politics

To Build Houses, First Buy The Land

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” – Margaret Thatcher

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

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Why are houses so expensive?

There are many reasons. To take just a few, Developers only build private housing at a rate just high enough to keep prices up and subsidies flowing, certain areas are being particularly pressured by those rich enough to own multiple homes at the expense of the local community, and – as we pointed out in our book All of Our Futures – the UK’s decision to push the burden of pensions away from the state and onto individuals has created a culture of “climbing the housing ladder” with “victory” meaning extracting the wealth you’ve accumulated through ever increasing house prices so that you can pay for retirement or, increasingly, so that you can give it to a private care firm owned by a tax-dodging hedge fund. That is, if you’re allowed to buy a house at all and aren’t destined to be one of the increasing number of private renting pensioners who face destitution due to rents and the lack of means to pay for care (something we warned about in All of our Futures but only recently being picked up as a problem by places like the FT).

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A Year In Common Weal – 2024 Policy Review

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world.” – Roy T. Bennett

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

If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donate page here.

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Intro

Welcome to the end of 2024. I can feel the Dùbhlachd tightening around me these days. I’ve always been a rather solar powered person (with a longtime ritual of greeting midsummer by reading outdoors under the midnight glow) and while I’m not afflicted – as some of my friends are – with full blown Seasonal Affective Disorder, I do feel the urge to crawl under a duvet and hibernate until the sun returns. Humans weren’t made to run a summer schedule in the middle of winter – we should be huddled around the hearth telling stories and hoping that the pickled fruits last till Spring.

Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to my winter break and some time to switch off, chill, and break into the aforementioned pickles – possibly with some home smoked cheese!
Until then, I want to leave you this year with a round up of what we got up to at Common Weal – especially as this year marked our tenth anniversary! We remain very possibly the most productive think tank in Scotland (supporting all of our staff members while the whole think tank earns less that the First Minister does – if you’d like help us correct that, then please sign up as a regular donor). We published 12 substantial policy papers, policy briefings or consultation responses this year plus we submitted several more less substantial consultation responses to the Scottish or UK Governments (many really are barely worth the time to submit but if we don’t then it gets held against us when it comes time to lobby properly for the outcome we want). This is all in addition to the whole staff writing in our weekly newsletter and our regular In Common Column in The National, plus all of the other media appearances we make with our work. Not a bad return for an average donation of £10/month! Regular newsletter readers will, no doubt, remember many of the stories and policy papers but newer subscribers or folk who have been a bit overwhelmed with the news of the year (i.e. all of us) may have missed a few things.

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Scottish Budget 2024 – Still Spinning Plates

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Our economic models are projections and arrows when they should be circles.” – Wade Davis

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Finance Secretary Shona Robison must have breathed a sigh of relief at the UK budget the other month (covered by me here) but if she did, it was the shallowest one she could get away with. The extra money from the UK that has gone into this year’s Scottish Budget has largely been accounted for in terms of public sector pay deals and reserved tax rises applied to those wages (not that I’m complaining about those pay deals – quite the contrary, even with them many public sector works are still lagging behind fair pay after over a decade and a half of austerity) or has gone into replacing cuts from last year’s budget so it’s clear that despite the relative expansion to Scottish finances there still wasn’t going to be a huge amount of play in the figures to do much more than work a little less hard to keep all of the plates spinning in the air.

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Just Work It Off

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“Work as if you were to live a thousand years, play as if you were to die tomorrow.” – Ben Franklin

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Sir Keir Starmer, Knight of the Realm and Man of the Working People, has declared again that thou shalt work or thou shalt starve.

It’s becoming an increasingly common political line in the UK that the economic woes are all caused by people not working hard enough and there is particular ire being levelled at those who are neither employed nor unemployed (a quite narrow measure of people who are not in but who are actively looking for work) but who are “economically inactive” – who are neither working nor who are looking for work. The other line is that work is the only thing that gives someone’s life purpose and that if you’re not working then you’re a lesser kind of person than someone who is – a failure, or an immoral shirker.

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Undermining Our Principles

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“The more expeditiously we can end this plague on earth caused by the landmine, the more readily can we set about the constructive tasks to which so many give their hand in the cause of humanity.” – Diana, Princess of Wales

This blog post previously appeared in The National as part of Common Weal’s In Common newsletter.
If you’d like to throw me a wee tip to support this blog, you can here.

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In a year of countless and boundless horrors, where war crimes and crimes against humanity are now so routinely fed to us in real time on social media that we are seemingly utterly numb to those suffering them and indifferent to or even cheering on those who commit them, who had “Scottish First Minister apparently breaches international land mine ban treaty” on their list of things to watch out for?

As reported by LBC’s Gina Davidson, last week, outside a primary school where he was launching a new literacy programme, FM John Swinney was asked about the then breaking news that the USA was changing its policies and giving Ukraine anti-personnel land mines to deploy during its war against Russia. Swinney stated that territorial integrity must be defended and that he “supported the actions taken”.

There’s a problem with this – that statement looks very much like a breach of Article 1(c) of the 1997 Ottawa Treaty that banned the use of AP mines – and in particular banned any state signed up to the treaty from taking any action to “assist, encourage or induce” any other state (whether signed up to the treaty or not) from using such weapons. The UK – and thus Scotland – is a state party to the treaty and all aspects of government, including the devolved governments, are bound by it.

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The NCS Bill Still Isn’t Dead

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“We are reluctant to quit things because we want to avoid the resulting heartbreak. The pain of failure is magnified by the sunk costs: all the time and effort and emotion you have already invested.” – John A. List

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The Scottish Government has announced that the National Care Service Bill shall remain in limbo for an unknown period of time.

While Common Weal and many other stakeholders pulled their support for the Bill as written (though we have not pulled our support for a National Care Service – just the one this Bill would have created) the death knell for the proposed legislation was the Scottish Green conference the other week where members voted to pull their support for the Bill. This should have been a point of change. Indeed, there had already been enough pressure placed on them to force that change long before now but I have a nagging feeling that this announcement came now not because they recognise the flaws in their legislation or even that they’ve acceded to demands from care stakeholders – including the people who NEED the care that the NCS will deliver – but that they’ve merely looked at the Parliamentary maths faced by a now-minority Government and are doing what they need to do to not lose a vote. It might yet be a step along the way of getting what we want but it’s not exactly a shining example of priorities and principles rising above party politics.

Nevertheless, after fighting against (rather than, as we’d prefer, for) the NCS Bill we’re now at a point where we should be focussing on actually improving care rather than fixing care legislation.

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The Climate Climbdown

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“If a pandemic can induce governments to take emergency actions, why can’t a climate breakdown that threatens to kill off the very life-support systems of the planet do the same? After this, there can be no more excuses for passivity.” – Andreas Malm

This blog post previously appeared in The National as part of Common Weal’s In Common newsletter.
If you’d like to throw me a wee tip to support this blog, you can here.

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Scotland – once a nation that held itself up as a world leader in climate ambitions – has formally repealed important carbon emission targets in a vote that would have had unanimous support but for the abstention of the Greens.

The Scottish Government still holds that Scotland will be a “Net Zero” nation by 2045 but has yet to demonstrate how we will actually reach that goal, especially as interim targets like the 2030 target just repealed continue to be missed.

To be clear on why this vote took place, the Scottish Government put the target into actual legislation as a show of force on its climate ambitions. A “mere” government policy target could have simply been broken and forgotten about as is all too common amongst governments of all colours but once placed in law, the government would have been acting unlawfully if the target was missed.

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UK Budget Review – 2024

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.” – Margaret Mitchell

This blog post previously appeared in The National, for which I received a commission.
You can read my donations and support policy here and if you’d like to throw me a wee tip to support this blog, you can here.

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The first budget of the new Labour Government and the first in 14 years is one that would have been more hotly anticipated if it wasn’t for the fact that the Government leaked so much of it to the media ahead of time – in direct contravention of Parliamentary procedure and in a way that would have seen Ministers resign not many years ago – and would have seen Labour complain about had they still been in Opposition. The Speaker rebuked them thoroughly, but – of course – lacks the power to actually sanction anyone involved (in Holyrood, the Presiding Officer could have technically cancelled the budget speech but even when the Scottish Government has leaked material like this, they’ve managed to stay on the side of a mere threat).

Nevertheless, the budget was delivered and it’s worth us taking a look at just a few of the things that happened that will affect Scotland.

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Strangled By The Purse Strings

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got lots of numbers in it.” – George W. Bush

This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.
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Eyes are on the UK Budget at the moment, and for good reason, but shortly after that we’re going to see what the Scottish Government lays out in its own budget and, given the scope of devolution, that is likely to have much more of an impact on Scottish public services – especially at a local level.

This means that recent news from Shona Robison telling Local Authorities that there’s “no money left” for public sector pay deals should be taken as a threat to local democratic autonomy.

Usually when I write an article like this I start by saying “imagine if Westminster treated Holyrood like this” but in this case I don’t really need to as we have the example of the UK Government’s cut to Winter Fuel Payments in England having a knock-on effect on the Block Grant which put Holyrood in the position of making the choice on whether to cut the equivalent Scottish allowance too. They didn’t have to – the Block Grant is calculated based on how Westminster spends money in England but Scotland is free to spend that Grant as it likes, not just on equivalent policies. In this case though, they did indeed choose to cut the payments.

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Scotland’s Population

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” – Carl Sagan

This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.
If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donate page here.

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Every year the National Records of Scotland produces an annual population estimate for the nation. While not quite as comprehensive as the once-per-decade census (at least, when the census isn’t marred by the problems of the 2022 Scottish census), it provides a good rolling picture of Scotland’s population both at a national level and at a more local level both on the scale of Local Authorities and per NHS Health Boards (the latter being important for the allocation of healthcare budgets and is gathered because one of the tools used to estimate population change is the number of people who present to the NHS with an illness or injury in a given year). Indeed, a report was published in March comparing the rolling mid-year estimate to the 2022 census and found that the estimate was within around 1% of the census value (which is a fair bit more precise than, say, the 3.4% margin of uncertainty in the revenue estimates in GERS).

The headline figure you’ll have gathered from the news is that Scotland’s population is growing faster than it has since the end of the Second World War (itself a statistical glitch as many thousands of soldiers returning all at once tended to bump the numbers) and that the growth rate is being driven by immigration to Scotland.
I fully expect that line to get more negative attention than it should given the rabidly anti-migrant stance that the UK is rapidly slipping down, driven by increasingly extreme social media cesspits – certainly a view backed up by the fight going on in the comments section of the BBC article reporting on the new figures – so it’s worth doing the thing I often do with reports like this and taking a dip beneath the headlines for a more detailed and nuanced view of Scotland’s changing demographics.

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