Goodbye to the Right to Buy

I welcome the SNP's proposals to end the Right to Buy for new tennants in the social housing sector. Introduced by the Margaret Thatcher's Tory government the Right to Buy was a popular policy in its time but has led to major shortages of affordable social housing in recent years as all of the decent stock has been sold off.

Building sustainable communities means providing equitable access to affordable houses for families and individuals and its time that we removed the negative impact of the Right to Buy from the equation. Whilst the SNP deserve the credit for introducing the necessary legislation now, I am pretty sure its something Scottish Labour would also have done, were it still in power. Labour should back the SNP proposals.

What is also needed, however, is a decent level of funding for Local Authorities and Social Landlords to build more affordable homes. I hope the SNP will think again about the cuts they have proposed to Housing Action Grant and other programmes.

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Highland Broadband

Great to hear today that Highland Labour MSP Peter Peacock has secured a commitment from the Scottish Government to invest more in Broadband Services for the Highlands. See here. When added to the investment already planned by the UK Government through its Digital Britain Strategy this will go a long way to ensuring homes and small businesses across the Highlands have access to the fast, secure and reliable Internet services which are so essential to building sustainable communities. For once, equal credit to the SNP and Labour!

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What to do about Bankers?

In my day job, I have worked regularly in the City for many years. As an IT specialist, I'm just the hired help but its enabled me to see first hand how the many diverse organisations that make up our financial sector operate. And of course there are good ones and not so. Many companies I work with are supporting fast growing businesses and creating real jobs and opportunities. Others, however, are trading and speculating between themselves, adding no social value, whilst generating huge profits and bonus pools.

Whilst the bankers and financiers have enjoyed huge personal rewards in recent years, our communities are now paying the price in lost jobs, shattered savings and service cuts.

There is now no justification for huge bonuses for individuals, built up on the back of government funded liquidity intended to protect out financial system from meltdown. Especially when its many of the same organisations and individuals whose high-risk behaviours have been responsible for getting us into this mess.

Dealing with this is very difficult. Knee jerking into punitive taxes and caps on personal or corporate earnings - popular though that may be - risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater. What we need is an intelligent approach which drives long term, structural change in the financial service industry, its behaviours and its contribution to our economic health.

I am hopeful that the baleful influence of the City on Labour thinking has finally been broken. The governments comments in the last few days on the importance of building up manufacturing & industry is welcome and long overdue.

A litmus test for me will be how Alistair Darling brings a Labour solution to this over the next few days.

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What a parcel of rogues in our nation....

Spending St Andrew’s day launching a white paper on an independence referendum shows just how out of touch the SNP have become. Instead of working to get us out of recession, create jobs for young people and get more teachers into our schools the SNP plan to spend millions on a referendum that we already know the answer to. Scotland deserves better. The coming election will be about jobs and the economy. The SNP have no answers and seem to be pinning all their hopes on the Tories winning power.

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Windfarm Walk 2

An interesting and enjoyable day on Monday, being shown round Lochindorb and the Dava by local campaigners against the wind farms being proposed for the area. When you stand on the highpoint of the B9007 across the moor, or on the shores of the loch, you are surrounded by one of the most unspoilt landscapes I have seen for a while. The visual impact of so many wind turbines right across the hillscape - not to mention the access roads that will need to be built - will be huge.

If we are serious about tackling climate change we need to increase our use of renewable energy sources. Wind farms have a big role to play - or so the current political consensus argues - and I can certainly testify that the Dava is windy. Or at least it was on Monday!

Which goes to the heart of the argument made by the local campaigners I met. They argue that the intermittent nature of wind-power generation will actually increase the reliance on non-renewable sources (coal and oil) by requiring such baseload capacity to be available for when the wind isn't blowing enough (or blowing too hard) to generate power. The more wind-dependant renewable capacity you build, the more backup capacity you need in order to stop the lights going out. To make their case, I was presented with a copy of Dr John Etherington's recent book , "The Wind Farm Scam". Its heavy going and packed with a lot of power engineering science (I knew my physics degree was going to come in handy one day). If the arguments in the book are right, then we need to think very carefully about what we are doing with wind farms.

But are they? And even if they are, what are the alternatives?

This is a complex issue with no easy answers. I'd be very interested to hear views on the subject.

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Wind Farm Walk

I'll be heading to Lochindorb and the Dava on Monday, to meet local people campaigning against the plans for wind farms in the area and to walk round the loch and some of the surrounding hills. I want to see for myself where such developments are being proposed and what the impact on the area will be.

I’m committed to strong and radical action to tackle climate change. I am also of the view that land based wind generation – including large and small scale Wind Farms - has an important role to play in the renewable energy mix. Inevitably, that will mean difficult decisions need to be made. But, we need to get the balance right and ensure we don’t compromise our unique mountain landscapes for only short-term gain.

I'll post again on this topic after my visit on Monday. Meantime, I'd welcome comments with views both for and against such developments.

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Keep Cool at Christmas

Spent an interesting couple of hours yesterday with Isobal MacInnes, the Usdaw rep at the Coop in Inverness, helping to leaflet shoppers about Usdaw’s “Keep your cool at Christmas “ campaign. The event was organised as part of Usdaw’s Freedom from Fear Week.

Usdaw’s most recent survey shows that two thirds of shop staff have been abused in the last year and nearly 10% have suffered physical assault. A major cause is angry customers and reports of ‘trolley rage’ incidents are on the increase. The shop staff that I met told me that Christmas is the time when they suffer most anger and abuse. Retail shop workers are in the front line of dealing with issues such as under-age drinking and the resulting verbal abuse can leave staff upset and depressed.

Shopworkers need much more support from their management as well as better understanding of these issues from the wider public.

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