Rolled-up Trousers

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.

Making halal meat kosher

Muslims make up 3 per cent of the UK population, but consume 20% of all the red meat sold in the country.

I was extremely doubtful of the veracity of this stat, reading it for the first time as I did in one of our quality tabloids. All the recent controversies now suggest the figures may be accurate, but it’s not Muslims consuming all this halal meat.

We have to be grateful to the Daily Mail for providing an ever expending list of outlets that sell halal. This apparently includes Waitrose, Costa coffee, Wembley Stadium and some has even found its way into the supply chain at McDonald’s. The far-right EDL have been protesting outside of Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you fancy a flutter at Ascot, it’s on the menu there too.  It’s a sign of how Muslims have weaved their way into the fabric of the country.

The scare story goes that animals have been “ritually slaughtered” by Muslims. This sounds alarming, but is literally a two second prayer said by the slaughterman. If you don’t believe in God, the slaughterman could have been having chat with his workmates instead, or listening to Kylie on the wireless for all this matters.

What the Daily Mail’s meat McCarthyism has settled on as the issue is whether animals have been electrocuted before slaughter. It’ll be interesting to see if this hysteria plants itself in the minds of the British public who have used the word kosher, which has the same issue about stunning, as a byword in quality. However, the situation with halal is more complex than this - the RSPCA state that 90% of halal meat is actually stunned. That is not to say that there aren’t prominent Muslims denouncing this state of affairs and calling for more stun-free produce.

I believe the debate needs to move on a bit and recognise the nature of the industrial meat production that exists today. If we want to look at what Islamic teachings say, there is also the belief that an animal should not see another animal be killed. If you take away the slaughter conveyor belt which animals are hoarded on to, given the quantities of meat being consumed, guaranteeing a classical slaughter is going to drive up prices. Would the Muslim public be willing to pay? My guess is not.

There is a lot of obsessing by Muslims about the state of affairs at point of slaughter. We'll all have received the text messages about boycotting KFC, Nandos or some other outlet. There is though little or no thought about the welfare of animals during their lives. The conditions in which many animals exist should make everyone pause and think – if nothing else, it affects the quality of meat and poultry you are putting it in your body. The disingenuousness of the right-wing tabloids means we may not get week after week of scare stories about the lives of our chickens so that they can be sold at bargain basement prices, but this does nevertheless matter.

A great deal of halal meat is imported. While what is sold at butchers is generally slaughtered within the UK, I understand that the majority of meat used at restaurants and takeaways is shipped in from countries like Brazil and Thailand. This is a not inconsiderable carbon footprint and we need to question its necessity and desirability.

For the sake of our health and planet, we should be eating less meat. Five-a-day prayers accompanied by five-a-day fruit and veg?

McDonald's reply on recycling

McDonald's have replied to my recent query regarding why they don't recycle customer waste, especially when their counterparts in other countries do. Here's the relevent bit:

"There are many challenges with this, most notably that many UK recycling facilities are contracted for household waste only and not for commercial use. In addition, few facilities will accept 'dirty' paper or plastics, deeming that waste that is contaminated with food or drink residues is unsuitable. That said we are committed to finding ways to reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill and will continue to explore this area."

I've replied asking what steps they've taken to lobby the powers that be to ensure sufficient recycling facilities are set up. As I pointed out in my last blog post on this, other chains are recycling with food. Also see the interesting comment by Michael King underneath this article.

For the sake of balance, a similar epistle has now also been sent to Burger King.

50,000 green jobs sitting on the wall

The Scottish renewables industry needs to shift emphasis from its great potential to what needs to be done to realise it

The Scottish Renewables report released last week on the future of the green energy industry lays out exactly how many jobs are at stake over the next 10 years.

If we do the things that we should, that number will be in the region of 48,000. On the other hand, if we get this wrong, it could only be just 900 jobs that are created.

It's all well and good and should further whet our appetite to unleash Scotland's potential in this field, with famously, one-quarter of Europe's wind offshore. That does mean three-quarters is elsewhere and the report warns that if we don't get it right, other countries will become the leaders in this field instead.

What the report doesn't stress is exactly how much investment is needed, what that should go into, and who should be pumping it in. The report seems to fall into the common trait of the renewables industry in Scotland in dwelling on how much potential there is instead of emphasising how we access it. By way of example, the Conservative government's recent Green Investment Bank Commission recently concluded that UK-wide there would have to be £550bn worth of investment over the next decade to achieve carbon reduction targets, albeit this isn't just for wind energy but also includes upgrading buildings and helping industry. There aren't any such figures readily promoted in Scotland.

Locked away in Annexe E of the Scottish Renewables report are some actions such as finding investment through the UK government releasing the Fossil Fuel Levy money, and making use of the upcoming Green Investment Bank. On the latter, Rob Gibson MSP recently suggested that the GIB should be located in Scotland, a call backed by a leading lawyer (although the Tories seem to be wading backwards on how it will be funded).

The report also states other practical measures: shortening of consent periods; the upgrading of and access to the national grid; and widening mid-career training as well as gearing universities to produce qualified people for the industry.

All of this requires money, money that does not seem forthcoming from the UK government and which the Scottish Government are powerless to raise. The Tories are crazily cutting spending at the time when we need to be investing in new industries, creating jobs and getting into a situation where we are producing things other countries want to buy. This report therefore underscores the need for the Scottish Government to have entirely normal economic powers to raise money to spend in this area. We also should be able to reap the benefits of it, meaning the proceeds shouldn't just be funnelled through to London as it has been with the oil. We should be greener and wealthier from this.

As with so much in Scottish politics, it returns to the constitutional question. It's all very well having values and principles, but if you don't have the power to implement them, they are pretty pointless.

BP oil could reach the shores of Scotland. Will we now wake up?

I’m astounded at the coverage in this country of the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Too much exception has been taken to President Obama’s use of “British Petroleum”, and very scant realisation has set in on the scale of the environmental catastrophe that has taken place and is taking place. There has also been concern for the financial portfolios of British pensioners. If there are people, especially old folk, who have put all their eggs in the basket of high risk, volatile, single company oil stocks, I would hope they went into such an arrangement with their eyes wide open or with appropriate amounts. Concern for current pensioners is though cover for funds which should level off eventually. If there are some funds that are overexposed, they should explain their strategy.

It’s another symptom of how the financial bottom line and profit is being put above health and wellbeing of people and planet. There are tens of thousands of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico every day. No one here seems to be speculating on what this means, and how the well will be stopped. What if it can't be blocked? What if it keeps flowing for months, years or even decades till the oil runs out?

Oil is said to be drifting into the Atlantic Ocean and entering the Gulf Stream. That hits Europe including the west coast of Scotland. BP oil could be reaching us in time to come, having a major impact which may not just be in terms of pollution. Could the oil also fundamentally alter the nature of the ocean current itself, having an effect on our climate given the warmer temperatures it brings?

No one seems to be asking the questions or giving assurances. We cannot trust BP to tell us what the scenarios are. There have been deceitful PR operations on this from day one, when BP went down to the source after the explosion and said there was no leak. They then didn’t release HD footage of the oil gushing out for over a month, meaning that the true extent of the oil coming out was not known till very recently.

I hope someone, somewhere is looking into this while our government instead worry about BP’s share price. Since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the UK government has approved deepwater drilling off the coast of Shetland. The drilling there is not in as deep water as the drilling at the Macondo Prospect (5,000 ft vs 1,430 ft to the sea floor and 18,000ft vs 7,654ft below the sea floor).

Depth may not be an issue at all, and there may have been peculiarities in the Gulf of Mexico. The point is that at this stage we don’t know the causes, and it may be prudent to take the action the Norwegians and the US have in suspending all deepwater drilling. Chris Huhne, energy minister, has said that the regulation of oil drilling in the North Sea is handled better than in the US, but this supposes that he somehow knows what the cause of the tragedy was there before an investigation has even concluded.

It’s all very well to blame BP, but the US government allowed them to drill. The UK is doing likewise. And just as with the banks, there is all the appearance of government not knowing what the heck they’re allowing big business to get up to.

The inactivity of Glasgow’s Labour MPs

Last week I issued a press release condemning the inactivity of Glasgow’s Labour MPs on high speed rail.

This was especially so when compared to how Yorkshire MPs campaigned vigorously and successfuly for the network to include Leeds and Sheffield. This was from a starting position where until even recently it was assumed that Manchester to Glasgow would be favoured ahead of them, and an environmental view that domestic flights would only be cut if the network came to Scotland.

Here in more detail is what each of the Labour Glasgow MPs who have been elected since 2005 have done on the issue for the city in Parliament:

Mohammad Sarwar – Glasgow Central
Nothing

Ann McKechin – Glasgow North
Question “answered” as Scotland Office minister
Another question in her capacity at the Scotland Office showing no concern about Glasgow

John Robertson – Glasgow North West
Nothing

Tom Harris – Glasgow South
Nothing. He has though questioned the environmental benefits of high speed rail. Was also at the ministry of transport.

Ian Davidson – Glasgow South West
Nothing

All is not lost and Glasgow can be put back on the map. This tired lot will clearly have to be replaced for that campaign to have the energy that it needs though.

Glasgow - making the Dear Green Place even greener

SNP candidate for Glasgow Central talking about wind farms on brownfield sites at Polmadie, green jobs at Strathclyde Uni, and High Speed Rail from London to Glasgow. Duration 2:48.

Treasury says 'It's trains or Trident'

From today's Times about High Speed Rail:

Treasury officials acknowledge that the project would compete for funds with Trident, prisons, an NHS database and other capital projects.

So Trident becomes even more of an election issue than it was already. The UK government is acknowledging the negative impact it has on other investment the country needs.

I am actually flabbergasted by today's announcement that the UKG is planning HSR to Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, but not Glasgow. The biggest obstacle to HSR coming here was supposed to be cost - in the region of £30bn. What the government have announced today is that package of money - but what they've done is served more locations in England through it. Read more in the press release I've put out.