Title:	25 True Facts About Scottish Independence
Topics:	independence
Date:	2012-05-25 @ 11:29
Security:	public
Location:	The Bonny, Bonny Banks of Old Aberdeen
Music:	Flower of Scotland by the Crowd
Mood:	complacent

With the launch of “Yes Scotland” pro-Independence campaign in Edinburgh later today two things have been on my mind.  What will the anti-Independence campaign call themselves and what will life actually be like in the independent Scotland of the future? I’ve consulted with a few knowledgable types and together our think-tank; The Shortbread Institute for the Study of Scotology has gazed into the future and can offer these predictions about life in Scotland in the early 21^st Century.

Title:	On Living in the Golden Age of Beer
Topics:	beer
Date:	2012-05-21 @ 10:39
Security:	public
Location:	Easter Road
Music:	Alcohol, Barenaked Ladies
Mood:	drunk

A few Sundays ago I went to an Edinburgh heat in the Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt. This is a competition to find new and saleable craft beers to sell in Sainsbury’s.

It reminded me that I think we live in a golden age of beer.

Today’s technical achievement was setting up a new email account, a new google calendar and then working out how to show my new personal google calendar on my work Outlook calendar and also that I can invite myself to things and therefore put the appointment in both calendars. Clunky, but workable.

I can’t sync across the two calenders yet, because my works IT security won’t let me run the google sync programme on my work computer and I don’t have dial in access to my work account from home at the moment.

I’m hoping that the new email account will be more robust to the hacking attempts on my hotmail account and won’t, therefore, keep stopping from working on my iPhone.

I hope having a more flexible calendar on my phone will allow me to keep myself better organised.

And this will be good for my mental health.

(And with thanks to Andrew Ducker for his assistance on this.)

Title:	On Her Majesty's Scottish Social Democratic Opposition
Topics:	independence, politics, social democracy
Date:	2012-05-16 @ 12:31
Security:	public
Location:	The People's Democratic Republic of North Britain
Music:	The Jarrow Song, by Alan Price
Mood:	contemplative

Whilst considering the political landscape of Scotland post-Independence I have been assuming that there was only room for one Social Democratic party in Scotland. Consequently, either the Scottish Nationalist Party or the Labour Party would cease to exist, either as a recognisably social democratic party or utterly. A helpful comment in a pub recently suggests that there might well be room for two social democratic parties in Scotland, one in government and one in opposition. What will they disagree about?

Scotland appears to have a settled political consensus around Social Democracy with a goodly amount of Democratic Socialism. By this I mean that it is broadly agreed that the state should be an economic actor, providing goods and services to its citizens, that there should be high levels of taxation and that the provision of public services by the state should be broad and of good quality.  Some areas of the economy are to be reserved for state action. In many more areas a commitment to state provided, tax funded universality of service is made. Some suggestions are made that the collective should directly own whole industries.  The state is seen as vehicle for effecting a meritocracy where the practical equality of opportunity brought about by universal public services allows people to rise and fall on their own efforts rather than the lot they were born into.

These are essentially arguments about the utility of state action in the economy as an agent of the community and individuals.

What then are the dimensions of opposition? Even within the confines of a debate between two social democratic parties the differences of opinion go further and deeper than differences over the correct technical policy or questions of whether specific fringe activities should fall wholly, partly or not at all within the parameters of the state.  Three that spring to mind as examples of how Government and Opposition in an Independent Scotland might be defined in the early 21^st Century are Centralisation, Authoritarianism and Diversity.

It is possible for two people to agree that the state should involve itself in the life of the community, yet disagree about the size and shape of the state and where the part of the state that interacts with an individual citizen is located.   Is the state to be highly centralised?  Are tax revenues to flow into the coffers of the central government and then be disbursed, with conditions and performance targets attached, to local administrators? Should those local bodies have responsibility for local policy and should they be directly accountable to the citizenry in their area? Are local bodies to be geographical or comprised of overlapping areas of endeavour.

Some examples.  Should all important decisions about policing and health care be made in Holyrood and Victoria Quay with local bodies merely the executives who deliver central government policy?  If policing and health and other policies are devolved to local bodies should there be one elected body with policy and strategic oversight, a local council and corporation or should the powers and responsibilities for policing be devolved to an elected police board and those for health to an elected health board? Where are the taxes to pay for nurses and polices to be raised and decided upon?

One question that captures the essence of the centralisation question for me “Is the Holyrood general election going to be the only election worth voting in?”

It is possible for two people to agree that the state should involve itself in the life of the community but for one to think that the state should not interfere overly much in the life of the citizen.

Is the state to be able and willing to intervene in the private lives of the citizenry?  These considerations are not restricted to issues of morality and the boundaries between the public purse and private health which are touched on in questions such as: How far should the state be able to go in regulating the sexual mores of the public or its eating and drinking habits? Is it the business of the state to encourage us to take exercise or to compel us?  

There are issues of civil liberties and public security that range from our response to terrorism to crowd control at football matches to thought crimes. Should we be subject to invasive screening and intrusive surveillance to protect us from malevolence?  Should disapproval of sexual behaviour or religion be a criminal offence?

It is possible for two people to agree that the state should involve itself in the life of the community, yet disagree about how that community should develop and what role the state should play in that development.  Is post-Independence Scotland to be mono-cultural or many cultured?  Is that the for the state to influence?  There are issues here of strict secularism in schooling.  Issues of state support for families howsoever defined (and distinct from financial support for those raising children). Do we promote various and varying sexual orientations as a positive choice people can make and a welcome addition to the gaiety of the nation or are non-straight, non-cis monogamists to be seen as the state sponsored norm with Others a tolerated by abnormal fringe?  When considering our immigration policy do we welcome people from social democratic Tanzania as more or less like us than people from Libertarian Texas and does it matter? 

For me the nub of these of Centralisation, Authortarianism and Diversity is how much control do we place in the hands of how few individuals?  If we are agreed in Scotland that we are all in this together and that the group has wide ranging obligations to its members and vice versa these questions seem all the more important.

I can see a Scotland emerging where the primary question of how much of a role the state has in the lives of our community is a settled one. The answer: a lot. What remains are discussions about how centralised that state is to be, where the boundary between public and private activity lies and when the state can step over that boundary and what role the state has in promoting or restricting diversity.

These remain ideological issues and they turn on whether you believe other people can trusted with their own happiness and a share in our communal happiness. 

Taken to extremes on the one hand we could have a social democratic party that sees the state as a diverse and devolved facilitator of the betterment of the community and the individual and on the other hand a party that sees the State and by extension the Party as the sole arbiter in disputes and the sole solution to an individual’s problems.

I’ve recently bought a Kindle and so has my Mum. In an attempt to reduce both my waistline and my monthly expenditure on lunch I’ve started eating soup in the canteen and using the saved money to buy ebooks.  On a number of occasions I’ve logged on to Amazon and been overwhelmed by the choice. Overwhelmed to the point of paralysis.  I’ve gone to the shop with an open wallet then walked out without spending any money.

I want a system that combines knowledge about my tastes with better meta-data about books on offer and a reputation management system for reviews and reviewers.

Here are some suggestions for Amazon about how they could help me spend money.

I am stuck on a train with The Capt & My Lovely Wife. The train ahead of us has broken down and we've be waiting in Berwick upon Tweed station for a little over a hour.

The Capt is in good form. I have been banished to the vestibule whilst he runs between our seats and the vestibule carrying kisses between his parents.

And we're moving.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Title:	On the Geographical Role of Elected Peers
Topics:	lords reform, politics
Date:	2012-05-08 @ 16:57
Security:	public
Location:	Edinburgh, but which part.
Music:	Sunshine on Leith, the Proclaimers
Mood:	curious

This is a bit of thinking out loud and I might change my mind entirely on this.

I think I can see a role for an elected House of Lords that is similar to the role of the US and Australian Senate. Their role, in part, is to represent the whole of a geographic (and Federal political) area.

One could argue that MP’s in the Commons already represent a geographical area.  I’m not so sure they do.  Whilst my local MP in theory represents the electors of Edinburgh South I think it could be argued that he actually represents the liberal, urban middle classes who happen to live in Edinburgh.  To some extent people physically segregate themselves according to income and social attitudes. This in effect groups them into voting groups that are class based rather than geographic. Edinburgh South has as much or more in common with Bristol West,( which includes Clifton) as it does with Edinburgh East.

Spin this another way, who represents working-class Tories in Edinburgh? Middle-class Tories might just get a representative in Edinburgh South on a good day, with a following wind and a great candidate.  Agricultural socialists in the Cotswolds are similarly out of luck and have to borrow the influence of urban socialists.

In this, ostensibly geographic constituencies are more like the Romans voting by Centuries than the Romans voting by Tribes. It’s class rather than anything else that determines which constituency you live in.

Even taking Commons constituencies on face value as geographic entities, Edinburgh South isn’t a meaningful area. It is socially and economically embedded in Edinburgh, the Lothians and Scotland. I think most issues that affect Edinburgh South affect the whole of Edinburgh. I rarely talk about living in South Edinburgh except when talking about politics or giving directions. How many people live in one constituency but work in another? How many organisations are in one constituency but depend on an organisation in another?  If you are ill in Edinburgh you travel to Edinburgh East, unless you are child, in which case you go to Edinburgh South.

This de facto class-based constituency is re-enforced by an electoral system that has the effect of polarising rather harmonising political debate. Politics in the UK is orientated around class division rather than geographical co-operation.

Who is looking out for Edinburgh as a whole. Who, other than Alex Salmond and the pandas, is looking out for Scotland as a whole?  This is a serious question.  Between them are Michael Moore and Margaret Curran really representing the whole of Scotland?

So what role for an elected Lords?  Under the current proposals Peers will be elected using STV based on large “Electoral Districts” roughly equivalent to an European Parliament constituency. So there will be Peers from Scotland, Peers from the South West, Peers from London.

Some of these areas have some form of devolved or regional assembly. Others do not.

It may be that a Peer elected from a large district that functions as social and economic community is able to (or required to) pull off representing both a meaningful geographic community and an ideology. There is a bit on One Nationism here. The idea that regardless of class the citizens of various parts of the UK have common interests that they don’t share with citizens from other parts of the UK.  Tin mining is an issue in Cornwall. Oil is an issue in Scotland.  The role of elected Peers is to advocate things that are in the regional interest rather than just a class interest.  This wider geographic role operates both within and without parties. Scottish elected Peers would have a role engaging at a national level with, for example, whomever is off to talk fisheries policies at the EU in order to support the whole of Scotland’s fishing industry. But they also have a role in making each party less focused on its core, geographically concentrated support. Again, what effective voice do left-wing agricultural workers have in the Labour Party? Or Tories in Scotland?

So, despite the fact that the UK doesn’t have a Federal structure I think there is a case to be made for elected representatives who serve a wider geographical community rather than MP’s who serve the interests of a particular class gathered together in the part of a city or county where people of that sort live.

Title:	Warren Buffet and Mark Twain on Electoral Reform
Topics:	electoral reform, politics
Date:	2012-05-08 @ 12:29
Security:	public
Location:	One Year from the Barricades
Music:	Take Another Road, by Jimmy Buffet
Mood:	optimistic

I was asked what I thought of this anniversary of the 5^th May blogpost by Milena Popova.

I don’t disagree with the analysis of the last 18 months. The Yes campaign was badly run. Most of the post referendum analysis started with “It wasnae me.” Unhelpful when you want to re-group and what you need is some discussion on how to keep a mass reform campaign going.  The sort-of-promised support for local groups doesn’t appear to have materilised (1)

So I share the frustration with where the pro-electoral reform campaign is now and how we got here. Does that mean that I agree that we should say the Viaticum over the body of Electoral Reform? I’m not nearly so pessimistic about the longer term outcome, or even the medium term outcome.  As Warren Buffet might say “Look at the fundamentals.”

Current and Future Usage of Electoral System.

The citizens of the UK are increasingly exposed to electoral systems other than First Past the Post(2).  Scotland uses the Additional Member System of PR for Holyrood, the Single Transferable Vote for local elections (and the Alternative Vote for local council by-elections.) Wales uses a form of PR for Assembly Elections. Northern Ireland uses STV for Assembly elections. London has the same electoral system as Scotland for its Assembly elections and uses the Suplementary Vote for Mayoral elections. A few more cities in England will also be using that system for their own mayoral elections over the next few years. Perhaps 1 in 5 voters are already regularly using PR for devolved chamber elections.

For European elections most of the UK uses the D’hondt form of PR to elect MEP’s(3)

So the British electorate is already exposed to a variety of electoral systems.  Directly elected police commissioners and an elected House of Lords increases the breadth of alternative voting methods in use. In fact, so many different electoral systems do we have in use in the UK that barely a year goes by without somebody somewhere using a non-FPTP electoral system and a different one each time. (4) (6)

The British electorate is increasingly able to use different electoral systems. They get to see how different electoral systems affect how their votes turn into representation. They see what different systems do to the choice they are offered and what they do to politicians’ behavior. Politicians too are growing up using and being elected through different electoral systems. They are more used to the compromises required by different electoral systems.

I think the direction of travel is towards more widespread use of different electoral methods. Lords Reform and local councils in England and Wales are both potential next steps.

Using different electoral systems is important for campainging reasons. It removes a number of the stronger arguments of the status quo camp. We’ve always used FPTP, it’s the British way – increasingly we don’t and increasing it isn’t. Other electoral systems are too complex and you can’t predict the results. Millions of Britons now use them annually and do so effectively. You can’t be sure what sort of madmen you will get and the coalitions will be a shambles. I think many Britons can see how their votes translate in the representation they are getting. They can see that in Scotland PR has lead to stable, even dull, government without a swivel-eyed lunatic fringe appearing. (10) They have more experience of the way coalitions work, or don’t work. They can see the differences for good and bad of the different electoral systems.

Electoral reform, to some extent, is already happening.

Lords Reform

There are a number of ways Lords Reform is important for electoral reform more broadly.

Firstly, it gives an electoral foothold for a variety of political parties other than Labour or the Conservatives. UKIP, the Greens, the SNP and the Lib Dems could all expect to pick up seats in an elected House of Lords using STV. This is important for two reasons. It gives those parties credibility (7), it gives them paid positions supported by the State in the form of salaried members and staff and Short Money, it gives them a platform. Secondly, each of these parties is in favour of electoral reform in principle.

Secondly, at some point a  UK government is going to be dependent on UKIP, Lib Dem, SNP or Green votes in the House of Lords for something. At some point the quid pro quo for not sparking a vote of no confidence will be movement on electoral reform. 

Thirdly, an elected House of Lords using STV would mean the whole British electorate was using STV for one half of a general election. (8) 

Fourthly, an elected House of Lords using STV already is electoral reform.  That’s STV in use in the UK at a Westminsiter general election. I know some genuine electoral reform activists who would consider that not only good progress but the perfect outcome. Let’s just sit with that for a moment. STV used at a UK general election in my life time.

Broad Electoral Trends.

The electoral trend since the war has been steadily lower turn outs and a steady increase in the vote share of the Not-The-Labour-or-Conservative-Parties-Party.  There seems no reason for this trend to reverse.  I’m sure the Liberal Democrats are going to suffer a drop in vote share at the next General Election.  I expect they will lose many seats (9).  I also expect this to reverse somewhat after the 2015 election. I also expect UKIP to continue to poll well.

At some point we are going to end up with another coalition. Probably not in 2015 but perhaps in 2020. Probably involving the Lib Dems but it might be a centre-right coalition of UKIP and the Conservative party.  If you are negotiating a coalition with one of the main two parties and you have an interest in electoral reform what is the big take away from 2010? Don’t faff about with referenda for your third choice electoral system. Insist on legislating for STV.

The more elections we have where smaller parties poll millions of votes and get a handfull of seats the stronger our case for reform.

Campaigning Network.

A network of pro-electoral reformers and reform organisations was created. It still exists. It needs some careful nurturing.  My experience in Edinburgh was that a fair few people who had never taken part in a political campaign got involved.  I’m still in touch with quite a few of them.  Many of them are still pro-reform campaigners – for a given value of campaigning.

We’re all a bit more experienced. We know better how to organise. We know better what happens if we don’t trust our instincts when we are badly lead. We have a long, long list of things we’d do differently if we had the chance. Next time round we won’t be campaigning for our third choice option.

I don’t want to appear Poly-Annaish about the strength of the existing reform network. It’s in dire need of some attention from the ERS and UD. It could easily evaporate into an effective nothingness, especially if there is nothing for it to do or to celebrate in the next twelve months. However, it still exists. It still breaths.  The evening before the anniversary of the 5^th of May I was at a meeting of the Edinburgh group. I know there are internal reformers actively engaged in making the two reform organisations better at organising reform.

I think the fundamentals are good for electoral reform in the UK. We already have a variety of elections using different electoral systems and we are adding more. We have a big chance and a big success in House of Lords reform. We may have STV introduced next year for elections in 2015. The electoral trends favour our arguments and give us opportunities and we have the remnants of an organisation that is trying to promote reform.

So, is Electoral Reform dead? I’d echo Mark Twain, rumours of its death are greatly exagerated.

(1) and I write this as one of the convenors of one of the more successful local campaigns who has both an Electoral Reform regional office and the former Chair of the ERS in my city. Unlock Democracy have also not picked up the phone to check in.  (Saying that, I’ve not phoned them.)

 (2) or to give it its Sunday name, Single Member Plurality voting.

 (3) NI uses STV – FTW.

 (4) Since 2010 I have used FPTP (SMP)(5), the Additional Member System and STV.

 (5) I’m sorry I just can’t help using the proper name for FPTP – because it says right on the title page how poor a system it is.

 (6) This excludes the large number of people who use different election methods for civic organisations such as University student bodies and Unions.

 (7) if they earn it – BNP local councillors I’m looking at you.

 (8) I know the elections are going to be stagered but still 50% of our chambers will be elected using STV.

 (9) and they may, ironically, end up with as many elected Senators as they do Representatives. I refer interested readers to the history of the Democrat Party in Australia and the dictum of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague, “Sometimes influence is more powerful than power.” 

(10) Unless you count Baron Watson of Invergowrie, the notorius fire raiser of that most radical of parties; the Labour Party.

Ever since I first met Fiona Watt I’ve been thinking about Directing. This was going to be a post outlining my theory of directing (1). My initial theory of directing which I would use as a provisional template to accept, reject or modify as I gained some practical experience.  Then the improviser in me kicked in.   I remembered how the five folk I was working with during Fiona’s session at the Residency weekend created Birnam Wood and understood the symbolism of the words and our interpretation of the words.  I’m an improviser.  We don’t Direct. We co-create. (2)

So, this is not a post about how I might Direct my first play. It’s a post about how I might help actors and technical crew access our play, hold a common vision of the play between them and share that common vision with an audience.

One of the unexpected things that happened to me whilst I was at the National Theatre of Scotland’s Open Stages Residency was that I had an insight into the mind of an Classical Age infantry soldier and into the leadership of Hannibal Barca of Elephant fame.

As part of a group improvision leading to a a performance of the Prologue from Romeo and Juliet we were doing some movement exercises.  At one point we were placed in groups of three, in a triangle formation, and asked to move around the space avoiding other groups, staying in formation and changing direction. Each time we changed direction the person at the point of the triangle facing forward became the leader. We were encouraged to try and create a link with the leader pro tem so that we could anticipate their movement and try to move as one group. Then we tried the same exercise with a group of six. 

Six is an obvious triangle. As we were forming up I had my first insight into how it would be to be a Classical infantry soldier.  I was standing in the second row on the right and I felt anxious. It is almost Understanding Classical Military Tactics 101 that you would expect a formation to creep to the left and that the mentally strongest infantry are placed on the right of the formation.  Why? On the extreme right you are exposed. You hold your spear in your right hand and your shield in your left. Your shield covers the left half of your body and the right half of the man to your left. If you are on the extreme right of the formation your right hand side is exposed. You try and creep to the left to get more of yourself behind your own shield. This nudges the man to your left to the left and so on down the line until your whole formation is moving crabwise.

So, standing in the formation I could see this clearly but there was something else going on too.

I didn’t feel we were standing close enough to each other. Not for physical protection but for the co-ordination of movement.  I wanted to be sholder to sholder with the other person in the second rank and have the rank behind me right up against my back so that I could feel them move and they could feel me move so we all moved together. That was the aim of the exercise, for us all to move together. I was worried that I would look at the right ear of the leader, see it move, step forward and the people behind me would not see or feel me go and we’d create a gap.  Stepping closer to the rest of the group I think would have just caused them to shuffle along a bit and maintain the gap.

There is a link here to the group exercise where a team of people holding a cane on their outstretched index fingers have to put the cane on the floor.

You can stop or slow this formation creep with rigid discipline. Everyone concentrates on not moving left. Everyone concentrates on staying still relative to a fixed, clearly indentifable leader.

So I learned a bit about what it is like to be in a group of people trying to move in formation with each other and the psychological need to be close to the others to feel safe and to feel that you are in contact with them so you can co-ordinate your movements.

When we started moving in sixes I noticed that it’s harder to spot the new leader as you angle the formations. A quarter turn will open up some ambiguity. Am I at the front? Should I be or am I just here because the formation was a bit loose?  Who’s leading us now?

To solve this people need to be both happy to lead and happy to be lead and happy to sit in a dynamic place switching between the two. The same for being an individual and part of a mass. This takes practise, it takes focus. You need to know how to do it so you can look up and see what’s going on around you and then respond.

There are parallels with improv here. Being and not being the leader. Switching from one to the other. Focus and internalising the skills so you can concentrate on what is going on beyond your own small group.

I know what Hannibal did that made him such an effective general. He  created armies with very flexible formations. This allowed him huge tactical flexibility. He could perform manoeuvres that Classical doctrine said would be impossible because the mass formations of the phalanx or the legion would break up. He also had good use of combined arms, different types of soldiers working with each other. From these two factors, flexibility and combination he was able to win a series of  very heavy victories over the Romans.

I now see how he created that army.  From very small groups of self-leading troops he built larger formations that could break apart and reform very quickly.  Each small group had confidence in its leaders and knew that it could find its own way to where it was needed because it knew how to stay in touch with itself and could concentrate on problem solving.

For think I think he would have needed to drill his soldiers in small groups. Smaller than he would ever deploy on the battlefield. Again, and again, get from here to there in a small group, through obstacles, mainly made up of other soldiers going somewhere else. Practise it again and again, this time not leaving anyone behind.  Stay within arms-reach of each other – or break up and form another group and follow the rest. He would have had to drill them in the practise of handing leadership from one equal to the next. He would have had to give them the confidence that he would always explain to them what he wanted, the effect not the position, so they could trust that they all would know what the sought after outcome was without having to be told.

His leadership was distributed around his army, and then lent and borrowed amongst his soldiers according to their need in the moment.

So, trust, handing over leadership amongst equals, everyone knowing the desired outcome, knowing the basics really well so you don’t have to think about them, fluidity about method.

Hannibal was an improviser.  You can tell. He rehearsed a lot.