Rolled-up Trousers

Egypt shows that Saddam would have been toast by now - without the need for war

Here's the full version of my article that is in today's Scotland on Sunday.

So the pharaoh is no more. In the end, the people did not require to part the sea. The shining miracle which was produced in Egypt this time was eighteen days of spectacular struggle by a people who had
been cowed for decades.

They came out when they knew critics of the regime were liable to ‘disappear’. They faced down and defeated the pro-Mubarak thugs on the streets over a period of a few days. And in the end, they fashioned for themselves a beautiful movement which will live on in the memory the world over. Now to build the promised land of democracy.

This is the Arab world’s 1989 moment. Dictators came tumbling down across eastern Europe that year, culminating in the Berlin wall falling. Tyrants across the Middle East are quaking at what has happened in Tunisia and now Egypt. And when it comes to separation walls coming down, the self-styled “only democracy in Middle East” Israel has been remarkably quiet on events over its border despite the fact they should be comforted by the principle that democracies don't go to war on one another.

The worry was that the 1989 parallel we were going to make was that Tahrir Square was Tiananmen Square. Democracy, free speech and human rights could have died for another generation if Egyptians hadn’t proved themselves more stubborn than Hosni Mubarak.

There are so many individual heroes whose stories have yet to be properly told and popularised. In a region which has been beset by the phenomenon of suicide bombings, it is the suicide of a Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi who set himself on fire outside his local governer’s office that has ignited a force for good here. He had been trampled upon by offialdom once too many times and was as mad as hell and couldn’t take it any more. He lit more than the fire on himself, and the flame is spreading across the region.

This was eventually bound to happen. Repression cannot last forever and the natural state for people to live is in freedom with leaders accountable to the people. States move forward when the people have a stakehold in their country and can contribute to its success. Presidents brutally holding power for decade upon decade can only lead to stagnancy and that is what the Arab world has been languishing in for too long. An injection of new ideas is badly needed.

This is what makes the position of the west in supporting these regimes for as long as they did absolutely criminal. Tony Blair, who holidayed in Egypt as Hosni’s guest, even during the uprisings was stressing the need for “stability”. This from the man who unleashed hell on Iraq but says it was worthwhile because Saddam was toppled and democracy installed.

I remember doing television interviews at the time of the protests against the Iraq war. The usual stock question we’d get asked is why we were supporting Saddam. My answer was that we weren’t, and what we should do instead is stop supporting dictators in the Middle East and allow the people to rise up themselves and establish democracy. This met with guffaws, but has proven to be correct. And had Saddam still been in power today he would be going or gone by now. It would have happened in an organic way which the people won and built themselves. And it would have happened without blowing apart millions of lives.

New job

Those following me on Twitter or on Facebook will already have heard that I've got a new job. I'm taking over as Head of International and Media Relations at Al Jazeera.

It means I'll be moving to Qatar where the network's global headquaters are. I'm really excited about the job and the opportunity. I've always held Al Jazeera in high esteem because of the quality of their news coverage. It is the voice of the global south, with it being the largest English language broadcaster outside of Europe and America. Its values mean it reports from places where other stations may have lost interest or are scared to go.

But there's also more to my new employers than just the excellent news coverage. There are eight Al Jazeera sports channels, which hold rights from FIFA and UEFA to air the World Cup and Champions League for example. There's a kids channel and a documentary channel. The network has undergone extraordinary growth since it was established just 15 years ago.

I’m looking forward to getting out to Doha too. It’s a vibrant place which has rapidly become a centre for global attention, most famously of course with the recently successful campaign to host the World Cup in 2022.

Will keep you posted.

Scotland could still be included in HSR plans - if we get our act together

The leaders of both Glasgow City Council and Edinburgh City Council were in London yesterday to jointly put the case for their cities being included in the first phase of the high speed rail project.

They were granted an audience with transport minister Philip Hammond. I can't find any news yet as to what the result of that meeting was.

It's great to see that action is being taken. I do wonder though why it's taken so long to get to this point. The original plans were outlined by Labour's transport minister Lord Adonis last April. In December, his successor Hammond pretty much put a seal on the plans with tweaks in the route after the consultation.

This is something I banged on about a lot during the general election campaign. I can't understand why there has not been more outrage about this in Scotland. The UK government might be building at a snail's pace, but once it's done in 20 years, the interconnectivity between Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, London and Europe is going to leave Scotland badly out in the cold.

And we're not exactly in the thick of things at the moment. The last decade has seen a speeding up of the West Coast Mainline between London, Birmingham and Manchester with £10bn of investment. We already have a slower line running up here. It now takes 50% longer to go from Glasgow to Manchester than Manchester to London despite the journeys being equidistant.

Many people south or the border cannot therefore see the point of the plans to speed up journeys between Birmingham and London. Conservationists have been protesting loudly. The home counties have been up in arms. It would be much easier building in Scotland.

There should have been a much louder chorus demanding that the line be in Scotland. This was after all the assumed default position. Yorkshire ran a relentless campaign involving its MPs, councils, businesses and media to successfully gain exclusion at Scotland's expense. This despite Glasgow and Edinburgh also having the advantage that the environmental benefits of HSR only kick in if the line comes to Scotland because of the modal shift from air to rail.

Instead we've still got our newspapers like the Herald throwing up smoke on whether the UK or Scottish Government should pay, instead of running focused vigorous campaigns for HSR like the Yorkshire Post did. The obfuscation originally stemmed from the confusion of likes of Lord Adonis, Tom Harris and Jim Murphy. The constitutional lines are clear though.

I'd like to hear what the councils are now planning. My own suggestion is that all the stakeholders need to be brought into a room to plan a strategy. On the agenda could be the crossborder plans as well as building Scotland internal high speed future. It's high time that the Glasgow-Edinburgh line for one was brought into the 20th century, nevermind the 21st. If the UK government can plan its building programme into the 2030s then surely we can lay out a sustainable plan now too. We might even get it finished first.

Cantona was right

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea".

Fast forward 16 years and it is a million tonnes of dead cod being chucked back into the sea every year because of EU quotas. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has started a brilliant campaign on Channel 4 to end the waste.

It's great to see this being taken on in such a high profile way. I worked in Peterhead eight years ago and this was causing agitation back then. This has only grown in the intervening years.

They used to talk of butter mountains and wine lakes in Europe. At least a lot of that was shipped around the world and used. The fish seamounts that are being created today are just pure literal waste. The million tonnes that is said to be thrown overboard would equate to 100,000,000 fish. I'm sure there are artists that could project what size that mountain would be.

If you've not signed the petition and seen the site yet, go to www.fishfight.net

We need to get the white community to think more clearly about why white bankers have ruined the economy

White collar crime may be more than just about the shade of togs. This is obviously a fatuous comment but shows the problem with racialising an issue as Jack Straw has.

I was going to add more stereotypes to the fray such as asking what white people are going to do about many of their number - not all of course - drink driving.

But it also has to be acknowledged that there are probably a fair number of crimes that young men of Pakistani heritage are disproportionally involved in. I say this because they are statistically more likely to be in prison than the rest of the population.

Taking Jack Straw's line of asking the Pakistani community to sort it out is not the way forward though. It's like looking to white working class communities to resolve the reasons why they are more likely to be in jail than middle and upper classes. This is for all of society to answer.

And class surely is at the heart of this. Young Pakistani men have the worst educational attainment of any ethnic group and are the least likely to go to university.

I've suggested to government for a while, including the Scottish Government, that this state of affairs should be investigated to find the reasons behind it and how it can be improved. In the absence of proper research and data, conjecture and Jack Straw fill the space.

Wanted: Visionary Pakistani leaders

I’ve been dismayed by the reaction to Salman Taseer’s assassination in Pakistan. I’ve heard people say the PPP governor of Punjab “had it coming” or “a good thing happened”. It’s by no means universal but this is a significant body of Pakistani opinion even amongst the UK diaspora. It’s not usually this way when it comes to terrorist incidents – for that is what this is we must remember.

The same takfeeri ideology that has been killing a steadily rising number of people in Pakistan over the years, one which says “I’m a Muslim with the right opinions so I will blow you up in the street, mosque or shop” is behind this killing. It says something about the level of bloodshed that has taken place in Pakistan that it has come to this. Those sympathising with Mumtaz Qadri’s motives should remember this. It was Salman Taseer today. But tomorrow it could be you uttering a word out of place.

The genie has come well and truly out of the takfeeri bottle and it is going to take a lot of pushing to put it back in. Once you open the door to killing innocent people, there’s no place that it will stop. There is a suicide bombing every four days in Pakistan, killing 8,000 people a year – Pakistanis killing Pakistanis.

Taseer’s killing was not even really about the blasphemy law. He didn’t say anything blasphemous, not that it would justify shooting him even if he did. He questioned a manmade law. Life is cheap in Pakistan. Words can be expensive.

Defenders of the law say it is the abuse of its provisions, rather than the law itself that is the problem. Its loosely defined nature gives the lie to that. Surely a Muslim-majoirty country should be confident and comfortable enough to withstand contradictory opinions? It is a matter of rank hypocrisy to expect to go around the world openly proselytising your own faith, loving every minute of Zakir Naik dissections of the bible, and at the same time support indirect imputement of blasphemy as a capital offence.

The state has no business judging disputes amongst people claiming faux offence for something uttered in a private context. It has led to vigilantes taking what shouldn’t be law into their own hands. Bombings at places of worship for Christians, Shias and Ahmadis are not unrelated.

Ironically, laws designed to protect Islam are doing much harm to its image. Mercy between faiths is in jeopardy. A mark of a society is how it treats its minorities. They should be protected and respected. Muslims in the West should know that as well as anybody. It is depressing therefore to see the same shrill reactions to the killing here. Let’s say for a moment that it’s true that some Christians said some offensive things about Islam to their neighbours or work colleagues. Why would the debate be at such a gutter level in the towns and villages of Pakistan? Could it be because of the myopic religious outlook presented by Muslims, the type of which has been exemplified in Pakistan this week?

Where are visionary leaders that are needed to build the new future for Pakistan? One free of war, terrorism and drone attacks. One that has a plan to rebuild the flood ravaged country. Leaders of a mass worldwide campaign to obtain relief from the international debt crippling the country. One that will feed the poor, educate the masses and eliminate the endemic corruption as something profoundly un-Islamic. A confident nation that can tolerate people saying what they want in the cafes and on the streets. The diversions need to stop and there needs to be focus on what’s important.

Is Jack Straw saying marrying in Pakistan is to blame?

My feeling on hearing Jack Straw's comments today - about Pakistani men committing sexual offences against white girls - was how remarkably unconstructive they were. Basically he seemed to be telling brown people to sort out their folk without even suggesting how they were any more able to root out criminals who happen share their skin colour than white people are with theirs:

"We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way.

What made Straw's comments objectionable today were his attempts to pin this on all Pakistanis. With the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election campaign in full swing, the seat vacated because of the race-baiting of a disgraced former Labour MP, it would appear the main difference between Phil Woolas and Jack Straw is that the latter doesn't need to spend money on leaflets.

Straw went on to say this in his BBC interview:

"These young men are in a western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they're fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off-limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically.

"So they then seek other avenues and they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care... who they think are easy meat."

Straw acknowledges that these crimes happen across the board in this country rather than being something unique to Pakistanis. However, the rest of his comments can be taken two ways. Firstly, his objection now can be construed that Pakistani men are not being equal opportunities in their sexual offences - that somehow it would be better if there were brown as well as white girls being targeted (by the way the researchers whose study sparked this off reject the notion that white girls are especially sought - in fact BME girls are overrepresented amongst victims).

But let's say we put that down to careless phrasing. What Straw appears to be doing is citing natural testosterone levels within Pakistani men not having an outlet because of family expectations that they will have to marry girls from Pakistan. If this is indeed what he's getting at, he would do well to explain why it is that rather than just having normal relationships with women in this country instead, some are engaging in criminality.

These are serious crimes that need to be dealt with in an evidence led manner. Jack Straw instead gives us another bumbling intervention in a subject he really should have left to the police.

Make tea for Mr Murdoch, not war

Vince Cable wasn’t with the programme. Rupert Murdoch should have government ministers declaring love for him, not war with him.

The decision of whether Murdoch can take over all of Sky has now been passed over to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, who once gushingly said we “wouldn't be saying that British TV is the envy of the world if it hadn't been for him [Murdoch]”. This doesn't just seriously similarly call into question his bias towards Murdoch, but also his taste in telly.

Murdoch’s Sun newspaper backed the Tories at this year’s election. Peter Mandelson said this was because the two had done a deal for “favours”. Lord Mandelson would know about such things.

What politicians of all stripes should be doing on this is not declaring love or war, but declaring their interest and bowing out of the decision. As Hunt himself said earlier this year about Ofcom’s ruling that Sky had to cut its charges for Sky Sports:

“For matters of policy, we think it should be ministers who make the decision but for matters like competition issues, it is very important that is made at arm's length to politicians.”

Anyone still dreaming of a white Christmas?

I never thought I’d see the day when we’d have traffic gridlock across Bishopbriggs, bustling metropolis it is not. But that’s exactly what we got on Monday morning. It took me an unprecedented two-and-a-half hours to get from the Academy to the Cross, a 1.5mile journey.

Later that afternoon my wife spent seven hours on the M80 negotiating a two mile stretch of road. She was fortunate though in avoiding having to spend the night in the car which befell many people including kids, the elderly and the infirm.

The political opposition have been at their usual shrill best. Calls for resignations abounded with no mention of what they would have done to avoid what happened. Some called for more grit, as if it was a magical substance that heats the streets. Some was put on my street last week and was quickly lost under snow. The white stuff was falling at an unbelievable pace during the morning rush hour. There are only so many ploughs and once traffic has built up, they are not nimble motorbikes in cutting through it all.

Labour spokesman Charlie Gordon said that after seeing the weather forecast late on Sunday night he would have told everyone to stay at home and closed all motorways on Monday morning until the snowploughs had done their work and gritting was thereafter completed. Given the blizzard lasted into the afternoon, this itself would have caused complete chaos as we can safely assume virtually no one would have listened to Mr Gordon and stayed at home. However, all of this is complete bunkum. If Mr Gordon was thinking this he should have issued his own release early on Monday morning to that effect. Even any utterance of any nature any time that day would give him real credibility looking back. 20/20 hindsight after 48 hours doesn’t cut it as fast decisive action.

Communication on the day was bad, which has been acknowledged by transport minister Stewart Stevenson. Even as Mrs Saeed set out from work early to get home in mid-afternoon there was no information about the extent of the problems on the M80. When I heard around 4pm that it was at standstill, there was a sense of watching the proverbial car crash in slow motion and foreboding at what might transpire into the night.

However, there was no information, let alone advice available from authorities on the internet, Twitter or anywhere else about it. As far as I’m aware, that problem on the M80 never made it onto the Traffic Scotland website at all. Local radio were reporting problems with messages about motorways being “closed”, but no indication of what motorists who were on the road were meant to do or expect.

Government and all the agencies involved coordinate and prepare for these kind of emergencies. I've been to detailed excercises that have been held on responses to terrorist incidents, and undoubtedly there would be similarly thought out plans for severe weather. That was sorely tested this week, and we need to build our country's resilience to such conditions.

Risk and Reward

German Chancellor, Angela Merkal:

"Have politicians got the courage to make those who earn money share in the risk as well? Or is dealing in government debt the only business in the world economy that involves no risk?"

This was said to the German Parliament in response to the situation in Ireland where they are bending over backwards to meet the demands of the state's debtholders. The Irish people are the ones suffering in order to do this. Merkel raises the point that these bondholders should accept they took a risk and can't always expect to get their money back with profit.

This basic principle of risk and reward should also apply to banking. The higher the risks, the greater the reward. Banks have made catastrophic financial losses, resulting in massive bailouts by taxpayers. These taxpayers are the same ones who hold accounts with these banks. The banks resolutely oppose any separation between this everyday banking and their casino-style trading. In the boom years, bankers walked away with billions leveraging on this money, while account holders received nominal rates of interest in return.

Post-bailouts, bonuses are back to what they were while ordinary people pickup the previous bill, never mind get a share of any money being made now. It is arguable that bank account holders haven't really entered a risky arrangement given that their investments come with a state guarantee. However, we know that the speculative activities of banks also come with a state guarantee - to answer Merkel's question, the answer is "no" as international bankers are in the same boat. They are also often holders of government debt, while being backed by governments. It's an almighty mess.

So who is risking anything here, and so who should get the reward?