The Flag in the Wind
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CAMPAIGNING FOR SCOTLAND
(Owned, Edited and Printed in Scotland since November 1926)
Compiled by Jim Lynch
[22 December 2000]

The Flag in the Wind wish all our readers a Very Merry Christmas

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR

We wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We were going to say "The Compliments of the Season" but it sounded a bit pompous.

We will be publishing as usual on 29 Dec 00 and 5 Jan 2001, but slightly abbreviated, as distinct from inebriated versions.

FALKIRK WEST BY ELECTION

21ST DECEMBER 2000

To Labour’s great relief, the voters stayed at home, or found better things to do, as originally intended, and allowed Labour’s man to scrape home. This was again categorised by Brian Wilson and his boss Dr John Reid, as another defeat for the Nationalists, and should make us think again. Well, as Labour’s vote fell by 14280 it might seem that we are not the people who should be thinking again. Labour had a majority of 13783 in 1997, and that majority is now 705.

It seems to be the expectation that the SNP will always have to climb almost unassailable mountains, and when we don’t quite reach the top, the other parties and their media lapdogs give us no credit for the height we do achieve. However, we must sympathise with the aforesaid lapdogs; they had written us off after the ghost elections in Anniesland, but we have come roaring back, and we hope to give many more sleepless nights to the Labour Party.

So where do we go from here? We ran a good campaign, did our best to raise the temperature against a Labour Party which tried to hide their candidate again; one report had it that Labour expected their candidate to buckle under media pressure, but this did not happen, mainly because there was no opportunity for media pressure. Our candidate, David Kerr, was impressive, worked hard, and faced and handled the media; he was good. However, we still have the Labour hegemony in the central belt, but it could be that this is now a crust, and not the deep rooted working class emotion that it used to be; let’s face it, New Labour is adept at putting on two faces, friendly to business and putting lucrative PFI contracts to their fat cat friends, while claiming to be the party of social justice for the working man. The mask is slipping.

MISSING THE BUS

The SNP made a wholly justifiable point that the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, just happened to be visiting Walter Alexander’s works in Falkirk to congratulate them on obtaining an order which would safeguard 1000 jobs; the fact that there was a crucial by election on at the time was surely impure coincidence.

We wonder why the SNP did not put forward that the bus order came from Stagecoach, whose founder, Brian Souter, has been a longstanding member of the SNP, and has given them substantial financial backing.

OLIVER BROWN AWARD

Readers are reminded that it will soon be time to judge the "Oliver Award" - the annual prize given by the Scots Independent in memory of the late Oliver Brown. (Learn more about Oliver Brown here)

Nominations for the "Journalist, author, critic, illustrator, radio or television performer" who, in your opinion, has done most in the past year to advance the cause of Scotland’s self respect, are welcome from now on, and must close by 28 February 2001.

Send yours, with your reasons, to OLIVER, Scots Independent, 51 Cowane Street, Stirling FK8 1JW.

HOUSE OF ILL REPUTE

It comes as no surprise that the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee has cleared Dr John Reid and John Maxton of any wrongdoing in the alleged misuse of their Parliamentary Allowances. The Commissioner, Ms Elizabeth Filkin, after an exhaustive enquiry lasting more than a year, had found both men misused their Parliamentary Allowances by having their Commons researchers working for the Labour Party during the Scottish Parliamentary Elections in 1999. Both MPs denied the charges, but Ms Filkin’s investigations said they had misused the allowances. Ms Filkin is a former Tax Investigator, and is used to sifting through complex cases, but the Committee unanimously cleared the pair. This was the same Committee who found that Peter Mandelson had acted properly when he borrowed £373000 from Geoffrey Robinson, who was being investigated by Mr Mandelson’s department; Mr Mandelson did not register the loan, and did not tell the Britannia Building Society either, when he borrowed more money from them.

Ms Filkin seems to do her job thoroughly, a trait that does not endear her to MPs, whom she investigates, and Mr Mandelson had to resign from the Government, but the Committee of Standards and Privileges did not feel he had done anything to bring the House of Commons into disrepute. Maybe they should shorten the name and just call it the Committee for Privileges.

It is possible to be censured by this Committee; Frank Roy was censured for going to the bookies and using his own money to back Michael Martin for Speaker - shock, horror, how very un House of Commons- a Bookie - and his own money! The House would never recover from the disgrace.

AND OTHER PARLIAMENTARY PALS

Baroness Thatcher, Mr Blair’s role model, must be pleased that the Chilean Supreme Court has rejected the current prosecution of her friend General Pinochet; she sent Lord Lamont (How appropriate that Peerie Norrie became a peer) to Santiago last week with a letter of support for the former dictator. General Pinochet was charged with kidnap, murder and torture, but apparently the appropriate formalities were not carried out, and the General’s case was presented by human rights lawyers!

However, there is possibility that even the Baroness may be embarrassed by recent revelations that the Chilean army and secret police are continuing to flood Europe and the US with cocaine, a practice started during the reign of the General, and still going on. An investigation by the Observer newspaper has uncovered a history of drugs being flown to Spanish territory in aircraft carrying Chilean made arms to Iran and Iraq, the development of the said arms having been assisted under the Tories by firms such as Royal Ordnance. There is no doubt that General Pinochet was aware of the trafficking; he said "No a leaf moves in Chile if I don’t move it- let that be clear".

What a miasma of lies, corruption and oppression is covered by international business and diplomacy.

AND BY ROYAL ORDNANCE

 British Aerospaces munition subsidiary, Royal Ordnance, has asked for a subsidy of £100 million to be paid to a German company to allow them to compete for a contract to supply shell propellant for British shells; the propellant was formerly manufactured at Bishopton in Renfrewshire, which is being closed because it is uneconomic. To our recollection, Royal Ordnance was going to save some money by closing the plant, but nowhere near £100 million. Apparently the German propellant is unsafe, and they need the money to make it safe; the Scottish propellant was suitable.

So, Bishopton will be closed in 2002, with a loss of 284 direct and around 200 indirect jobs, to allow the Ministry of Defence to purchase shell propellant from Germany (There’s a South African connection in there as well) and we, the taxpayers, will pay out £100 million on top of all the other costs. New Labour, as is their wont, have the temerity to criticise the SNP Defence Policy.

AND OTHER FISHY THINGS

 We have not yet heard why Mr Henry McLeish, our valiant First Minister, decided to downgrade the post of Fisheries Minister; the post was occupied by John Home Robertson, who went in the Cabinet reshuffle, but the portfolio was offloaded on to Rhona Brankin, as an add on to her other jobs. Now that the European Fisheries Council have made massive cuts in Scottish quotas, the industry is seething at the failure of the British team to defend Scotland. According to Ms Brankin, the team was taken by surprise when the commission insisted that thousands of tonnes of white fish be taken from Scottish catches and given to Denmark, especially as this would end up as pigfeed.

The quotas are as follows;

The figures are for the North Sea and the West Coast; it is estimated that up to 1000 jobs will be lost.

As an independent country, Scotland would have negotiated a far better deal than this; as it is we are subsumed as part of the UK delegation, and fish is not something Londoners bother about. Think how they would react if it was the oil under the sea, and not the fish swimming in it. Would they be so cavalier in their approach?

FOOT IN THE MOUTH NOTES

At this time of the year the papers all have advertisements paid for by the Government warning about food safety.

The Hannah Research Institute, near Ayr, is one of the country’s finest research centres and has won awards for its achievements in dairy, nutrition and health fields; the Scottish Executive is cutting its grant by £200000, and they will have to make up to 20 staff redundant.

Ambulance control rooms in Scotland are to be reduced from eight to three; the centres will be in Paisley, Edinburgh and Inverness, but there will be a control room in Dundee for seriously ill patients. The centres to be closed are in Glasgow, Paisley (?), Motherwell, Aberdeen and Ayr.

Only last week an elderly patient had to wait seven hours for an ambulance to take her to her home quarter of a mile away; we wonder where that was ordered from?

A few months ago, the Lottery Commission rejected bids from Camelot, and the People’s (Boak) Lottery, as not up to scratch; they said that while neither bid was satisfactory, they would only consider a revised bid from the People’s Lottery, fronted by Sir Richard Branson. Camelot appealed to the High Court that this was unlawful, which it was , and the Chairman of the Lottery Commission, Dame Helena Shovelton resigned. (No we had never heard of her either). 

A new Commission was appointed, and its chairman was Lord Burns. When they looked at the bids again, they decided to give it back to Camelot; now Sir Richard Branson is considering appealing to the High Court. Maybe the Commissioners had been travelling on Virgin trains.

The Auditor General’s report on the NHS showed that eight out of 28 NHS Trusts in Scotland have deficits totalling £30 million.

The Scottish Executive diverted £44 million from the NHS to act as a bribe for the housing stock transfer in Glasgow.

An English firm controlled by offshore interest is trying to buy up Scottish hotels and turn them into hostels for asylum seekers; the Leena Consortium has four directors, Mehboob Kanji, Haider Jaffer, Shaffin Jaffer and Zahoor Jaffer, and control is with Chesophynya Leisure Investments Ltd, in Jersey. 

Homelessness in Scotland has risen year by year, and there are now more homeless than when New Labour came to power in 1997. There are no applications for change of use to hostels for the homeless, but then again, there’s no money in that.

DATES IN HISTORY

22 December 1820
The 1820 Radicals, sentenced to transportation to Australia, set sail on the convict ship Speke. Only one, Andrew White, returned when pardoned to Scotland.

25 December 1950
Four young Scots, led by Ian Hamilton, retrieved the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey, London, England.

26 December 1251
Marriage of Alexander III, King of Scots, to Margaret, daughter of Henry III, King of England, in York. The young Alexander refused to acknowledge English overlordship of Scotland.

THE REBELS CEILIDH SONG BOOK

THE FOGGY DEW
(As sung by Hugh MacDonald)

As down the glen one Easter morn
to a city fair rode I,
There, armed lines of marching men
in squadrons passed me by;
No pipe did hum, no battle drum
did sound its loud tattoo,
But the Angelus bell o'er the Liffey's swell
rang out through the foggy dew.

Right proudly high in Dublin Town
they flung out the flag of war,
'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky
than at Suvla or Sud El Bar;
And from the plains of Royal Meath
strong men came hurrying through,
While England's Huns with their long-range guns
poured hell through the foggy dew.

'Twas England bade our Wild Geese go
that Small Nations might be free,
But their lonely graves are by Suvla's waves
or the fringe of the great North Sea;
O, had they died by Pearse's side,
or had fought with noble cathal Brugha,
Their names we'd keep where the Fianna sleep,
'neath the shroud of the foggy dew.

But the bravest fell, and the requiem bell
rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide
in the springtime of their year;
While the world did gaze, with deep amaze,
at these fearless men, but few,
Who bore the fight that Freedom's light
might shine through the foggy dew.

See the Songbook in our features section

A KIST O FERLIES
A Keek at the Guid Scots Tung
By Peter D Wright
(Note: All words underlined in this section are RealAudio links)

• bubbly-jock: turkey ( male )
• christmas: Christmas present
• lum: chimney
• yule: Christmas
• yule E'en: Christmas Eve
• A green Yule maks a fat kirkyaird: A mild Christmas fills the cemetery

I'm gaun to hing a stockin up,
I'll borrow my big brither's,
It's bigger nor my sister's ane
And strang-er nor my mither's.

I'll be in bed on Yule E'en
When Faither Christmas comes.
I ken he'll wale oor chimley oot
Amang the ither lums.

On Yule richt early I'll be up
Afore the screich o day
To see what ferlies Santa Claus
Has brocht me for my play.

I hope he'll mind a cuddly bear,
And cups for dolly's tea
Wi lots o ither bonnie toys
For a guid wee lass like me.

Yule - J K Annand

See Scots Language in our Features Section

THE MONTHLY PRIZE CROSSWORD

Each month the Scots Independent Newspaper offers a prize crossword and we're now offering this online in the Flag in the Wind as well.   Should you complete the crossword by the deadline you can fax it over to the SI and the first correct one opened on the closing date will win a £10.00 book token.

SI Prize Crossword No. 13
[Clicking on the picture will bring up a life size version which you can copy to your desktop or print out]