Wasted Opportunities

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, designed or removed from production.” – Pete Seeger

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

Like many of us, I try my best to do right by the waste my lifestyle inevitably produces. I try to shop responsibly to minimise the air miles my food racks up. I try to avoid purchasing anything that produces more waste than it must. I try to reuse and repair as much as I can (Ok, so my wife is better at repairing things than I am but still…). And I try to separate my waste into the appropriate bins when the time comes to throw things away. But I’m becoming increasingly exasperated with the limits of this. I can see the results in my bins just before they go out for collection which still contain far too much in the way of un-recyclable plastics and other materials.

So I was genuinely interested when Tesco announced that it was going to start collecting a lot of these “soft plastics” at its stores for recycling. Especially as it included a lot of hard to recycle products like crisp packets and clingfilm wraps. When they installed a collection bin at my local supermarket I applauded it. It’s a good idea – or at least it would have been if it had worked.

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Council Tax: Running Away From Reform

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

As the local elections loom, Scottish voters should be considering not just which candidates or parties we vote for in those election but also what we expect them to do with the power we loan them with that vote. Party manifestos are beginning to be launched so, as with the Scottish Parliamentary Elections last year, I’ll do my best to collect as many of them as I can in one place (do email me if you find one I might miss, such as from the smaller parties).

Today though, I want to discuss just one of the powers that I believe is being badly mishandled in Scotland for no reason other than the lack of political will to change it.

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Solarpunk: Growing the Hope We Deserve

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. – William Gibson

So began William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer and so began what is now known as the Cyberpunk genre. So began countless other generation-defining books, films, works of art, technology inspired by the ideas the genre explored. So began me – 1984 was the year I was born. Cyberpunk is my generation.

Cyberpunk is a world of crushing dystopia. Tortured air and acid rains bleach the life and soul out of polluted cities. There is no society or community here. An individual is one against millions, toiling thanklessly to meet a quota set by an uncaring human if you’re lucky; an equally uncaring AI if you’re not. This is a world where Megacorporations rule to the point that even Governments can do little to prevent them sucking the last dregs of the world’s resources into their ever growing, ever insatiable maws. Technology can provide you with the kinds of miracles that once founded religions but only at a terrible cost. And yet there are those who still work at the edges of this world, or beneath it, or hidden within it, who still fight for what hope remains in the world. Cyberpunk is often about celebrating the rebels fighting against crushing authority. Those who refuse to accept that which others tell them is “inevitable”. Victories are sometimes fleeting, sometimes they are indeed entirely futile, but victories are still possible. Hope can still be found in the “desert of the real”, even if it is a grimy, flawed and compromised kind of hope.

But in Gibson’s opening it is a curiously analogue metaphor that defines the digital frontier of cyberpunk. A sky as grey as analogue static. You don’t have to be much younger than me to be someone who doesn’t understand that metaphor in the same way that I can. The UK – by far not the frontrunner in this particular technological race – completed its television digital switchover a decade ago. For generations now and those to come the dead channel of television will be a brilliant sky blue.

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(Source: Wallpaper Cave)

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Penetrating Pension Politics

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 4 Comments

Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth. — J Michael Straczynski

This week – amidst several weeks of some of the most fraught politics both south and north of the border – saw the re-emergence of a political topic that is both quite defining of my political career so far and has been the source of some of the most vicious and personal attacks levied against me by folk on the other side of my political leanings (albeit, even that was far less abuse than many folk receive on the internet as a matter of course simply for the “crime” of having an opinion in public while not being a straight, white, middle-class, cis-male). But hey, what’s one more time into the breach amongst friends…

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(Source: Centre for Ageing Better)

I am, of course, talking about the matter of how state pensions are likely to operate in the transition years immediately after Scottish independence. Sparked by some senior members of the SNP catching up with and seemingly now adopting the position that I introduced six years ago. Namely that:

After Scottish independence and unless there is a political deal to the contrary or a drastic shift in current policy, the State of the remaining United Kingdom (rUK) – assuming it successfully claims Continuing State status with regards to the former UK – shall continue to pay its state pension to people who have paid UK National Insurance in proportion to their years of payment regardless of their citizenship, their geographic location during their period of working or their location upon reaching retirement age and this includes qualifying pensioners living in post-independent Scotland.

It is important however to discuss each of the clauses in that statement and to do so while remaining, as far as possible, above the emotive statements and political bias that have characterised this topic. Perhaps no other – except perhaps the topic of the physical customs infrastructure at the border – is more emblematic of the complexities of disentangling two states and even that exception will ultimately affect far fewer people and in far less tangible ways. Not all of us frequently or regularly cross the border into England. Many more of us face the prospect of growing old and having to prepare for eventual retirement.

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But It’s Reserved!

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 2 Comments

“When you have no real power, go public — really public. The public is where the real power is.” – Elizabeth Warren

The nature of Scotland’s devolved settlement is that the country is simultaneously less powerful than many would like but more powerful than many would give it credit. The reserved powers list in Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act are quite clear and the Scottish Government can and has been taken to court when it has attempted to overreach its powers. However the areas of devolved powers are broad and cross-cutting enough that it is often possible to effect change in defiance of Westminster simply by looking for the cracks and loopholes within those reserved and devolved powers.

We have also seen the pandemic reveal that some powers (such as the power to close or restrict borders) which were previously assumed to be reserved have, in fact, been substantially devolved. Until the pandemic struck it would have been considered unthinkable that the Scottish Government could effectively order the closure of the Anglo-Scottish border – and yet, for a time, it was (that the closure wasn’t particularly well policed and enforced is another matter entirely).

Scotland pushed against reserved Westminster policy many times – mostly significantly by using powers over planning permission to effectively block nuclear power and onshore fracking in Scotland. A larger challenge looms in the form of offshore oil and gas, but I believe that the Scottish Government could go further that it current does in terms of opposing oil extraction around Scotland despite the powers to do so being largely reserved.

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(Source: Unsplash)

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Why I’m Voting Against The SNP/Green Deal

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 3 Comments

‘We must take advantage of the “tide of fortune”’.
‘I know about tides, sir. They leave little fish gaspin’.’ – Terry Pratchett

Edit 28/08/21 – The Scottish Green members voted overwhelmingly in favour of the deal and it was subsequently also voted through overwhelmingly by Council. The SNP members similarly voted overwhelmingly in favour in their consultative ballot. The deal shall now go ahead as written.

Tomorrow is going to be one of those turning point days in Scottish politics. The SNP and Greens have agreed to a cooperation deal that would see the closest relationship between the two parties in Holyrood, the closest that Greens anywhere in the UK have got to being in Government and the closest arrangement between any two parties in Scottish politics since the Labour/Lib Dem coalitions that ran the country between 1999 and 2007.

Tomorrow, the Green membership will decide whether or not to endorse that deal in a binding vote at an EGM.

In this blog, I’m going to lay out why I plan to vote against that endorsement.

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We Need To Talk About: GERS (2020-21 Edition)

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 2 Comments

“Never make predictions, especially about the future.” ― Yogi Berra

This article was previously posted on Common Weal. You can also read my previous work on GERS on this blog behind the following links: 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20

In my analysis of GERS last year, I remarked that this was in a very real sense the end of an era not in the sense that it would show us anything different from the previous years but that it was the last year that wouldn’t. Covid has upended the entire world and for statisticians that means the worst possible thing that could ever happen to their data tables – a discontinuity.

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Post-Nationalist Scotland

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 2 Comments

“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it….” ― George Bernard Shaw

Yesterday my wife and I took part in a fascinating radio interview looking at how people, particularly migrants to Scotland, have come to support independence. I hope I’ll be able to share it with you in a month or so when it’s due to be published though at this stage I have no idea how much – if any – of our conversation will make the final cut (the programme is expected to be about ten minutes long, we talked for over an hour and the interviewer spoke to several people apart from us). As one might expect the conversation looked, in part, at the nature of Nationalism in Scotland and how that is viewed by both migrants and the countries from which they came. That part of the conversation got me thinking about my own views on Nationalism and where Scotland is, or could go, as part of our journey towards independence.

Be assured, that this isn’t going to be another lazy attack on Nationalism as we have seen levelled against proponents of Scottish Independence (particularly by those who wave their own flags just as hard under the more sanitised name of Patriotism or National Unity). Indeed, I shall defend at least the logic of Nationalism later in this piece. But I shall lay out why I think it only takes us so far in the philosophy of independence and set out a proposition that there is perhaps a hint of what an independent Scotland could look like in a post-nationalist world.

(And yes, I appreciate the irony of writing this on a day when a lot of folk are watching groups of men defined by their national identity kick a ball around. I never was one for Football.)

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Scottish Elections 2021:- The Results

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 6 Comments

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” – Abraham Lincoln

A strange election in strange times has, after more than the usual delay, returned a result that seems almost strangely familiar. Prior to the 2016 election, the “received wisdom” was that the majority SNP government was going to come back to power with that majority and thus usher in five years of “boring government” under a “one party state”. Instead, we got a minority government and everything that followed from that. This time round, the challenge to “restore” that majority government was rejected and we again find ourselves with a Parliament that looks really quite similar to the one in 2016. Many of the names have changed, many of the seats have not. The SNP have fallen one seat short of a majority, the Tories remain the “2nd party” by equalling their previous tally, the Greens have increased their ranks and Labour and the Lib Dems have reduced. Despite enthusiastic campaigning by their activist, no new parties have entered Parliament and none have left either (though the Lib Dems have dropped below the “major party” threshold which may have significant implications for them). From a pure democratic stance, at 63% the turnout was the highest of the devolution era – despite or in spite of fears that the pandemic would suppress it. More voters is always a good thing. As is diversity in the Parliament with record numbers of women, people of colour and other underrepresented groups in the House.

A full breakdown of the results in each constituency and region can be found here.

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(Source here)

There will be discussion over the coming days about the makeup of Government and whether the SNP continue to run as a minority or whether they form a formal coalition – most likely with the Greens. For my part, with a track record of two minority governments I think that a coalition is unlikely and my preference would be against one anyway for reasons I’ll detail below but primarily because of my feeling laid out on Thursday that a Government that can rely on whipped loyalty will make less good decisions than one that has to justify itself to Parliament.

The call for a second independence referendum must now intensify. There is a Parliamentary majority capable of passing a referendum bill and instructing the Government to proceed with its manifesto promise. Indeed, between the SNP and the Greens there is now as many pro-independence MSPs in Parliament now as there were in 2011 when the first indyref was initiated. Mandates are sure to be traded – some more, some less valid – and we’re still lacking an effective pressure campaign to keep the tactical and strategic advantage on our side, but I think it is likely now that the only person who can actively prevent an independence referendum within the next Scottish Parliament is now Nicola Sturgeon. The campaign is there for her to take and run with.

For more detailed analysis of each of the parties and the overall political landscape, keep reading below the fold.

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To Those We Are About To Elect

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 9 Comments

“Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power.” – Seth Berkley

This has been an unusual election, put upon us by unusual times. The pressures of the global Covid pandemic here in Scotland have greatly limited electoral campaigning (though I do believe there’s a bright future ahead for digital and semi-digital hustings and other meetings) and the count itself has been extended to allow for the safety of the staff involved. The grand tradition of watching over-tired politicians and pundits trying to say nothing for as long as possible between 10pm and the first results coming in was pretty much absent in Scotland this year. Normally, around this time, I’d be reporting on the results and my analysis of them but as things stand we’re not expecting the first Constituency results in Scotland until this evening and as the Regional results can only be tallied once all of the Constituency results are in, we’re not expecting the final results until Saturday night or maybe even Sunday morning.

Instead of that analysis (which shall come when we have the results) I want to write an open letter to all of the politicians who will take up seats in the upcoming Parliament.

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