Mary W has tagged me, so I have to find 7 wierd things about me.

Hmmmmmmmmm

Need to get my thinking cap on, I am having as much trouble with this as I would with "list 7 things about yourself you think are amazing"

No doubt something will come to mind, I'm going to sit on this for a couiple of days.

Thanks Mary (I think)

Today Alex Salmond was elected First Minister of Scotland. It is the first time in the party's 73 year history that they have been in Government and quite possibly one of the best sights I have ever seen.

Since the mid 1980s I have been involved as a member in numerous campaigns in elections and by elections all over Scotland. I have frozen my arse off outside too many town halls to remember, often only to be disappouinted in the result, but we'd be there to support the candidate, win or lose.

I have been an office bearer at Branch and Constituency level over a number of years, though have not been really active at all for the past 2 or 3 years, concentrating on other things. I have attended numerous annual conferences, drafted and debated motions and had the Party Conference experience of 4 days with no sleep on several occasions!

So when the count came in and the SNP were ahead by one seat, I was thrilled. Pleased for Alex Salmond who has worked for so long for this. For John Swinney, former party leader, another who has spent his whole adult life working for Independence, he's now Finance Minister. For Nicola Sturgeon who finally took Glasgow Govan from the Labour MSP who refused time and again to give up his better paying other job to serve his constituency. Oh the list goes on, we're a small country, the list of MSPs reads like old acquaintances.

Most of all proud of all the hundreds of members who turned out time after time to work all year round to build the result we finally got, and sadness too, for those who didn't live to see it. Thoughts of Margaret Ewing, such a talent lost early to breast cancer. She did get to serve in both Parliaments, to local members who didn't get to see this, Morag and David in particular.  

I spent the weekend following the election in rural Perthshire, staying in Scotland's oldest hotel. Burns wrote a poem on the wall there, they covered it in glass and have kept it. Burns and Salmond, both nationalists and Internationalists, united by a huge love for a wee country.

No it's not Independence, but it is coming, just watch this space!

Liz

Musings on the May 3^rd debacle

On May 3^rd this year we had elections. The Scottish Executive decided we would have a BIG election-instead of just the Scottish parliament election, we would have the ballot for Local Councils on the same day. As a further complication, Local Government was to be elected using proportional Representation, with a Single Transeferable Vote (STV).

This meant 3 ballots, using 3 systems, running at the same time. The Scottish parliament has a PR type system that means Constituency MSPs are elected by the First Past The Post system. These are supplemented by Regional Lists, where candidates selected and ranked by the various parties are allocated additional members on the basis of share of the vote. This allows some representation for smaller parties who have insufficient vote share in a single constituency.

Both Constituency and Regfional List candidates were presented in 2 lists on the same ballot paper. One vote was to be made from each list, marked with an X.

The second paper was the STV Local Council one, to be marked 1,2,3 in oeder of preference. Turnout at the last elections here was under 50%, it is in one sense understandable holding all the ballots on the same day would maximise the turnout and address the "election fatigue" caused by having Westminster, Scottish parliament and Local Council elections all held at different times. In addition, there has been lots of publicity about postal voting, also hopefully to increase turnout.

Before the first results were even in, an enquiry had been announced into the number of people whose postal ballot papers had not arrived on time. Then an announcement that fog had delayed the helicopter bringing votes from the island of Barra for the Western Isles count, so that would be delayed till Friday. Then the boat bringing votes from Arran got stuck in the Clyde Estuary, with another boat being sent out to rescue ballot papers and crew. There are allegations papers were soaked/damaged/lost before reaching the mainland. Oh and in Edinburgh, a man with a golf club attacked the boxes in a polling station and damaged several......officials at the count could be seen sticking ballot papers back together with cellotape.

The new machines for electronic counting broke........in several places counting staff were sent home for the night while these were repaired. Where they did work they were slow. If the machine could not read a paper, the Returning Officer or an aide made a judgement about whether the paper was acceptable. Papers rejected by the machines were flashed up on TV screens for an opinion. This didn't seem problematic, with party agents hovering around also able to see the papers in question, all except in Airdrie and Shotts where the returning officer decided he wasn't a sharing kind of guy and excluded everyone else. That raised some more questions.

The biggest scandal of the night was by the time it was over, there were 140,000 spoiled papers. This is more than the entire vote cast in 3 constituencies. In a number of instances the number of spoiled papers was greater than the winning candidate's majority. There has been no great cry of foul from any one party, it seems unlikely the spoiled papers were discarded in any partisan way, but there has to be huge concern about the sheer volume of uncounted votes and some uncertainty about those close run results. It does seem the whole administration of the process needs to be closely examined, how could a system so comples 140,000 people couldn't understand it ever have been put in place?

Results were not clear till 6pm on Friday, 20 hours after the polls closed. However, they wre well worth waiting for, more on that later.

Liz

I have shamelessly stolen Mike's picture, it really does deserve the widest possible audience. I am sure everyone has a story on this theme.

I work in Social Services. Last week I had occasion to call a telephone company, they had disconnected the outgoing calls of someone whose bill was a bit overdue, but in doing so had cut off her emergency 24 hour alarm system. This sort of thing happens from time to time, usually it's no big deal and companies are fairly co-operative, not wishing to put someone vulnerable at risk. I only ended up dealing with it as the worker normally involved was on holiday.

The conversation went along the following lines

"I have no information this person is vulnerable"

"I am telling you now, so now you have the information"

"I have no record of an emergency alarm at this address"

"In that case I am advising you of that too"

"In any case you have to follow procedure"

"That's fine, tell me the procedure and I'll follow it"

"Speak to your local Social Services manager, they will know the procedure"

"I AM the local social services manager. I am asking you to advise me of the procedure so I can deal with this"

"If you were the local social services manager you would know the procedure"

"Could you really be any less helpful?"

"Indeed I could" And with that he hung up the phone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I rang back, got a different person and it was sorted, literally in seconds, with no argument.

Liz

What follows is something I have just posted in Integral Institute, in response to Ewan's thoughts that Tony Blair is the first Integrally informed Prime Minister. I don't agree he is and I don't think his approach has been particularly helpful, maintaining the worst of the Thatcher era with a few tweaks. I am reposting here because I want to let rip, I think, about what the world feels like from here after 10 years of Blair government on top of the havoc of the previous 20 years of Tory government that no one in Scotland ever voted for. For me it amounts to 30 years of disenfrachisement and disappointment in the political system and I am only moved to write now because there is finally a ray of hope.

But more of that soon, here's the post about the Third Way




I am having continued trouble with the elevation of Tony Blair to the status of "Our first Integral Prime Minister". I don't believe there is anything particularly integral in his approach, nor am I in any sense convinced that the Third Way represents anything in second tier thought, approach or analysis.

I thought it might be helpful to have a look at what the Third Way actually is, both to clarify for those who aren't sure and to help people make useful comments about where they think the approach might fit. I have used Bill and Charlie Jordan's Social Work and the Third Way-Tough Love as Social Policy (Sage,2000), basically because it would take me a long time to express anything as clearly and also because I am largely sympathetic to this analysis. I am making no attempt to be even handed here, feel free to counter.

The Third Way

The Third Way is the name given by the New Labour leadership to its own political philosophy and strategy; it is also the title of texts by Tony Blair and his adviser, Professor Tony Giddens, both published in 1998. It purports to be an alternative to margaret Thatcher's free market model of the neo-liberal state, and to old-style socialism, both of the undemocratic Soviet, command economy kind, and of the Old Labour variety (with a mixed economy and universalistic, collectivist welfare state).

What is distinctive about the Third Way in both accounts is the emphasis on the requirement to find new expressions for the values of socialism, feminism, anti racism and justice. Tony Blair writes that Labour's values have not changed, but the means of achieving them must change: "The Third Way is a serious reappraisal of social democracy, reaching deep into the values of the left to develop radically new approaches" Similarly, Tony Giddens writes of socialist values which "remain intrinsic to the good life that it is the point of social and economic development to create"

The following is a list of the Third Way's values and how they are interpreted, following Carling (1999)

Equality-equal moral worth of all human beings: equality of opportunity, not outcome; protection of the vulnerable.

Autonomy- personal freedom; choice; political liberty.

Community - individual responsibility; reciprocity;obligations corresponding to social rights; social inclusion as the basis for social justice .

Democracy - empowerment; devolution of power

The key question is whether these values have any substance when they are detached from the context of socialism, feminism, anti racism and justice. As carling points out, the Third Way largely accepts capitalism as a suitable vehicle for delivering these values, and aims to modify it mainly in terms of the following policy goals:

lifelong learning (The Social Investment State)

a balance of rights and responsibilities

promoting independence through work

provision for genuine need

Institutions, Moral character and Political Settlements

Political mobilisations, such as Margaret Thatcher's "property owning democracy" and Tony Blair's "Third Way" rely on reaching new political "settlements" that combine 2 or more of 4 apparently conflicting cultural projects in new ways. The stability of the settlement depends on its capacity to create cohesion out of conflict (Douglas 1996).

The 4 cultural projects can be represented as

A Fatalism. Individuals make themselves. No form of morality is reliable. Luck or fate determine outcomes. Institutions are incidental.

B. Individualism. Individuals should pursue their own projects. Institutions should prevent them from violating each others' rights to do so.

C. Hierachy. Individuals should keep rules. Institutions should reinforce rules, they should punish wrongdoing and reward virtue.

D. Egalitarianism. Individuals are made by communities. Moral character is the product of membership and belonging. Institutions should protect comunities.

Thatcherism was a mobilization that combined Individualism and Hierarchy, against the collectivism of the 1970s under Old Labour. The Third Way introduces Egalitarianism, but in combination with Individualism(the individual as the moral unit in society) and Hierarchy ( the need for law enforcement and strong central government leadership).

Values, Morals and Emotions

The ethical foundations of the Third way are shaky. Its attempt to combine individualist and collectivist elements in moral and political culture is a necessary corrective to the unintended consequences of Thatcherism, but its version of community as a system of membership and mutuality is flawed. This is partly because it relies on the values and emotions of the "blood and guts" code and partly because it fails to recognise how the rational legal regulation of liberal democracy protects freedom and difference. It is also because it transposes principles of reciprocity and fairnes in co-operation from the sphere of small groups and associations (where they belong) to that of large, complex market societies (where they do not). As a result, the Third Way is much more authoritarian, monolithic and narrow than is needed to restore the sense of belonging and sharing of our culture.

The paradox at the heart of Third way ethics is that new Labour's programme requires citizens to be more self responsible and more aware of their interdependence, yet its style of government gets in the way of this cultural shift. If what are needed are more morally autonomous, active citizens, then the enforcement of obligations to the state is unlikely to produce them. If change is what is to be promoted, enforcement counsellors are not the best way to achieve this.

So there you go folks, the ethical dilemma at the heart of New labour, and the Third Way as an impossible cherry picked mish mash of incompatible ideas. It's not advanced, it's not new and it sure ain't either Integral or Second Tier. It is, in my view, as green as green can be, trying to encompass bits of everything as valid, with no ability to discriminate in order to be congruent or effective.

Liz

Well, here I am with a clean page. Not sure what I want to do with this as yet. I've never used a blog, never written in this cyber space without an expectation someone will talk back.
More when I have something I want to say.