Fred Goodwin

When Lord Myners allegation about Fred Goodwin is shown to be an infantile fabrication will the noble Lord do the honourable thing and resign?

The nuclear option

Let's go back a couple of years and take a look at the text of the final report by the STUC and CND which was co-authored by Labour's new convenor, Claudia Beamish.

From the intro there is this point which should be borne in mind:

The report assumes the continuation of the Faslane Royal Navy base for non-nuclear weapons functions in line with government projections.

The report referred to was the Review of Naval Bases, commissioned by Des Browne, which indicated that Faslane should be kept and that its operations couldn't be removed to one of the other two naval bases (Plymouth and Portsmouth). Clyde is responsible for ammunition supply to all of the UK's submarines, Portsmouth is home to two thirds of the UK's surface fleet and Devonport refits nuclear subs. Devonport is suffering cutbacks under the Marine Change Programme with destroyers being moved to Portsmouth and routine maintenance on all surface warships also being removed to Portsmouth (Clyde does routine maintenance on the subfleet).

Jobs
How many jobs would be at risk from cancelling the Trident renewal? Far fewer than are currently being lost in the recession - page 5:

936 civilian jobs directly dependent on Trident would become redundant between 2022 and 2027. The main skill groups would be MoD police and security (400), outfitting and steel work (240), technical and supervisory mainly in shipbuilding related areas (70) and clerical (70). If, however, Trident was decommissioned early to coincide with the build up of Astute class nuclear submarines at Faslane to a total of six by 2018, and thereby avoiding the need to increase the workforce to service ten submarines between 2018 and 2022, the level of job losses could be reduced mainly to security staff between 2016 and 2018. Few Scottish manufacturing jobs are likely to be jeopardised by a decision not to build a new Trident submarine – at most 150. The number of potential Scottish job openings at risk, civilian and military, direct, indirect and induced, from Trident cancellation in 2022-2027 is estimated as 2,191. The number of civilian jobs would be 1,891.

Let's put that job count into perspective, though - page 6:

Over 40,000 Scottish defence-related jobs have been shed since 1990 without significant government intervention to ensure the provision of alternative employment.

Costs
What are the costs of this weapon system that has been branded "no bloody use" by General Sir Hugh Beach? Page 9:

“we went through an exercise recently to make sure that we were identifying as accurately as we could the costs that were associated with our nuclear weapons system and that caused us to revise information that previous governments may have put into the public domain.”

Leading to costs of around £1.63bn a year (2007 prices) on annual in-service costs - 5% to 6% of the UK's defence budget, according to the MoD.

The White Paper gives procurement costs of £15bn to £20bn which the UK Government intends to spread over 15 years (but it won't allow the Scottish Government to spread the costs of the new Forth Bridge) on top of which the Atomic Weapons Establishment will have a £12 billion capital spend over 12 years and will take up another 3% of the defence budget - £850m a year. Then there's future costs like decommissioning costs and the storage of nuclear waste.

And all for a weapon that we keep getting told will never be used.

The report estimates a £153m a year cost to Scotland if Trident is replaced - money that would be better spent on renewing Scotland's economy and helping set us up to recover from the UK's recession.

Employees
How many employees are there on nuclear weapons duty? Page 15:
810 Trident crew members
530 Marines to guard Trident.
1146 shore based personnel to serve the 3 Trident vessels and the 10 other vessels at Faslane which don't carry nuclear weapons.
A civilian workforce of 3,180 between Faslane and Coulport.

Then there was this Parliamentary Answer on 21 Feb 2005:

Angus Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will estimate how many (a) direct and (b) indirect civilian jobs in (i) Scotland and (ii) the rest of the UK rely upon the Trident programme. [214416]
Mr. Hoon: The number of civilian jobs which directly rely upon the Trident programme is estimated to be 936 in Scotland, with an additional 6,640 in the rest of the United Kingdom. The number of civilian jobs which indirectly rely upon the Trident programme is estimated to be 300 in Scotland and 5,700 for the rest of the UK.

So 1,236 civilian jobs might be less secure, 810 crew would be affected, perhaps 100 onshore service personnel, and the 530 Commanchio Company Marines (away with that terrible new name).

The crew and the Marines could, no doubt, be redeployed, given the current stretch in armed forces. The onshore service personnel and the civilian jobs would require more effort, although 1,050 of them are MoD police - many of whom could be redeployed and some, I presume (though I can't say for sure) could join the civilian police (especially given that the SNP Government is expanding the numbers).

Addressing job losses
The report goes on to examine cases where bases have closed in the past - including Holy Loch - and shows that, where the closure has been planned properly, the impact on employment is massively reduced.

As the report points out, Jackie Baillie made up the 11,000 figure:

It has been widely claimed that Scotland would suffer economically as a result of job losses if Trident replacement does not proceed[1]. This report demonstrates the opposite to be the case.
[1] Scottish Parliament’ Report, Debate on Trident Renewal, 21 December 2006, Jackie Baillie, MSP West Dunbartonshire: ‘11,000 P45s would be issued to hard-working people in my area and to thousands more throughout Scotland’ if a decision were taken not to renew Trident.. Such claims have frequently been repeated in the press.

The money that is currently being pumped into maintaining Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Clyde that successive Governments insist is just a deterrent and not to be used, and the money that is projected to be wasted in the future is massive. The reports authors, including the new convenor of the Labour party in Scotland, claim an 8.5% share of that spend for Scotland (I assume on some population basis) and point out that spending that money in a fiscal stimulus would provide more jobs - and productive jobs - than Trident currently supports.

So, according to Labour's convenor, the jobs argument that Labour keeps using is plain wrong. I think that there's another aspect to be considered, however, as I wrote in an answer to a comment on an earlier post:

[T]he banning of corporal punishment in schools led to a reduction in employment opportunities for people who had made the tawse - should we insist that teachers go back to beating children so that these employment opportunities can be restored? Think of all the soldiers demobbed at the end of the Second World War - should we return to a European bloodbath to provide employment? Should we have agitated for the Accudyne jobs instead of banning landmines? I believe that children used to be employed in the cleaning of chimneys, manual labour in mills and even underground in mines. Do you think we should send them back? Think of the jobs ...

We've got what it takes to rid Scotland of nuclear weapons, you know.

Mind how you go!

Labour - split on nuclear weapons

Not the usual kind of split - Iain Gray, Labour's leader in Scotland, at FMQs this week claimed that cancelling Trident would cost 11,000 Scottish jobs.

His party's new convenor, Claudia Beamish, is opposed to nuclear weapons and has argued that the 11,000 figure was made up by Jackie Baillie.

Geoff Hoon said it was a tenth of that.

David Milliband wants to get rid of nuclear weapons - without any concern for lost jobs, apparently.

All over the place! Mind how you go.

The Gurkhas

The Gurkhas - you may have heard of them. You may even have heard of the Gurkha Justice Campaign.

If, like me, you heard today about the conditions being attached to the right to live in the UK of those who served in the UK's armed forces, your reaction may have been the same as mine - spluttering disbelief. A disbelief made worse by the comments of the Immigration Minister Phil Woolas:

With their dependents you could be looking at 100,000 people.

Ignorant oaf that he is. I agree completely with Dhan Gurung, the ex-Gurkha who said:

"If they want Gurkha soldiers, they should treat them equally."

Gordon Brown insists these rules are fair. That, surely is an indication of the galloping incompetence of his administration and the incredible contempt in which it holds anything and anyone not of them and in agreement with them.

I note with some horror that one of the conditions for settlement is serving 20 years - something which only officers will have done. Labour favours officers over ordinary soldiers and I'm not even surprised.

I can only wonder what flash of inspiration drove some true genius to suggest that this was an adequate or sensible way to treat anyone. I don't expect to be enlightened.

How much was that budget in the window?

Always remember to say "thank you, Darling"...

Sterling has sunk under the burden of the budget, the pound now worth $1.4440 or €1.1127.

Chocolate coins are a safer bet than sterling:

A company that peddles chocolate coins, in other words, is currently deemed a better credit bet than the British Treasury itself.

Although Darling predicts economic shrinkage in the order of 3.5% this year, the IMF said today that it will be 4.1%:

From the BBC (yes, I've selected the bits I want to highlight):

RUSSELL HILLS - HEAD OF TAX at KPMG IN SCOTLAND

The Budget projections look like a triumph of hope over experience. Despite having to drastically downgrade his forecast for growth this year, the Chancellor still expects the economy to rebound over the next two years.

GRAHAME SMITH - SCOTTISH TRADES UNION CONGRESS

the STUC believes a golden opportunity has been missed to introduce a timely and targeted fiscal stimulus to save current jobs and create new ones.

JACQUI WATT - SCOTTISH FEDERATION OF HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS

These measures are not nearly enough to tackle the desperate crisis in housing which sees nearly half a million Scots on housing waiting lists, and a stalled construction industry. It is doubly disappointing after the Scottish Government had committed to putting any extra funds it received from the budget towards new build affordable housing.

ANDY WILLOX - FEDERATION OF SMALL BUSINESSES IN SCOTLAND

the fuel duty rise will make it particularly hard for rural and other essential business road users to keep moving during the downturn.

IAIN MCMILLAN - CBI SCOTLAND

we are deeply disturbed by the further rises in duty on alcohol and on fuel duty. The additional taxation on spirits and alcohol will make it harder to argue for fairer taxation on Scottish exports in overseas markets.

DOUGLAS HAMILTON - SAVE THE CHILDREN IN SCOTLAND

Today was their last chance to keep their promises that they made a decade ago and they have failed to do that

GAVIN HEWITT - SCOTCH WHISKY ASSOCIATION

A duty increase during a recession is a real blow and follows last year's duty rises on Scotch, the largest since the 1970s.

And what about Labour's First Minister in Wales?

First Minister Rhodri Morgan has told BBC Wales that he cannot guarantee that there will not be cuts to services and job losses in the public sector as a result of the announcement.

We're heading for a £1.4 trillion public debt

The unprecedented borrowing programme sparked warnings that a generation of British workers face higher taxes to pay off the debt, and raised doubts about international investors' willingness to go on lending to the UK.
The final figures could be even higher, since Mr Darling based his borrowing plans on an assumption that the UK economy will start to grow again later this year and rebound sharply by 2011.

79% of GDP as debt - mummy, daddy!

Martin Wolf didn't miss and hit the wall:

Only Alistair Darling, most emollient of politicians, could manage to make this
Budget boring. He is telling his country that its prosperity was as fraudulent as a collateralised debt obligation, that Gordon Brown’s boasts of “no more Tory boom and bust” are a joke, that the forecasts he gave only last November were nonsense, that the public finances are deteriorating at a rate never seen in peacetime and that, to cover these failures, he is indulging in populist attacks on the highly paid. To make this feel boring is an achievement.

Another fine mess they've got us into, but are they ready to say sorry'?

Claudia Beamish - an interesting Labour choice ...

The new chair of the Scottish Labour Party is Claudia Beamish, daughter of Sir Tufton Victor Hamilton Beamish, also known as Baron Chelwood, who was wounded during the retreat from Dunkirk; rowed (along with seven other men) away from Singapore as it was falling to the Japanese forces (to Sumatra which had also fallen, forcing them on to Ceylon); served with the Eighth Army in North Africa and took part in the invasion of Italy before leaving the army at the end of the war. He followed his father into the Commons and served as a Conservative MP for 29 years - turning down offers of Ministerial positions. He inspired the Private Eye character Sir Bufton Tufton and wrote a book, Half Marx, warning against the rise of the left in the Labour party.

His daughter is made of similarly stern stuff - a primary school teacher, she's topped Labour's list in the South of Scotland for the last two Holyrood general elections and is currently a Labour candidate (taking on David Mundell, I think) for the Westminster election. She's not shy and retiring, and she's not afraid to put forward her case. As an activist in the Socialist Environment and Resources Association she spearheaded a campaign to remove David Milliband because of his support for nuclear power - which she and others in Labour's 'green wing' oppose.

She's not afraid to speak out publicly either, authoring submissions to consultations which make clear her opposition to nuclear power (and the opposition of other Labour members) and her interview with the BBC before last year's Labour regional conference hints at an intelligent and thoughtful woman (yes, there are one or two in the Labour party). She was on the CND/STUC working group that reasoned that getting rid of Trident would increase Scottish employment prospects and she's described nuclear power as a "dangerous irrelevance". She has had a wee bit controversy here and there, but nothing too scandalous.

Here's the question, though, with Labour's new Scottish convenor agreeing with the SNP on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, are we about to see a Labour volte-face to support the eminently sensible position of the SNP? Will Labour in Scotland have the courage of Claudia Beamish's convictions and will Labour in Scotland now oppose the unwelcome positions taken by Gordon Brown and his cohorts on nuclear power and nuclear weapons?

This could be most interesting. Mind how you go!

A wee shame

There's a wee problem facing Labour in a London constituency by the name of Erith and Thamesmead - ballot box in Labour HQ broken open and postal votes destroyed for one thing, allegations that something is not right about postal votes for another, much moaning many grumbles. Could the real reason for much of the disquiet be that Georgia Gould, daughter of Philip Gould, is running a better selection campaign using all of the advantages she has - including her contacts?

It's an interesting wee insight into how Labour's selection works - the SNP selects by postal OMOV (everyone gets a ballot paper through the post and returns it by post) and I understand that the Greens do the same - but the over-riding impression is of a party in turmoil. I've been a bit of a cad in the past, suggesting that Gordon Brown is Labour's John Major, but that may be a bit harsh, Major arrived in the office almost, it appeared, by accident; Brown has plotted, planned and salivated over his ambition for years. You might have thought that someone who had so long coveted the office would have a long list of things they would like to achieve. It would seem not, and perhaps I was a tad unfair to John Major.

Perhaps Gordon Brown's Labour is more akin to Lloyd George's Liberal Party - the destruction of the core of the party, the splitting apart of the principal players, the aftermath of war, the abandonment of long-standing principles, and a lack of direction. Of course, his predecessor had his own Lloyd George moments ...

What remains to be seen is whether Gordon Brown will lead Labour as Lloyd George led the Liberal party - into oblivion. It may seem a bit far-fetched but - is Gordon Brown Labour's last Prime Minister?

Mind how you go!