty about the future of Scotland. Now the Chief Executive of Scottish Engineering has added his voice to those who, like Calton, would like to see the independence referendum brought forward to Autumn 2013, not 2014. Dr Peter Hughes is also reported on the BBC News website as saying "It is important that our politicians start to answer the key questions which we have been asking rather than indulge in political rhetoric which does nothing to advance our understanding of the key elements involved." He must have been watching First Minister's Questions yesterday.

Scotland used to have an engineering industry we could be proud of. If we want to see it return we need to give it the environment which it needs to flourish and that includes political stability and certainty. It's time for the SNP to stop prevaricating and put Scottish interests first.

All new hooses and nae work?

After the doom and gloom of this week's jobs figures, it was good to hear some positive news on Radio Scotland's Business Scotland this morning. Not only has Global Energy Group bought the old Highland Fabricators yard at Nigg with plans to get it working again for the renewables sector but Ross County FC are also hopefully looking ahead with promotion to the SPL in mind. Calton sincerely hopes they get it. He also hopes that Global Energy succeeds in bringing long-term jobs to Nigg, which has lain unproductive for 10 years. On his forays around Scotland Calton has noticed a growing replacement of industrial sites with housing developments e.g. the former Alcan site at Burntisland, Ravenscraig steelworks in Motherwell, the old Motorola plant at Dunfermline, converted warehouses in Leith. The list is endless. This is all very well but where are all the occupants of these houses going to work? Admittedly it would take some ingenuity to convert a large dry dock into housing, however it is a nice change to see it being brought back into industrial use. Lots of houses and no industry is not a recipe for success.