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Johnstone's View 7th
December 2007
This
has been another busy week in the Scottish Parliament with
detailed scrutiny of the budget again taking centre stage
and at the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Committee
on Tuesday we took detailed evidence from a broad cross
section of transport interests about the way the budget
proposals will hit home.
The broad consensus appears to be that
public transport, bus and rail, will require efficiency
savings to simply stand still over the next three years.
The positive side of the balance however, is that investment
in road projects including the M74 extension and, essential
to the North East, the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route,
will be protected. I will be seeking detailed confirmation
of this in weeks to come.
On Wednesday I was invited to speak at the
‘Science in the Parliament’ conference where climate change
took centre stage. Sponsored by the Royal Society of
Chemistry, it was an opportunity to meet scientists and
engineers from across Scotland and beyond and hear how their
solutions to the world’s problems differ from those of
politicians with which I am more familiar.
While many politicians pay lip service to
the need for investment in advanced research and
development, the reality is something rather different.
While our scientists and engineers are often world leaders
in their field, if their research takes them into the area
of nuclear physics or genetic engineering, they become
pariahs in the eyes of some. What do we expect our
world-class researchers to do in these circumstances? They
go to abroad, that’s what they do.
In the afternoon I was able to speak in a
Parliamentary debate on the same subject in which I
highlighted the continued problems in finding maths and
science teachers and the need to give these subjects a
higher priority in our schools. Perhaps the next generation
of researchers will find themselves in a less prescriptive
environment.
The ordinary work of the Parliament has
however, been overshadowed by two events which have
dominated the weeks news.
The world of political fundraising means
different things to different people depending on whom you
talk to or where your knowledge was gained. The
Conservative party in this constituency is funded through
membership contributions and vigorous fundraising at coffee
mornings, auctions, dinners and the inevitable raffles. Not
for us, the world of high finance and business
contributions. I dare say all the other political parties
are the same.
This week however, the news has been full of
speculation and intrigue surrounding those who give large
amounts of money to political parties, their practices and
their motives.
Ten years ago a fresh new government came to
power with a mission to “clean up” politics, although their
motive was at least as much to blacken the names of their
predecessors as to achieve their stated aim.
Few of us can have missed the supreme irony
of a government which, having set such an intricate trap,
now falls into it with such monotonous regularity. With so
much that needs to be renewed in Scotland and such a great
opportunity before us, the Labour party’s embarrassment has
delivered nothing of value.
I have spent most of the week fielding phone
calls and e-mails from people who cannot understand why a
committee of Aberdeenshire council decided to send Donald
Trump, and his £1 billion of investment, homeward to think
again. So far I have been unable to shed any additional
light on the decision since I find it impossible to
understand myself.
The importance of the North East to the
broader Scottish economy is obvious for anyone to see but
its precarious dependence on one single industry causes many
of us to worry for the future. Aberdeenshire council itself
has long been aware off the need to achieve critical mass in
the tourism industry and the economic benefit which that
would bring. Everyone who remembers “archeolink” realises
that, although it was a monumental waste of public money,
its primary motivation was to boost the tourist industry.
Donald Trumps proposals, allowing
Aberdeenshire to present a radically different face to the
outside world, could have been the start of a second
economic miracle in the North East. Instead our councillors
have left us looking like fools.
Some people seem to believe that the North
East of Scotland, other than the oil industry, is just an
economic backwater and they want to keep it that way. It’s
our loss that one of them turned out to be Convenor of the
Infrastructure
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