Cochrane's Paradox

A recent entry from the Scottish Dictionary of National Philosophistry (2004) (OUP). 

First identified by the onyxo-unio-cardiolist Alan Cochrane in or around Auchtermuchty in 2007, Cochrane's Paradox remains one of the thorniest politico-logical puzzles of contemporary Scottish philosophy. 

Extending Erwin Schrödinger's famous thought experiment in quantum theory from the feline to the functionary, Cochrane sought to find a basis in reason for the claim that civil servants working for their democratically-elected governments could be both a scandal and a disgrace, and celebrated and proper, at the same time. Although Cochrane's primary focus was always theoretical, contributing to humanity's understandings of higher order concepts, this uncharacteristically political theorist of physics chose to express this paradox in terms of the constitutional controversies of his own day.  

 Just as a fluffy kitten in the fuzzy bloom of youth cannot be both lively and dead simultaneously, the richly face-furnitured philosophist struggled to reconcile the claim that the UK government's use of its bureaucrats' time, talents and authority to promote its constitutional preferences was simply splendid, while the perfidious Scottish Nationalist insurgency's use of the self-same civil service resources to make the case for independence amounted to a disgraceful abuse of power and a subversion of a key pillar of the state hinting at dark designs on the liberty of the subject. 

But how could both propositions be true simultaneously, the same practices being both right and proper when undertaken by civil servants under the superintendence of UK ministers and a scandal and an outrage when simultaneously engaged in by their Holyrood counterparts? Cochrane's paradox was formed.  Only fully worked out in his late writings, Cochrane's early work in the field anticipated the thought experiment which would make his name. 

In an early pamphlet, he considered the perils of a senior Scottish civil servant "going native" in service of his Nationalist masters.  A subsequent scholarly review, Cochrane poses the question more starkly: "have Scotland’s civil servants become an arm of the SNP?" Cochrane, whose prose style was strongly influenced by his early readings of Professor Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (1927) concluded in a celebrated passage that: 

"Civil servants are paid by you but in Scotland they work for a separatist government even though they’re members of the British Civil Service."

To date, no subsequent theorist has been able to resolve the basic logical tensions in Cochrane's position. Emotionally and intellectually exhausted by his many failed attempts to resolve these issues, Cochrane abandoned advanced political quantum thinking in 2014. Selling his Perthshire home, the onyxo-unio-cardiolist is understood to have invested in a supply of gunpowder, a veteran crew of rum-soaked ex-lobby correspondents and a small brigantine. 

Flying under the traditional Cochrane Maggie-Thatcher-spearing-a-heart-while-quaffing-champagne flag, the ship has been implicated in a recent series of raids on fishing villages and towns along the Banff and Buchan coast. Locals have returned to find their homes despoiled of copies of the Spectator and Royal Jubilee branded tea sets, large numbers of which now flood the London black market.

See also: Dr John Charity Spring pp. 138 - 9.

Cock-eyed Cochers cocks a snook...

Devolution is "a motorway without exit" to a separate Scottish state. So contended Tam Dalyell. I've long found the Telegraph's Alan Cochrane's lapses into this mode of thinking rather befuddling. What does a Unionist politics look like, if you subscribe to this sort of devolution determinism? If you are travelling on Dalyell's motorway - you may accelerate, decelerate - but cannot u-turn. Onward ever onward you vroom, however unwillingly, with no prospect of changing your direction of travel. Strictly speaking, I suspect he and others like him may well entertain fond dreams of flattening Holyrood and "repatriating" devolved powers to a restored Westminster - but for the foreseeable future, the engine has fallen out of that political project, leaving the old banger wheezing far back on the hard shoulder.  

Many - and I share their skepticism - would write off Dalyell's metaphor as whizz-bang rhetoric to underline his anti-devolution argument, rather than a serious sociological diagnosis that independence is rendered inevitable by the mere existence of a Scottish parliament. But for the black-hearted Unionist who does hold this curious deterministic position, the fatal moment has come and gone. The Union may not have gasped its last, but is certainly lying on its bed of death. Care at this point can only be palliative, all hopes of a cure perishing with the "yes" vote in the 1998 referendum.  For old time's sake, you may strive to keep the patient alive for as long as possible, deferring her dissolution by bloody-minded but purposeless interventions in public life. On this theory, Dalyell and Cochrane and their ilk are reduced to murmuring their Dylan Thomas - "Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light" - ever more world-wearily. As politics go, this is a macabre business. The perplexity and dissatisfactions of this position were called to mind, hearing Cochrane's response to a recent speech from John Major. The former Tory Prime Minister argued that ...

"Why not devolve all responsibilities except foreign policy, defence and management of the economy? Why not let Scotland have wider tax-raising powers to pay for their policies and, in return, abolish the present block grant settlement, reduce Scottish representation in the Commons, and cut the legislative burden at Westminster?"

Predictably enough, Cochers is appalled to hear such sentiments expressed by a man who once stoutly opposed devolution on the grounds that Scots were "sleepwalking towards independence" and that it represented "a stepping stone to separation".  On Newsnicht, Cochrane sputtered his astonishment: "I found this the most incredible intervention in recent years - months. For John Major to say this, is absolute havers." The BBC journalist who put the piece together styled Major's proposition "moving towards a weaker Union" - a profoundly problematic proposition, baldly to advance. Indeed, it is precisely the Union strengthening qualities of more radical devolved powers which is at issue between these conservative characters. For Major, and Darth Murdo Fraser - and as I understand him, David Torrance - the rationale for embracing a much more extensive, settled and federal devolution settlement is precisely that it will end the "unsustainable" situation we currently occupy, characterised by political instability and the slow "appeasement" of nationalist demands.  Baillie Bill Aitken's appeared in the same edition of Newsnicht, arguing that devolution is a process, not an event.  It is this endlessly parroted phrase that Major is seeking to expel from our political vocabulary, tying down the open ends of devolution into a settled federal structure.

For Cochrane, by contrast, the Calman Commission, Scotland Bill and prospect of much more extensive devolution of powers - are sops that enervate the Unionist soppers without soaking up Nationalist feeling. While I'm sure old Cochers does not count Maximilien Robespierre amongst his intellectual influences, his views echo a speech made by the latter in the Jacobin Club after the King's abortive Flight to Varennes in 1791. Said Robespierre:

"What frightens me is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone. And here I need to be listened to until the end. Once again, what frightens me is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone else: it’s that since this morning, all of our enemies speak the same language as us."

In Cochrane's case, the logic is precisely inverted. What concerns him is that his friends speak the same language as his enemies, not just conceding but adopting the Nationalist political logic of an ever-empowered Holyrood. For Cochers, they do Salmond's work for him and win no appreciable benefit for the Union in the process. For him, any concession is a defeat, weakening the Union. Victory is curbing Nationalist ambitions by bluntly telling us to sod off. For what it is worth, my own feeling is that Cochrane's response is quite wrong-headed and that Major's two propositions, while superficially contradictory, are not incompatible. It is perfectly plausible to hold (1) that you believe devolution is and was a "a stepping stone to separation" but (2) if voters reject argument (1) and you end up with devolution, preserving the Union may behove finding ways to stabilise the devolution settlement, to extinguish, or diminish the demands of self-determination.

Devolution was never just about relocating decision-making powers from institution A to new institution B after all. Politically, it doubtlessly empowered the SNP, transforming them from a very small handful of MPs in a very large House of Commons to a party of primary opposition, then minority government in 2007 and a majority in 2011. More broadly, it created the possibility of a distinct public sphere in Scottish politics around Holyrood. Although this outcome may not have been foreseen by those voting on the Scotland Act 1998, it ought to have been clear that devolution would displace Westminster's monopoly on "official" political life and fundamentally alter the character of - and in the short to medium term, strengthen - the SNP.  As a Unionist, one can conceiveably oppose the emergence of a distinct Scots political agora, and nevertheless recognise that once such a public space exists, think about ways to reconfigure the powers exercised by the institution and its creatures, better to serve your aim of preserving the Union. Cochrane, by contrast, seems to see no such distinctions.  Which, given his lapsing into the Dalyellesque logic discussed at the outset, is something of a curiosity.

Discussing the same topic of "the Conservatives, the Union, Scotland and the British State", Gerry Hassan notes...

"The Tories are moving on the union, doing what they do best, being pragmatic and conciliatory on the surface, while doing all they can to maintain the union which is central to their politics and identity, and just as crucially, maintain the bastardised nature of the British state. It won’t work, because constitutional change has consequences for the political centre, but don’t write off the Tories genius at reform to postpone more fundamental reform. They have been at it a rather long time." [My emphasis]

For what it is worth, I think Cochrane is right on the Calman process and the current Scotland Bill. It stabilises nothing and settles nothing. An unprincipled trimmer's expedient rather than a settling and principled architecture for the future, mute but determining, the Scotland Bill's rank ad hockery is fundamentally driven by a policy of preserving the political centre and tinkering with the periphery. Gerry is absolutely right. It is the reflexive, transforming implications of federation for the British political centre which will make it intolerable and unworkable. A federal politics requires a federal mindset that is basically incompatible with the Westminster status quo and its cherished constitutional nostrums.  Either the old pieties of the "pragmatic", sovereign constitution must yield, or federalism cannot prosper. Contra Dalyell, there is nothing inevitable about Scottish independence, once devolution is conceded. However, if independence is achieved, I'm convinced that it will be owed in no small part to the refusal of British politics to countenance its own transformation.

"Minor alterations to conserve the antique essence of English hegemony..."

Will geography cause an upset in our Tory leader guessing game? asks Alan Cochrane, the Telegraph's in situ black-hearted Unionist, in a column of last week. Scottish Tories, such as they are, appear to be experiencing one of their regular existential crises on the relationship between their Unionism and their attitudes towards devolution. Creditably, the issue was explicitly addressed in an apparently "packed" fringe meeting, held at the late Tory Spring conference in Perth. "Darth" Murdo Fraser was debating the serpentine former Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Forsyth. Both were concerned about the Scotland Bill, devolution and Tory strategy. Forsyth contended that any sort of fiscal devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament would be a "timebomb at the heart of the union". Fraser disagreed. I wasn't in attendance for obvious reasons, but I'd imagine that Fraser might argue that constitutional reform represents an opportunity to stabilise and entrench the Union, leaving the settled will of the Scottish people properly settled.  By contrast, Forsyth's anti-devolutionary motto seems to be give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile, so don't relinquish one mil of authority. Period. According to Cochrane, the Tories in the room overwhelmingly backed the old villain's devolution skepticism. The issue has prompted a wee flutter of debate in our online agora. In a recent edition of the Scottish Review, David Torrance writes "in defence of the Union", arguing that the Tories should embrace the vision of a federated United Kingdom. He concludes:

"'Things fall apart,' wrote Yeats, 'the centre cannot hold', or, as Lord Acton put it, 'a great democracy must either sacrifice self government to unity or preserve it by federalism'. A Liberal, the late Russell Johnston, put it even better. 'The choice for Scotland is between separating herself from the United Kingdom and working out a federal relationship,' he said in 1976. 'Nothing in between makes sense.' Amen to that."

This morning, Bill Jamieson has a piece on a similar theme in the Scotsman, arguing that the "Scotland Bill's 'consensus' is a sham". Coincidentally enough, I've recently been re-reading the third edition of Tom Nairn's seminal The Break-Up of Britain, published in 2003. You can probably expect a series of snippets and phrases from the work, over the coming weeks.  First published in 1977, I'm frequently struck by the continuing contemporary resonances of Nairn's commentary, the recognisable Unionist angsts and coping strategies; the reticent attitude towards the apparently settling prospect of UK federalism; the overarching sense of bemusement and foiled endeavours about how best to sustain Britain's crepuscular Kingdom in the face of Scottish nationalist political demands.  Wasn't devolution supposed to "kill Scottish nationalism stone dead" after all? Where is its thistle-strewn corpse? Why isn't that cadaver spent? Where did it all go wrong? All are questions which immediately concern the Unionist trio of Murdo, Forsyth and Torrance. Nairn's first chapter - "The Twilight of the British State" - has much of interest to say in this regard...

"In summary, almost emblematic form, one might say: London government invents habitual class remedies to nationalist ailments. Its instinct is to concede, when sufficiently prodded, then consolidate tradition on the new, slightly different balance of forces that results. Although notoriously effective on the front of class struggle and negotiation, the strategy has no real application to national questions. The philosophy and practice of conservative empiricism presupposes a stable, consensual framework; the new nationalisms challenge that framework itself. British constitutionalism makes an arcane mystique of power, removing it from the arena of normal confrontation and enshrining it as a Grail-live "sovereignty"; by nationalism is about power, in a quite straightforward sense. It is a demand for the Grail, or at least a bit of it (this is of course a demand for the impossible, in English ideological tradition).

This pattern has been followed to the letter in the development of intra-British conflict so far. When Welsh and Scottish nationalism began to advance politically in the 1960s, London government from the outset assumed that these developments would have to be adapted to, and nullified, in the habitual way. It noticed that the demands were different in Wales and Scotland, as were the relative strengths of the nationalist parties. So of course different concessions would be in order for each region. A Royal Commission was appointed to work out how this should be done, in the customary hope that the problem would have solved itself by the time this body's deliberations were finished. When completed, its recommendations were greeted with universal derision and cynicism.

The derision vanished with the new election results of 1974. The new Labour government hastily produced legislation embodying some of the Commission's ideas, which became the "Scotland and Wales Bill" of December 1976. Now that the problems were not going to disappear spontaneously, concessionary tactics would have to be employed. With limited degrees of self-government in domestic matters (extremely limited in the case of Wales), it was believed that the regions would soon relapse into their traditional subordination. Are they not full of basically loyal folk who may have a few grievances but know that Britain is best? Once reasonable note is regally taken of their grudges, surely they will fall into line again, acknowledging their limited yet honoured place in the greater scheme of things?A great deal of fulsome rhetoric of 1960s vintage went into the deal: the legislation was titled "Our Changing Democracy" and sanctified by speeches on bringing government "closer to the people", combating impersonal centralism, etc. When set in the historical perspectives of English élitism, this was indecorous to say the least of it: few have seen it as anything but an ideological façade. Like the Local Government reforms which had preceded devolution, the changes were at heart ways of preserving the old state - minor alterations to conserve the antique essence of English hegemony.

There was no real belief in a new partnership of peoples. And in fact, such a partnership - in other words, genuine "transfer of power" from the old state - was never conceivable without the most radical reform of the centre itself. To give effective power away meant examining, and changing, the basis of power itself: the Constitution, the myth-source of sovereignty, and all that it depends upon. The whole British political system had to be altered. There has been no serious question of doing this, for the sake of the Scots, the Welsh and the Ulstermen. The only political party which advocates it is the one permanently removed from power, the Liberal Party.

Unable to contemplate radical reform of the centre (since its whole modern history has been built on avoiding it) London government has blundered empirically into using the usual tactic of graduated response. One commentary after another has explored the self-contradictory nature of the proposals, their liability to generate conflict and escalation of nationalist sentiment and demands..." Tom Nairn (2003) The Break-Up of Britain, 3rd edn, pp 49 - 52.

There's no devolution without devolution...

To paraphrase my Jacobin friend Maximilien Robespierre, this week I've found myself reviving the question "do you want devolution without devolution?" Various commentators have form with this particular species of misunderstanding, where notional support for devolution sits uneasily alongside trenchant criticisms of some inequality in these islands. Of late, intemperate terms such as educational apartheid are being bandied about in response to the prospect of ratcheted up English student debt, feeless Scottish higher education and the news that the Welsh Assembly Government has decided to bear the brunt of the Conservative-Liberal coalition's university fees hike, saving academic Welsh youngsters the significantly inflated cost of a degree which their English cousins will bear alone. What strikes me as curious is that challenging the "unfairness" of this seems to make Scottish and Welsh authorities the guilty regimes who ought to "get" a good deal less cash (this premised on the assumption that if education spending is higher, all spending must inequitably be too high). This argument doesn't register a number of debatable points. 

Firstly, "fairness" isn't a transparent term and different conceptions of a fair distribution of spending across the United Kingdom may be advanced. Paxman et al. specialise in obfuscating justifiable differences between conceptions of fairness by pigheadedly insisting on the common-sense damn-your-eyes obviousness of one particular conception of just spending. Cowrin, timorous politicians tend to collude in their own abuse here, deflecting and avoiding the substantive heart of the thing - which is a debate on what constitutes a fair distribution. Secondly, if we assume that our levels of public spending are justifiably fair(ish) on some conception of justice, different priorities in terms of spending could easily reproduce the student fees situation we have before us. It is by no means evident that fees in one part of the country and none in another indicates that the latter is growing paunchy while the other is being hollowed out to feed the lardy substance of the latter. Obviously enough, the consequence of not subjecting your students to fees would be diminished spending on some other area.  This, as others have rightly argued, is the inevitable consequence of devolution. 

Indeed, the incoherence of this allegation on the individual cost of higher education illuminates an important aspect of theories of apartheid. Oppression of this sort, I'd argue, is fundamentally premised on the inclusion of the excluded category whose life is regulated, allotted a subordinate position in relation to the dominant category. I know it sounds obscene, but an apartheid state only makes sense if it is underwritten by a unitary analysis. As I understand it, devolution is precisely about foregoing this sort of unitary thinking in the United Kingdom. I'm not sure how convincing the argument "different therefore unequal therefore unfair treatment" was before 1998 - particularly with a view to our different legal systems in the United Kingdom - but the logic of the case collapses  totally once you accept devolved axioms about the justifiability of different treatment, spending and priorities - in the name of "local" decision-making. Give me a black-hearted Unionist any day who despises devolution with all of his heart, compared to these lukewarm clots who can't embrace the basic conclusion demanded by their warped logic. There's no devolution without devolution.

The particularly bizarre aspect of this discussion is the suggestion that it is used as an excuse to attack devolution rather than the plots and schemes of coalition to balloon student debt, while giving us stern lectures on why national debt is terribly iffy. Instead of seeing this issue as a means of recognising English political choices as just that - choices - leaving room for others to take a different view about what matters, the education apartheid case seems to argue that if student funding differences are unfair, Scottish and Welsh authorities are faulty. Needless to say, this thinking needs to be rigorously repelled. If not, the debate risks being transformed into a bad-tempered indictment of the feckless Celtic fringe of ruddy-cheeked Scotch blackmailers and giggling Welsh chancers. Rogues on the make, needing no excuses to defraud your dull-dog English taxpaying yeoman of his hard-earned schilling. While  the underclass of "hard-working families" (as I like to think of them) are invited to viciously shillelagh the perceived excesses of the "devolved regions", sleekit English ministers would no doubt hope to slither away undetected. 

On wur ain snake-hipped ministers, in the Herald this weekend, Iain MacWhirter has a piece I'd very much endorse arguing that The SNP must stick to its guns on student fees. Mr MacWhirter has been very much on form this week, with another interesting contribution earlier on, arguing that the ongoing discussion on the new Scotland Bill represents a victory for the gradualist Scottish nationalist cause - but presents a real debating difficulty for the coming Holyrood election. Since I opened with Robespierre, I'll close with another Jacobin-inspired thought which seems relevant.  After King Louis' flight, Maximilien told his Jacobin brethren that:

"What frightens me is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone. And here I need to be listened to until the end. Once again, what frightens me is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone else: it’s that since this morning, all of our enemies speak the same language as us."

The core of MacWhirter's thesis is the notion that once you've transformed your opponents' premises, made them speak your language and talk to your concerns, you've been victorious.  It is certainly significant, in its limited way, that the new Scotland Bill proposes to change the Scottish Executive to the Scottish Government, in law. No doubt haughty quibblers are already feeling aggrieved to lose such an immediately useful form of condescension. At least in the deep fibres. In his remarks, Robespierre may have been concerned with false patriots who don the Phrygian cap only to cover their own iniquity and dissemble sincerity (a subject, interestingly enough, which Alex Massie has recently been blogging on under the title The Scottish Nationalist pathology). Both pieces to lend our lugs and minds to, I'd suggest.

Unionist quotation of the day...

"Till the Union made them acquainted with English manners, the culture of their lands was unskilful, and their domestick life unformed; their tables were coarse as the feasts of Eskimeaux and their houses filthy as the cottages of the Hottentots." ~ Dr Samuel Johnson, on the Scots.

My summer reading includes a too-long neglected copy of Roland Black's (2007) edited version of To the Hebrides which sets Dr Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and the companionable James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides side by side. Like my narrators, I've only just embarked on the journey, hidden inside Boswell's pocketbook. While Johnson's commentary is terse and mildly sententious, the latter's prose is full of fun, a touching earnestness, vivid historical detail, the topics raised over dinner conversations and the learned sallies and bouts as Johnson sets about the serious-minded Scotsmen, ministers and professors they encountered on their way up the east coast. At times, both firefly Boswell and his smouldering Johnson cut absurdly earnest figures, discoursing confidently (and dare I frequently spuriously) on any number of topics. Such were the spirits of the learned men of the times. Cynicism of a modern turn in relation to how we conceptualise truth, subjectivity  and so on are understandably not much in evidence. In my mind's eye I can almost spot the Scot gravely nodding as his English companion once again cries "No sir!" in response to some local worthy's half-reasoned view on a burning issue of the times, leaving the dumbstruck soul half corrected, half boggled. He was a bumptious old villain in his way, was our Dr Johnson. That said, I can appreciate the gadfly malevolence behind his Socrates impersonation. How else to explain this chortlingly niggling remark in the Journey that:

"A Scotsman must be a sturdy moralist, who does not prefer Scotland to truth."

Both accounts, in their own ways, leave fascinating sketches of two personalities, their relation and  their relationship to the world, as best they understood it. I commend the volume to you.

Do you trust the Scottish Government?

Answer: If you are a woman, probably not.

Many of you will no doubt have heard of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey. Public research, publicly funded, the Survey covers a broad gamut of concerns since it was first conducted in 1999. Although my own research sympathies and interests are less statistical than the folk who conducted this study, unlike my more militant anthropological cronies, I'm far more patient about the value which these large-scale can have. The answers permitted  by structured surveys may be terse and sparse compared to the range of opinions which people can hold.  The use of scales can look fishy and improbable. Certainly, if a survey is pushed in front of me and I'm invited to express satisfaction on a measure of ten pips, I invariably panic. All of these qualms may be true, but there remains no better way to generate an understanding - however conditional or partial it might be - of the otherwise imperceptible eddies and pools which form in the public consciousness. I thought this recent Scottish Government publication would be particularly of interest to political obsessives.  It:

"... explores trends in attitudes to government, the economy and public services.  It examines longer term-trends in public opinion since the start of devolution in 1999 and changes in attitudes over the shorter period since the last SSA took place in 2007."

This core module explores the following - 

(1) Changing attitudes to government in Scotland  
(2) Changing attitudes to economic performance and public services 
(3) How to attitudes to government and the economy vary?

Interesting questions abound here on how the public perceive the legitimacy of devolved institutions and government, how voters vary, the role the demographics, how voters' views vary, policy by policy and issue by issue. Under the first heading, the researchers asked whether respondents trusted  government; their awareness of governmental activity; the responsiveness of the government to public views. This included asking how much do you trust the UK government to work in Scotland's best long-term interest? and how much do you trust the Scottish Government to work in Scotland's best interests? Devolved institutions and their supporters can feel quite satisfied by the results. Table A.8 sets out the answers to the question - Which do you think ought to have most influence over the way Scotland is run? The first preference of 72% was the devolved Scottish institutions. The black-hearted unionist cohort  - answering Westminster - came second with only 13% of respondents giving that Palace precedence over Holyrood. Interestingly, 11% suggested that they thought that local cooncils should get the most power, while ardent Europhiles, wanting to make "the European Union" our lord and master, slipped from 1% of the total in previous surveys.  I can't do justice to all of the data which they uncovered - it is all clearly set out in the relevant sections of the report and it is extremely unlikely that I could improve upon their presentation.

Blame & standards of health...

However, with our political cap on - it is worth paying particular attention to public services and the economy - and in particular, who the respondents blamed for successes and failures.  On health, for example, of those who believed that standards have improved in 2009, 55% credit the Scottish Government policies with this improvement, only 18% Westminster policies. Of those who believe standards in the NHS have fallen, however, only 12% blamed the Scottish Government while 41% attributed falling standards to Westminster policies. On the balance of the same, some 26% of the total believed there had been some improvement, 25% alleged diminished performance, while 41% took the steady as she goes course - of no change.

Blame & standards of the economy...

The expressed views on the standards of the economy, the 66% who think there has been any improvement attribute this to the Scottish Government with only 14% attributing positive developments to the UK government. For those who take the negative view of the economy, how blame was attributed suggests a fascinating story. A slim 7% believed that the Scottish Government were responsible for the diminished economic circumstance, the UK government pick up 38% of the blame, while 44% suggest 'some other reason' is at work behind it. What might this suggest? Firstly, that the Scottish Government appears to be scooping up credit and avoiding blame - but that on the economy, many may have bought into the idea of the global economic crisis, while a secondary cohort believes that the London government is at fault. Significant perhaps for Labour attempts to pin cash cuts on the Scottish Government, undoubtedly significant for those of us wondering how the discourses of impending 'Westminster cuts' might go down with the Scottish people.

On political engagement...

Interesting things too on people's political activities (or lack thereof). Table A. 23 collates more or less 'political' activities which respondents engaged in over the last year. While 45% had done 'none of the below', 17% of respondents had contacted their MPs or MSPs, 14% had attended public meetings, 28% signed some sort of petition, while 9% claimed to have "spoken to an influential person".Well, I suppose the Maximum Eck does put himself about a bit.

Finally, the demographic breakdown of the results is of interest, disclosing as it does variations based on gender and education, party affiliation, constitution preferences and so on.

On gender...

Rather surprisingly, the survey discovered that...

"Women were significantly less positive than men about a number of aspects of government in Scotland in 2009. For example, just 29% of women, compared with 43% of men, trusted the Scottish Government 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' to make fair decisions."

In 2007, 50% of men and 44% of women expressed 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' of trust in the Scottish Executive to make fair decisions - a gap of just 6 points. But by 2009, while the proportion of men who trusted the Scottish Government on this measure had fallen to 43%, the proportion of women who said the same fell even more sharply, to 29%. In fact, it appears that while the views of men remained more positive in 2009, trust among women had fallen back to close to 2006 levels (33% of men, 30% of women).

This is a concerning statistic for we nationalists, not least because the party's appeal to women voters has generally proved lower among women than men.  Something to be looked at very closely.

On educational background...

"those with degrees were significantly more likely than those with no qualifications to trust the Scottish Government to act in Scotland's best interests (71% vs. 52%), to believe having a Scottish Parliament gives Scotland a stronger voice in the UK (64% vs. 43%) and to think that having a Scottish Parliament gives ordinary people more say in how Scotland is run (60% vs. 35%)."

On newspapers...

"... 69% of broadsheet readers said they trusted the Scottish Government 'just about always' or 'most of the time' to act in Scotland's best interests, compared with just 53% of tabloid readers." 

As you can see, plenty to be pouring over here.  Do take a look for yourself.

Views from the vomitorium...

Urk. A bilious lurgy as claimed me and my guts are in a sorry state. You’ll forgive me, therefore, if I don’t spend much time squinting at the computer screen this morning, constricted by nausea. Regular readers may recall a while back that I discussed the new UK Supreme Court, its political carpet – and its new Unionist steer. At the end of that semiotic journey through a contemporary re-imagining of British constitutional institutions, I referred to a report that was being compiled by the University of Edinburgh’s Professor Neil Walker. His Final Appellate Jurisdiction in the Scottish Legal System report was finally published on the 22^nd of January and contains much to satisfy neither legal nationalists, nor those with a fudging political Unionism in mind. Although I’m not sufficiently chipper to compose my thoughts, over at the UK Supreme Court blog (Yes indeed, there is such a thing. How a la mode has the judicial pillar of our state become!) Scots QC Aidan O’Neill (of late referenced on the ongoing asbestos Act litigation) discusses some of the constitutional and political ambivalences implicated in the document. Hopefully I’ll reclaim ownership over my gastric tract imminently.

Renewables revelation

I have a confession to make. Despite being close to a peat worrier or two, working in the Scottish renewables sector (who I trust will forgive me), the sense of impetus and the energy-generating possibilities presented by Scotland’s geography and enterprising schemers hadn’t entirely dawned on me, instead just sloshing about in the shadows of my half-conscious. I imagine this is true of most people – even those without an urban-rustic associate to reel off the technical terminology, calculated to stop up the lugs, deafening you to understanding.

Increasingly, however, I find myself becoming rather excited by the accounts of the renewables schemes emerging across Scotland. Writing as a distinctly uninformed member of the public common. On a superficial level, the imagery is easily appealing. Renewable energy’s metaphors appeal to a distinguished idea of human creativity, cloud-compelling cunning. Like the God of Genesis at work, its tools are the maelstrom of wind, tide, wood, wave, water, sun. Don’t lets be dazzled by the bigness of all of this. Buildings are made of bricks, monuments to human efforts the sum of innumerable smaller acts, efforts and cares. Think naught a trifle, though it small appear; Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles life. It is this aspect which I find so compelling about these large projects, their coordination. Their allure is precisely in the sum of their smallness, their dullness even. Some of this enthusiasm in my part is probably furnished by how far it contrasts with my own labours. It must be existentially rather dissimilar to see your efforts given material expression. The planning and building up, coordinating and engineering will be attested by a sea of white windmills, blades scudding through the froth and foam.

Although I’m unable to independently verify the information, pause for a moment and consider the following estimations of Scotland’s renewable capacity. 7.5 gigawatts (GWs) of tidal power, some 25% of the total capacity for the whole of the European Union. Up to 14 GWs of wave power, 10% of the estimated EU total capacity. A further estimated potential of 36.5 GW of wind power. Politically speaking, this sort of optimistic, up-beat tale of Scots potential is just the sort of thing Alex Salmond gets excited about. He looks like the chubby child who finds the sweet shop door unlocked, and the toothsome candies within easy reach. Although support for renewables isn’t generally politically contentious in Scotland, the Maximum Eck clearly finds its storied narrative intensely compelling. That most black-hearted of Unionists, Alan Cochrane, described the FM as ‘positively ecstatic’, the air of the Crown Estates’ announcement of two huge windfarms in Scottish waters ‘almost euphoric’. Generally speaking, wise people should ensure that their thoughts spy on each other. Nothing ought to make one more suspicious than charisma or great expectation. The triumph, as always, will be in the details, in small places. That said, as a positive image of Scots possibility - its hard to beat.

Supreme Court UK: Unionist project

I suspect lawyers of a certain vintage will find the transformation difficult. For years, it has been House of Lords decision which have been at the apex of England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s judicial structures and the court of last domestic resort for Scots civil appeals. Now, at last, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has come alive. The old Law Lords have donned their new-weaved robes, invaded the Middlesex Guildhall and set to their jurisprudential tasks. Born of tripartite constitutional theory and a borrowed American obsession with the notion of executive-legislative-judicial division, it was always predictable that other political projects would attempt snag themselves on the long court robes of this “clarifying” measure, pursuing their own ends while change is in the air.

The aspect I wanted to raise in particular is how moving from the quiet institution of the House of Lords – composed of a mixed membership, including Scots lawyers – has been seized as a symbolical moment for a new Unionism. From a legalistic perspective, the Court’s claims to supremacy are partial at best. In the United Kingdom’s plural jurisdictions, for instance, criminal appeals cannot wend their way south. From a Scots devolutionist perspective, perhaps the most significant aspect of the new Court’s jurisdiction is its ability to hear devolution minutes under the Scotland Act 1998 and on the limits (and potential legislative and ministerial excesses) in exercising powers devolved. It is, therefore, an unequal sort of supremacy the court, as constituted, can exercise.

What interested me in particular, however, is how the architectural and legislative shifts which moved the Law Lords off their red benches and into designated judicial space has accumulated a Unionist semiotics which are strongly political. Glance at the symbol of the Court, left. English rose, Welsh leek, Scots thistle and Northern Irish flax all mingle at the roots, creating a complete circle. About this verdant knot, omega circumscribes, apparently referencing the Supreme Court’s finality. Designed by Yvonne Holton, Herald Painter at the Court of Lord Lyon in Scotland, I think it’s a handsome enough symbol. In context, it is, however, also a highly political account of the new judicial body – the institution of the Supreme Court being re-imagined through a symbolically unionist lens. Unlike the old House of Lords, this imagery explicitly ties Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in.

The court also has a pop-art carpet (right) designed by Sir Peter Blake which replicates the idea of the court as representative of jurisdictions and nations united. Of course, you might say – its just a dirty bit of carpet and a magic picture. We can pull up the former or paint out the later. Or like old claims to be King of England Ireland and France – just muddle along and hope nobody notices. My point is that it is interesting, among all the alternative choices of symbolism – one can think of innumerable images appealing to neutral justice and its scales of judgement - that a directly unionist image and account of its character was selected for this new court.

Andrew Motion, ex poet laureate, precisely replicated the same themes in his pretty trite poem, which is now chipped into the court’s walls…

Tides tumbled sand through seas long-lost to earth;
Sand hardened into stone – stone cut, then brought
To frame the letter of four nations’ laws
And square the circle of a single court.

Here Justice sits and lifts her steady scales
Within the Abbey’s sight and Parliament’s
But independent of them both. And bound
By truth of principle and argument.

A thousand years of judgment stretch behind –
The weight of rights and freedoms balancing
With fairness and with duty to the world:
The clarity time-honoured thinking brings.

New structures but an old foundation stone:
The mind of Justice still at liberty
Four nations separate but linked as one:
The light of reason falling equally.

Stir into the pot this fact. On 15/12/2008, the Scottish Government announced that Professor Neil Walker of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Law is undertaking an analysis about cutting the civil appeal from the Court of Session to London. There are cogent reasons for this in terms of legal understanding. If law is something one knows about – how appropriate is it for the final deciders on questions of Scots civil law to be English lawyers, with perhaps only the most passing and incidental of knowledge of how things are imagined by legal souls north of the border? Professor Walker has been asked to report back by 01/11/09, but I’ve not heard a peep about the position he takes or the argument he makes yet. Cutting the civil appeal stream to this new Supreme Court would (probably) require Westminster legislation. In which context, even if reasonable grounds so to do are suggested by Walker, given the choice to turn the Supreme Court into a claim about the permanence of Union, I’d be astounded if the Westminster powers let this happen.

On confusing justice with mercy...

In the land of the gobsworthy, the fat mouthed man is king. Or, in the interests of gender parity, the chubby lipped lady. Sometimes one gets so used to the helterskeltering, tapsalteerie world of political comment, its bickering squall and the predictably light sleet of negativity and baseless criticism rather passes one by. Up to a point, one can allow for its existence, without getting overly engaged in it. Bring a Macintosh, and invest in a pair of Wellies.

I posted previously about what I suggested might be the deliberate diffusion of information by the august Kenny MacAskill concerning the apparently imminent release of Al Megrahi. Watching the man himself on television, he certainly did not seem to my eye to be a chap standing with his trousers sagging, full of an unexpected and unanticipated gush of ordure. Certainly, his remarks flowed with their usual wending, ox-bow fluency. With MacAskill you never step into the same sentence twice. Indeed, listening to him speak, he clearly operates in an eternal verbal present, never certain what words passed his lips even a moment before, and equally uncertain what his next glittering phrase might be. My point, to be brief, is that he did not appear like a man anticipating the flood.

Nevertheless, I’ve been mildly taken aback by some of the coverage. I expected there to be robust exchanges in the rowdy writing press – totting up to a furore, a row – about the justice of the thing, about which I have my own doubts. Other opinion-flingers are all over the place. The coal-ventricled Telegraphist seems to object primarily because nobody has told him what is going on, crying “lack of clarity”. Magnus Linklater goes mildly nuts about the whole affair – or absence of final ministerial comment of the aforementioned affair – in the Times. Meanwhile, Tam Dalyell, who does not find the case for Megrahi’s conviction compelling, makes a profoundly chilling argument about what he believes actually happened in 1988.

Indeed, on the whole issue of compassionate release, my particular little conscientious compass darts hither and thither, indecisively. Here, roughly, is why. It is grotesque loftily to insist in the integrity of a system, despite all appearances. Only a fool would imagine an innocent person may not be clapped in irons, thrust into some concrete cave we all prefer not to consider. Like everyone else, Lockerbie furnishes me with few answers that I can scrutinise, instead relying on the authority-begging judgements of others, small flickering lights through the murk. Guilty, said the three judges in the Netherlands. That we all know, flatly. The hostile case is that the decisions of those in authority have not illuminated the guilt of Al Megrahi. Indeed, enwrapped in their robes of high distinction, they are distracting willow-the-wisps. Thus, what can one honestly say on the justice of the thing, really? Who in the general public is furnished with sufficient personal information to come to a decision? For most of us, the voice of justice is silent, uttering hardly a whisper.

Crank up your telly and turn to the BBC News, however, and at some point you’ll bump into selected souls of the dear old Scottish public, sharing their views on the prospect of Megrahi being released. Opinion, representatively differs. Here, however, is one story one hears quite regularly. Says the woman, if he didn’t do it, I think he should be released. If he did it, he should stay inside. While this may seem like an obvious reiteration of the basic rationale and justification for incarceration, it isn’t. In the current matter, other considerations are stirred in. Putting aside the treaty provisions on transferring prisoners, focus on the much mooted compassionate relief, on an exercise of the executive prerogatives to mercy. See it in that context. The argument reassumes the following form. If he is innocent, he should receive compassion. If he is guilty, punishment should resume, even unto the last, bitter breath.

Over time, much has been written on the paradoxical relationship of justice with mercy. For Christians, and its ultimate, maximum God of both justice and mercy – the prompting, unanswerable question is how can the divinity absolutely dispense the full measure of both virtues? Do not the imperatives of justice and the imperatives of mercy at times conflict? If God is perfectly merciful, how can he be perfectly just? More prosaically, and to return our minds to our own godless deliberations, how should we determine when to be merciful? Is mercy reached by rules still mercy, or does it enter the strictures and precepts of justice? What seems clear is that a significant section of the general public are conflating one with the other, bundling the two threads into a disastrous tangle where justice determines whether or not we should be merciful. It shouldn’t. If Megrahi is guilty in law, that is a matter to be sought for in the mind of justice. If he is innocent, justice must throw open his cell door.

The exercise of clemency cannot be so restrained. Here, the question ‘should Megrahi be released’ becomes equally contested, but less entangled in unanswerable speculation on what happened that grim day, over Lockerbie. Put aside the man’s guilt or his innocence. Admit we have no idea. Now, should MacAskill undertake the works of mercy for a dying man? That last point is a particularly challenging one in the present climate, as Megrahi’s condition remains a largely unknown quantity. Crucially, we have no images of the man, no visual encounter to confirm the largely heatless announcement that cancer is claiming him. Does the extremity of the crime he was convicted for militate against the granting of mercy? Some people believe so. Yet approaching the problem in this way leaves one open to the rip-tide of uncertain justice, and the tumult we only just excised ourselves from.

In part, the progress of this argument is an expression of my own attempt to understand how I feel about the decision facing MacAskill. Perhaps predictably, I found myself being drawn into the debates about the justice of the matter, and in that maze, hastily lost. To everyone else, I'd commend the question "should we be merciful"? While understandable, the family members of the lost who ask "was Megrahi merciful to the victims" are imagining a false pairing. Mercy has no relevance for the innocent. For the guilty, or those determined to be guilty, mercy affords no tit for tat, precisely because it is not a manifestation of justice. That being so, I believe that we should release Megrahi, not because it is just to the deceased if he is guilty, because it isn't. Not because it is just to him if he is innocent - because its not. Enacting punishment on a man in the last throes is grotesque. We should be merciful if we simply determine that we should. While many of you will be familiar with the indomitable, sharp-featured visage of justice, brandishing scales and sword - you may have encountered fewer representations of her sister, Mercy. The imperatives to mercy are not so clean and reasoning as those commending justice. This second goddess lacks the uncluttered Palladian lines of the former, without the objective tools of measurement which are Justice' instruments. She is wild, contingent, simply herself. It is this feature which makes the decision to exercise mercy so difficult. Unlike the rule-governed, disposing formulae of contemporary justice, it is a real decision, every consideration unweighted, resolutely particular.

The Incredible Unionist Cap...

Incredible to see today that the Sunday Herald, Scotland on Sunday, Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph haven't bothered to cover or comment upon the news, publicised by the Herald yesterday that the Liberal Democrats failed to stitch together their submission to the Calman Commission on time - and that the Conservatives weren't bothering their posteriors either way on the issue.

Willful wall-to-wall silence about the ostensibly incompetent spirit ruling what is often presented - in my view erroneously - as the key engine of constitutional change in Scottish politics today. Imagine, if you will, a symmetrical Scottish Nationalist screw up on a similar scale - or if the government behaved with the bland indifference towards their own policy which the hopscotch Conservative and Unionist Party seems to be indulging in - would a discreet press cap be placed over the dangling embarrassment? Think at least of the cost. If the Tories were contented well enough with the prevailing legal framework - why spend all that money to find that out? One does not need a squadron of dozy Commissioners to manage the inertia.

So why leave all of this unsaid? Whatever one's position on Scotland's "place in the United Kingdom" - etcetera - shouldn't the public be informed, considering that we pay for the Commissions activities and it was constituted under the auspices of the Parliament? It is difficult to see how the absence of coverage cannot be construed as a conscious silence - a generous gift to proponents of continued Union - and something of a fraud on the public.

Could it be that yon chapeau - its editorial ticket tucked jauntily beneath the brim - gingerly conceals its silky Union-Jack-stamped lining?