A cruel and chilling message to victims

There has been an interesting discussion going on over at Lallands Peat Worrier about the causes of the 'gender gap' in the SNP's support, and what can be done about it. But the poster Am Firinn makes an interesting point about one thing the SNP categorically shouldn't do, even if there is a chance that it might help matters. He points to the Scottish Parliament debate on June 10 about domestic violence against men, and the way in which even "normally sensible" Labour MSPs like Malcolm Chisholm were prepared to dismiss the problem as trivial.

I must say, having had a quick look at the Official Report from that debate, I think Am Firinn has got a point. The most telling contribution comes from the SNP's Christine Grahame, in which she explains how the biggest problem that male victims face is that they simply have nowhere to turn, because of the popular perception that domestic violence is exclusively something that men do to women. And if you want to know where that popular perception comes from, you need look no further than the Labour contributions to the debate. To those MSPs, male victims are few in number, in many cases are really the perpetrators of the violence anyway, and even just acknowledging the existence of the problem is an unwelcome distraction from the message that domestic violence is all about 'gender inequality' - ie. an inequality that women are on the wrong end of.

What I found even more depressing is that it appears SNP members joined with Labour to vote through Johann Lamont's amendment, which made the gender inequality point, and also noted "that overwhelmingly victims are women and that eradicating domestic abuse will only succeed where that pattern is acknowledged". This ignores the fact that there is quite simply no credible evidence to support the assertion that the "overwhelming majority" of victims are female - if anything, there is rather a lot of evidence to suggest that a significant minority of victims are male. And if this is solely a 'gender inequality' issue, how do we explain the many victims of domestic abuse in same-sex relationships, including lesbian relationships? What might be the case is that there is a gender inequality in terms of the outcome of abuse, in that violence inflicted by women tends to take a different form, and men are perhaps better equipped to physically defend themselves. But there again, aren't many men culturally conditioned never to strike a woman, even in self-defence? There's certainly precious little cultural conditioning of that sort in the opposite direction. And isn't the fact that male victims of abuse are less likely to receive help - or even be believed in the first place - also a clear-cut case of gender inequality?

So it cuts both ways, and there's no mystery about what is perpetuating the latter problem. The message from Labour (and, to be fair, from many other quarters) that some victims of domestic violence are less equal than others is a cruel and chilling one.

Selective standards of proof

Brian Flynn is the brother of one of the American victims of the Lockerbie bombing, and was also one of those consulted by Kenny MacAskill in a video conference before the decision to release Megrahi was taken. He has had a high profile in recent days, castigating the Scottish government, alleging nefarious motivations for the decision on the basis of "evidence" that frankly isn't there, and last but not least demanding the resignation of both Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill.

It's difficult to know how best to respond to someone who has suffered so much, has a huge amount at stake in all this, and clearly has no agenda other than the truth as he sees it. But it seems to me that when the integrity of others is being wrongfully impugned, it's still important that those points are rebutted. In particular, it strikes me that Mr Flynn is guilty of a clear double-standard - he is very quick to label anyone who questions Megrahi's guilt as the peddler of wild conspiracy theories, and yet the evidential basis for those "theories" are demonstrably about a thousand times stronger than the "proof" he cites for his own apparently unshakeable belief that the SNP were nobbled by businessmen in the Libyan corner.

Here is the comment I left at Mr Flynn's latest article in the Guardian -

As I've said to him on another website, I have every sympathy for what Mr Flynn and his family have gone through since 1988. But the fact remains that his logic is self-contradictory, evades certain inconvenient facts, and thus leads him to direct his anger towards the wrong place.

The point about the dictatorship in Libya having been strengthened by Scotland's actions is first of all a totally unproven assertion, and frankly highly implausible. The idea that a devolved government could ever have anything like as much impact on international affairs as Mr Flynn is suggesting stretches credibility to the limit. But the much more important issue is this - does Mr Flynn want the rule of law to prevail, or doesn't he? If he does, then he can't seriously argue that Kenny MacAskill should have been taking account of any theoretical side-effects of his decision. He was acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, and thus had to focus on the narrow matter of whether Mr Megrahi satisfied the conditions for compassionate release, and whether it was appropriate to release him. If he'd done anything else, he would be guilty of Mr Flynn's charge of treating Megrahi differently from others for political reasons. But he didn't.

"two months before the release, the Scottish National party received a visit from the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), a Middle East-based sovereign wealth fund critical to SNP's plans for capital investment and greater economic independence from the UK"

A fairy story. The only thing that can give Scotland "greater economic independence from the UK" is legislation at Westminster, not shady deals with mysterious Qataris.

"Clearly, the vaunted Scottish justice system had been corrupted by the political needs of the SNP."

This really is an extraordinarily silly charge, and it resembles the one made by Menendez and co over Lord Trefgarne's (utterly unimportant) letter. Mr Flynn's logic seems to be that because it can be shown that someone said something to the SNP, the SNP are somehow automatically "implicated" in it. It apparently doesn't even change anything if it can be clearly shown that the SNP gave a firm response that political and economic considerations would under no circumstances be taken into account.

"And dozens of prisoners die of natural causes every year in Scottish prisons. Why was al-Megrahi considered a special case?"

The whole point is that he wasn't. Many terminally ill prisoners have been recommended for compassionate release before, and it has always been granted by Scottish ministers. If they had rejected this particular recommendation on political grounds, they would indeed have been treating Megrahi as a special case. They didn't.

"How is it right that al-Megrahi served only 11 days for murdering a little child four days before Christmas in Lockerbie?"

And if he hadn't been granted compassionate release, how many days more would Megrahi have served for that murder? One or two, at the very most. I can understand the emotive power of those kind of statistics, but they aren't terribly meaningful in these particular circumstances. It simply wasn't in Kenny MacAskill's power to give Megrahi the kind of punishment Mr Flynn feels he deserves.

Summer quiz no. 2 : Find the political blog!

First things first - as promised, the answer to the first quiz. It was of course the man affectionately known by the Scotsman as "a senior Labour MSP" (there are apparently no others), George Foulkes. A frank admission at this point - I couldn't dream up enough clues to cover all the letters of his full official name His Eminence Baron Sir Lord Georgie Foulkes, for which I humbly apologise.

OK, now onto the second quiz! This time you're looking for the name of a well-known Scottish political blog, but other than that the rules are the same as before. Find the answers to all the following clues, then take the first letter of each answer, and rearrange those letters until you have the name of a blog. If the answer to any clue is the name of a person, you are looking for the first letter of their first name, not their surname.

Clues :

1. The (slightly misleading) shorthand name for the new voting system John Smith introduced for Labour leadership elections in 1993.

2. The constituency that Labour's former Welsh Secretary Ron Davies will be contesting for Plaid Cymru in the Welsh Assembly elections next year.

3. What a larger-than-life Liberal MP suggested might be done to the SDP at the moment of its birth.

4. The parts of Tony Blair's body to which the hand of history naughtily strayed, coincidentally just after he had left his soundbites at home.

5. The country that became an integral part of the United Kingdom during Pitt the Younger's tenure as Prime Minister.

6. According to Ann Widdecombe, Michael Howard had "something of the [fill in the blank] about him".

7. A Tory government minister and prolific diarist who Clare Short accused of being drunk while making a statement at the dispatch box.

8. Along with Foyle, one of two constituencies in Northern Ireland to have been recently represented by a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

9. The retailer that specialises in products for pregnant women and young children, and that was name-checked repeatedly by David Cameron during the Prime Ministerial (sic) Debates.

10. The Labour frontbencher who, in the wake of the 1996 Scott Report, addressed Ian Lang with the words "I warn the President..."

11. The popular game which George Bush Sr. tried to convince Denis Thatcher was more "fun" if there was running involved.

12. The only person to contest both the 1999 and 2006 Liberal Democrat leadership elections.

13. The organisation that Nigel Lawson dubbed Britain's "national religion".

Once again, I'll reveal the answer when it's time for the third quiz!

'There are no Kellys in Scotland...'

It has to be said I'm having extreme difficulty breaking the habit of leaving comments on every ignorant American article I come across relating to the Megrahi affair. The latest one is from the Wall Street Journal - it basically just rehashes some very old information about the specialists having been unwilling to commit to a firm three month prognosis, and packages this as a stunning new revelation. Of course, the absurdity of the article is that those specialists made clear that, whatever the uncertainties, they fully expected Megrahi to live "months, not years" - words which speak for themselves.

Instead of reprinting one of my own comments on the article, however, I thought this time I'd reprint a comment from someone who replied to me. It really is a classic of its kind...

"James, I suppose you are now going to tell me you are a retired musician with an interest in politics! You sound remarkably like the person I had an exchange with on The Time Mag website during PM David Cameron's visit to Washington a few weeks ago. Then, I believe your name was Robert.

Firstly, I have never heard of a Scot with the name Kelly. Unheard of. Secondly, you have unsurprisingly twisted the meaning of my statement "That is beside the point though". I only said that, now regrettably, to indicate that there are many Scots in The Labour Party. And I am sure many of them would secretly be in favor of Scottish independence.

You say the SNP does not have any foreign relations. The party does not of course, but a Scottish government minister supposedly released Megrahi of his own accord. He, Kenny MacAskill, is not free to roam the world as a free agent of the Scottish government! His relations with the US and Libya for that matter, are controlled by the Foreign Office in London. So, your argument does not wash. That would be like the governor of one of the US States having independent relations with a foreign government, not like George Bush taking orders from the Iranian President! Your analogy is ludicrous and illogical.

Why don't you now tell us who you really are since this is one of few sites that request people use their full real names. If you are from the UK Foreign Office, I have some suggestions for you."


As John Smith once memorably said, "you don't even have to set traps for them"...

The American imagination hoaxes itself

(NOTE : This is a comment I posted a few minutes ago on a Huffington Post article, and there was an option to post it directly to Blogger. Given that what appears offers very little clue to the fact that it's a comment from elsewhere, I'm not sure I'll be trying this again!)

After all this time, I genuinely cannot believe I am reading yet another article based on so much ignorance. How many times do the Scottish government have to set the record straight before the message finally gets home? Let's take it in turn...

"Dr. Sikora quickly backtracked from his latest calculations, but that was only after it became known he was picked by Libyan officials..."

Incorrect. It's been known since last year that Sikora was paid by the Libyans, a fact which isn't terribly important given that his diagnosis played no part whatsoever in the decision to release Megrahi. And, as it happens, he didn't actually backtrack on his comments about the possibility of Megrahi surviving ten years - he simply clarified them for the benefit of a media that seemed determined to misconstrue his meaning.

"a Scottish doctor might have a different diagnosis than one from Libya..."

Just as well, then, that the only diagnoses that were taken into account were from Scottish doctors.

"But what would the families of the Lockerbie dead say about what happened?"

For starters, they would disagree sharply with each other. The majority of British families supported Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds, and many of them have severe doubts about Megrahi's guilt - understandable given the SCCRC report that referred Megrahi's case back to the Court of Appeal. That appeal would have started last autumn had it not been for Megrahi's illness, and might well have cleared him by now.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Summer quiz no. 1 : Find the MSP!

I may not be around much to blog in the coming days and weeks, so it occurred to me that I could keep things ticking over by writing a few posts in advance and pre-scheduling them to appear at regular intervals. One obvious snag, though - it's impossible to know what's going to be topical a couple of days ahead of time, let alone a couple of weeks. So instead I thought I'd try something completely different - quizzes! Mind you, there's a snag with this as well - if the first one goes down like a lead balloon, it'll be too late because I've already pre-scheduled a whole batch of them. In that eventuality, never fear - there will be an end in sight at some point!

The idea is very straightforward. Answer all of the following simple clues, and write down the first letter of each answer. (If the answer to a particular clue is a person's name, you're looking for the first letter of their first name, not of their surname.) Then, rearrange those letters until you have the name of a sitting member of the Scottish Parliament. The first person to name the correct MSP will win the fabulous prize of...well, nothing, really, but don't let that put you off - the world is materialistic enough as it is.

Here are the clues -

1. The name of a political party that was once a 'Representation Committee'.

2. A Welsh political leader in whom the BBC spotted some distinct alien potential.

3. A central African country that the son of a former British Prime Minister had designs on.

4. The adjective Neil Kinnock used to describe the nature of the chaos caused by Labour-run Liverpool city council hiring taxis to deliver redundancy notices to its own workers.

5. The constituency of an MP who, as a Murphy, finds that it breaks his heart to feel compelled to tell us so regularly what a rubbish country Ireland is.

6. The wife of the man who was the youngest Cabinet minister in John Major's government.

7. The scene of a famous 'Liberal revival' in 1962.

8. A TV celebrity talent show, which both the current Business Secretary and his immediate predecessor have expressed an interest in appearing on.

9. The government department which the Chancellor Norman Lamont refused to be demoted to in 1993, preferring instead to return to the backbenches.

10. The Scottish location for the 2005 G8 summit, which was the focus of the Live 8 concerts.

11. A political party in the UK that was in government for 51 consecutive years during the 20th Century.

12. The opponent of a newt-lover in a forthcoming internal party selection.

13. A former England football manager who once practiced headers with Tony Blair for the cameras.

I'll reveal the answer when it's time for the second quiz!

It is not logical, Mr Chekov

It suddenly occurred to me that it was overwhelmingly likely that self-styled "liberal unionist" (ie. zealous Brit Nat and Tory cheerleader) Northern Ireland blogger Chekov would have been bound to weigh in on the Megrahi affair at some point over the last few days. I wasn't disappointed - and needless to say, there was plenty of predictable guff about a blundering 'regional executive' creating problems that our hard-pressed 'national' leader Mr Cameron has to mop up for us. Just for once, I tried to leave a comment there, but I wasn't sure it went through, and as Chekov has a "perhaps, perhaps, perhaps" moderation policy in any case, I thought it might be an idea to post it here as well...

As ever, Chekov - utterly desperate. A few points -

"he didn’t expect that his ruling would cause the SNP to crash in the polls"

Just as well there's no reason to think he was wrong, then, isn't it? To the best of my knowledge there hasn't actually been a Holyrood poll for ages, but even on the assumption that the SNP vote is not as high as it was, have you got the slightest scrap of evidence that there's a causal link between that and the Megrahi release? Thought not. It's not a particularly plausible proposition anyway, given how split Scottish public opinion was on the subject. From the way you talk you'd think there was unanimous opposition.

And I fear you might be in for a nasty shock about the effect of the current controversy - so far I can detect nothing but quiet satisfaction at the way Alex Salmond is very respectfully rebuffing the US Senate's arrogance.

"A nationalist Scottish Executive, flexing its muscles and styling itself a ’government’"

'Styling itself'? Do you want to have a little think about what the word "executive" actually means in this context?

"medical experts suggest that Megrahi could live for another decade"

I'll ask the same question I've asked of a good few others - why leave out the crucial words? I believe what you were trying to say is "have suggested there is a less than 1% chance that Megrahi could live for another decade". Giving people the full picture isn't so much use for propaganda purposes, right enough.

"In truth, the Scottish Executive chose the wrong issue to attempt to parade its autonomy in front of an international audience."

As you seem utterly convinced that the UK government was in some mysterious, unspecified way involved in MacAskill's decision, a far better way to "parade independence" and court popularity would have been to say "we're having none of this, the evil mass-murderer stays right where he is". But they didn't take that easy, cheap, opportunistic, populist route. They actually had the courage to take the right decision for the right reasons under impossibly difficult circumstances.

I've never been more proud to be an SNP supporter than I was that day.

My back-of-the-envelope blueprint for an independent Scotland

On the previous thread, Ezio asked for my views on how the political system should be reformed in an independent Scotland. Thinking about it, I realised that I hadn't considered the subject in enough depth to fill a post of any great length, but in broad terms this is what I would favour -

STV for parliamentary elections. The Jenkins committee rejected the abolutism that regarded STV as the "Holy Grail" of electoral systems, noting that there was no such thing as a perfect system. That's quite true - STV is less proportional than a pure list system, for instance. It is, however, plenty proportional enough to be getting on with, and given that it maximises the power of the voter - and minimises the power of the party machines - it surely comes closer to ticking all the relevant boxes than any other electoral system yet devised.

Abolition of the monarchy. Not a huge priority for me, but in an ideal world I'd prefer a republic - mainly for straightforward democratic reasons, but also because it would seem far more becoming of a grown-up country to have a home-grown head of state. However, I can also see the power of the argument that retaining the monarchy would be symbolic of a continuing British "Social Union", and that such a prospect might help reassure sceptics that independence wouldn't be the end of the world.

A directly elected ceremonial president (ie. the Irish model). If the monarchy is abolished, I can't see a credible case for denying the public a direct say in choosing their head of state. The only reasonable concern is that a president with a personal mandate might challenge the legitimacy of the government, but as far as I'm aware that hasn't been the experience in Ireland.

I wouldn't, however, support the idea of a directly elected Prime Minister. It would be a kind of presidential 'cuckoo in the nest' of the parliamentary system, and create an obvious potential for instability if (as could very easily happen) the Prime Minister found it impossible to form a parliamentary majority. It would also exacerbate the already depressing tendency of politics being too personality and image-driven.

A presumption of parliamentary authority unless there are sound practical reasons. What I mean by that is as few equivalents to the Westminster "royal prerogative" as humanly possible.

Of course we would almost certainly have a written constitution, which should probably be ratified (or rejected) by referendum. Which leads me on to a point about which I'm genuinely unsure - whether referenda should be as frequent (and have so many automatic triggers) as in countries like Ireland or Switzerland.

So those are my very vague thoughts - I'm sure I've left out a great many important issues. What do others think?

*

A couple of little things while I'm thinking of them. Firstly, a few days ago I wrote a number of 'quiz' posts, which I've pre-scheduled to appear over the remainder of the summer, starting tomorrow. So apologies in advance if they're not everyone's cup of tea! Secondly, if you haven't voted in this year's Total Politics Blog Poll yet (hint, hint, cough, splutter, violent sneeze) you've still got just over a day to do it - details of how to vote can be found here.

American views on compassion are based on "emerging evidence"

USA Today has published an opinion piece on the Megrahi case, which (as you can probably guess without even reading it) is full of the now-familiar ignorance and innuendo. They do, to be fair, reprint Alex Salmond's first letter to John Kerry as an 'opposing view' - although, mysteriously, it's very heavily edited. Anyway, I decided to leave my own comment...

"Perhaps Libya has a better hospice system than anyone realized, or perhaps Megrahi's failing body was revitalized by the hero's welcome he received when he returned home."

Or perhaps USA Today should have read the statement Kenny MacAskill made when he released Megrahi, making abundantly clear that it was possible he might live longer than three months. That was merely a reasonable estimate, based on the best medical evidence from impartial doctors. That's right - doctors. Not prophets.

"Emerging evidence suggests the release was, at best, based on misguided notions of sympathy and bad medical advice; at worst, it involved a sleazy deal by British businesses — including, yes, BP — to improve commercial ties with Libya."

What evidence? At what point did it "emerge"? This is the whole problem with much of the US media on this story - and indeed with many of your politicians. It's as if you just have to say the words "evidence" and "suspicions" often enough and that'll do to be getting on with. For the four Senators (who as Alex Massie has identified have been peddling almost laughable inaccuracies about this story from the beginning) it's apparently sufficient to point out that there is an awful lot of "coincidence" at play in this case. Well, I'll tell you the biggest coincidence of all - Megrahi just happened to become gravely ill at a time when BP were lobbying for the PTA to be concluded. By the senators' logic, does that mean God was also nobbled by BP?

In any case, how can there be "emerging evidence" that the compassion shown to Megrahi was "misguided"? If you think the values Scots Law is founded on are wrong, that's fine, but it's also an utterly subjective opinion, of no greater or lesser validity than anyone else's. It's not based on evidence, "emerging" or otherwise. An abuse of the language, by any standards.

Finally, if the only link anyone can find between the Scottish government and BP is a single ill-advised letter from Lord Trefgarne, expressly written on his own behalf as a member of the House of Lords as much as on behalf of a council of which BP is only one member, then this conspiracy theory really is looking pretty threadbare. That letter, incidentally, says a good deal more about Trefgarne - a senior member of David Cameron's Conservative Party - than it does about Kenny MacAskill, who I'm quite sure read it dutifully and then promptly disregarded it.

Why is the Scottish government even cooperating in writing with this committee of clowns?

I was going to try to resist the temptation to write yet another full post on almost exactly the same subject as the last one, but it has to be noted in passing that Menendez's latest pronouncement on the Megrahi affair is bordering on the deranged. He's clearly impugning the integrity of Kenny MacAskill and Dr Andrew Fraser by suggesting that "all" witnesses who have declined to appear before the Senate are "stonewalling" and need "to clear their names". The latter point shows an arrogant disregard for UK/Scottish sovereignty by implying that a US committee is the appropriate (and indeed final) arbiter for who is or is not "guilty" in this matter.

He also warns us that he and his colleagues will be "publicly" and "frequently" requesting further documents from the Scottish government. Evidently the world is meant to shudder before America's righteous and tireless pursuit of truth. But what do you want to bet that these requested documents will be - just like the last batch - ones that were published on the Scottish Government website months ago, or ones that haven't been published for the simple reason that the US government denied permission? The man's refusal to do basic homework and his need for others to point out elementary facts that are in front of his eyes - sometimes many times over before the message finally gets home - utterly beggars belief. And any sign of a gracious apology when he realises that one of his previous sanctimonious rants was based on false information or outright ignorance? Don't be daft. This man who presumes to adjudicate upon the integrity of others demonstrably has precious little of his own.

From initially having thought that Alex Salmond should testify in person, I'm beginning to wonder why he's even bothering to cooperate in writing with this committee of clowns. They don't want "The Truth", they want a show-trial with a transparently predetermined outcome. I'm glad that the Scottish government is at least showing strictly limited interest in playing along with their little game.