May 2011 Election

[Ivo den Bieman]

Anyway, Montenegro aside, the manifestoes should be interesting.

1. The SNP are likely to go long on their record, presenting themselves as the steady hand on the tiller during difficult times. Their strategy was always to do as little as possible for the first four years in order not to frighten the horses and steadily build a case for independence. I think the independence rhetoric will soften this time around.

2. Labour's manifesto still seems to be a bit of a blank canvas. They seem to have very little policy substance other than knee-jerk opposition to the Nats, and they have an epically dreadful leader. If they win, it will be purely because the Tories won in London last May and Labour, for whatever reason, are cretinously perceived as the "defenders" of Scotland against a Tory government, despite the fact that there is very little difference in practice between the two parties in government.

3. It doesn't matter what the Liberals say. They will slip to their lowest ebb in Scotland in a generation, and they will deserve every lost seat and humiliated candidate richly.

4. I suspect this will be the last campaign of the old style Tories. Brian Monteith seems to be bumping his gums a lot in the papers about party reform and putative independence from the party in London. For centre right politics to be credible here that's a basic first step to be taken. it may frustrate Tory supporters, but there is still no sign of the Thatcher-Major years being forgiven or forgotten by the majority of Scots voters. A new start is needed, so I'd expect a reasonably low key campaign and Annabel Goldie to slip quietly back into obscurity shortly afterwards.

5. I wonder if the Greens will slip back further. Robin Harper, their most recognisable politician, is standing down, which will see the leadership pass to Patrick Harvie, who I can see being re-elected. But in another extremely tight battle between SNP / Labour the small party votes are squeezed mercilessly. that's why they did so poorly in 2007. It's conceivable that they could be wiped out- although I think Harvie will get back, as a baseline. the strategy of not standing in constituencies and hoping to hoover up second votes is getting a bit tired.

Sadly, my gut says Labour will win this, though not by much. If that is to happen, it truly is depressing, head-banging-off-the-wall stuff.

[Ivo den Bieman]

In this case, it would have been fine.

BTW you can retract the Labour supporter slur at any time

Edited for more appropriate smiley

Fair enough, slur withdrawn (although i think my reasons for suggesting it were justifiable)

[The Old Northerner]

Fair enough, slur withdrawn (although i think my reasons for suggesting it were justifiable)

Surely, scrutiny of one person's statements (even from a false starting point) isn't really much of a hook to hang things on. Especially something quite *that* bad

[xbl]

You have to admit though ,choosing carefully to analyse the response (and it was purely speculation) of one persons statements, while choosing to effectively give a free pass to the political party that were the cause of the statement in question with their much more dishonest, and much more relevant comments, makes you look bad, and gives good justification for questioning your motives. Which I still do by the way.

[The Old Northerner]

You have to admit though ,choosing carefully to analyse the response (and it was purely speculation) of one persons statements, while choosing to effectively give a free pass to the political party that were the cause of the statement in question with their much more dishonest, and much more relevant comments, makes you look bad, and gives good justification for questioning your motives.

Not at all.Some statements claiming to be factual *can* be analysed without context. In the Slovenian case, my memory led me to error, but Wikipedia (for example) would have led me to accept the statement. Neither path requires a free pass to be given to anybody

Which I still do by the way.

You couldn't be more wrong though. Quite a way off the mark

[xbl]

Interesting nugget on the class size target pledge in the scotsman today, apparently, two thirds of all Scottish teacher number reduction come from labour controlled councils...

[H_B]

That's always been known.

The councils' gripe with the SNP is that they made the manifesto pledge then provided no extra funding for extra space or teachers, but put the ball in their court with a "right, so, go reduce class sizes then".

Incredibly enough, they can't.

[H_B]

As the EIS have recently said :-

"The Scottish Government’s concordat with local authorities has not delivered its commitments to reduce class sizes in our schools – a policy which has now been revealed as a shambolic failure. We have already witnessed the emergence of a postcode lottery in education provision across Scotland as a result of the discredited concordat, with wide disparities in class sizes, teacher numbers and investment in school resources.“As the deep budget cuts continue to bite, the situation will get worse and pupils will face larger and larger classes and a diminishing quality of educational experience"

I believe the number of teachers in Scotland have actually fallen by 2,000 since the SNP came to power. I do have some sympathy for them that it's a very expensive policy to implement.

Basically it was a stupid, unachieveable manifesto promise, that was never going to come to pass. I suspect they knew this fine well, but just fancied having a nice shiny vote winning carrot out there for parents to chomp on.

[xbl]

Okay, so my question is how come this postcode lottery seems so influenced by labour? Is it just because of the geography of the councils controlled, are the snp let councils more efficient, or is it mainly down to labour playing politics? Surely if its "impossible" then all councils should be unable to do it?

[H_B]

Okay, so my question is how come this postcode lottery seems so influenced by labour? Is it just because of the geography of the councils controlled, are the snp let councils more efficient, or is it mainly down to labour playing politics? Surely if its "impossible" then all councils should be unable to do it?

What councils have successfully implemented this?

What was their class size position when the SNP came to power?

[xbl]

I was referring to the reduction in teacher recruitment, with the drop being in predominantly labour controlled councils. I think the recession killed off any plans for universal class size reduction, but I agree, it was an optimistic target that didn't take into account the control of councils over education.

[H_B]

but I agree, it was an optimistic target that didn't take into account the control of councils over education.

But that was a pretty cynical move on the SNP's part though. They entered into this "concordat", which has allowed them to say "gasp - not our fault class sizes haven't reduced, it's them", ignoring the fact that the councils have huge budget issues to address, which can't possibly allow them to implement this.

I do take the point that councils play political games with Holyrood though. A Labour council has obviously no incentive to help the SNP meet a manifesto promise. Had it been a Labout government trying to push this thoruhg, you might well have seen the councils divert money from other projects to at least try and attempt this.

[xbl]

I do agree with your point about that particular SNP target, it is fair to say that class sizes were an impossible target to meet, especially now in hindsight. In my view, they should have come right out and said that due to the spending cuts, they had decided to focus on other targets, but then, they would have been open to just as much ridicule.

Until today though, I honestly didn't know that the main drop in teacher numbers was primarily due to labour councils. Yet another reason to treat anything labour say as worthless.

[renton]

I do agree with your point about that particular SNP target, it is fair to say that class sizes were an impossible target to meet, especially now in hindsight. In my view, they should have come right out and said that due to the spending cuts, they had decided to focus on other targets, but then, they would have been open to just as much ridicule.

Until today though, I honestly didn't know that the main drop in teacher numbers was primarily due to labour councils. Yet another reason to treat anything labour say as worthless.

whereas the initial SNP pledge was.... ?

As for being primarily due to Labour councils, that is a tricky statement, that the majority happened under Labour councils may be true, but this is far different from saying it is directly due to the presence of a Labour council. you would have to look very carefully into the reasoning behind each reduction and each and every councils budgets and spending priorities before you could make any kind of judgement on the motivation of the various councils.

For example, a Labour council wiht a large number of specialist services under it's supervision, say extra child services, hospices or the like, may find a number of other pressures on them to meet targets. While true that Labour councils might not try that hard to meet the SNP pledge, it's no doubt also true that many will have very legitimate reasons for not trying. Equally, an SNP council that tries extra hard to make that pledge to keep the Holyrood bosses happy is as guilty of playing politics and perhaps negatively so if their extra effort in this area denies funding to other equally deserving services.

[H_B]

Equally, an SNP council that tries extra hard to make that pledge to keep the Holyrood bosses happy is as guilty of playing politics

Spot on. It's a two way street.

It's just never ideal that national policies should be left for local councils to implement through their annual budget.

Who decides if a playpark and a local drop in facility should close to allow St Mick's Primary to have smaller class sizes? You are always going to have competing interests and not enough money to please everyone.

[xbl]

And I did ask for opinions as to why this happens in. Predominantly labour councils, so what you say may well be true. Interesting though.

Still, I have uncovered a labour policy from the summer, apparently they will hire every Scottish teacher, or something like that.

[renton]

Spot on. It's a two way street.

It's just never ideal that national policies should be left for local councils to implement through their annual budget.

Who decides if a playpark and a local drop in facility should close to allow St Mick's Primary to have smaller class sizes? You are always going to have competing interests and not enough money to please everyone.

There is a good case for removing party politics at council level, councils are surely a primarily managerial concern, rather than ideological. Thus it is surely a matter of selecting the correct individuals for the job, rather than by party bias.

[xbl]

Regarding education, from the scotsman article I read, they made the point that education was council controlled because once upon a time, the cooncils were effectively the only Scottish specific democracy, and with the rise of the parliament, their role should change and education should be centralised. I have a lot of sympathy for that view.

[ICTChris]

There is a good case for removing party politics at council level, councils are surely a primarily managerial concern, rather than ideological. Thus it is surely a matter of selecting the correct individuals for the job, rather than by party bias.

Did Michael Forsyth not propose privitising local councils?

[H_B]

I do too.

Anything that can be removed from councils is a positive thing in my view.