Walk a mile

If pro-Palestinian groups want to stage a peaceful protest against an Israeli dance group outside the Playhouse that's absolutely fine - they are entitled to do so. Protesting inside the theatre and disrupting the performance is another matter and Calton agrees with UK Minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt who is reported as saying that he "strongly supports the freedom of Batsheva to appear at the festival, and deeply regrets the attempts to disrupt them". After all, isn't that what the Edinburgh International Festival is all about? It is hard for us as an island nation to understand what it is like to be a tiny country bounded by the sea on one side and a host of undemocratic, potentially hostile nations on the other. We do not know what it feels like to be a Jew, with centuries of persecution in their collective memory. We can go about our business without fear of rockets landing on our homes. Does Calton think Israel is always right in what she does? No, he doesn't, however he thinks that we should walk a mile in their shoes before condemning them.

SNP - doing something right

Calton is aware that the SNP Government comes in for the most stick on this blog, partly because they are the government and partly because of their overweening arrogance since they became a majority, however praise where praise is due - at least John Swinney is resisting calls by the CBI and Willie Rennie to privatise Scottish Water.

Caltongate

It is a very dubious honour indeed to have a 'gate' named after you and so Calton is relieved to hear that the Caltongate development, the gap site of which is currently one of the old town's premier eyesores, will hopefully now be going ahead. (Not that he has any connection with it apart from the name.)

Last of the sour grapes?

We are nearly into Autumn and there are still sour grapes around, probably due to the lack of sunshine to sweeten them! This time it is Virgin Trains who are not happy about losing the franchise to run the West Coast Main Line. Whether or not they are justified in taking court action over the decision Calton doesn't know, however the policy of periodically putting rail franchises up for competitive tender has always seemed to him to be fundamentally flawed, along with the split between Railtrack and the rail companies. Infrastructure like our railways needs long term vision and investment, something which cannot be achieved in a 13 year timeframe. Good old British Rail was inefficient and costly but the solution was to improve it, not chop it up into bits. In a similar vein, it seems utterly ridiculous to be replacing Northlink with another operator on the Northern Isles routes after just a few years just to satisfy the gods of privatisation and competition. Calton is no communist but some things should be owned and run by the people, for the people.

The Scottish Autumn

It seems that Scotland is no longer a democracy because, if it was, the Government would be legislating on the basis of the democratic mandate they have received from the people of Scotland. Instead, the Scottish Government are legislating on the basis of what the Deputy First Minister thinks is 'right'. Now, to paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government ever invented, with the exception of all the other forms of government ever invented. So, in dictating to us when they should be listening to us, the SNP is regressing to an inferior form of government. Either that or Dawkins is not the only one who seems to be deluded into thinking he is God. (And before anyone south of the border starts congratulating themselves that it couldn't happen down there, it already has - David Cameron has promised legislation on gay marriage before the results of the Westminster Government's consultation on the issue have been analysed and published.) The Arab Spring was all about achieving democracy. The Scottish Autumn gives every appearance of being about reverting to a dictatorship.

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.

A forest of FoIs

Calton is considering putting in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to find out how much the Scottish Government is spending on defending their refusal to grant MEP Catherine Stihler's FoI request regarding any legal advice obtained by the Scottish Government on Scotland's position in the EU should we become independent. If you have managed to follow this post so far, hold on to your seat - apparently there has now been a FoI request on Stihler's original FoI request. (See the article part way down the MEP's homepage.) Just in case the real issue gets obscured in a forest of FoIs, a pdf file of Stihler's correspondence with the Scottish Government can be found on her website and Calton's earlier comment on it is here. It's bad enough that the SNP want to keep us in the dark over Scotland's legal position in Europe after independence. The fact that they are using our money to do so is insupportable in Calton's opinion.

Disabled paying for blue badge fraud

As Calton has said before, Scotland leads the way with its policy of free prescriptions, however we are lagging behind the rest of the UK when it comes to charging for disabled blue badges. Scots are having to pay £20 for a blue badge whereas the charge in England is £10 and in Wales they are free. Calton believes that there should be a crackdown on the abuse and misuse of these badges, which is rife, however for some people they are an absolute necessity and to charge £20 for one seems wrong. It is punishing the innocent for the actions of the guilty. Instead, we should increase the fines for blue badge fraud.

A leg up the property ladder

When Calton bought his first Edinburgh eyrie it was with a 95% mortgage which was 2.5 times his salary. Those were the days when your banker interviewed you before deciding whether to give you a mortgage and 3 times your salary was the absolute maximum available. Now, the housing market is only open to those with substantial deposits, leaving many young people out in the cold, so the initiative to provide 95% loans on new houses by industry body Homes for Scotland in conjunction with the Scottish Government is to be warmly welcomed. No-one wants to return to the days of irresponsible lending but the pendulum has swung too far the other way, with detrimental effects on the housing market and our building industry. Hopefully this scheme will go some way to redressing the balance and will help more people to get a foot on the property ladder.

SNP suffering from selective deafness

Calton has a lot of sympathy for Cardinal Keith O' Brien, who has decided to stop talking directly to the Scottish Government over the issue of same-sex marriage. The latter have completely ignored all the postcards sent in by individual Roman Catholics in response to their consultation, ostensibly because they all say the same thing but in reality because they don't say what the Scottish Government wants to hear. If people take the time and effort to sign a postcard, put a stamp on it and post it why should that not count? Not everyone has access to the internet or is computer literate. Many people are not comfortable with filling in an online form. Why is their contribution to the consultation worth less because it was done in an old-fashioned way? It seems that the Government is discriminating against older people, since it is they who are less likely to respond using the internet. The Government is also discriminating against those who didn't feel confident about putting their views into their own words and so used the pre-printed postcards which their church provided for them. If you include all the postcards, the majority of those responding to the Scottish Government's consultation on same-sex marriage were against it. The SNP are now going against the wishes of that majority because they have a majority in the Scottish Parliament and they think they can do as they please. They should remember who put them there.