Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
What is the story of Scotland’s biggest city and who will tell it?
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, April 14th 2012
The forthcoming local elections are reduced in most of their coverage to their impact on UK and Scottish politics.
Most attention is focused on the tragi-comedy and pantomime of Boris versus Ken, with even the plethora of local referendums on Mayors across some of England’s cities concerned with what happens to this or that Labour MP.
The only other place that gets a serious look in is the battle for Glasgow, between Labour and SNP for control of the council.
This may not have the box office appeal of Boris and Ken but it still has a lot of hooks. A city with a once dominant Labour tradition now in crisis, and a resurgent SNP hoping it can for the first time win an overall majority. However, in a week when both major parties issued their ‘Glasgow manifestos’ much of this debate can be seen as threadbare or mere positioning. Read the rest of this entry »
The Missing Million Scots: What Do You Do When Democracy Fails You?
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, April 7th 2012
A causal observer might think that the Scottish political classes love consultations and going through the motions of public engagement and dialogue.
This is evidenced in the simultaneous UK and Scottish Government consultations on the independence question; something we have seen before with the ‘national conversation’ and the Calman Commission.
While politicians and their supporters invoke the public, no one seems to take cognisance of who is missing from this debate, who they are, why and what we might do about it?
Take the last Westminster election in 2010 for example. A total of 2,465,722 Scots voted – producing a turnout of 63.8%. That was down significantly from 1997 (71.3%) and 1987 (75.1%) and even more compared to the 80% turnouts of the 1950s. Read the rest of this entry »
The Continued Legacy of Britain’s South Atlantic Adventure
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, March 31st 2012
The 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Falklands war is next week, a conflict that matters to this day.
Like many at the time, I had to first find the South Atlantic islands on a map, then put them into my leftist anti-Thatcherite view of the world, and then observe the mood of a Britain I barely recognised.
The Falklands war raised so many questions then and now. Was this a war of principle or pride? What did this say about Britain’s self-image and who ‘we’ were as a ‘people’?
Would Margaret Thatcher have survived without retaking the islands? And would the Tories have won in 1983 without military victory? Definitely not and arguably; Thatcher herself concedes the former in her memoirs. Read the rest of this entry »
A Global Scot of Ideas: The Influence of Tom NaIrn
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, March 24th 2012
The United Kingdom this year will showcase itself to the world hoping that the Diamond Jubilee celebrations and London Olympic Games lift the domestic gloom, aid business and bring the tourists flocking.
One man who has spent his life cutting through the national mystique, hyperbole and veneer of tradition is Tom Nairn who later this year turns 80.
Nairn has over his rich intellectual life written on numerous aspects of British society; the nature of the union, the symbolism of the monarchy and the reality of Britain under Blair and Brown. On a more international canvas he has contributed extensively to studies of nationalism and globalisation and addressed the theme of the left and Europe.
His greatest book, ‘The Break-up of Britain’ was published as a counterblast to the Queen’s Silver Jubilee of 1977, a more potent and long lasting challenge than the Sex Pistols ‘God Save the Queen’ of the same year. Read the rest of this entry »
The Back to the Future UK Budget
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, March 22nd 2012
George Osborne, rather like Gordon Brown, thinks of his Budgets, in acutely political terms and calculations.
The top rate tax cut gives a boost to 328,000 people, whereas the stamp duty hikes could at most affect 4,000 people – 1% of those at the top getting tax cuts. And that is if they all decide to sell their houses. In November 2011 a mere 121 homes were sold worth £2 million or more, 98 of them in London.
Osborne presented this as a measured, pragmatic Budget, but his road of travel is clear. Millions of taxpayers may have had their thresholds raised, but massive public spending cuts and welfare cuts are coming, of which he said absolutely not one word.
Pensioners are being hit by having their tax thresholds frozen. ‘Middle Britain’ is seeing its income squeezed as the 40% tax rate draws in more and more people, while he obsesses about the tiny group of super-rich taxpayers.
Why this is happening isn’t an accident of some supposedly insensitive Chancellor. It is a direct product of a broken British political system, and a Tory Party entrenched in the South East of England which knows little directly of the North of England, Scotland and other parts of the UK. Read the rest of this entry »
