ONE of my tasks every Monday is to table a question for answer by Alex Salmond at First Minister's Questions on Thursday. My questions are very, very seldom taken because Presiding Officer Alex Fergusson sticks to the "d'Honte" system of selecting PQs for answer. The arithmetical proportionality of this system of allocating speaking time, and PQs, seems fair enough in a de-politicised and dehumanised sort of way, but it militates against topical, spontaneous debate. But hope spri
This week was the last chance this year to ask a question that might become even more urgent and important over the holidays, as some employers look at the books many of them couldn't bear to open until after Christmas. Some businesses may not reopen
after what turns out to be a last throw of the dice. So I've asked the Scottish Government what assessment has been made of employment trends in the city's travel-to-work area, and how it means to protect Edinburgh's sense of wellbeing now that the Lloyds TSB and HBOS shareholders voted for a takeover and the demotion of Edinburgh in the league table of financial centres.
Right now, the concentration of political commentators' newspaper and broadcasting features is on whether Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken to wearing his underpants over his longjohns and whether he's right to let slip that he thinks he saved the world, or the German finance minister is right to claim that not only is the PM wearing no garments on his nether regions, he's out in the financial storm without any clothes at all.
I hate to say it, but I suspect Peer Steinbruck's remarks owe more to his clear-sightedness than his notorious lack of tact. Understandably, perhaps, out of a desire not to spook people into even more depression about what lies ahead in 2009, politicians here have viewed the road ahead through rose-tinted glasses. Assurances have been given that things will start to look up by late spring. Although I doubt that estimate in general, I'm absolutely sure the Capital's economy and sense of wellbeing will not be registering where they did on the "feel good scale" this time last year.
Unemployment will start to be felt in the banking business, adding to the lay-offs in the construction industry. Because of problems made impossible to solve during the enforced fall-off of trade along parts of the trams construction route, some small businesses will close, creating loss of turnover amongst their suppliers, and amongst the service industries such as hairdressers and dry cleaners etc.
As regards the city's citizens' sense of wellbeing, if I'm correct in choosing the Germanic analysis of where Gordon's gone wrong, the PM and his Chancellor won't be able to answer Scottish Finance Minister John Swinney's plea for money so as to afford a new Forth crossing, and schools with roofs that keep the rain out. Our public services are under strain across Scotland and the frozen council tax means that even with the best management in the world, Edinburgh City Council will find it nigh on impossible to cope with the social fallout from economic depression and the financial turmoil in banking and mortgage lending.
When people lose their jobs, there's a rise in homelessness, illness, child neglect and fear of failure. Lothian health services are already stretched to cope with the problems of success, add to that the problems of poverty – depression and susceptibility to illness that accompanies the feeling of having failed, or having been stuffed by the system – and you begin to see why I'm pursuing Alex Salmond.
The problem is not of his making, and devolution doesn't give the Scottish Parliament the power or the money needed to customise a response, and Gordon Brown is intent on a course of action that depends on German, Japanese and Chinese people breaking all their cultural taboos against spending their rainy day savings to help out other countries. So, Scotland's First Minister would be well-advised to devote what resources he does have to preparing Scotland for the end of the depression. FE colleges should be helped to provide re-training and enhanced educational and vocational courses to get ahead of the next round of prosperity.
Better times will return after a couple of years or so, if we're lucky. But can we hope to resume the level of consumption to which we had become accustomed when perhaps two generations of future tax-payers will be saddled with the debt the PM has built up with the borrowing he calls Keynesian and Herr Steinbruck calls too much?
I'm for Steinbruck: borrow to pay for schools, bridges etc, not to send more troops to Afghanistan.
