SNP CUT GLASGOW AIRPORT LINK & CUT HOUSING SUBSIDY - WE PROPOSE KEEPING THEM BOTH AT FAR LOWER COST

The Scottish government have announced their next budget which is cut due to there being a recession. The Scotsman says:

THE Glasgow airport rail link, social housing and economic development have become the first major casualties of the Scottish Government's spending cuts.

The axing of the £115 million rail link was the most high-profile of a raft of cuts announced by finance secretary John Swinney yesterday in the draft budget for 2010-11.

Others included a proposal to cut social housing spending by £180m,

This rail link was always political pork barrelling for the Glasgow Labour establishment. When the previous, Labour, administration set it up their own inquiry said that it made no economic sense & indeed would not have done so even if it achieved twice the expected passenger levels. Back then the cost was indeed quoted at around the £115 million mentioned but it has been rising ever since to anything up to £400 million now.

However the government already have an alternative on the table. ULTra, who are building am automated monorail for Heathrow offered to build a monorail from Glasgow Airport to Paisley Gilmour Street railway station for £20 million.
This, as I reported previously, & again was rejected on the grounds that, without seriously investigating it is not be seen to be "so completely superior" to the rail link as to be worth investigating. I suspect that if an actual assessment were made of the monorail option it would indeed be found not merely to be an order of magnitude cheaper but also superior.

The idea of an automated monorail for the 1 1/2 miles from the airport to the station has the following advantages other than cost:

* Because there are trains from Paisley to Glasgow Central every few minutes it would usually be quicker than waiting up to half an hour for special trains.

* Creating a hub airport - Paisley Station is on the same line as the station at Glasgow's other Airport, Prestwick, to which trains already run regularly. Thus this link would allow people to cross connect turning the 2 airports into a regional hub.

* Modern appeal - monorails, particularly fully automated ones do give an impression of modernity that traditional railways don't & would make an appealing gateway to Glasgow.

* Speed of construction. The world's first passenger monorail, constructed in 1888 between Listowel & Ballybunion, a distance of 9 miles, took under a year so, with modern technology, it should be easy to have this 1 1/2 mile stretch built well before the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

* Encouraging innovation in public projects - there are many such public projects which seem to be rejected purely because of what looks like Not Invented Here syndrome (this happened to a Forth Tunnel which could cost a few tens of millions & to the Scottish Tunnel Project which could have revolutionised the whole Scottish economy) but one such project could lead to others.

* Land saving - since a monorail moves above the ground almost no land is taken out of use.

* Ease of access - Gilmour Street Station is already elevated so a monorail from the upper level of the terminal to the station platform would be a simple & easy trip.

* Government investment - a growing economy has to invest as well as just current spending. By cutting this project the SNP government has ended one of the very few actual government investments is existence.

* Green - since the Scottish Parliamentarians have, unanimously, decided that not creating CO2 is so important it is worth destroying half the Scottish economy the importance to them of the fact that small monorail cars travelling such a short distance use little energy & since there need be no trains added to an already good service there would be no extra there, literally cannot be overestimated. While it would save many cars & buses.

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There was also a cheaper version involving a 1,000 yd monorail to the Paisley St James station which would run roughly along the spur the proposed railway would have taken. Since it attaches to much less used line than the main proposal it would , though cheaper, have far fewer train connections & only has the advantage of being the lowest bid.

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On the other main cut proposed - cutting spending on social housing - I blogged a few days ago about how how using shipping container sized modular housing units could produce as much housing as wanted at a very much lower cost than current building. This would require some reduction of government regulation which currently appears to be designed to prevent the building of affordable housing but if government can no longer afford to, at the same time, subsidise such housing removing barriers would be a more efficient compromise.

SARAH PALIN, HOPEFULLY AMERICA'S NEXT PRESIDENT.

She has quit running Alaska & the US media have been attacking her restrained only by the fact they know the people there know what she stands for. Britain's media are not so restrained.

In fact her resignation statement available online here is a very well crafted document & she clearly knows what she wants to do - to reform America which will probably, but not certainly if it would interfere with that aim, mean running for President. Her programme

free enterprise and smaller government; strong national security for our country and support for our troops; energy Independence; and for those who will protect freedom

is one which sets her directly against Obama & is very close to ours. All she would really need to match ours would be an X-Prize Foundation & I have hopes she will go for that.

The US media, let alone our own, do not seem to have noticed that she has also set herself firmly against the "catastrophic global warming" (now rebranded climate change") scam:

I don’t want any Alaskan dissuaded from entering politics after seeing this real “climate change” that began in August when she was elected

If only even one of the Scottish MSPs who unanimously voted to destroy 42% of our economy had 1% as much integrity & gumption as her.

Meanwhile expect our press, broadcasters & politicians to continue being surprised & affronted & not a little scared that ordinary American people no longer want politics, lies, bureaucracy, quangos for the boys & failure as they have been able to serve up to us here for so many decades.

"THE RECESSION WILL LAST LONGER IN SCOTLAND, ON THE BRIGHTER SIDE THE CLIMATE CHANGE BILL PASSED UNANIMOUSLY"

Said Gordon Brewer on BBC's Newsnight Scotland
Which demonstrates that the allegedly impartial non-party BBC is quite open about its commitment to eco-fascism.

Another reporter then stated "climate change is happening, that is beyond doubt". The 9% Growth Party challenges the BBC to explain why, with temperatures having dropped since 1998 & currently falling faster it, is impossible to doubt they are currently rising at a catastrophic rate. We undertake to publish a BBC reply if they feel it possible to defend this total & totally party political, lie.

With current falling temperatures & the fact that there has never been any actual evidence for catastrophic warming the 9% Growth Party say that it is now impossible for any honest politician or journalist to maintain the case proven for warming. Any attempt to obtain money by making this claim is clearly fraudulent.

That being the case, in response to the recent decision by the Scottish Parliament to cut our CO2 by 42% by 2020, Neil Craig sent this letter to most Scottish newspapers - the highlighted portion being published by the Scotsman:


"In 1856 a young African woman Nongqawuse said that the ancestors had ordered that all cattle be killed, that all stored grain should be destroyed, that no grain should be planted and that everyone should purge themselves of all charms and witchcraft. If this were done then the world would be saved, the Xhosa people fed & all would be well.

Not all believed, not even all their leaders & indeed threats & violence were used against sceptics & deniers. The mob hysteria was unabated even when the first predicted dates for this transformation failed to happen. Finally it was predicted that the Sun would rise coloured red on 16th Feb 1857 & unlimited cattle be provided by the ancestors.

Obviously the Sun rose the normal colour, the Xhosa were not fed & 10s of thousands of them starved to death.

Compare & contrast this with the Scottish Parliament which has unanimously, unlike the Xhosa leaders, adopted a law that we should destroy most of our economy. The correlation between energy consumption & wealth is one of the clearest in all economics. As part of what has correctly been called "The War Against Fire" they wish us to destroy 42% of Scotland's fire producing facilities over the next 11 years & 80% by 2050. In a display of added insanity they want to close down the only substantial other source of power - our nuclear generators. This will ultimately reduce us to a level of energy usage & therefore standard of living unknown since Victorian times. We will sink into a 3rd world society as the BRICK (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Korea) become the dominant 21stC economies.

Nor do the Holyrood MSP's have the excuse of ignorance the Xhosa tribal leaders had. They lived in a world where people genuinely believed in the magic powers of the ancestors whereas we know that the scientific method works & that a science is only as good as the experimental predictions it makes. While Nongqawuse's predictions had less than a year to fail "catastrophic global warming" has had 30 years now & we know global temperature is not now demonstrably higher than 1979. Like all other massive catastrophe predictions made by our self appointed "environmentalist" shamans (global ice age, acid rain, pollution caused cancers bringing life expectancy down to 42 by 20 years ago, peak oil by 1993, increasing millions of deaths by starvation annually starting 30 years ago, radiation deaths etc. etc.) global warming, even when rebranded as "climate change" is not only a "theory" but one disproven by massive evidence.

Every single MSP knows this. Every single journalist pushing this hysteria has seen the facts. They are doing this merely because it increases their power & sells newspapers. Not a single one of what is now de facto a single party in Holyrood can ever again claim to be in any slightest way motivated by a duty to help constituents. Not a single one of these parasites can claim to be honest.

Since nearly 3,000 Scots already unnecessarily die, annually, from fuel poverty we may expect the ultimate death toll in Scotland from the War Against Fire to greatly exceed the 1856 hysteria."
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Using figures issued by the BMA that each reduction by 1% of GNP causes 21 deaths per 100,000 (ie 1050 across Scotland) we have been able to calculate that the Climate Change Bill will provably cause the deliberate & unnecessary deaths of 6,346,050 Scots over the next 91 years though this excludes lives which would be saved or extended if there would otherwise have been any economic growth in those 91 years . he calculations are clear, verifiable, simple & involve no hidden algorithms & are therefore much more valid than any estimates produced by the IPCC, let alone Al Gore.

Calculations are accessible here & have not been disputed as to fact.

That being the case the unanimous decision of the Scottish Parliament to order these deaths proves either, in the generous option, that every single MSP is clinically insane. The less generous estimate being that, for the sake of power, money & the chance to impose ever more control over the people of Scotland & to produce fear they have deliberately engaged in mass murder, treason & an attempt to destroy civilisation. If so they could only be barbarians who do not understand civilisation & wouldn't like it if they did.

The 9% Growth Party calls on Her Majesty to dissolve the body & bring its murdering treasonous fascist members to trial, if judged sane.

UKIP FOR THE EU ELECTION

I am not standing for this election. Having to decide who to support I have had a look at UKIP's policies page. Here are MY COMMENTS

-UKIP will leave the political EU and trade globally and freely. We will re-embrace today’s fast-growing Commonwealth and we will encourage UK manufacturing so that we make things again. YES ON ALL POINTS

-We will freeze immigration for five years, speed up deportation of up to a million illegal immigrants by tripling the numbers engaged in deportations, and have ‘no home no visa’ work permits to ease the housing crisis. YES

-We will have a grammar school in every town. We will restore standards of education and improve skills training. Student grants will replace student loans. YES

-We will radically reform the working of the NHS with an Insurance Fund, whilst upholding the ‘free at the point of care’ principles. We will bring back matrons and have locally run, clean hospitals. YES

-We will give people the vote on policing priorities, go back to proper beat policing and scrap the Human Rights Act. We will have sentences that mean what they say. YES

-We will take 4.5 million people out of tax with a simple Flat Tax (with National Insurance) starting at £10,000. We will scrap Inheritance Tax, not just reform it and cut corporation taxes. YES, CUTTING CT WAS A PRIMARY 9% GROWTH PARTY POLICY, INDEED IT WAS OFFICIALLY THE REASON I WAS EXPELLED FROM THE LIBDEMS

-We will say No to green taxes and wind farms. To avert a major energy crisis, we will go for new nuclear power plants on the same existing site facilities and for clean coal. We will reduce pollution and encourage recycling. YES - PRIME 9% GROWTH PARTY POLICY AT THE SCOTTISH ELECTION TO WHICH ALL THE MAIN PARTIES WERE OPPOSED AND THE SNP AND LIBDEMS STILL ARE - WITHOUT THIS THE LIGHTS GO OUT

-We will make welfare simpler and fairer, introduce ‘workfare’ to get people back to work, and a new citizens pension and private pensions scheme insurance. NOT SURE IF A NEW PENSION SCHEME IS AFFORDABLE IN THE CURRENT ECONOMIC MESS BUT OTHERWISE YES

-We will support our armed forces with more spending on equipment, military homes and medical care. We will save our threatened warships and add 25,000 more troops. NO, WE CAN'T AFFORD MORE SPENDING ON ANYTHING JUST NOW & WHEN WE CAN WE SHOULD GO FOR NEW TECHNOLOGY RATHER THAN NUMBERS

-We will be fair to England, with an English Parliament of English MPs at Westminster. We will replace assembly members like MSPs with MPs. And we will promote referenda at local and national levels. NO RETAIN MSPs AND HOLYROOD BUT IF MPs WERE VOTED IN ON A DEMOCRATICALLY PROPORTIONAL SYSTEM THEY WOULD BE INTERCHANGEABLE. ENGLAND SHOULD HAVE A PARLIAMENT IF THEY WANT ONE

-We will make customer satisfaction number one for rail firms – not cost cutting and will look seriously at reopening some rail lines that Beeching closed. We will make foreign lorries pay for British roads with a 'Britdisc’ – and we will stop persecuting motorists. BEST WAY OF SUPPORTING RAILWAYS WOULD BE OUR POLICY OF FULLY AUTOMATING THEM. THE POLITICALLY CORRECT HATRED OF MOTORISTS IS SERIOUSLY DAMAGING OUR ECONOMY

-Last, but never least, we will bring in fair prices and fair competition for our suffering farmers, and restore traditional British fishing and territorial waters. FREE TRADE WITHOUT EU RESTRICTIONS WOULD SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE FOOD PRICES TO THE CONSUMER & FREE FARMERS FROM THE GOVERNMENT FARMING REGULATORS (A CLASS WHICH CONTAINS MORE PEOPLE THAN THERE ARE FARMERS.

ALL IN ALL A SENSIBLE PROGRAMME WHICH WOULD KEEP THE LIGHTS ON AND SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE ECONOMIC GROWTH. WOULD BE NICE IF THEY HAD A MENTION OF X-PRIZES BUT YOU CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING. THIS IS CLEARLY A CREDIBLE AND SENSIBLE PROGRAMME WHICH IS HEAD AND SHOULDERS BETTER THAN THE OTHER PARTIES.

The EU’s Enterprise Commissioner Gunther Verheugen said in an interview with the FT this week (OCT 2006) that EU legislation now costs European business €600 (£405 billion) a year, on the basis of a new evaluation of the administrative costs of red tape.

That is equivalent to £70 billion in Britain alone now or £2,500 from every wage packet in the country. The official figures of actual cash handed over are on top of that. Expect this fact to remain unmentioned by the BBC and most parties, particularly LABOUR and LIBDEMS who made a Manifesto Promise that we would get a vote on the constitutional treaty and as soon as the election was over cynically broke it

It is impossible for anyone with the slightest self respect to vote for people we know to be corrupt lying war criminals who clearly have no respect for those who voted for them.

And UKIP don't lie about the Catastrophic Global Warming we are all allegedly suffering from like the rest of the tax increasing leeches.

9% growth party says

vote ukip

on 4th June

don't let them grind you down

UPDATE The blogger Mark Wadsworth has told me that he was involved in drafting their policy on eorkfare & pensions & that, though much to complicated to explain in a 1 line sentence it is practical. Having read his blog I accept thaty.

HOW WE CAN GET OUT OF RECESSION - What politicians who say they will "do whatever it takes" would do if they meant it

FOR SCOTLAND while remaining part of the UK:

1: Cut government spending by £3 billion (10%). Since we spend about 20% more than the UK average per head this is clearly practical.

2: Endorse nuclear electricity. We could still persuade the French to invest heavily here if we were sufficiently enthusiastic about letting them build.

3: End business rates. This is a pretty extreme step, in principle business should pay something, but we are in a drastic situation. This is a fairly close analogy to cutting business rates to 12.5%, like Ireland's for which we need Westminster support & though the SNP are committed to doing so they don't seem to have been putting on enough pressure. In theory cutting CT is marginally more effective because it rewards the most profitable best whereas rates rewards the most property intensive but it is a relatively marginal difference. This would cost about £2 billion.

4: Cut the laws on Health & safety & other regulations & the enormous bureaucracies that enforce them which do so much to push up the cost of projects here.

5: Tell Donald Trump he can start investing his £1 billion tomorrow morning. Apart from his own investment how many billions have we lost by convincing other potential investors they would not be welcome?

6: Cut the regulations that prevent people building houses.

7: Provide an interest free bridging loan of 20,000 pounds to any off site manufactured home for the period from completion of manufacture until installation & a grant of 5,000 pounds to direct purchasers of such homes, so long as they are for their personal use as first homes. This system to last only until we are building 30,000 a year. This would encourage the establishment here of a modular housing industry which, in due course, the English would be clamoring to buy.

8: Scottish Tunnel project - start cutting tunnels to the Cowal peninsula & the Scottish islands. Cost £7 m per km

9: Forth Tunnel instead of bridge & start digging tomorrow. Since the official cost of the bridge has been reduced to two & a half billion massive savings could be made this way & it would be ready far earlier.

10: Privatise Scottish Water thus saving the over £200 m it gets annually.

11: Schools vouchers. It should be a matter of shame & is instead a matter of complete disinterest in our media that our schools, for the first time ever, are underperforming southern ones. The long term future of the nation depends heavily on education.

12: Fully automate the Glasgow-Edinburgh train system.

13: Stop subsidising bloody windmills. Apart from the total waste of money we have as beautiful a countryside as anywhere in the world & should stop desecrating it. This would save between £500 m & £1 billion depending on whether we are allowed to end the subsidy to the production of electricity as well as to building the windmills.

14: Scottish X-Prize Foundation. £50 million a year would give us an even chance of gaving a Scottish built orbital plane in 5 years & would certainly attract a significant part of the world's satellite industry (£1 billion a year & growing)

15: Spend the extra money we have saved on improving roads with the exception of

16: £1 billion to cut Scottish income tax by 3p, the full amount allowed. If that doesn't get people wanting to move here nothing will.

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FOR THE UK:

1 - Cut the size of government spending - I would go for a no new hires rule & price freeze in the government, probably excluding new doctors & a few other proven front line requirements - this should be about a 5% real reduction year on year. Also completely prune particular departments described later. 5% of the budget is £30 billion so including both actions over a couple of years that is probably about £100 billion. Mark Wadsworth comes up with a similar figure from different directions. This doesn't itself increase the economy, indeed cutting the non-productive £100 billion would cut the economy by £100 billion (ie 7%) but gives us money which can be used with a real multiplier effect & long term growth benefits.

2 - Cut corporation tax to Irish levels - cost about £30 billion & this is the main bit of what got Ireland's growth up from 2% to 7%.

3 - Lets go overboard & cut business rates too - about £20 billion at half the effect.

4 - Gut the Health & Safety Exec - if it saves the work of 4 million workers that is 14% of the economy.

5 - Allow the free market to build as many nuclear plants as the market needs, starting tomorrow. There are arguments for & against the government paying for & owning it but lets keep it simple & at zero cost.

6 - Improve transport - better roads, particularly motorway junctions, allowing airports to expand & the road tunnels project. Cost a few billion. Improving transport infrastructure is one of the things where government expenditure actually works.

7 - Adult job training. Hire retiring plumbers, electricians etc etc to do evening classes in some of the schools empty in the evenings. Adult, particularly male, technical education is the part of education which shows real worthwhile payoff in productivity.

8 - Automate the rail system & introduce lightweight vehicles based on road vehicle technology. My guess is this would be about £10 billion annually but once it is done rail costs go way down & capacity way up.

9 - Quit the EU. The Bruges Group have said the EU costs us £55 billion in direct costs. The EU's Enterprise Commissioner says the regulations alone cost £405 billion - ie £67 billion to us.

10 - Allow almost unrestricted housebuilding & encourage modular methods. This should let them cost about 1/4 the present price. Housebuilding is pretty much the biggest industry in any country & that would give us an enormous boost.

11 - End most of the sort of "environmental" regulations which have stopped Trump investing his £1 billion here for 3 years. This alone has cost the Exchequer £360 billion (£12% a year).

12 - This has already been done, albeit accidentally & need not be extended - Letting the £ drop is a major stimulus to the productive sector though exports. It worked in Major's time too - also accidentally.

13 - An X-Prize foundation & a free market regime on Ascension Island as a British Space base. So long as the Foundation is guaranteed an increasing amount of money at approx 5% above the rate of growth & able to offer prizes based on what the fund will be in future it can offer multiples of the current cost & in turn the gain to the economy will be multiples of that figure. Of course if nobody wins such prizes it has zero cost - that being the worst case scenario. I would suggest £1 billion a year as starting payment which would certainly put us at the top of the space & high technology trees attracting many times that level of investment & even more importantly, many of the world's best brains.

14 - I see that though we have saved £155 billion plus we have only spent about £70 billion. Put the rest into cutting taxes (28p off income tax or equivalent!). I would also support raising alcohol taxes since it discourages something socially damaging whereas most tax discourages productive stuff. It wouldn't take many years of excise duty rising faster than a Chinese style growth rate to pay for all the size of government here.

- These are a bit of a flyer not to be done till we know the economy is recovering:

15 - Build some floating islands, probably around Ascension island, probably about £1 billion each.

16 - Make a purchase guarantee for a factory to mass produce turnkey operation nuclear reactors in Britain, for use here & around the world. If it can be done with a new design & much smaller & hence less economic reactors it can be done for normal 1 gw ones. Invite the best designer, probably Ariva or Westinghouse (which used to be British owned but the government forced British nuclear to sell it off). We guarantee that if they can make a production line turning out one, turnkey operation reactor, a day we will purchase the first 2 years supply at cost if they can't sell them abroad. Assuming £350 million (70% of the current minimum price) a shot that puts us on line for a £255 billion liability & I am working on the assumption that, since there is currently a backlog they would actually sell. That is a bet but a reasonable one & if it works we would lead ourselves & the rest of the world to unequalled prosperity & end up with the sort of role in building the world's electrical power that the US has exercised for decades in world aircraft production.

- I think it would be conservative to say that most of the above individually, excluding #1 in each set, would increase growth by more than 2%. It would be optimistic to assume they would all work cumulatively but but even so that would be pretty good.

Alternately doing only a small amount of this would still have us matching the most successful economies in the world.

A POLL ON WHAT HOUSE YOU WANT

(penthouse, 10,000 sq ft, 6,000 ft, 3,000ft, 1,500 ft homes)

Suppose you woke up tomorrow in an alternate reality where housing was built according to free market priniciples & had been for a long enough for prices & supply to stabilise. We will assume in some inexplicable way that this did not feed through to the general growth rate so we don't all get to be much wealthier in other ways. However, since long term housing costs are 4 times what they could be you get to choose 4 times more housing. Housing would be mainly modular, unloaded off the back of a few lorries over a day or 2. Like mass production car manufacture, which it would probably resemble there would also by all sorts of hi-tech optional extras of the sort currently available in Bill Gates mansion. For Gates these are expensive because it is a one off deal. If a computer run house with its own plug in lighting, heating, cooking, security, ordering from ASDA, & if desired rubbing your back & wiping your bum (separate attachments) systems were being manufactured in the hundreds of thousands they would be affordable in the hundreds of thousands.

As pointed out yesterday 34% of average disposable, after tax, income goes on housing. So if your present approx 1500 sq ft home was only going to cost you 8.5% what would you do?

Your question
	Invest the rest in share. pension fund etc just hope that pays back as well as housing once did.
	Spend it on wine, women amateur dramatics.
	Move up to a house 4 times the size.
	Move up to an automated house twice the size that cooks your meals mixes your drinks wipes your bum
	Buy one twice the size and a 2nd one in the country
	Move to beyond suburbia get a home of 6,000 sq ft
	Spend more of your income on housing build yourself a 10,000 ft mansion in the countryside
	Spend more get a penthouse flat with all the extras
	Other - please comment
pollcode.com free polls

Obviously nobody is likely to take exactly any of these options but choose the closest.

POLL - HOW MUCH SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT SPEND?

Here is my poll question:

How much of the national economy should, in an ideal society, be spent by the state?

This means all the money spent by the state - defence, administration, quangos, police etc but also social security, NHS, education, rail & windmill subsidies, X-Prizes etc.

I would be really interested in knowing what people would like the answer to this to be so please take a few seconds to answer it. Call it research.

HOW MUCH SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT SPEND?
	0 - 9%
	10 - 19%
	20 - 29%
	30 - 39%
	40 - 49%
	50 - 59%
	60 - 69%
	70 - 79%
	80 -89%
	90 - 100%
pollcode.com free polls

SLOW, HALF HEARTED, CYNICAL & WITH THE WRONG PRIORITY BUT THE LIB DEMS NOW FOLLOW THE 9% GROWTH PARTY'S LEAD

Tavish Scott the new Scottish LibDem leader has broken one of the taboos in Scottish politics. He has said that it is desirable to use our right under the Scotland Act to cut income tax.

"We should use the Scottish Parliament's power to cut income tax by two pence in the pound."

He should be commended for this complete reversal of party policy. The Conservatives must, quite deservedly, be feeling sick as a flock of parrots for not saying this first. We can be certain that he has not done this without checking with some focus groups that the public want it.

As somebody expelled from the Lib Dems for supporting lower taxes on the grounds that this was "illiberal" & "too right wing" to even be discussed I am pleased to see that eternal liberal principles have changed in the intervening 2 years.

As leader of the 9% Growth Party, the only party to have campaigned in last year's election for cutting Scottish income tax I am pleased to see that Mr Scott is now a follower of ours. In the same way while we were the only party to campaign for new nuclear power, the Labour & Conservative parties have now followed us on that. To round it off, since we supported X-Prizes for space development, the SNP have offered one for a sea turbine & subsequently,& quite possibly consequently, John McCain offered one for an improved battery.

Nonetheless I cannot fully endorse Mr Scott's about face for 3 reasons.

1) He has made no specific proposal as to how it should be paid for. We said that a 3p cut should be paid for out of the £1 billion a year of pointless windmill subsidies.

2) 2p is a very silly figure to choose. There is a fixed cost in changing the rate which is about equivalent to 1p income tax. Therefore it makes financial sense to go for a 3p cut or nothing. 2p is falling between 2 stools.

3) We have been quite clear that the first priority is encouraging growth & that the way to do that is, as the Irish did, by cuts in corporation tax & rates which should be the priority. Desirable though income tax cuts are it is obvious that a one time only 2p in the £1 cut will provide only a fraction as much to ordinary people as Ireland's 7% growth (let alone the 9% we are committed to), year on year.

Mr Scott is to be commended for making a single belated, half hearted, cynical about turn somewhat in the direction of economic sanity. Let us hope that, though he has been the first to break ranks on this issue, He will not be the last..

"I am favour of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible." to quote Milton Friedman. It may be the wrong tax to cut & by a silly amount but it is to be welcomed.

Our party may be small in votes & members but almost everybody in Scottish politics is now among our followers, which is a good start.

BRITISH SUB-ORBITAL SPACE-PLANE FOR £50 MILLION

Evidence given by Dr Patrick Collins, Director of Space Future to the Commons Science & Technology Committee 21st Feb 2007.

To give an example about how easy it can be to make getting into space cheaper, this is a picture of the SR53, a British supersonic rocket plane which flew in Britain 50 years ago this May. There is a British company, Bristol Spaceplanes, which has a design of a passenger space plane, drawing very much on that technology, which could make suborbital flights at a cost of £3,000 a head. There is simply no difficulty at all. The technology was already there 50 years ago, and materials and so on have advanced a great deal since then.


Q506 Chairman: Do you have any evidence to support that claim? That is the most astounding claim you have just made, that you could do it for that sort of cost.

Dr Collins: This vehicle is in the RAF Museum and it flew on 15 May 1957 and flew supersonic in 1958. It was a military plane.....

This was intended as an interceptor for Russian planes. In fact missiles were much better so they did not develop a higher altitude version, but suborbital space flight is that straight forward so it could have been started as a passenger business in the 1960s. There is no doubt about that. Going from suborbital to orbital is a big step; it is from 3 or 4 March up to 26 Mach so it is a big step and requires a much bigger investment. Based on a successful business like this, it would be quite a logical and low risk investment. I am a great fan of Virgin, they are doing terrific work, but if no governments were to make any effort and it was just left to Virgin it is still going to take a long time to get to orbit, but for a tiny investment and a modern version of this for £50 million, a one-off investment, in three years you would have a prototype which would be flying, within five years it could be certified for carrying passengers, and within 10 years it would be down to £3,000 a head. Suborbital flight is a very straight forward low cost investment.

One of my frustrations, as someone who has been aware of this for a long time, is the absolute refusal of the BNSC [British National Space centre] to even comment on the subject....What it means is low cost space travel which is the secret to allowing everything to happen in space but the BNSC and the then Minister for Science, Lord Sainsbury, have simply refused to say anything in eight years.

The 9% Growth Party has repeatedly said that we should be funding a British X-Prize Foundation from the money we currently give to ESA. If this is too forward looking for British politicians we should right now put up the £50 million to allow these regular sub-orbital flights. While it could not itself achieve orbit the original did carry 2 rockets & a modern version would be much lighter because of modern materials. That means it is likely that it would be able to launch rockets able to carry small satellites. Beyond that it would certainly be able to carry experiments to test manufacturing in zero-G. The potential number of materials that can be mixed, produced as chemical compounds or manufactured in zero-G considerably exceed the total which can be done in a gravity field & some of them are bound to be valuable, for example crystals created without being distorted by gravity can be larger & stronger than any we can now produce. Having the ability to launch small satellites & carry out microgravity experiments would be worth many times the £50 million investment even if it wasn't worth doing simply for Britain to have something to be proud of.

The 9% Growth Party laments the lack of vision of our representatives who have done nothing since getting this evidence. It would cost them the equivalent of 3 1/2 windmills or 2 years subsidy of opera at Covent Garden so they cannot claim it is not affordable.

THE FORTH BRIDGE SHOULD COST £314 MILLION NOT £4.2 BILLION - A TUNNEL WOULD BE CHEAPER YET - PRESS RELEASE

For once the 9% Growth party are going to agree with the Greens. They don't want this either.

The Scottish government have decided to build a new Forth Bridge.

"A new bridge is to be built across the Firth of Forth, just west of the existing suspension road crossing.
The cable stayed-style bridge is due to open in about 2016 and will cost between £3.2bn and 4.2bn.

Finance Secretary John Swinney told Parliament that concerns over the future viability of the existing bridge meant the government had to act now.

Ruling out a tunnel, he said the chosen option would deliver the crossing in the quickest possible timescale.....

He went on: "It will be an iconic structure. It will maintain a fundamental link across the River Forth. It will create a new and better connection to our transport infrastructure in west and east central Scotland.

"And it will be delivered through effective and comprehensive care for our natural environment"....

The five-and-a-half year construction project is expected to get under way in 2011, with a competition to find a constructor due to be launched the year before."

Back when the cost was a mere £2.5 billion (June this year) I asked why it was so high. The previous road bridge cost £19.5 million which converts today to £314 million. I have asked why exactly real costs have gone up 8 times (now 10 to 13 times) & received no answer except for an implication it is "environmental" & other paperwork costs. The £314 seems in line with overseas experience such as the 2.1 km Sydney cross city tunnel at £300 million.

The official cost of a tunnel is even higher & very much looks like it has been set high so that it will make the bridge look good. We know the Norwegian government have been building tunnels at between £3.5 & £11 million per km which should produce a Forth tunnel at about 1% of the quoted price. The laws of physics are the same on both sides of the North Sea.

I don't believe the rush to build this based on the original claim that the current bridge was about to fall down because the cables were going. This story seems now to be winding down & I very strongly suspect it will be found possible to re-rope this bridge for about £10 million - just after contracts are signed on a new bridge. If so then there is no urgency & we need not be bounced into this.

We are entitled to know exactly why the Scots government cannot build things at less than 10 to 100 times what it costs in the rest of the world. If it is regulatory we should remove such regulations. If it is corruption we should prosecute.

The point about buying a pig in a poke is that it is unwise to buy without seeing what it is. This applies equally when discussing a £4.2 billion pig.

Any new crossing should be openly arrived at, knowing whether it is actually needed & with an open bidding process including foreign bidders. Bidders should be invited to quote for any form of crossing - so long as it does the job. We are also entitled to full explanation of why building costs so much higher in Scotland. Only when all facts are on the table should a decision be made.

I note that, unlike the last bridge this is going to be toll free. Perhaps this is due to the generosity of taxpayers towards motorists or perhaps it is because with probable interest payments on this running at at least £300 million a year there is no possible way that tolls could pay for it, as they did for the previous bridge & not charging anything handily conceals that this project makes no economic sense.

HOW BRITAIN SHOULD DEVELOP SPACE

Currently the British government spends about £450 million on space - this being our contribution to the European Space Agency. A recent report from a committee of MPs strongly recommended that we increase our space budget. I doubt if anybody in the space advocacy movement would disagree but the real problem is not the amount of money being put into space development but how well, or rather badly, it is spent.

There has been legitimate criticism that NASA, which gets $16 billion (£8 billion) annually, has not been very effective at actually getting into space. By comparison the Russians spend about £800 million annually & are the only nation which currently has a capacity to continuously man the space station. NASA is regularly described as a jobs creation programme for bureaucrats & the southern states masquerading as a space programme. However compared to ESA they are a model of efficiency & success. ESA, combined with the nominally separate German & French space agencies, has a budget of £4.5 billion, half of NASA's & yet is still in the Sputnik era, not having yet managed, or even come close to, launching a single human into space. It is almost openly admitted that the only reason we contribute to the ESA gravy train is to ensure a significant share of the lucrative contracts it hands out - like most European projects it is more important that each nation get a share of the goodies than that it actually achieve anything.

If there is the constituency for more space spending, & the MP's support proves that there is, then the role of space advocates must be to ensure that it is actually spent on space & not co-opted to the EU gravy train. To allow such co-option would discredit any future spending on space in the public eye as it would be seen to achieve little or nothing.

Fortunately there is an alternative - the X-Prize.An X-Prize is a prize awarded for a specific technological achievement, with no strings attached but with no payment made until the goal is achieved. It is thus left up to private individuals & companies to to decide how & whether to compete, without government committees having to say whether sufficient investigation had been made to prove one project sufficiently superior to the previous government project to actually try it, This has been spectacularly successful in the case of Burt Rutan & Spaceship One, where a $10 million prize enabled the first private sub orbital launch, which in turn is being parlayed into Richard Branston's Virgin Galactic space tourism business. $10 million being 0.0006th of NASA's annual budget. Historically similar prizes funded Lindberg's first crossing of the Atlantic & John Harrison's development of a way of measuring longitude. Such prizes have a record of achieving spectacular results at orders of magnitude less cost than conventional projects organised by government bureaucracy - which may explain why government bureaucracies tend not to be keen on them. Another advantage such prizes have is that if they don't succeed they don't cost a single penny - unlike most government projects where failure means increased budgets.

Dr Jerry Pournelle, who has the experience to know, has gone on record to say that he could solve the space access problem with the following government X-Prizes:

"Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:
The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:
1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.
2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.
3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.
4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megawatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.
5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.
That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.

My suggestion is that Britain should set up an independent X-Prize Trust with a small board consisting of suitably qualified engineers, scientists & business people respected within their professions for ability & innovation (definitely not the retired civil servants, politicians & compliant judges, lacking a scientific qualification between them, who normally receive such appointments). This Trust should be funded with the £210 million presently given to ESA & matched by 3 times as much of new money, totalling £840 million - not a serious drain on a government budget of £552 billion but enough to exceed Russia. To ensure stability the government should also guarantee to increase the annual funding in line with GNP, including inflation with, for the first 3 years, 5% above that. Thereafter the rate of increase should be 2% above the increase in corporation tax paid by companies registering an interest in the prize, which I am confident not be less. This would mean a 10% annual rise in the funds given to the trust enabling it to rely on being able to disburse £13 billion within 10 years. This is almost exactly what Dr Pournelle has said would be enough to ensure cheap orbital flight for anybody, a permanent Moonbase & the start of a solar power satellite programme. NASA & certainly not ESA, are not going to provide such a future & though the Russians, Chinese & Japanese are spending their money more effectively they are still running monolithic government programmes. Britain certainly could achieve this - the time is long overdue - 50 years after the Wright Brothers first flew we had transatlantic jet travel & we could have made similar progress 50 years after Sputnik. all That is needed is for the space advocacy movement here to push hard enough for it.

50 YEARS OF SPACE TRAVEL

Letter published in the Metro & the Guardian:

Today (4th Oct) is the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first time human beings put anything into space orbit. 12 years later men walked on the Moon.

A comparison with aircraft, where 50 years after the first flight we had achieved twice the speed of sound & passenger jet airlines were in service, is instructive. Today NASA promises to be able to return to the Moon in 13 years, & has been promising this or more for 30 years. The problem is not so much a shortage of money but of how it is used. NASA with a budget of £8 billion has been described as a jobs creation programme for bureaucrats & the southern states which occasionally does some stuff in space. By comparison with Europe, whose combined budget is £5 billiion & has not yet allowed them to launch a human they look positively animated. Russia, on the other hand, with a budget of £650 million actually has a greater launch capacity than even the US. Britain's budget of £210 million, largely given to ESA, is aimed fairly openly not at going anywhere but at ensuring a share of ESA contracts.

The good news is that a $10 million "X-Prize" awarded for the first independent launch has virtually created Virgin Galactic & the space tourism industry - that is what NASA spends every 5 1/2 hours or Europe in 10. Experts have said that an X-Prize of only £1 billion would produce a shuttle capable of at least weekly launches. This is what Britain already spends on space every 5 years. By comparison with what we spend on wars or windmills this is chickenfed (& as for what we spend on farm subsidies)!. With even a little vision humanity could get back on that 50 year track that aircraft builders pioneered.
Yours Faithfully
Neil Craig
References
Various space budgets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency#Overall_budget
UK budget of £210 million http://www.bis-spaceflight.com/sitesia.aspx/page/1191/l/en
What could be achieved by X-Prizes http://www.jerrypournelle.com/topics/gettospace.html

COST OF SCOTS BUILDING PROJECTS

Running a single tram line across Edinburgh will cost £600 million & the Labour, LibDem & Tory parties have outvoted the SNP administration to keep this boondoggle going.

EARL the proposed train link to Edinburgh Airport, officially costed at £610 million, but for which virtually no work has been done may be successfully canceled.

The previous Executive decided to spend £200 million on a rail link, agreed to be uneconomic between Glasgow airport & the city centre when they had an offer for a monorail link via Paisley station for £20 million.

A new Forth Bridge is being costed at £2.5 billion, far above previous estimates of about £1 billion.

By comparison the original road bridge - "Mott, Hay and Anderson and Freeman Fox & Partners designed and constructed the bridge at a cost to £11.5 million, while the total cost of the project including road connections and realignments was £19.5 million." Further comparison according to this site the modern price of something costing £19.50 should be £314.96 so the new proposal is 8 times more than the the present day cost of the original bridge.

The proposal for a tunnel comes in at a figure I cannot believe is meant seriously but only to discourage interest in anything but a bridge - £4.7 billion.

This was discussed online in the Herald where I said:

"Previous estimates of a tunnel have been between £250 & $500 million & even this is very high compared to the cost of Norwegian tunnels http://www.vti.se/Nordic/1-03mapp/tunnel.htm at £3.5 ot £11 million per kilometre (11 kroner to the £ on the link). To claim that it will cost £4.7 billion &%£"(*&

We should ask international companies to publicly tender for a crossing & see what Bechtel & the like offer

Give the job of building a new forth road bridge to the French, The Millau viaduct is a beautiful example of French engineering and cost only £320,million!

What set me off to put this here was an announcement today that by comparison with the expense of such projects here Germany & Denmark have just agreed to build a bridge costing £3.7 billion pounds.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKBAT00181320070629

It is a 20 kilometre bridge.

We are talking about public projects in Britain costing 10s, possibly several 10s of times what they cost abroad. I can see no technological reason for this & if anybody can think of a reason, other than a cosy relationship between favoured suppliers & the civil service involving massive fraud I would be interested to hear it.

For once I am with the EU - all such projects should be put out to tender & not with the self serving conditions used to fake a tendering process for MacBraynes (eg requiring ferries which, coincidentally, happened to be MacBraynes ferries) but instead with the broadest possible requirements viz "any form of crossing as long as it can carry the traffic".

Reminds me of a scene in I Claudius where Claudius, having been told Rome needs a new harbour & given estimates looks up the records for a similar scene in Octavian's time & finds that his civil servants have given him a vastly inflated figure.

ALMOST THE ENTIRITY OF OUR MEDIA COVERAGE

This is virtually the totality of media coverage I got in the election

let us now consider the9% Growth Party.

I met the 9% Growth Party - Mr Neil Craig as he is also known- when went to The Doublet bar in Glasgow to have a pint and avoid elections for a wee while. Craig, whose science fiction book and comic shop Futureshock is nearby, was handing out leaflets.

"No blackouts. No vindictive bans", the leaflet said. I assumed he was talking about the pub: Don't drink so much you have a blackout, but even if you do, you should not necessarily be barred.

But no, it transpired the "blackouts" is a reference to nuclear power, of which the Glasgow regional list candidate is in favour.The"vindictive bans"isa reference to the Scottish Executive's unilateral prohibition on smoking, to which he is opposed.

The leaflet also promised "Double your income in eight years", which sounds a decent enough electoral bribe. In Craig's brave new world, all business taxes and fiscal controls will disappear. And with 9% compound growth, income apparently doubles in eight years.(Well,it does if you are an entrepreneur. If you're on a pension, it might be a little more difficult.) I suggested to Craig that he might have given his movement the snappier title of the Double Your Money Party, but he thought people might get confused with Hughie Green.

Our Mr Craig is not very green. He thinks climate change is a myth; he tilts firmly against windmills; he thinks the Green movement has killed more people than Hitler. (Check it yourself: Google "9% growth party + Hitler".) Mr 9% does have some sensible policies, too. He wants to automate the Glasgow subway with driverless trains running 24/7 and do the same with the Glasgow-Edinburgh rail link. Less convincing is his proposal to build a tunnel from Oban to Mull to make the island more accessible to fans of Balamory.

It says on Craig's CV that he was chucked out of the LibDems for illiberality which, in itself, is quite an achievement.

From Tom Shields in the Herald. Had an 8 year old child with a pocket calculator been available Mr Shields could have confirmed that 9% growth over 8 years does indeed double income for everybody but clearly he does not move in such intellectual company. Beyond that he actually seems to know what I was standing for & is apparently a train enthusiast. The Herald & Sunday Herald declined to publish my response.

I thank Tom Shields for his approval of the 9% Growth Party's proposal for fully automating the Glasgow underground & Glasgow-Edinburgh lines.

He is quite correct that I support putting new nuclear in to replace the 50% of our electricty production which is reaching retirement. This is a matter on which the larger parties have specificly refused to debate. I'm afraid if we lose half our power massive blackouts are obviously inevitable. Burying our heads in the sand, as the big parties do, is grossly irresponsible & will not make reality go away.

The tunnels proposal is based on the Norwegian's achievement of building 740km of tunnels over the last 20 years. A series of tunnels at Gourock/Dunoon & crossing to Kintyre, Bute Arran & as he says, Mull making it a simple drive from there to Glasgow would greatly improve the prospects of all.

Tom expresses some doubt about the effect of 9% Growth. Doubling income in 8 years at 9% growth is how compound growth works. Try getting a pocket calculator & multiplying 1.09 by totaling 8 times & you will see it. Mathematically it is known as the Rule of 72 since doubling, except in very short time periods, requires 72 points of growth. Thus at Scotland's current growth rate of 1.5% doubling takes 48 years while at 10% growth the income of the Chinese will have doubled & doubled & doubled & doubled & doubled & doubled & close to doubled again.

This is part of why getting the economy growing would be so very valuable for all of us, rich & poor, as I hope, thinking it over, readers will appreciate.

OUR ELECTION ADDRESS - STILL THE BEST & MOST INNOVATIVE OF ANY PARTY

9% Growth Party – Neil Craig
Election Communication
1st (Regional) Vote

BLACKOUTS ARE COMING

In 2011 Hunterston nuclear power station is due to close & Scotland will lose 1/6th of our electric power.> 
In 2015 new EU emission controls will come into effect forcing the closure of our high emission power stations. We will then be down to 2/3rds of current electricity generating capacity.

In 2023 the Torness nuclear station will close & 1/2 of our power will be gone. If we do not replace this, indeed if we do not increase current capacity in line with our hopefully, growing economy we are going to have massive & continual blackouts. In Britain we already have 24,000 deaths per year, mainly pensioners, because of fuel poverty but a further unnecessary massive increase in deaths will be inevitable. The 9% Growth Party calls for immediate approval in Scotland of proven designs & proven sites & to allow the building of enough reactors to satisfy demand. Whether this is done by government investment or private enterprise is unimportant - why is important is that it is done before the lights go out.

If we do this the fact that France is currently producing 80% of the electricity it uses from nuclear at 1.3p a unit. This is half what conventional power costs, 1/4 what onshore windmills cost & 1/6th of offshore wind. To do so would virtually end fuel poverty in Scotland & massively improve our economy. Only we are facing this problem.

PROSPERITY IF WE CHOOSE
In 1989 Ireland, which was then in an economic depression, cut corporation taxes & some regulations - immediately their economy boomed. Since then they have achieved an average of 7% growth per year with a peak of 11%. That is why Ireland has gone from 2/3rd our standard of living to 4/3rds & is now, per capita, as rich as the USA.

Our leaders should have noticed this years ago but it is not to late. If we cut our corporation tax, possibly in several steps, to Ireland' 12.5%, do the same with business rates & look at our regulatory regime, particularly the regulations which prevent housebuilding. If we do this we can reasonably expect to do better than Ireland since we have a stronger tradition of scientific & enterprise.

If we also allow the building of the sort of modern nuclear plants which are producing power in France a 9% growth rate is fully achievable.

9% Growth Party – A Philosophy

A century ago 80% of the metal hulled ships in the world were Clydebuilt. This is not a plea for going back to shipbuilding it is a plea for Scotland to regain the spirit of science, technology & entrepreneurship which allowed us to build the Clyde as the leader in what were then the world's greatest high technology industries.

Scotland has fallen to a political elite whose reaction to any form of new technology or new ideas are to regulate them out of existence. This drives the fruits of our science abroad, which is why so many of those who developed Dolly the sheep are now working in Singapore.

We wish to see our government support progress not decline further into the Ludditism of windmillery & dependency. We support human progress & absolutely reject the doomsayers who tell us the we have no future. In many was, in both engineering & philosophical terms Scots invented the modern world. The engineering of James Watt & the economic philosophy of Adam Smith should make us proud of our heritage, but also eager to live up to it.

The classic liberalism of Smith is sweeping the world producing growth from Ireland to China. We can & should learn from the nations we have taught.

Scotland's greatest days can be ahead of us IF we choose.

26 Things We Support

1) Stop blackouts. Act before we lose 50% of our electricity.
2) 9% growth using the methods that gave Ireland 7% on average & 10.5% in a good year.
3) Reform planning regulations. In 1907 a house & car cost the same - the difference is that planning regulators restrict housebuilding.
4) Stop subsidising windmills. Save £1 billion.
5) The smoking ban is an illiberal restriction on individual freedom. End it.
6) End fuel poverty. France produces 80% nuclear at 1.3p a unit. We can do the same.
7) A needs based transport policy. The previous Executive were committed to spending 70% of their transport budget on public transport (code for railways) though it makes up only 3% of traffic.
8) Tunnels project. Norway built 740km of tunnels at £7 million per km. We should do the same making it a short drive from Glasgow to Dunoon, Rothesay, Kintyre, Jura, Islay & Mull etc. Fully automate Glasgow's subway allowing it to run at lower costs, greater capacity & 24/7.
9) Fully automate Glasgow's subway allowing it to run at lower costs, greater capacity & 24/7.
10) Fully automate the Glasgow-Edinburgh train with the same effect.
11) Ultimate aim of a fully automated Scots rail transport system.
12) 2% cut in civil servants annually.
13) 2% government efficiency savings. Almost any private business trys to incresae efficiency at least that much & their is more scope in Holyrood.
14) Don't spend £610 million digging a tunnel under Edinburgh Airport. Make sure other government projects at least come close to making economic sense.
15) 3p cut in Scots income tax after funding of business tax cuts to provide growth.
16) No new politically correct vindictive bans. The smoking ban was NOT in manifestos at the last election.
17) A Holyrood committee to find & abolish counterproductive laws & regulations.
18) A schools vouchers system.
19) Allow schools to impose discipline.
20) Make a DVD of Scotland's history & post it to Scots, or those with Scots names, over the world. Include links encouraging Scottish tourism.
21) Establish a £20 million X-Prize to encourage space satelite industry to locate in scotland.
22) Establish an X-Prize foundation funded from the Scots contribution to the lottery to encourage high technology in Scotland.
23) Widen & improve the M8.
24) If Gore's silly film must be shown to Scots schoolchildren let them see the alternate view, AS THE LAW SPECIFICLY REQUIRES.
25) 54% of all money spent in Scotland is government money. Cut this.
26) Instead of knocking down Glasgow's high rise flats they should be given, free of charge, to those occupants who don't prefer to be rehoused.

I DIDN'T WIN - & THEN SOME

OK no way round it. I came last on the Glasgow poll. I got 80 votes.

Thats democracy. I think I was right & everybody else wrong but so be it.

RED ROAD FLATS ARE BEAUTIFUL

The Red Road flats are a group of 8 blocks which, when put up in the early 1970s were the highest & arguably the grandest blocks of flats in Europe. Shortly after that high flats, which politically had been "the answer" to housing became unfashionable & the Council, in the tradition of self fulfilling prophecies, let them slip. Recently the Glasgow Housing Association decided that they should be knocked down & everybody rehoused.

Of the policies in my election address #26 was that rather than knocking down such blocks it would be better to give them to those occupants who don't want rehoused. I decided to do a special leaflet pointing this out & distribute it there & I spent yesterday evening doing so. Partly I was inspired by Matt Quinn's letter reproduced on 27th April here. "The place is in the state it's in because of WILFUL neglect on the part of the City Fathers; no other reason. They let the buildings rot, effectively condoned the violence and drugs and deliberately used the place as a dumping ground"

Having been there I believe there is nothing wrong with the place that could not be fairly easily fixed. I have delivered leaflets in North Kelvinside & I can say that there are closes there, where most of the flats cost 200 K, which are in a worse state of repair. I do not believe there is anything structurally wrong. It is a sin to knock it down.

Give the properties free to those who want to stay (& whom the rest don't have a serious problem with - such is the nature of dumping grounds). Put in place a good commercial factor (Glasgow has lots) with a strong factoring agreement. Get a proper community council going working with the new factors & police.… Give Mr Mo the franchise for a couple of 24 hour shops at the base of the bigger blocks (there are a couple of shops surviving but if actually linked to the blocks themselves people could buy things without having to go outdoors which would make them community centres. Encourage the building of a McDonalds (or Pizza house if we are going to be politically correct) & a pub (with good soundproofing cause sound travels upwards easily). Do a bit of repainting & replastering - not that much. There is a really horrible stagnant pool just behind the nursery school, which I suspect has been there since the earth was piled up during the building - clear it & put up a cheap prefabricated community hall. Also there are places where ownerscould buy 2 flats 7 knock them into one. Not within current rules but perfectly feasible.

All this would create a real community & I guarantee that in 6 months lawyers who work in both Glasgow & Edinburgh (it is near both the Edinburgh & Stirling motorways) would discover it. In 5 years it would be gentrified, an entrepreneur would be building a 3 level car park in the present parking space, Tommy Sheriden would be denouncing the fact that "ordinary working people" could no longer afford to buy (but were selling) penthouse flats & Scottish national heritage, God help us, would be wanting to list the buildings.

Opinions of those I spoke to were mixed. Some thought they were to far gone & should be knocked down, but even they thought they had once been fine. One told me it was a done deal & that the people were powerless because GHA had "already sold the land". And some saw the potential.

As I left it, last night I looked back at the flats. They are always impressive but, against a velvet night sky they stood out as pillars of light & they really are beautiful.

RECENT PRESS RELEASES

30/4/7
The 9% Growth Party is pleased to see that the President of the World Federation of Scientists Antonio Zichichi, discoverer of nuclear anti-matter has stated that he is not convinced that global warming is caused by the increase of emissions of "greenhouse gases" produced through human activity.

Climate changes, he said, depend in a significant way on the fluctuation of cosmic rays.

For such an eminent man in such a position to say this proves that the whole idea that there exists a "scientific consensus", rather than a political one, on catastrophic global warming is untrue.

All 7 Luddite parties in Scotland are insisting on spending £1 billiion a year subsidising windmills to "fight" this non-existent threat rather than £870 million on the 3p income tax cut the 9% Growth party favours.
This drives a coach & horses through their claims.

------------------------------------
28/4/7
A research paper published by the Adam Smith Institute, said that Scotland could emulate Ireland's recent economic success:
Instead of current growth rates that trail the rest of the country, Scotland ten years into independence could out-perform the UK, the report claimed.

If an independent Scotland reduced taxes, cut spending and created a business-friendly environment, the country's growth rate over a five-year period could move from 1.7 per cent to Ireland's 7 per cent, he said.
The paper, Independent Scotland: The Road to Riches by international economist Gabriel Stein of Lombard Street Research, found that from 1992 to 2004, Scotland's gross value added growth was only 87 per cent of that of the UK.If an independent Scotland reduced taxes, cut spending and created a business-friendly environment, the country's growth rate over a five-year period could move from 1.7 per cent to Ireland's 7 per cent, he said.

This is almost exactly what the 9% Growth party have been saying (though we say that building enough inexpensive new nuclear can push it up to 9%) & indeed what I was expelled from the LibDems for saying. However if we get the setting of corporation tax rates devloved to us & I see no reason why we can't, then we can do all this with or without separation.Equally we might get separation & a government supported by the Greens & S&SSP - a scenario for which the word "desperate" would be inadequate.

If the 9% Growth Party do not do well in Glasgow it is that much more likely that the SNP activists will be able to pull them in a leftward direction.

Their link http://www.politics.co.uk/press-releases/xopinion-formers/a/adam-smith-institute-scots-thousands-pounds-better-off-after-independence-$472260.htm

-----------------------------------
21/4/7
The SNP leader has given a speech about the growth his party would aim for. Instead of the previous concentration on a 4% growth rate we are now told that we should expect a growth rate equal to or better than the UK average (2.5%), up 1% from the abysmal performance of the previous Executive (1.5%). This is an extremely modest promise. The promise of 4% growth, said to be an average of Ireland's 7% & other small countries is now relegated to the date when independence under his party has been achieved or Hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

They intend to achieve this by cutting corporation tax to 20%.

By comparison the 9% Growth Party are committed to:

1) Cutting corporation tax to 12.5% (the Irish rate)

2) Cutting business rates very substantially.

3) Setting up a Holyrood committee to identify & repeal economically damaging laws & regulations (again following the Irish example).

4) Cutting building regulations & encouraging mass off site manufacturing in the housebuilding industry to achieve a minimum of 30,000 new homes a year.

5) Producing nuclear electricity at 1.3p a unit as France does.

6) Cutting income tax by the full allowed 3p.

While it is true that the SNP are doing only 1/2 of 1 of our proposals we believe their extremely modest proposal to increase growth by 1% is realistic. We trust they will also do us the courtesy of confirming that our, up to 12 times more robust, programme to increase growth 7.5% to 9% is, if anything, more realistic

--------------------------
17/4/7
We note that Labour, SNP, Lib Dems, Tories & Greens have all refused an invitation to discuss the forthcoming loss of 50% of Scotland's electricity, when Hunterson, high emission coal generators & Torness close.

This is grossly irresponsible of them since the electorate have a right to know what plans, if any, they have to replace this power.

WHAT "CONSENSUS" ON WARMING

The media have been pushing the claim that there is a "consensus" among scientists, not merely among politicians & journalists on the warming swindle. What sort of consensus excludes the President of their organisation?

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 27, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Scientists might not have human behavior to blame for global warming, according to the president of the World Federation of Scientists.

Antonio Zichichi, who is also a retired professor of advanced physics at the University of Bologna, made this assertion today in an address delivered to an international congress sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Zichichi pointed out that human activity has less than a 10% impact on the environment.

He also cited that models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view. The U.N. commission was founded in 1988 to evaluate the risk of climate change brought on by humans.

Zichichi, who is also member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, showed that the mathematical models used by the IPCC do not correspond to the criteria of the scientific method.

He said that the IPCC used "the method of 'forcing' to arrive at their conclusions that human activity produces meteorological variations."

The physicist affirmed that on the basis of actual scientific fact "it is not possible to exclude the idea that climate changes can be due to natural causes," and that it is plausible that "man is not to blame."

He also reminded those present that 500,000 years ago the Earth lost the North and South Poles four times. The poles disappeared and reformed four times, he said.

Zichichi said that in the end he is not convinced that global warming is caused by the increase of emissions of "greenhouse gases" produced through human activity.

Climate changes, he said, depend in a significant way on the fluctuation of cosmic rays.

A member of the Anti-smoking Publican Party posted in the Scotsman on Sunday:

"The current smoking ban was initiated by pressure groups such as ASH Scotland who incidentally received £1.7 of taxpayers money from the Scottish Executive between 1999 and 2005.

I have met many non-smokers who have said they support our view as they see the ban as a freedom of choice issue."

I replied
"Thanks Eddie I hadn't realised they had been given £1.7 (million) of our money to browbeat us.

Rather like Scottish Renewables boss getting money to lobby (& write letters to the Scotsman) for more money for windmills.

I am also a non-smoker who shares the view that the smoking ban is an "illiberal attack on individual freedom".

Our political class is a very incestuous bunch who seem to be cross subsidising each other at every opportunity.

If this money had gone to a political party (either yours or ours) to lobby against spending more taxpayer money there would, correctly, be an outcry."

WHY ARE OUR POLITICIANS SO BAD?

Tom Brown in the Scotland on Sunday:

I put my job on the line twice with editors who were uncertain about backing the Scottish Parliament. Now, I look at the mediocrities on all sides of the chamber - a motley collection who, from the very first session, were described as "duds", "sweetie-wives", "skivers" and, of course, "numpties" - and I ask: "My God! Did I do it for this?"

...We envisaged teachers and educationalists bringing their classroom experience to schools policy-making, doctors and health professionals fixing the NHS, lawyers immersed in the rights and wrongs of the law-and-order system, instead of a social worker who is out of her depth and a laughing stock as Justice Minister.

Scotland is a first-rate country capable of producing first-rate politicians at UK and international level. So why have we settled for second and third-raters in our Parliament?

From the start, it was deliberate policy by the party hierarchies to choose candidates who would toe the leadership line. Rather than the brightest and best, they opted for the dullest and safest.....

I commented:

Only thing I disagree with is his list of professions which should be represented in parliament. To my mind we have more than enough lawyers & teachers & a grave shortage of engineers, accountants & scientists.

SoS has an article on business reaction to an SNP win. I commented :

The SNP have promised to improve growth to beyond the UK average, IE above 2.5% & to 4% on independence. If they get the power to change corporation tax that is fiscally at least as good as independence.

A 4% growth rate is easily achievable if the will is there & in my opinion this pledge is more important to the average person than independence.

This promise must not be ignored & it is up to the media & business leaders (& the 9% Growth party if elected in Glasgow) to keep reminding them.

Discussing a stripogram ban.

The same vindictive politically correct puritanism which brought in the smoking ban. Doubtless we will be told that passive enjoyment at looking at sexy women can harm you.It should be remembered that the smoking ban was supported by all parties - Scotland's political class, not merely one party, is the problem. Among the 26 things we support & the other parties almost unanimously oppose was not merely ending the smoking ban but: 16) No new politically correct vindictive bans. The smoking ban was NOT in manifestos at the last election.I must admit I had thought they would get the election over before announcing more such things

Stephen Hawking in weightless training.

"I want to encourage public interest in space flight and I hope many people will follow in my path.

"Life on Earth is at ever- increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically-engineered virus or other dangers. "

"I think the human race has no future unless it goes into space."

This is, of course completly incompatible with the Greens who say that humanity's future is retreating back into our past. Another point is that the disabled might find space a particularly congenial place to live. Even the Moon, at 1/6th our gravity, could mean many years of extended life to those with heart problems.

It is shameful that having got there in 1969 we gave up. We could have had 10s of thousands of people living there now.

A debate on policy

ADAM SMITH INSTITUE

A research paper published by the Adam Smith Institute, said that Scotland could emulate Ireland's recent economic success:

Instead of current growth rates that trail the rest of the country, Scotland ten years into independence could out-perform the UK, the report claimed.

If an independent Scotland reduced taxes, cut spending and created a business-friendly environment, the country's growth rate over a five-year period could move from 1.7 per cent to Ireland's 7 per cent, he said.

The paper, Independent Scotland: The Road to Riches by international economist Gabriel Stein of Lombard Street Research, found that from 1992 to 2004, Scotland's gross value added growth was only 87 per cent of that of the UK.
If an independent Scotland reduced taxes, cut spending and created a business-friendly environment, the country's growth rate over a five-year period could move from 1.7 per cent to Ireland's 7 per cent, he said.

----------------------------------------

This is almost exactly what the 9% Growth party have been saying (though we say that building enough inexpensive new nuclear can push it up to 9%) & indeed what I was expelled from the LibDems for saying. However if we get the setting of corporation tax rates devloved to us & I see no reason why we can't, then we can do all this with or without separation.
Equally we might get separation & a government supported by the Greens & S&SSP - a scenario for which the word "desperate" would be inadequate.

If the 9% Growth Party do not do well in Glasgow it is that much more likely that the SNP activists will be able to pull them in a leftward direction.

GLASGOW HUSTINGS

I went to the Stop the War Coalition Hustings last week. Though I hadn't been invited I was, after a bit of a push, given a place because the Tories & Labour had both decided not to come.

They didn't really know what to make of me since on the one hand I spoke strongly against both the Iraq & Yugoslav wars & got a rousing cheer for saying that, under the precedent of Nuremberg, Blair was guilty of war crimes & it was in the interests not merely of justice but international legality, that he be brought to trial.

On the other hand, being basically a coalition of socialists my freemarketsim didn't go down well & saying that we are going to have massive blackouts if we don't build new nuclear went unanswered. Finally my answer to question on whether the BNP should be allowed to stand my liberal commitment to free speech, even for people we disagree with went down like a lead balloon. Nonetheless I believe it.

At the end a nice young lady took my photo & said that while she was a left wing socialist her husband was a classic liberal & would almost certainly vote for me. I assume in that house they throw copies of Marx & Adam Smith rather than crockery.
---------------------------------------------
Unfortunately I have not been invited to any other hustings, mostly organised by the churches. I assume, apart from being more convenient, this is a handy way of de facto banning the BNP without discriminating against them. If so it is an example of how censorship, once started, tends to spread.

It is said that the public meeting is dead & I am certain I reach for more people on the net here & on newspaper online sections than I could at meetings. Nonetheless it is a bad thing for democracy that the choice of what people willing to make the effort of coming to hustings are allowed to hear is being censored. I am also convinced that I could speak as effectively on my policies as any of the others with the possible exception of Tommy, who does have an extremely effective form of bluster.

NUCLEAR COSTS

Another assertion of nuclear being more expensive on the Daily Record blog http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/opinion/messageboards/page.cfm?objectid=15649356&method=m2_msg_full&siteid=66633 which I corrected & brought no further dispute.

Duncan McFarlane from CARLUKE said...
Nuclear power is neither cheap nor safe nor CO2 free. .In order: British nuclear, currently owned by the government has provided the Treasury with £2.5 billion profit in recent years. This is not a government subsidy. France is 80% nuclear is producing it at .1.3p (2.6cents) a unit selling it to all its neighbours including the south of England - http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htmTotal deaths in nuclear since Chernobyl are 2 worldwide, in Japan. By comparison coal kills 150,000 annually worldwide 20 people in Britain have died on windmills.Nuclear produces no CO2 by burning. It is a nuclear not chemical reaction. The CO2 opponents talk about come from employees breathing, concrete setting industrial processes. Since each windmill requires a base of up to 1000 tons of poured concrete windmills, by that definition, produce vastly more CO2 than nuclear. Sincere opponents must also oppose windmills.

BBC INTERVIEW

Here is an interview I did for the BBC but purely to be delivered online.

It is the sole mention they have made of 9% Growth.

Considering that the BBC can be relied on to produce at least 2 items a day talking to the Green Party/Greenpeace/FoI spokespeople I think it is another example, like their continual news items about global warming being "worse than previously thought", where their political allegence lies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6567017.stm

Still I think it is an OK interview.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TAKE ON THEPC VIEW - WHEN THEY HAVE NO ARGUMENTS

I have been outed on the Herald forum [ http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.1347061.0.0.php } so guess you had better know

Posted by: John McIntosh, Barrhead on 2:08pm Mon 23 Apr 07
================================================= 9% Growth Party member (only one?) Neil Craig, whose science fiction book and comic shop Futureshock is nearby, was handing out leaflets. "No blackouts. No vindictive bans", the leaflet said. I assumed he was talking about the pub: Don't drink so much you have a blackout, but even if you do, you should not necessarily be barred. But no, it transpired the "blackouts" is a reference to nuclear power, of which the Glasgow regional list candidate is in favour. Our Mr Craig is not very green. He thinks climate change is a myth; he tilts firmly against windmills; he thinks the Green movement has killed more people than Hitler. He proposes building a tunnel from Oban to Mull to make the island more accessible to fans of Balamory. It says on Craig's CV that he was chucked out of the Lib Dems for illiberality which, in itself, is quite an achievement. =============================================== All aboard the loony train.....
=================================================9% Growth Party member (only one?) Neil Craig, whose science fiction book and comic shop Futureshock is nearby, was handing out leaflets. "No blackouts. No vindictive bans", the leaflet said. I assumed he was talking about the pub: Don't drink so much you have a blackout, but even if you do, you should not necessarily be barred.But no, it transpired the "blackouts" is a reference to nuclear power, of which the Glasgow regional list candidate is in favour.Our Mr Craig is not very green. He thinks climate change is a myth; he tilts firmly against windmills; he thinks the Green movement has killed more people than Hitler.He proposes building a tunnel from Oban to Mull to make the island more accessible to fans of Balamory.It says on Craig's CV that he was chucked out of the Lib Dems for illiberality which, in itself, is quite an achievement.===============================================All aboard the loony train.....

I replied

Posted by: Neil 9% Growth party, Glasgow on 2:45pm Mon 23 Apr 07
Not only one & not handing out leaflets in Barrhead today but otherwise not far off. And yes I do think that when we lose 50% of our electricity we are bound to have blackouts. And yes i do think the smoking ban is a vindictive medically unjustified piece of political correctness . And yes catastrophic global warming (now being relabeled as climate change because the warming stopped in 1998) is a lie. And yes if Norway can build 740 km of tunnels in the last 2 decades then we could revolutionise the western highlands & islands by building tunnels. And yes the Liberal Democrats did expel me for opposing blackouts & supporting growth. So John if you would care to point out in which of these makes me a loony & the LDs sane I would be interested. http://9percentgrowth.blogspot.com/
Not only one & not handing out leaflets in Barrhead today but otherwise not far off.And yes I do think that when we lose 50% of our electricity we are bound to have blackouts.And yes i do think the smoking ban is a vindictive medically unjustified piece of political correctness .And yes catastrophic global warming (now being relabeled as climate change because the warming stopped in 1998) is a lie.And yes if Norway can build 740 km of tunnels in the last 2 decades then we could revolutionise the western highlands & islands by building tunnels.And yes the Liberal Democrats did expel me for opposing blackouts & supporting growth.So John if you would care to point out in which of these makes me a loony & the LDs sane I would be interested.

He didn't.

EATING UP THE GREENS

I have had several discussions with a group of Green party activists on the Herald comments section, one at least of whom is either employed as a Grenn organisation advertising flack or has a boss who has no objection to him spending his woking hours being one.

You can read our discussion on carbon footprints http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.1342474.0.0.php

After a considerable amount of rudeness on their part & more measured rudenss on mine I said

Yet again - I repeat "And you still haven't come up with a single eco-scare story which, over time, turned out to be truthful." Come on - 1 single catastrophe scare story out of hundreds which turned out to be fully & entirely truthful isn't a lot to ask.

It isn't but they couldn't

But the next day on a different thread [ http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.1347061.0.0.php ] about nuclear power we got on of the same Green Party trio saying

Are you sitting comfortably as this might come as something as a shock to you:No one is interested in anything you have to say! There, I think that needed to be said. Every day you come on here and get shot down in flames. Even when people answer your questions you either choose to ignore them or deflect the question on to some other topic.I look forward to May 4th so we don't have to put up with any more of your annoying drivel and your demented belief that the answer to all of the worlds ills in economic growth.

I do not get bullied by the likes of that & replied

Again Susan i would say that getting richer is an answer to quite a few ills. As a Green with whom I have clashed before perhaps you would care to dispute your point with fellow Green Michael Stewart who attacked me for saying that you Greens were, at least in practice & often in theory as well, anti-growth.Or perhaps, having been shot down in flames you will decline to answer - again.

The Green Party activists on these threads have claimed not to be anti-growth, to be anti-growth & to believe that windmills are cheap & nuclear power is expensive. I have repeatedly challengedc them on the latter asking them to explain how France couls possible be solvent not only running 80% on nuclear power but selling it at competitive rates to all their neighbours. Not Once have any of them tried to answer yet time after time they come back on subsequent threads with the same statement which they clearly know to be lies. Clearly many, possibly not all, Green activists have absolutely no compuntion about telling any entirely blatant lie if it helps their cause.

PROPOSAL FOR A MAG-LEV TRAIN TO EDINBURGH

Our former Executive have been floating the idea of a bullet train or more fun yet a magnetis levitation (Mag-Lev) train between Glasgow & Edinburgh. Interest in this stirred when Nicol Stephen visited China & saw their train set & wanted to play too. Now normally I am entirely in favour of high technology projects but was put off by the price. I have commented on this previously [ http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2006/07/bullet-train-from-glasgow-to-edinburgh.html }.

The idea was floated in the Herald { http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1345823.0.0.php ] & shot out of the water by all & sundry including myself.

Particularly interesting was this from an accountant Robert Fotheringay

The overall structured costs of this project are indeed in the region of £7.5 billion,startup costs to and including completion are estimated at between £1.7 billion and£4.8 billion depending on what figures and criteria you believe,what is not in dispute is that the overall all in total will be around £7.5 billion.As an accountant with knowledge of this proposal all I can say is that it is totally not feasable,the figures outlays and returns,are wishful thinking.

UK Ultraspeed posted a long justification which you can see on the link, if you have nothing better to do. It shows how much palpably untrue things a flack can believe. My reply 7 another commet are here

To reach £150 million from tickets at £8.95 single would (assuming there are no return tickets) require 16,759,776 travellers - about 10 times the current rate. Taking about half the traffic as going on weekday rushours (104 hours a year) we get about 80,000 an hour. Assuming a train each way every quarter hour each train would have to carry about 10,000 passengers. If this number was achieved it still wouldn't cover the subsidy to run the thing, let alone start to pay the cost of building it.These people expect the electorate to swallow this nonsense.

Posted by: Bill Forbes, Cambuslang on 1:29am Sun 22 Apr 07
Can’t disagree with your arithmetic Neil; but you should have taken it further: With £150,000,000.00 Annual Revenue @ £8.95 Per Ticket = 16,759,776.54 travellers p.a. With 500.00 Passengers/train = 33,519.55 Trains/annum There are 365.00 Days Which = 91.83 trains per day And a service of 8.00 trains per hour (four each way) Equates to 11.48 Hours of jam packed Maglevs travelling in each direction The big assumption (if those were not big enough already) is that there would be no competition to the Maglev, i.e. the existing train services and M8 bus services would simply disappear without as much as a whimper. The other big assumption is the time quoted of 15 mins for the journey. With a minute to accelerate to top speed and a minute to slow down this leaves 13 mins for the approx 73.5km journey or an average speed of about 340 km/hr. The Shanghai Maglev has an average speed of 250 km/hr and if this service is used as a comparison the likely journey would take closer to 20 mins. With a service frequency of 15 mins this means that bigger stations will be needed and more train sets as trains arrive at the station before the previous one has started the return journey. With that sort of arithmetic it is clear that someone should lend the SPT a calculator. But there is an easier way to assess it. The man from Ultraspeed admits that this will cost the taxpayer a subsidy of between £100m - £150m every year. That would buy a good sized hospital every year.
Can’t disagree with your arithmetic Neil; but you should have taken it further:With £150,000,000.00 Annual Revenue@ £8.95 Per Ticket= 16,759,776.54 travellers p.a.With 500.00 Passengers/train= 33,519.55 Trains/annumThere are 365.00 DaysWhich = 91.83 trains per day And a service of 8.00 trains per hour (four each way)Equates to 11.48 Hours of jam packed Maglevs travelling in each directionThe big assumption (if those were not big enough already) is that there would be no competition to the Maglev, i.e. the existing train services and M8 bus services would simply disappear without as much as a whimper. The other big assumption is the time quoted of 15 mins for the journey. With a minute to accelerate to top speed and a minute to slow down this leaves 13 mins for the approx 73.5km journey or an average speed of about 340 km/hr. The Shanghai Maglev has an average speed of 250 km/hr and if this service is used as a comparison the likely journey would take closer to 20 mins. With a service frequency of 15 mins this means that bigger stations will be needed and more train sets as trains arrive at the station before the previous one has started the return journey.With that sort of arithmetic it is clear that someone should lend the SPT a calculator. But there is an easier way to assess it. The man from Ultraspeed admits that this will cost the taxpayer a subsidy of between £100m - £150m every year. That would buy a good sized hospital every year.

On my previous discussion of this I thought this far more expensive than our automated rail proposal - I did not imagine that anybody would have the arrogance & idiocy to try to land us with this at a cost of £7.5 billion. I clearly overestimated our leaders.

RED ROAD FLATS

One of the 9% Growth parties policies is not to knock down once politically correct but now incorrect blocks of flats & that if that is the only option the GHA have then it would be better to give them away to their occupants. I discussed this elsewhere & have received an email in support of my position

"I was brought up in the Red Road. I started my first Company (Clydeside Television Productions) from my flat in Red Road court. I had a warm, secure, well appointed home. I loved the place, but was forced to move in 1990 because the council were letting it slide just too far.The place is in the state it's in because of WILFUL neglect on the part of the City Fathers; no other reason. They let the buildings rot, effectively condoned the violence and drugs and deliberately used the place as a dumping ground. The original posters proposals won't see the light of day for one reason and one reason only; Those holding the controls want their skin; their wedge off the top. Nose-in-the trough time for the City's fatcats and to hell with the ordinary weegie!
# posted by Matt Quinn : April 25"

To which I replied

"Thank you for commenting Matt. That was pretty much how I thought of it but never having been an occupant of such a flat I have always felt a bit nervous about pontificating.... I have thought that if they just leased out a shop & perhaps pub at the bottom of the larger flats they would turn them into a real community. Victorian developers built corner shops & pubs but they were motivated by money. Our councillors & planners, with purer motivations never thought of this."

The idea of knocking down what should be decent homes just because high rise living, except for the rich when they are called luxury apartments, is now unfashionable is offensive.

ALL JOCK TAMSON'S BAIRNS

Last night we were out putting up posters in central Glasgow. I was up a lamppost (near the Maltman in Union St) & there was a beggar on the pavement asking for money whom we were studiously ignoring.

When our eyes met he said "Its OK mate, I don't mean you. You're working same as me"

TRIDENT

Trident, fortunately for us, isn't a Scottish parliament issue. SNP claims that they could introduce a special punitive tax on nuclear weapons & thus get rid of our bases is without either legal or practical merit.

The unfortunate thing about the "debate on replacing Trident" is that there hasn't been one. The government keep insisting we must have the most expensive weapon possible against an unknown enemy who might appear some time in the next 20 years. CND keep insisting that immediately getting rid of all our Bombs is the only option.

The technical answer is that the Bomb cannot be uninvented, that the time to decide on a new weapon system is when we know what capabilities this enemy will have, which rather requires us to know who they are. There is also the certainty that Trident depends on US spare parts & may very well have a backdoor in its computer programming which the US could, if they wished, use to switch it off - Our "independent deterrent" makes us dependent not independent. Finally I would support a no first use policy which in turn means no use against a non-nuclear power, & enshrine this is UK law. If we cannot uninvent the Bomb we can, hopefully, at least step back a pace or 2 from the brink.

SAT 14th

The Scotsman has asked for questions for Jack McConnell & Alex Salmond. Here are mine:

To Jack McConnell
Bearing in mind that we still have have a poorly growing economy, indeed with 2 quarters of recession under your rule & that you said just before the last election & again on 30th March, that growing the economy was your "number one priority" why does your manifesto concentrate on spending more on education? Why do you not think that putting the same money into cutting business taxes would not encourage business?

http://business.scotsman.com/economy.cfm?id=496622007 for his "number one priority remark

To Alex Salmond
In your recent conference speech you appeared to say you intended to pick a fight with Westminster over gun control laws. If you wish to pick a fight why did you not choose to make it over negotiating a cut in Scottish corporation tax, which would have a massive effect on the standard of living of us all?

To both

In 2011 Hunterson is to close & we will lose 1/6th of our power, in 2015 new EU regulations will close much coal fired power & we will be down to 2/3rds & by 2023 Torness will close & we will have lost half Scotland's electricity. If you achieve any economic growth demand will, of course, increase. Wind, currently 3%, is intermitten & thus even its supporters say it cannot provide baseload. Where will we get the missing power, in such a short timeframe, if we are to avoid massive midwinter blackouts & deaths?

TODAY'S NEWS

News item about a company which is planning to fly passengers to the USA for £6 plus £124 airport taxes. My comment

The reason Ryanair don't do the Highlands & Islands airports is because of relatively high landing charges. We subsidise these airports by 2/3rds of their cost but, having the same security rules as Heathrow, but far fewer passengers makes up about 1/3rd of running costs. Some years ago I spoke in support of a motion at the SLD conference calling for either an increase in the subsidy (cost about £8 million) or reduction in security rules to make landing charges zero which would have had an enormously beneficial effect on the local economy.

Despite the motion passing Transport Minister Nicol Stephen chose to introduce a far more expensive & bureaucratic system of limited ticket subsidies for locals.

Quite a high tax ratio if the product costs £6 & the tax £124. Still it provides more money for train subsidies.

&

China's economy is growing at 10%, Scotland's at 1.5%. If we don't do something in a generation we will be, per capita, poorer than China. Nobody seriously disputes that we can do 9% if we try it is merely that our politicians are more interested in windmillery & invading places than allowing us to become wealthy.

ONLINE COMMENTS TODAY

Automated cars & trains http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=559992007

The number of decisions in running a train is vasdtly simpler since the tracks already choose the direction. If driverless cars are on the horizon then driverless trains have been possible for years. Driverless trains would allow single carriage units thereby providing far more flexility, allowing departures every few minutes, 24/7 working, lower running costs & increased capacity. This could make trains truly competitive but has been held back because government control does not inspire innovation.

Housing http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=559892007

having accepted that the things the LD's call free aren't free you are now advising all unwilling taxpayers to vote elsewhere (as you point out the Tories don't intend to cut taxes though 9% Growth have promised to take the money you waste on windmills & fund a 3p tax cut - which actually wouldn't cost the unfortunate anything unless Mr al Fayed counts).


Lib Dems to spend another £1 billion http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=559582007

The cause of house prices is not a mixture of over deman & under supply but -
Under supply purely. What you call over demand is people speculating that house prices are going to go up continuously. If we allowed builders to build houses the supply would increase & speculation would be pointless. There is no technical reason why houses toady should cost more multiples of peoples incomes than in Queen Victoria's time - it is entirely government regulation

26 THINGS WE SUPPORT & WHICH OUR OPPONENTS ALMOST UNANIMOUSLY OPPOSE

1) Stop blackouts. Act before we lose 50% of our electricity.

2) 9% growth using the methods that gave Ireland 7% on average & 10.5% in a good year.

3) Reform planning regulations. In 1907 a house & car cost the same - the difference is that planning regulators restrict housebuilding.

4) Stop subsidising windmills. Save £1 billion.

5) The smoking ban is an illiberal restriction on individual freedom. End it.

6) End fuel poverty. France produces 80% nuclear at 1.3p a unit. We can do the same.

7) A needs based transport policy. The previous Executive were committed to spending 70% of their transport budget on public transport (code for railways) though it makes up only 3% of traffic.

8) Tunnels project. Norway built 740km of tunnels at £7 million per km. We should do the same making it a short drive from Glasgow to Dunoon, Rothesay, Kintyre, Jura, Islay & Mull etc.

9) Fully automate Glasgow's subway allowing it to run at lower costs, greater capacity & 24/7.

10) Fully automate the Glasgow-Edinburgh train with the same effect.

11) Ultimate aim of a fully automated Scots rail transport system.

12) 2% cut in civil servants annually.

13) 2% government efficiency savings. Almost any private business trys to increase efficiency at least that much & there is more scope in Holyrood.

14) Don't spend £610 million digging a tunnel under Edinburgh Airport. Make sure other government projects at least come close to making economic sense.

15) 3p cut in Scots income tax after funding of business tax cuts to provide growth.

16) No new politically correct vindictive bans. The smoking ban was NOT in manifestos at the last election.

17) A Holyrood committee to find & abolish counterproductive laws & regulations.

18) A schools vouchers system.

19) Allow schools to impose discipline.

20) Make a DVD of Scotland's history & post it to Scots, or those with Scots names, over the world. Include links encouraging Scottish tourism.

21) Establish a £20 million X-Prize to encourage space satelite industry to locate in scotland.

22) Establish an X-Prize foundation funded from the Scots contribution to the lottery to encourage high technology in Scotland.

23) Widen & improve the M8.

24) If Gore's silly film must be shown to Scots schoolchildren let them see the alternate view, AS THE LAW SPECIFICLY REQUIRES.

25) 54% of all money spent in Scotland is government money. Cut this.

26) Instead of knocking down Glasgow's high rise flats they should be given, free of charge, to those occupants who don't prefer to be rehoused.

CANDIDATES PERSONAL STATEMENT - NEIL CRAIG

I am 54, divorced & own Glasgow's West End Science Fiction, Graphic Novel & Comic shop Futureshock & live nearby. I am also the publisher of the iconoclastic political blog A Place to Stand

I was a Liberal & Liberal Democrat since helping my father WGA Craig as a candidate in 1970. From him I learned that individuals are more creative than states, armies or classes & that it is better to stand for what you believe in than to win for what you don't. I also learned the importance of clear & logical thought rather than sloganising - he was as argumentative as I am & was alleged to be able not only to talk the hind legs off a donkey but also to be able to persuade it to walk.

I also grew to love not merely science fiction & the future it promised but also the scientific method as the best, perhaps only, tool to understand the world. Unlike the "Green" movement which says we should try to get through our lives without changing anything I believe that if the universe has a purpose it is that humans learn to understand & control it.

In 2001 as a Lib Dem I pushed through a motion, unanimously adopted, calling not only for Yugoslav war crimes trials to be prosecuted on a non-racial basis but for "leaders of the countries which, in clear violation of international law, supplied the KLA with vast quantities of weapons whilst they were an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation" which certainly included Helmut Kohl & Bill Clinton. Though this remains officially the Scottish party position it has never, for some reasin, been mentioned but I am proud of it because I was opposed to illegal wars when many of those now loudest in opposition were enthusiastic supporters.

Later in 2001 I spoke at conference against the leadership's motion to absolutely reject nuclear power. At that time Mr Blair was also opposed to nuclear electricity but has since followed my lead. In 2003 I first tried to get conference to discuss trying to achieve Ireland's growth rate by cutting corporation tax & regulations. Despite years of resubmitting the motion it was never debated though the SNP have subsequently adopted a similar policy.

In 2004 I was the only person at conference to speak directly against bringing in the smoking ban on the grounds that the alleged medical evidence that it was a serious health hazard was not scientifically supportable. That in such circumstances a ban was merely nanny statism & not in the tradition of liberalism.

In December 2005 I received a letter from the party executive, chaired at the time by Robert Brown MSP, saying that they had unanimously voted that I be expelled because letters I had had published in Scottish newspapers, supporting economic growth, lower housebuilding costs & the need for nuclear power were "too right wing to be discussed","illiberal" & "irreconcilable with membership". Despite (or to be fair possibly partly because of) my robust defence in which I proved that everything I had said was indeed Liberal as understood by the founders of Liberalism, who had followed Adam Smith among others & been opposed to overbearing government & Ludditism, my expulsion was confirmed.

I was dissatisfied with all parties. All of them are ignoring the very real threat that if we do not replace the 50% of Scotland's electricity due to close we will face a catastrophe. This will not go away if they ignore it & it is grossly irresponsible of them to do so. Ireland makes it quite clear that we can achieve economic success & though the SNP have made limited moves in this direction their primary interest in "independence in Europe" which I believe provides no answers.

I thought it sufficiently important for democracy that you have the choice of voting for somebody who does not stand for the Holyrood consensus that I decided to form the 9% Growth Party. We can achieve everything I am promising but only if you are willing to support it. I believe this country can achieve our potential but the choice is now yours not mine.

A CALL TO DEBATE THE NUCLEAR ISSUE

A local Glasgow candidate (Katy Gordon for the LibDems) has distributed a leaflet giving her & her party's priorities. They call for a more complicated & more expensive (but some may suspect not more speedy & thorough) refuse collection system, more subsidies for windmills & stopping shops using as much packaging. These The sole other thing mentioned is to say that Labour supports nuclear power & that it cannot "provide all the answers"

As a LibDem until I was expelled from the party for supporting nuclear power & Irish style business tax cuts for growth on the grounds that they were "illiberal" & "irreconcilable with membership of the party" I, as leader of the 9% Growth Party, wish to challenge Ms Gordon & any other LibDem candidate, or indeed any candidate from any party opposed to nuclear power, to debate the issue.

I would be happy to debate either in the media (newspaper, radio, TV) or in a public meeting. I would point that her reason for dismissal of nuclear is completely different from that of her leader who said that "nuclear is the easy answer" & must thus be opposed resolutely because if it was seen to work the electorate would never accept paying massive subsidies for windmills & other politically correct methods of engineering. She is also, unfortunately, wrong in accusing Labour of supporting nuclear. While the rank & file did vote heavily for it at Conference leaders such as Jack McConnell & Wendy Alexander are opposed, in an indecisive way.

I believe that in an election the candidates have a duty to discuss the issues & I would at least be relieved to see if they have any idea how the 1/6th of our power due to close in 2011, 1/3rd by 2015 & 50% by 2023 are to be replaced without blackouts.

I hope Glasgow's newspapers will wish to support such a debate.

Neil Craig

PROMISES & COSTS

This is probably the only party you are going to see telling you where they are going to cut public spending but we are committed to treating the public like adults & you all know that spending promises cannot be made without getting the money from somewhere.

Freezing each ministry's budget, allowing natural wastage to cut staff by 2% annually & making wage rises fully funded by efficiency savings (does anybody doubt there great inefficiency in government:
£1.5 billion annually (5% ot Hoyrood's budget)

Stopping the £1 billion annual subsidy promised to windmills
£1 billion

Cut Scottish Enterprise's budget from £500 million to not more than £100 million
£400 million

Using Scotland's underspend
£600 million

Selling off Scottish Water saves £260 million running costs & could bring in £2 billion.

General cutting ofoutrageousutrageaous examples of waste (SNH spending over £1000 a head to get rid of hedgehogs, civil servants spending £12 million to give advice on not getting into debt, where the client's debt totalled £3 million)
£500 million (low estimate)

Total saving £3760 million in the first year & another £1,500 billion next year.

One off savings:
Forth tunnel rather than bridge - £500 million
Not putting tunnel under the Edinburgh airport runway - £610 million (& rising)
Scrap borders railway - £200 million (?)
Selling Scottish water £2 billion

Total £3310 million

Possible spending

Cut corporatin tax to 12.5% - £2.14 billion
Abolish business rates - £1.7 billion
Cut Income Tax by 3p - £870 million (figure previously agreed with Treasury)
Scottiah Tunnels Project (over 10 years) - £100 million
Nuclear Power (only if we decide it is to good an investment to put in the private sector) - £100 million
Housing - providing bridging loans to stimulate mass production - 0 to £36 million.
Scottish Technology Projects (per year) - £200 million
Scottish X-Prizes - £20 million

Total £5,166 million

Clearly with the one off saving this programme would, on paper, be fully affordable immediately since it would take just over 2 years for the savings to match the new projects & the one off savings would not be depleted by then. It might be prudent to
take a little longer & some of the spending will require agreement with Westminster. Since this is all fully funded it would not prevent carrying out any other party's promises as well - as long as they have already identified where thefunding should come from.

If the science of economics or the experience of Ireland means anything then the only way putting over £5 billion into directly encouraging growth would not allow Scotland to hit a 9% growth rate was if we went over.

A NEAT WAY TO GO NUCLEAR

Politically there is virtually zero chance that this would be accepted but in financial & engineering terms this is how Scotland should replace the 50% of our electricity we are shortly going to lose.

1) Get our nuclear stations, possibly excluding Dounraey which is basically an experimental facility, formed as a separate company. This is similar to the way that Scotland's Railtrack, which was also renationalised in same dubious way, was separately put under our authority.

2) Get Westminster to allow immediate type approval of French, US & Canadian reactor designs. While Westminster Labour are committed to more nuclear they are also currently supporting the Atomic Energy Authority's desire to spend 5 years deciding the foreign reactors work (they obviously do & have for years) & that Hunterston & Torness are suitable places to put reactors (they obviously are & have done for years). Hunterston is going to close in 4 years & it takes 4 years to actually build a reactor so if we don't want blackouts we can't afford spending an extra 5 years moving paper around. Since Labour are desperate that the lights not go out I think they would go for this.

3) There are many billions in a fund already put aside for decommissioning reactors. The inexpensive way to decommission is to lock up the reactor for 50 years until the radioactivity is down to safe levels (all the stuff bout reactor waste being dangerous for millions of years is propaganda - highly radioactive waste is highly radioactive purely because it has a short half life). We undertake to move back the boundary fences at Hunterston & Torness & decommission the current reactors by locking them up, not letting in the public, & leaving them till they are safe - for this we get paid at least several hundred million £s.

4) We set Scottish Nuclear up as a public company which builds as many new reactors as there is demand for at Hunterston & Torness. Since 1MW reactors have been bought off the shelf for $1 billion ((£550 million) this company could afford to do so with the fund money & only a little extra by borrowing & selling 10% of the shares publicly, though it might be better actually invest a tokeamountnt ourselves..

5) Government leaves the company management to the 10% shareholders, who understand such things & merely accepts the profits.

Scotland would thereby get as much electricity as we can use, at a substantially lowered price & would have a national, dividend paying, asset worth many many billions of £s for virtually nothing.

Also this is virtually CO2 free so that, if the Greens etc genuinely believe we face catastrophic global warming (I personally think they know they are making it up) they would be enthusiastic about the only practical method of making large amounts of electricity without CO2. To be fair a few environmentalists such as Professor james Lovelock & Bishop Hugh Montefiore have gone on record to support more nuclear for this reaspn.

DAVID STEEL CALLS FOR CORPORATION TAX CUTS

This morning Andrew Marr interviewed Malcolm Rifkind & David Steel. Rifkind criticised the idea of us going for Fiscal Autonomy on the grounds that full fiscal autonomy would mean us giving up several billion £s more than we currently raise.

David Steel, former Lib Dem leader replied with the inanity that we could just lower corporation tax!

OK so this doesn't exactly address Rifkind's point of where the money comes from but on a purely personal basis it hit home. My expulsion from the LibDems was for supporting nuclear power & CALLING FOR US TO ACHIEVE IRISH STYLE GROWTH BY CUTTING CORPORATION TAX. This crime was unanimously judged by the Scottish Party executive to be "illiberal & irreconcilablee with membership of the party" & "too right wing" to even be discussed.

It seems like barely a year since then - in fact it is. Clearly if that was the case then Mr Steel, by going on TV to say this, rather than blogging or putting a letter in the papers, has transgressed to a far greater extent. The position of Robert Brown MSP & other members of the executive would not seem to be morally tenable if they do not choose to immediately write to Mr Steel to advise him of his proposed expulsion.

Perhaps they may wish to apolgise & admit my prior use of this idea in the party. Had they, rather than the SNP been willing to adopt it who knows how they would now stand in the polls?

WHAT WE COULD DO IF WE STOPPED SUBSIDISING WINDMILLS

Windmills are an expensive way of providing intermittent & largely useless electricity. We should, instead be allowing the building of new nuclear power stations which provide electricity in France at half the price of conventional power.

Apart from halving everybody's electricity prices what else could we do?

"THE GOVERNMENT’S GREENenergy initiatives, the Renewables Obligation and the Renewables Obligation,Scotland (RO/ROS), promise to raise £1 billion a year for electricity suppliers by 2010 through levies oncustomers. OFGEM estimated the cost to consumers in 2003-2004 at £416 million."

Bearing in mind that 3p off our income tax has been calculated by Westminster as costing £870 million which is considerably less than £1 billion it seems we could very easily afford it if we stopped this nonsense.

This would not interfere with any of the other things the 9% Growth Party is pledged to do. Scotland has no problems that could not be solved by having a competent government.

WHERE YOUR MONEY GOES

This contains pie charts of where the government raises our taxes & where it goes all measured in billions of £s. Scotland's population is 8.6% of Britain's & our per capita GDP is about 10% lower so I have also included this (7.74% figure (7.74%). I wouldn't stand by this but it is probably a good ballpark figure, except, of course, for oil.

Where Taxpayers Money Comes From

Income tax £157 (£12.15)
National Insurance £ 95 (£7.35)
Excise £ 41 (£3.17)
Corporation Tax £ 50 (£3.87)
VAT £ 80 (£6.19)
Business Rates £ 22 (£1.7)
Council Tax £ 23 (£1.78)
Other (capital gains, stamp duty,
vehicle excise
£ 84 (£6.5)
TOTAL £553 (£42.8)

Total expenditure for Scotland for 2004-5 was £47.7 billion (£25.8 billion by Holyrood) c/o Brian Monteith's new book Paying the Piper so adding 10% for 2007 I assume £52.47 billion. The UK figure is £587 billion which puts our spending at 8.9% (somewhat hogher but as I said i am taking no account of oil & certainly a far smaller deficit than the £50 billion the RU costs us).


Where Taxpayer's Money is Spent
Health £104 (£9.26)
Transport £ 20 (£1.78)
Education £ 77 (£6.85)
Defence £ 32 (£2.8)
Nat Debt Interest £ 30 (£2.67)
Industry, Agriculture, Employment & training
£ 21 (£1.87)
Public Order £ 33 (£2.94)
Housing £ 22 (£1.96)
Social Protection £161( (£14.3)
Other - public services, culture,
sport international development, civil servant
pensions etc £ 59 (£5.25)
Total £587 (£52.47)

COMPARING SCOTLAND'S GROWTH - SCOTSMAN LETTER

Scotsman letter today.

Peter Ellis's letter (23 March) comparing Scotland's growth to Albania's is wrong to say that theirs, at 6 per cent is the best in Europe. Ukraine (9.4 per cent), Lithuania (9 per cent), Latvia (7.4 per cent), Russia 7.3 (per cent), Belarus (6.8 per cent), Moldova (6.3 per cent). Estonia and Ireland have also had very impressive long-term growth.

Of course, many countries are doing as well or better: China's 9.1 per cent growth means GNP doubles every eight years.

However, the basic point is true. Scotland (long term rate 1.5 per cent), and indeed the United Kingdom (2.5 per cent) could, and should, do far better if we only attempted to make growth the priority these nations do.

All power to the Albanians where it is deserved, but I do not think we are unable to match or exceed them.

NEIL CRAIG

This is Mr Ellis' original letter on which I have commented. The growth figures are from Geography IQ Others will differ slightly depending on the year under question & counting methods - but not by much.

Analysis of SNP's economic policy ignores the potential for growth

This is an OPINION peace I had in the Scotsman in April 2005. It is still correct.
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Professor Arthur Midwinter is misinformed in his comments on the SNP’s policy of cutting corporation tax to kick-start economic growth (your report, 29 March). The case that all the SNP’s policies, specifically independence and the use of oil revenues, could cost £10 billion is arguable either way; but it is unreasonable to use this figure in an argument about cutting corporation tax.

As he states later, since our total corporation tax receipts are £2.1 billion, a cut of one-third would be £700 million. Scottish Enterprise already costs us £500 million, for less obvious effect, and Holyrood has regularly had an underspend of £500 million. This is, therefore, clearly affordable.

The argument about independence is a different issue. It is quite possible the SNP could become the leading party without persuading the electorate to secede.

He is also in error in saying Ireland’s growth preceded the tax cut. Ireland decided on reform in 1989, including cutting business taxes, and instituted it within a year. They immediately came out of stagflation.

It is true that in face of this success they repeatedly cut corporation tax to its present level of 12.5 per cent (and that the rate of growth further increased), which is what he is referring to in saying that some tax cuts came after success. But the initial cut came first - the relationship between reform and success is so close that it is not reasonable to deny that the one led to the other.

Independence and European Union membership, sometimes credited with responsibility for Ireland’s achievement, came decades earlier, and immigration (actually the return of generations of emigrants), not surprisingly, followed growth.

A point he misses is that the lesson the SNP has learned from Ireland is twofold. Not just cutting business taxes, but also cutting regulation.

Turning round our economy cannot be done purely by writing a cheque, but it can be done by a government willing to make the effort, which includes writing that cheque and backing it. Since each 1 per cent increase in growth means an extra £1 billion of national wealth each and every year, the gains to be made exceed the cost many times over.

I do not believe Scottish voters are too stupid or too shortsighted to understand this.

NEIL CRAIG

THE BUDGET

Corporation tax will be lowered from 30p to 28p next April - the first time the business levy has been reduced since 1999.

Corporation tax rates for small firms will rise to 22 pence, higher than the basic rate of income tax

The income tax cut is smoke & mirrors because the increase in getting rid of the 10p low rate exactly matches what we save with 2p off.

I have been calling for cutting corporation tax cuts to Irish levels of 12.5% for Scotland & also for the UK. Cutting 2p to 28% is a very small step but it is at least in the right direction even though there is at least half a step back in raising it for small business.

All in all no significant change.

Brown should have cut corporation tax by 3p, not increased the small business rate & made a specific promise that any increase in the amount raised by CT would be returned in further reductions. That would have cost very little more & had a significant role in improving growth as it would have established a virtuous circle of declining business costs. This would be in line with the Laffer curve predictions by economist Arthur Laffer.

WHY, BEYOND MONEY- THE 9% GROWTH PARTY STANDS FOR SOMETHING BETTER THAN THE GREENS

We are here to make the next generation of the human race more knowledgeable about how the universe is put together, more in control of it & generally able to achieve more than the previous ones. That is not achieved by hiding in a hole & wishing we didn't exist.

NO CLIMATE CHANGE BILL

Catastrophic warming is a lie.

The Climate Bill calls for a 60% cut in carbon emissions in Britain.
This 60% cut either means complete dependence on nuclear for our electricity & probably to manufacture petrol or a massive reduction in living standards. Obviously I favor the former. FoE's "it will not impinge too heavily. For instance, it could mean changing the fuel we put in our cars, or the way energy is produced at source, or more recycling." is completely dishonest, particularly for an organisation which expels people who suggest we need nuclear.

The big parties are trying to push this through because it gives them more power over our lives & they care not a jot about reducing poverty.

The Scots Parliament should have absolutely nothing to do with it.

The 9% Growth party will oppose any economically damaging climate bill. If passed we will campaign for its repeal. There is no justification whatsover for politicians using their power to lower living standards.

WHY DO CORPORATION'S PREFABRICATED HOMES COST SO MUCH?

Having pushed for the encouragement of prefabicated mass produced housing I was very pleased to hear:

Ikea flatpack home deal is signed


A £200Million housing project using Ikea flatpack homes is to be launched in Glasgow today.

The scheme will see 1200 family houses built over the next five years in Drumchapel.

As exclusively revealed by the Evening Times last year, around 40 of the properties will be Ikea flatpacks, the first time the Swedish company's prefabricated homes will have been used in Scotland.

advertisementSmart-living "Boklok" homes are a big hit in Scandinavia with their open-plan designs, high ceilings and large windows.

Today all the partners involved in the project were signing off the contracts in a ceremony at Glasgow City Chambers.

Summerhill councillor Paul Carey said: "Today we are giving the green light to the largest single regeneration scheme in Scotland."

On the other hand, since similar Norwegian houses sell at approx £40,000 (excluding installation) I was a little surprised at how much that is costing the corporation. £200 million for 1,200 homes comes to £166,000 each.

According to Boklok's site "BoKlok is aiming to sell homes in the range from a one-bedroom flat for under £100,000 to a three-bedroom house for under £150,000" - this is fully installed because "Will BoKlok homes be available to buy as flat packs from IKEA stores? ---
No. You will not be able to buy a flat pack house from IKEA". A not unreasonable position when there are so many rules in this country & councils knock down houses which, while well constructed, haven't done their paperwork acceptably.

Without such rules it would be perfectly possible to put one of these up for £40,000 for the unit & £20,000 installation.

GLOBAL WARMING IS A "SHORT-TERM CRAZE"

The smartest money in global warming stocks may be scurrying to the exit just when the enthusiasm for alternative-energy companies is at an all-time high....

``As an investment play,'' global warming is ``a bubble'' and ``social short-term craze,'' said Ken Fisher, who oversees $35 billion as chairman of Fisher Investments Inc. in Woodside, California.

Anyone looking for corroboration of that assessment may find it in the so-called short selling of U.S. alternative-energy stocks last month, which climbed 45 times faster than the average for Standard & Poor's 500 Index members.

SunPower, the biggest U.S. producer of solar energy, had the largest jump in short sales relative to shares outstanding in the Nasdaq Stock Market. Short sellers sell borrowed stock on the bet price declines will let them to buy back the shares at a lower price and profit from the difference.
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Note that this isn't even these managers betting their & their clients money that catastrophic warming isn't happening, take that as a given & anyway these guys aren't interested in investments of 100 years. What they are saying is that the global hype about warming is visibly about to burst. Next year all the politicians & BBC who are now riding the warming bandwaggon, saying sceptics are "from Mars" & that Holland & Norfolk are about to go underwater will all be hurrying away & looking for a new scare story to leech off of.

Course what do they know. If they're so smart howcum they aren't rich?

"NUCLEAR IS THE EASY ANSWER"

This is a comment online & unpublished letter to the Scotsman:

While nuclear engineering is obviously complicated the basic questions - is it cheaper, has it a better safety record, is it reliable, does it produce less pollution, is it far less visually interfering than wind or smokestack - are all easily answered in the affirmative which makes the decision what the Americans call a no-brainer.

Malcolm Slesser (letter 21st Feb) has asked for an impartial source to assit him. May I go one better & give him the words of an opponent. Nicol Stephen was willing to say, during the BBC "energy debate", that "nuclear is the easy answer" & that he only opposes it because it is so obviously satisfactory that if new nuclear was adopted the electorate would never be willing to shell out for windmill subsidies, If someone so resolutely opposed says this its superiority can hardly be denied.

ISSUES OVERVIEW

THE ECONOMY - We believe 9% growth is entirely achievable using the methods which have given Ireland 7% growth (cutting corporation tax & business rates & regulations particularly housebuilding regulations) plus a programme of building as many new nuclear power stations as there is demand for producing power at 1.3p per unit, which would obviously be attractive to business (& to all of us who use electricity at home).

Currently 55% of Scotland's economy consists of government spending, from almost all of which examples of waste abound. This is not sustainable in the long term & certainly couldn't be dine by an independent country.
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LAW & ORDER - There are no easy answers here & any party that says otherwise is feeding you a line. We would be prepared to bite the bullet & build more prisons. We would also consider cutting the age of criminal responsibility. As a general principle the law should ensure that punishment should hurt the perpetrator at least as hard as they hurt the victim, though it must be admitted that there are strong limits on what can be done here under Westminster & EU rules.

In the longer term there is statistical evidence that children without a father present, particularly boys, are considerably more likely to become criminals or generally anti-social. This is not something which can be altered either easily or quickly but we would wish government to incline more towards encouraging family stability & male role models who are not members of gangs.
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EDUCATION - The 9% Growth Party approves of education vouchers. We would allow schools as much freedom as possible & allow parents to choose. This choice would also extend to schools outside the state system & to new ones created to satisfy this market. In theory Catholic schools are difficult to ideologically justify but in practice they have, in recent years, produced relatively good results. We prefer a system that works to one that is ideologically correct & expect that such schools would become only one of a variety of schools available to people.
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The NHS - The 9% Growth Party believe that the NHS' problem has not been money, but political meddling & the establishment of PC rules & targets. We spend 25% more per head than in the south. We would seek to see the separate health areas being free to set their own rules as far as possible with a transparent funding formula for each area & a free market between areas.

Currently decisions on the opening or closing of facilities seem to resolve themselves into an arm wrestling comprtition between local MSPs & MPs, whose duty is correctly, to try to get as much as possible for their own constiturcies but it would be better if such decisions were made by area management, knowing exactly how much money they have.
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HOUSING - "Affordable housing" has become a political code word meaning houses built by government, often to be turned into tied houses for government employees. This is not our policy.

A century ago houses & cars cost about the same & there is no technological reason why we should not get close to that again. Government planning is not the solution - government planning is the problem, They insist that houses not be built except in very limited approved areas - thus we have land rated for agricultural use on one side of a fence costing £2,000 an acre & on the other side rated for housing at £40,000 a plot (£320,000 an acre). They insist on using pretty much the same materials used in Victorian times, while cars are no longer made of wood. They insist on individual planning approval (& design changes) which prevents the sort of mass production technologicla breakthrough that Henry Ford made for cars.

We will allow builders to build, allow them to use modern materials, grant type & encourage them to invest in mass production off site manufacturing by giving type rather than individual approval & providing bridging loans on completed houses till sale. If the laws of supply & demand work, and they do, we can guarantee fully affordable across the country.
TAXATION - We are committed to cutting business taxes first, since in anything but the very short term an increase in GNP puts more money in people's pockets than tax cuts. Nonetheless we are committed to a freeze on government spending & the severe pruning of the most outstanding examples of government departments which are not providing value for money. For example we think most of the £500 million Scottish Enterprise spend would more successfully attract nrw business in the form of business tax cuts, the Executive has spent £12 million on a debt counseling service which which counedled only 202 people with debts totaling £3 million (both major opposition parties want merely to "reform" this bureaucracy, we would get rid of it) or Scottish National Heritage's hedgehog programme which cost £750,000 to get rid of 690 hedgehogs). We are convinced that after 2 to 3 years of this, depending on how fast the economy takes off, we will be in a position to cut income tax by up to 3p.

We recognise that some of the pruning will be painful & many special interests, who are not bad people, will cause a stramash. Nonetheless it is the duty of government to spend your money carefully & we believe there is very great room for more care in the way Scotland's government has spent our money. The lessons of the Parliament building are not preventing current waste. We think the Scottish electorate are mature enough to know that we cannot spend as much as we would like on everything in government & still have as much as we want for ourselves & we will not ask you to believe promises that we, or anybody else, can.
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IMMIGRATION - This is a UK matter & in practice cannot be otherwise. Currently Scotland has a relatively slight immigration "problem" due to the success of our current government in keeping up the relative decline in Scotland's economy. We are confident that, when the economy takes off we will not need programmes to attract immigrants. We absolutely disagree with calls from all parties to have special gentler rules for deporting asylum seekers here than in the rest of Britain. In the long term skilled immigrants such as doctors & scientists are people we should be both glad & proud to attract but, with the best will in the world, unskilled immigrants with families & little knowledge of English can add little to our culture or economy.
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IRAQ - Foreign policy is not part of the remit of this election & while we think it both right & in our long term interest that our foreign policy be based on the rule of international law, which the the invasions of Iraq & Yugoslavia clearly broke, we do not call on you to vote for us for this reason. On the other hand the Iraq war was sold to us by Labour on the basis of a lie (WMDs) & the Tories say they would have supported it even without the purported legal justification. The Yugoslav war was also sold on a lie (genocide by the Serbs) by Labour, Tories & Lib Dems. You may reasonably feel that parties which lie to you are unworthy of your vote & on that basis choose to place your vote elsewhere.
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TERRORISM - Terrorism must be opposed. On the other hand most of the damage terrorism has done to us has been through our reaction to it. For example the air security rules we apply to ALL passenger flights ensure that it costs £20 per passenger to keep bin Laden from landing in Tiree. This, in tuen, prevents the establishment of a successful air service there & elsewhere in the Highlands & does immense damage to the potential our tourist industry has. We should not allow ourselves to be frightened pointlessly.
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EUROPE - Again this is not part of the remit of this election. Nonetheless the EU Enterprise Commissioner recently confirmed speculation that our membership costs us £50 billion annually, mainly in regulatory costs, so we would prefer to leave. Wesminster government have always refued to do an official assessment of the cost to us, while denouncing the opinions of sceptics & would like Holyrood to produce an official estimate for Scorland.
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INDEPENDENCE - We do not consider "independence in Europe" to be either true independence or the solution to all our problems it is sold as. On the other hand there are circumstances, such as a refusal to allow us to cut business taxes, when we could support it. The main problem with a referendum is that if we came up with what separatists consider the "wrong" answer they would insist on another chance for us to get it "right" & another & another.
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GLOBAL WARMING- We agree with the, widely unreported, words of the President of the Czech republic who recently said that "no serious person" believes in catastrophic warming & went on to call Al Gore "insane".

It is a scam to get you to accept more taxes & more regulation of your lives. It is a scam perpetrated by the political establishment leading all the other parties.

This can be proven because it is impossible for anybody who believes in catastrophic warming caused by CO2 to oppose the only practical method of generating sufficient virtually CO2 free power - nuclear. Nonetheless those loudest in calling for you to make sacrificies in the name of alleged warming are the very people most opposed to cheap nuclear electricity. The mere fact that, despite all the predictions, the years since 1999 have all been cooler is also a bit of a giveaway that catastrophic warming isn't happening.

Thus we are absolutely opposed to Luddite measures carried out on the name of stopping global warming.

We aren't going to take it any more. If you aren't too there is only one way to vote.

SOME RECENT PRESS RELEASES

19/2/7 NO TO ROAD PRICING BUT MORE DRIVING TAXES SHOULD BE SPENT ON IMPROVING OUR ROAD INFRASTRUCTUE

The 9% Growth Party believe that proposals for road pricing would be expensive & involve the sort of expensive computerisation which the government has repeatedly had failures & mass cost overruns.

We also consider that the civil liberty aspect - that it would give government complete information & ultimately control over where anybody who drives is - has not been properly considered.

We also point out that tax on petrol already provide, at much lower collection expense, a pretty fair analogue of congestion costs in that town driving uses much more petrol per mile than country driving & waiting in queues even moreso.

We have instead called for more money to be spent on improving roads. Currently the Scottish Executive are committed to spending 70% of their transport budget on 'public transport" which is largely code for railways, despite the fact that rail makes up about 2% of traffic. We could also call for money spent on rail to be put towards fully automating selected systems.

The Glasgow/Edinburgh "motorway" should be widened & instead of putting a bullet train between the cities a far simpler automated line running 24/7 with carriages leaving every few minutes should be considered.

We have also supported building a monorail to Glasgow airport for a quoted price of £20 million rather than over £200 million for a rail link.

Spending £610 million on a rail tunnel into Edinburgh airport when all that is needed is a moving walkway from the rail line that passes by is also a waste of money.

Open quotes for a new Forth crossing should be invited from the world's engineericompaniesies. We are convinced that a tunnel would turn out to be the most cost effective option. Norway has built 730 km of tunnels at between £3.5 & £11 kilometre & we have seen no explanation as to why we cannot do so here.

We would like to see the building of tunnels not merely under theForth but also Gourock/Dunnon. to Bute, to Kintyre, to Arran, to Jura, to Islay, to Mull to the Hebrides & if the £1 billion planned for the Forth crossing hasn't run out, to Orkney, Ulster & Man.

Road traffic is the most convenient & flexible sysrem that exists & it is government's duty to spend more of the money they raise from motorists on roads - not merely for the benefit of drivers but as one of the few ways the government can help the entire economy the entire economy.

13/2/07 CZECH PRESIDENT DENOUNCES GLOBAL WARMING SCARE

"Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor

it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses

Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me.

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing"

Vaclav Klaus, dissident, Czech President
http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2007/02/12/20070212_161315_flash.htm

Perhaps Ross Finnie, who says anybody who doubts the impartiality of Al Gore's film, as we have, is "from Mars" may wish to retract.

The 9% Growth Party wishes to congratulate Mr Klaus, who is clearly able to recognise a politically correct lie, even when it is supported by a monolithic media campaign, when he sees one. One could wish that politicians not brought up under communism had developed similarly sensitive antennae.

Note that this was not picked up by any paper. This is unsurprising when you consider that his remarkable statement has been missing from virtually the entire mainstream media.

6/2/07 BBC ARE WRONG TO SAY WINDMILLS GIVE CHEAP POWER

This morning BBC Radio Scotland did a feature on the proposed new line of pylons across the Highlands to carry windfarm electricity.

During the programme the presenter referred to this as being "cheap & renewable". In fact onshore windmills cost 5.4p a unit, twice the cost of coal power & 4 times what French nuclear costs.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:XUGG4sNU4NsJ:www.countryguardian.net/generation_costs_report.pdf+nuclear+cost+royal&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&ie=UTF-8
Neil craig twice rang the programme to ask them to correct this inaccuracy. but they did not do so.

At any time the BBC should show a concern for truthful reporting. particularly on political issues. With a Scottish election coming up the BBC, who have a long history of giving large amounts of airtime to "Green" issues, spokesmen & politicians while denying it to supporters of technological progress should exercise particular caution in reporting truthfeveny & evn, in theory, without political bias.




2/2/7 IT IS WRONG & AGAINST THE LAW TO TELL CHILDREN GORE'S FILM IS IMPARTIAL

Is "An Inconvenient Truth" genuinely a non-political & impartial documentary giving nothing but the truth, the whole truth & nothing but the truth about alleged global warming. I think not. Irrespective of whether warming let alone catastrophic warming is really happening the assurance that we are going to have massive sea level rises etc. is at best highly improbable & purely spinning a questionable partisan line.

This film is being shown to every Scottish schoolchild by order of our political masters.

Ross Finnie says that there is no debate in Scotland over warming & that anybody who says there is is "from Mars". This is pure eco-fascism - when any free debate is allowed to ordinary people it has been repeatedly shown that the sceptical view is predominant & highly defencible on the facts. I would like to remind the Executive & indeed head teachers of their lawful duty:

1966 Education Act section 406 "The local education authority, governing body and head teacher shall forbid .... the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school." Section 407 requires that "where political issues are brought to the attention of pupils .... they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views."

To show the Gore propaganda film in isolation would surely be in flagrant breach of the law.




30/10/06 STERN REPORT

The Release by the government of the Stern report, with attendant media hullabaloo is being used as evidence of global warming. It is no such thing it is merely a listing of the worst possible cases in the event that the world temperature were to grow somewhere (anywhere) between 2 & 5 degrees.

In fact the total temperature increase in the last century was 0.6 degrees & still well within known temperature highs during the Medieval & Late Roman Warming Periods. With the mathematics of the Hockeystick Theory, on which the original IPCC report leaned heavily, having been proven invalid, & the temperature being stable since their report promising massive increases, there is no credible evidence to support a higher temperature.

The Stern Report does not mention the supposed costs of an increase of less than 2 degrees though this is obviously vastly more likely. This is because the effects of such a rise would largely be beneficial.

Perhaps not coincidentally the government are, at the same time, trailing proposals for massive tax increase to be sold to us on the basis of the need to fight global warming. With the Lib Dems having already made such proposals & the Conservatives visibly on the verge of the same we are clearly being prepared for massive tax increases in a Scotland where 54% of every pound spent is spent by the government. Whatever pleasures this might give the professional politicians it would increase poverty & have a disastrous long term effect on our economy.

The 9% GROWTH Party is unambiguous in saying that catastrophic Global Warming is a myth & that we do far more harm to ourselves through such fears than warming could ever do. With Kyoto costing £400 million a day worldwide & having, according to its own calculations, cut global temperature by 2 thousandths of a degree we, virtually alone, are offering the voters reasonable policies.



26/10/06 NUCLEAR POWER

Energy analysts Wood MacKenzie have warned that Britain faces the real possibility, though not yet probability of blackouts this winter because we are not replacing our ageing reactors.

There is no question that we will face winter blackouts on a massive scale if we do not replace our current reactors & the portion of our coal power that will fail to meet new emission standards the EU have imposed for 2015. In Scotland this amounts to half our electricity. There is no possibility whatsoever that this can be fully replaced by windmills, tidal, cabin capture. fusion or fairy dust within this timescale.
Whether we have blackouts & deaths this winter or not we will inevitably have them soon if we don't build new nuclear power before Hunterston closes in 2011.
Electricity has to be produced somewhere it doesn't just come out of the sockets by magic.

Every single "environmentally aware" politician & activist knows this. Every single one of them who has opposed nuclear power is quite deliberately guilty of killing 24,000 UK pensioners who die because of fuel poverty every year. Every single one of them will be as guilty of each death occurring during blackouts as Stalin was for the Soviet famine deaths. Such people should be brought to justice.

There is no excuse whatsoever for current high electricity prices which kill people & damage our economy & even less (if less than zero is possible) for the coming blackouts

At the spring 2001 Scottish Lib Dem conference the 9% Growth Party leader, Neil Craig, who was then a Lib Dem said in a speech that a failure to support new nuclear power "would be & would be seen to be grossly irresponsible". In reply Ross Finnie guaranted that the Scottish Executive would not 'allow" blackouts. Mr Craig stands by his statement & asks the Executive to repeat their guarantee.

ONE OF THOSE WARMING SCEPTICS THE LIB DEMS SAY ARE "FROM MARS"

Haclav Klaus

Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor

it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses

Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me.

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing

Obviously our media will mention this barely if at all (but it is going round the net) so they won't have to ask the likes of Ross Finnie who said anybody who doubted the impartiality of Gore's film was "from Mars" if he is really saying that the former world famous dissident & Czech President is really an alien.

2 PRESS RELEASES NAILING PROPAGANDA LIES

This morning BBC Radio Scotland did a feature on the proposed new line of pylons across the Highlands to carry windfarm electricity.

During the programme the presenter referred to this as being "cheap & renewable". In fact onshore windmills cost 5.4p a unit, twice the cost of coal power & 4 times what French nuclear costs.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:XUGG4sNU4NsJ:www.countryguardian.net/generation_costs_report.pdf+nuclear+cost+royal&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&ie=UTF-8

Neil raig twice rang the programme to ask them to correct this inaccuracy. but they did not do so.

At any time the BBC should show a concern for truthful reporting. particularly on political issues. With a Scottish election coming up the BBC, who have a long history of giving large amounts of airtime to "Green" issues, spokesmen & politicians while denying it to supporters of technological progress should exercise particular caution in reporting truthfully & evn, in theory, without political bias.

The BBC have not responded
-----------------------------
Is "An Inconvenient Truth" genuinely a non-political & impartial documentary giving nothing but the truth, the whole truth & nothing but the truth about alleged global warming. I think not. Irrespective of whether warming let alone catastrophic warming is really happening the assurance that we are going to have massive sea level rises etc. is at best highly improbable & purely spinning a questionable partisan line.

This film is being shown to every Scottish schoolchild by order of our political masters.

Ross Finnie says that there is no debate in Scotland over warming & that anybody who says there is is "from Mars". This is pure eco-fascism - when any free debate is allowed to ordinary people it has been repeatedly shown that the sceptical view is predominant & highly defencible on the facts. I would like to remind the Executive & indeed head teachers of their lawful duty:

1966 Education Act section 406 "The local education authority, governing body and head teacher shall forbid .... the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school." Section 407 requires that "where political issues are brought to the attention of pupils .... they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views."

To show the Gore propaganda film in isolation would surely be in flagrant breach of the law.

£12 MILLION OF YOUR MONEY

The Debt Arrangement Scheme (DAS), which helps people rearrange their debts so they can pay them off, was launched in 2004 as a flagship Executive policy to tackle Scots' spiralling debt. Since then, it has ploughed close to £12 million into setting up the service and supporting advisers whose job it is to deliver it.

Yet in that time, the advisers have helped Scots with a total of only £3.2 million of debt.

Politicians and accountants last night said the scheme was far too bureaucratic.

The Executive admitted the take-up of Debt Payment Plans was "lower than hoped for" but said it would be reformed.

The real problem with this is not just that it was ever done but that our leaders don't want to axe it merely "reform" it & that the Tories & SNP are barely better

Kenny MacAskill, an SNP MSP for the Lothians, said: "The idea is right but not the implementation ......David McLetchie, the Conservative MSP for Edinburgh Pentlands, said: "The DAS is a good idea, but it's not working in practice

No it isn't. If it is doing that badly it should be axed immediately not "reformed" & given another chance to blow another £12 million. This is the problem with our government spending having got out of control & politicians being afraid to grasp this nettle.

£12 million could cut business rates by 1%. Does anybody believe there are not 100 other government activities similarly useless which could be axed without harm? There is absolutely no reason why Scotland cannot have a very successful growing economy indeed if we let the people make use of more of the 55% of the economy the government takes & spends.

I don't think this is just socialism since David McLetchie mentioned as someone who didn't want to axe it, is no socialist. Though socialism is an 'ism that fits with state bureaucracy better than most. The problem is that there is very little incentive for anybody of any party to cut spending & a culture in Holyrood of throwing money.

It must be made possible to fire public "servants". Nobody else has a job for life. Beyond that I would like to see a cap on government spending. Any other industry expects to make efficiency savings of about 2% a year & government clearly has room for this. A 2% cut in real terms would be the equivalent of no inflationary increase. The savings should then be devoted to cutting corporation tax, business rates & income tax in that order. This would get the economy moving in a world beating way.

CONSERVATIVE MANIFESTO - STIRRING UP APATHY

The Tories have announced that their Scottish manifesto will offer £100 million more for drug adicts & ...... that is about it.

THE Scottish Conservatives have decided to ditch a number of key policies for this year's Scottish Parliament election and concentrate instead on crime and drugs, it emerged yesterday.

Annabel Goldie, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, revealed she had dropped her party's pledge to axe the graduate endowment - the payment in lieu of tuition fees paid by students after they graduate.

The Tories have also dropped their policy of taking education out of the hands of councils and their commitment to cut council tax by 35 per cent for all households.

Miss Goldie also confirmed her intention not to offer any income tax cuts. Instead, the Conservatives will spend £100 million on drug rehabilitation and another £80 million rejuvenating crumbling town centres.

There has been much internal party debate on whether to use the so-called Tartan Tax, the parliament's ability to cut income tax by 3p in the pound, to lower taxes in Scotland. However, despite pressure from within the party, Miss Goldie has decided not to offer income tax cuts to the electorate this year.

Why would anybody want to vote for this? Scotland is in comparative economic decline. We have a depressing, incompetent Labour/SLD administration who can think of nothing more than windmills & nanny bans. Scotland is crying out for something new & all they can do is hide in a corner & limit themselves to a couple of PC tokens. They have given the SNP, ourselves & UKIP a free hand to stand for business tax cuts & Irish style growth.

One gets the impression they just want to get the election out of the way, lose a few seats & get back to sleep in Holyrood.

DIRTY TRICKS AT THE HERALD

The day following the Herald letter mentioned below they published a letter specificlycalling for a reply from me (in fact an apology) claiming my letter was provably wrong. The basis for that claim was that the writer said Scotland had already reached 10% of our electricity coming from windmills.

The true figure is 3-4% as everybody on the Herald with any knowledge of the field must be aware. Indeed a commenter on the Scotsman online mentioned it asking with amusement if I was answering it.

I had already done so & the Herald have refused to allow me any right of reply. I believe they have also rejected other letters pointing out this obvious untruth.

By using this writer as a catspaw & not allowing a defence the Herald have clearly made & deliberately maintained an attack on this party they know to be untrue.

If they wish to comment I will allow them the right they denied me.

HAS THE GREEN MOVEMENT KILLED MORE PEOPLE THAN HITLER - YES

In many ways the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, about the way pesticides were alleged to be killing birds to such an extent that they would one day soon be wiped out, was the start of the modern environmentalist movement. It certainly introduced all the Grens' favourite hobby horses - unseen poisons, evil big companies manufacturing the aforesaid poisons, evil big companies lying about their poison being safe to make profits, catastrophe that ordinary people know nothing about but only the elite environmentalists do & the ever popular desire to ban things. Also the fact that the research denouncing DDT has been essentially disproved.

It was a hit & as a direct effect the Greens used their full power on western governments, who rarely object to excuses to throw their weight about, to enforce a de facto international ban on DDT.

By this stage DDT had already cleared malaria from the western world (the southern US particularly used to suffer) so they had no worries. Indeed the international campaign against malaria had managed to get deaths worldwide down to 50,000. It is now estimated at 2 million.

Since the supposed ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler.
State of Fear by Michael Crichton

There are many other cases one could use - the 25,000 pensioners in Britain who die of hypothermia annually due to fuel poverty when we could halve electricity costs by going nuclear. 150,000 who die from black lung & emphysema as a result of the coal industry, African children who suffer brain damage or death due to lack of protein when we have, but are banning, genetically modified rice with high protein levels.

The Greens are usually portrayed by our media as an ethical cuddly if somewhat weird bunch. Just saying you are nice, in the traditional manner of Tony Blair, is not enough. A movement must be judged by what it does not what it says it wants to do.

The Green movement has clearly killed more people than Hitler & restricted human potential far more. They must be judged on that record.

HERALD LETTER WARNING OF BLACKOUTS

Another letter in the Herald today:

To say that windmills work 90% of the time, as Kerr MacGregor of Scottish Solar does (January 13), is true but misleading. The amount of power produced varies roughly with the cube of windspeed up to the optimum of about 24mph. Thus a 6mph wind does indeed produce electricity, but only about 1/64th of capacity, which will not keep many lights on. This is why windmills overall produce about 27% of their rated power performance. Whenever you see another politician saying that such and such new wind farm will produce power for 50,000 people, it won't. Even with "planned downtime" - which, being planned, can be set for when demand is low - conventional generators are vastly more reliable.

Storing power is less feasible than suggested. The only serious method is the pump storage system we use at Cruachan which loses 25% of the power put into it due to inherent inefficiencies and is, in any case, comparable in expense to a new conventional generator. If onshore wind is already twice as expensive as coal generation and four times as much as nuclear, the additional expense of building more pump storage facilities can be imagined. As Denmark and Germany have found, the inherent instability of the system means that it is very difficult to get windpower above 10% of the grid.

All our political leaders know this and know that if we do not now start building the replacements for the 50% of our power produced by Hunterston, Torness and the high-emission coal plants due to close in the next decade and a half, we are going to have blackouts on a massive scale. Windmills are an expensive token to give the appearance of action. Despite the hysteria, nuclear is the safest and cheapest method of generating electricity, as well as being effectively CO2-free. If more of them do not find the guts to say so, we are going to have many more hypothermia deaths.

GROWTH THROUGH CORPORATION TAX CUTS / THE LIB DEM ALLEGED ENTHUSIASM & THEIR EXPULSION OF NEIL CRAIG

A letter in the Herald today:

The letter from Iain McMillan of CBI Scotland delineating the constitutional powers of Scotland was interesting. I agree with him that Holyrood could do far more to help economic growth (over the last 8 years its "contribution" has been a massive increase in regulation, a massive increase in the state sector & increased business rates, the latter being very slowly removed)) without going for corporation tax cuts. Nonetheless in criticising George Lyon for calling for such cuts he gives no actual reason why they should not also be made. If small moves, such as business rate cuts, will do a little good surely big actions are likely to do a lot. Certainly the case in Ireland, which he does not mention, is that corporation tax & regulatory cuts have lead to 16 years of 7% growth transforming them into one of the wealthiest countries in the world even ahead of the USA. Mr McMillan gives no reason why we cannot do the same & neither, it appears, can anybody else. So lets do something.

It is also good to see a Lib Dem MSP calling for corporation tax cuts. Such a change of heart is welcome, if barely credible. It is only a year since I was expelled from the Lib Dems for the political incorrectness of having had letters published in Scottish newspapers, including the Herald, calling for such corporation tax cuts & also for replacing our aging nuclear reactors. Before the lights go out. The party executive unanimously voted that such positions were "to right wing" to even be discussed & "illiberal". Could it be that there is an election coming up?
Yours Faithfully
Neil Craig
9% Growth Party

This is the first time any newspaper, except the Glasgow West End Times, has reported my expulsion. It will be interesting to see if anybody in the party is willing to write in & defend their position - from previous experience I suspect not. I will update if they do.

This is also the first occasion when a newspaper has used the 9% Growth Party name in the address to a letter of mine.

A SIMPLE GUIDE TO A SUCCESSFUL NATION

This is an important article - a very well researched PDF of 68 pages of a statistically investigation of what causes economic growth.

To give away the ending the answer is ECONOMIC FREEDOM. Perhaps not startlingly unexpected but proven in great detail.

It was written for the South African government shortly after the end of apartheid & has, for reasons which may be those mentioned on page 10, not been absorbed by them. Since economic growth is far & away the most effective way of improving the total population's lives I would like to think that anybody invol;ved in government would at least make themselves aware of this.

POINTS

p3 Table of contents

P9 "When published data for all countries has been analyzed the correlation between higher taxes & lower growth (which exists in OECD countries) is not found"

p 10 "During recent years, simple techniques have developed for predicting probable effects of individual measures. It should therefore be easy for all countries to prosper, yet very few do, which suggests that policy makers in most countries:

Adopt sub-optimal or counter-productive policies unwittingly;

Do not use readily available techniques to avoid, identify and correct mistakes, or

Have higher priority anti-growth objectives." (since this report was prepared for the new South African government it seems itself proof of government not making growth a priority - this suggests that what is needed to obtain growth is to put it higher on the political agenda - precisely the intent of the 9% Growth Party & achievable without becoming a majority party)

p12 "There is no evidence that foreign "aid" has the potential to "make poverty history". On the contrary, the evidence suggests that aid may be harmful......The aid paradox is that to be a positive incentive, aid would have to go to countries where it is not needed, that is, where governments adopt policies that
result in high growth." (I would point out that aid recipients are self selecting as failed states statistics shown a correlation between aid & failure may be because more aid is the effect rather than the cause)

p13 "What matters, as far as economic growth is concerned, is not the characteristics
of rich countries, but of high-growth countries." The fact that Ireland & Norway are richer than us doesn't matter. The fact Ireland is growing far faster than us should be a lesson)

p 25 "Everything gets better with growth....
few people realise how much faster countries become much wealthier if they achieve just slightly higher growth rates" (indeed few people understand in their bones how fast compound growth in anything works)

p40 "Most of the world's top 10 richest or highest growth countries never had
colonies"

p41 "welfare states under-perform on average, which could also be attributable to the fact that welfare statism tends to coincide with other policies which compromise growth, Sweden being the conspicuous exception, where the market has been characterised by regulatory liberalism and privatisation." (I would also hold up Singapore have a cradle to grave welfare system, though one which is cost conscious, & has an obviously high growth rate)

p 43 "The world's experience appears to support the view that economic freedom may be a necessary and sufficient condition for prosperity"

p50 "Firstly, China cannot be thought of as a single economy or even as a single country as far as its economy is concerned. The diversity of economic systems within China, from one province to another, is bigger than the diversity of economic systems internationally. Secondly, almost all its growth (industrialisation, investment, etc) is not only confined to provinces with high scores on the "marketisation index", but to a few special zones. Thirdly, these zones have the freest economies on earth, if not the freest economies the world has ever known."

PP50 & 51 - China's 10% annual growth conceals even greater success. China is not an enormous free economy, it is a range of economies from Guandong province which is nearly as free as Hong Kong (& growing at about 20%) to Quinghai, whicheconomicallyconomicly free market than the world's least free independent country Burma accordinglyordeingly. China is "close to a controlled experiment in social science". An experiment which goes largely unnoticed here. This proves 2 things.

Firstly that 10% growth is not a maximum beyond which other countries cannot aim but merely an AVERAGE. If China has a province the size of European countries (85 million) growing at 20% then a mere 9% is fully achievable here (granted internal movement in China means the population is growing far faster than anybody would for the UK as a whole & this probably considerably helps growth). Applying this to the Scottish example it suggests that we can continue falling behind England & continue to see the decline of Scotland's population if we choose to do nothing. Or we can act.

Secondly that the Chinese "bubble" is not going to burst, indeed because the faster growing provinces are becoming an ever larger proportion of the economy we should expect their 10% growth, which represents the average, to increase.

PP 54 & 55 - Countries with high taxation levels are not automatically going to have lower growth rates than those with high taxation. This comes as a surprise to free marketists & somewhat less so to me, who at one stage was a great supporter of the state capitalism which really did produce high growth in the early days of the USSR. The reason seems to be that if government spends the money as wisely as the free market it will achieve at least as good results. To spend effectively government should (1) build infrastructure especially transport, (2) provide services rather than regulate (ie the NHS rather than smoking police) (3) do things that don't merely duplicate what the market does (don't run the railways) (4) increase efficiency by outsourcing & privatisation. To extend my point about the early USSR I believe that where government is bad is in the long term - because it doesn't have the spur of bankruptcy an efficient government enterprise will, over time, acinefficienciesficiences. I believe that is what happened to NASA & the USSR, both government organisations which once performed spectacularly & over time became mired in tbureaucracieseacracies. By comparison a Scottish executive which insists on spending 70% of its transport budget on outdated railways & prefers windmills to nuclear has managed to omit the first stage of the process.

P58 - Most studies find that less regulated countries out perform more regulated ones (unsurprisng) & that regulations cost the people 20 times more than they cost the government (surprising).

p60 - "The relative size of education budgets does not significantly influence growth"

THE SCOTTISH TUNNELS PROJECT

The Scottish Executive seem to have made up their mind about the need for a new Forth crossing. Up to now all the semi-official word has been about another bridge but the Forth Tunnel Action Group & Roy Pedersen among others have made a very good case that a tunnel would be faster to build, cheaper & lower maintenance. While a bridge will cost about a billion tunnels have been credibly costed at between £500 & £250 million. The latter depending on achieving the same cost standards as Norway has achieved. Over recent years, because of new bortechnologylogy, tunneling has become much cheaper - something the Norwegians have noticed.

This brought me to look up Norway's tunneling record & it is impressive.

There are over 900 road tunnels in Norway. The total length of the tunnels is over 750 km. [1]

The longest road tunnels (>7 km, with opening year and length)
Lardalstunnelen, 2000, 24505 m
Gudvangatunnel, 1991, 11428 m
Folgefonntunnel, 2001, 11150 m
Korgfjelltunnelen, 2005, 8530 m

Almost all of them built between 1982 & 2000. Clearly there would be substantial cost savings doing a lot of tunneling rather than just one project. IndeNorwegianina cost are extremely competitive. This goes into more detail on construction & cost

Construction costs for the tunnels which are now open are shown in Figure 2. All costs are based on year 2000 costs, according to price indexes of the Ministry of Transportation and Communication.
From 1992 to 2000, prices have increased linearly by 37 per cent. This is higher than the official price index. The reason for this is the improvement in tunnel standards, which has not been compensated for in the Ministry's price index.
Costs for planning and field work are not included for all of the tunnels. It is estimated that these costs are somewhere between NOK 2,000 & 4,000 per metre tunnel. This does not apply to the last tunnels which have been completed, where all costs are included in the survey.
The total construction costs vary from NOK 35,000 to 115,000 per metre. The Tromsasund tunnel is expensive because of its double tubes, whilst the Nordkapp tunnel is costly because of the poor rock quality in the tunnel.
The conclusions to be drawn is that subsea tunnels have become cheaper, but that rock conditions are decisive for the final price.

Since there are 11 Kroner to the pound this makes tunneling costs from £3.2 million per kilometer to £10 million. Even with multilane dual carriageway & motorways we are talking about a pretty fair saving.

Useful Tunnels Projects in Scotland

Forth Crossing - I firmly believe the Forth Road Bridge can be reroped for £100 million but with traffic increases an additional tunnel would be worthwhile.

Glasgow Motorway Extention - The present above ground proposal is costed at £500 million apparrently relocting costs & because some of the ground is said to be polluted by chrome. Obviously a tunnel with bypass outlets would be far cheaper & would not cause the pollution problems opponents claim to be motivated by.

Gourock/Dunoon - Much of Argyllshire is remote from the central belt because of long lochs & roads which need to go round them. The road distance between Gourock & Dunokilometerskilometres despite facing each other across the Clyde.

Cowal Penisula/Bute - A few miles south of Dunoon. With 2 tunnels Rothesay would be about 35 miles. A pleasnt commute whereas now it takes virtually a full day including ferry.

Loch Fyne Tunnel - There are several possible crossings leading on from the Dunoon crossing which would put the Kintyre peninsula within about 60 miles of Glasgow.

Arran - Either from Ayrshire (the longer & more expensive tunnel) or from Kintyre which could tie into the roads mentioned above.

Oban Mull - Makes the place accessible to 10s of thousands of Balymory fans.

Kintyre/Jura - Another almost uninhabited island which could become a one hour drive from Glasgow.

Islay/Kintyre or Jura - Direct from Kintyre would be about 15 miles, linking to Jura would be much cheaper. Again this island has a very small population because it is, by current methods, inaccessible. Islay is know as the Queen of the Hebrides because, being the most southerly & well out into the Gulf Stream it used to be the capital of the Lordship of the Isles. When the ancient Scots kingdom & later Viking lordship communicated by sea it was very centrally located but because our transport methods are now road based it is isolated. With an area similar to the Isle of Man & & more temperate weather, because of the Gulf Stream, it could be as prosperous if it were an hour & a half drive from Glasgow.

Orkney/Mainland - This has already been proposed. It would be expensive but Orkney has an oil fund & should be prepared to put up most of the funding.

Ulster/Galloway or Kintyre - About 15 miles from Kintyre, 25 from Galloway. A Kintyre tunnel was seriously looked at last century - the technology has improved since. I assume that Ulster, which would benefit even more than Scotland would put up a proportionate share of the cost.

Isle of Man/Galloway - About 20 miles. Man could reasonably be expected to put up the bulk of the money.

Skye/Lewis - Again about 20 miles.
------------
I don't say that all these will work & there may well be others where a tunnel would be a practical way from one glen to another. I do say that improving transport infrastructure is something where government investment almost always pays off. I can think of nothing which would so revitalise the Island communities. Check the map yourself for ideas.

Paying for it

The Executive have already talked of a Forth Bridge costing a billion & Glasgow motorway £500 million. This entire programme might well cost less. Beyond that the use of a land capture tax, whereby a proportion of the increase in value of land sales on the isles, Cowal or even Fife could be taken as payment. After that some money could be retained by local development corporations. Islay, for example has 3,000 inhabitants over 600 square miles so the land value cannot be high. It wouldn't take the building of many homes there to pay for a tunnel. There could also be a case for giving the development organisation authority comparable to that of the Manx Parliament. Home Rule did them no harm.

ANOTHER WAY TO PROVIDE UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

1) High resolution video record a couple dozen people each teaching the same college course (e.g. calculus, freshman physics, freshman chemistry, partial differential equations, etc).

2) Make those video recordings free or very cheap to download on the internet. Sell them as DVDs too.

3) Put automated tests on the web where anyone can test their ability to do, say, calculus, freshman physics, etc).

4) Have testing days where you can go to a room and say what you want to be tested in (e.g. calculus, freshman physics, etc). Proctors in the room prevent cheating. Tests are designed by the appropriate British professional societies. Then pay a fee and sit down at a PC that shows you the test questions (variations thereon generated automatically with different numbers and such) and you write in paper to figure out the answers. Then you enter the answers.

5) At the end of the test they tell you if you passed and with what score and that score goes into a database. You then can say you passed freshman chemistry or organic chemistry or inorganic chemistry or linear algebra.

6) Repeat process until the professional societies say that you have demonstrated your understanding of a bachelor's degree worth of chemistry, physics, math, mechanical engineering, accounting, or other useful topics.

Granted, this does not work so well for topics like Dramatic Arts. But it would save probably tens of thousands of pounds for each person who wants to earn a degree in an objectively measurable topic.

The idea is not original with me however it is apparent that, if this is on the net, it would be possible for anybody able to visit Scotland & able to paythe testing fees to seek such a degree. So long as there is no relaxation, if anything the opposite, in the standards required a degree from Edinburgh, or indeed Islay University would be desirable anywhere.

In many ways this is what the Open University could have been had it been willing to divorce itself a little more from conventional education. It is something we could do now.

WHY THE 9% GROWTH PARTY OPPOSES SOLVING GLOBAL WARMING AT 10th THE COST OF THE LEWIS WINDFARM

This Rolling Stone article goes into 6 pages on stopping global warming by proactive means. I am not going to reprint the whole thing (I have discussed this before) anyway but here:

Wood hooked up his laptop, threw his first slide onto the screen and got down to business: What if all the conventional thinking about how to deal with global warming was wrong? What if you could do an end run around carbon-trading schemes and international treaties and political gridlock and actually solve the problem? And what if the cost to get started was not trillions of dollars but $100 million a year -- less than the cost of a good-size wind farm?

Wood's proposal was not technologically complex. It's based on the idea, well-proven by atmospheric scientists, that volcano eruptions alter the climate for months by loading the skies with tiny particles that act as mini-reflectors, shading out sunlight and cooling the Earth. Why not apply the same principles to saving the Arctic? Getting the particles into the stratosphere wouldn't be a problem -- you could generate them easily enough by burning sulfur, then dumping the particles out of high-flying 747s, spraying them into the sky with long hoses or even shooting them up there with naval artillery. They'd be invisible to the naked eye, Wood argued, and harmless to the environment. Depending on the number of particles you injected, you could not only stabilize Greenland's polar ice -- you could actually grow it. Results would be quick: If you started spraying particles into the stratosphere tomorrow, you'd see changes in the ice within a few months. And if it worked over the Arctic, it would be simple enough to expand the program to encompass the rest of the planet. In effect, you could create a global thermostat, one that people could dial up or down to suit their needs (or the needs of polar bears).

By comparison the Lewis windfarm, which is not going to solve 1000th part of the alleged warming, is being costed at £500 million. Perhaps Scotland should just cough up the £50 million to save the world & be done with it.

Actually I would be opposed to doing this until we know any non-beneficial warming is actually taking place. For entirely different reasons a number of catastrophe enthusiasts held the same view:

Bill Nordhaus, a Yale economist, worried about political implications: Wasn't this simply a way of enabling more fossil-fuel use, like giving methadone to a heroin addict? If people believe there is a solution to global warming that does not require hard choices, how can we ever make the case that they need to change their lives and cut emissions?

This is also the Nicol Stephen reason for opposing nuclear - that if we solve this "problem" the common people will never again be persuaded to accept all the nonsense regulations & taxes we want to heap on them.

ELECTRICITY DEMAND COULD OUTSTRIP SUPPLY BY 23% BY 2015

The energy crisis is far worse and will begin hitting far earlier than the Government believes, a top power industry consultant has claimed.

A report from LogicaCMG states that by 2015 energy demand could outstrip supply by 23% with climate change and demand for electricity to power air-conditioning causing blackouts all year round.

LogicaCMG says its analysis contrasts with the warning in the Government's Energy Review which suggested that by 2025 demand could outstrip supply by 30%.....
------------------------
This should be taken very seriously. It is is grossly irresponsible for politicians to ignore this & witter on about somebody some day finding a working sort of renewable that might give us enough power or indeed about spending 5 years doing paperwork before we stat building new reactors. People are going to die in large numbers if we have blackouts.

SCOTTISH LABOUR FOLLOWS 9% GROWTH PARTY'S LEAD (at least a bit)

The news that Jack McConnell is willing to stand up to the treasury in support of corporation tax cuts is the best news for the Scottish economy for years. I never thought he had it in him.

This is certainly a great turnaround. For 3 years I tried to get the Scottish Liberal Democrats to at least discuss such a proposal & was eventually expelled, the party Executive having unanimously endorsed a report on me saying that such a proposal was "too right wing" to even think about (the founders of the original Liberal Party who were followers of Adam Smith must be spinning in their graves).

Last year, after the SNP came out for cutting corporations tax, the Scotsman published a letter from me (letter 25/3/5) saying the SNP were now "easily the most economically competent party in Britain"

Ireland's success in going from 2/3rds our standard of living in 1989 to 40% better off is astounding & more noticeable in Scotland than Westminster.

Nonetheless this almost complete reversal of Holyrood political opinion shows how, by trying the job, our politicians are growing from posturing ex-councilors to real leaders.

However to achieve Ireland's growth rate we need not just low corporation tax but also to reduce the regulatory thicket, particularly on house building, as they did.

On top of this news we have another report that Labour's Scottish manifesto will contain a promise that nuclear must be part of the mix.

Labour's glossy final manifesto policy document, agreed by ministers, MSPs and senior activists, is almost mocking. "No political party can be taken seriously on climate change if it refuses out of hand to consider any source of energy generation that is carbon free, such as renewable energy or nuclear."
.

Nice to see Scottish Labour trying to be taken seriously.

Seriously. Taking this together with McConnell's decision to go for corporation tax reductions if Northern Ireland gets them we are looking at, an at least nominally, sensible Labour party.

Lets not go too far - after all these aren't promises but just offers to look at, they are also made in a pre-election period when cynicism is justified & finally we have the experience of Jack's previous promise just before the last election, that economic growth would his "number one priority" followed by a full term of doing almost nothing. Also we should note that support of corporation tax cuts can mean no more than a token cut & that Labour's national nuclear plans still involve spending about 5 years deciding whether French & American reactors can be licensed as workable & Hunterston & Torness suitable as sites for new reactors despite the obvious fact that they have been doing so for decades. Since Hunterson is due to close in 2011 & it takes 4 years to build a reactor we obviously cannot spend an extra 5 on paperwork.

Nonetheless it is clear that we are seeing an enormous shift in the Scottish "political class" & that there is now, at least if manifestos are to be trusted, a large majority for classic liberal economic growth policies & if those SNP supporters opposed to blackouts say so, also for nuclear power.

If we can match Ireland's growth with cuts in corporation tax & regulations we can exceed it if we also build enough economical reliable nuclear electricity.

The difficulty will be keeping them to more than token acts after the election & of course moving "respectable" political opinion on our other policies.

SCOTTISH LABOUR MOVES ON CORPORATION TAX CUTS

The news that Jack McConnell is willing to stand up to the treasury over corporation tax cuts is the best news for the Scottish economy for years. I never thought he had it in him. Perhaps his recent visit to Ireland may have opened his eyes.

This is certainly a great turnaround. For 3 years I tried to get the Scottish Liberal Democrats to at least discuss such a proposal & was eventually expelled, the party Executive having unanimously endorsed a report on me saying that such a proposal was "too right wing" to even think about (the founders of the original Liberal Party who were followers of Adam Smith must be spinning in their graves).

Last year, after the SNP came out for cutting corporations tax, the Scotsman published a letter from me (letter 25/3/5) saying the SNP were now "easily the most economically progressive party in Scotland and, while they may not appreciate the honour, in the United Kingdom".

Subsequently new SLD leader Nicol Stephen came out for a fairly token cut in business rates which was duly adopted.

Unfortunately the Tories have entirely failed to enter this debate though to be fair they did call for business rates cuts long before the SLD.

Ireland's success in going from 2/3rds our standard of living in 1989 to 40% better off is astounding & more noticeable in Scotland than Westminster.

Nonetheless this almost complete reversal of Holyrood political opinion shows how, by trying the job, our politicians are growing from posturing ex-councilors to real leaders.

It looks likely that next year's election will produce a Parliament committed to growth, perhaps with a Labour/SNP Executive, the Tories playing catch up & only the SLD & Greens (whose reaction to the business rate cut was to denounce it as showing "to much concern for growth") in opposition.

However to achieve Ireland's growth rate we need not just low corporation tax but also to reduce the regulatory thicket, particularly on house building, as they did.

To surpass Ireland we should allow the building of enough nuclear power stations to fully and cheaply satisfy demand. On this Jack has an advantage in that the Scottish Labour Conference, without being pushed by the leadership, has overwhelmingly supported more nuclear.

I must admit to feeling very very pleased at this. I can't say if my early appearance before this bandwagon started moving helped much but certainly I was there & I would like to think it did.

TRANSPORT BUDGET

The Executive are committed to putting 70% of their transport budget into public transport which effectively means railways. Since road traffic amounts to 43 billion kilometers a year & rail traffic about 1 billion it is obvious that this 70% will be largely wasted, & that it is being done for purely political reasons. If the money was spent proportionately to traffic need there would be no problem widening the M8 & properly linking it to the Edinburgh bypass & that this would be far more use in making transport between the cities easier than the proposed spending of £3 billion on a high speed rail link.

We should put the Executive's transport budget under the control of a committee of qualified engineers rather than politicians, with instructions to hand out contracts on commercial terms & to decide on improvements purely on the basis of cost effective improvements in traffic flow.

REFERENCES
Department intends that 70 per cent of its transport budget will be spent on public transport in the nine years to 2010/11 (sect 1.6)

Scottish transport Statistics They only give the number of train journeys at 63 million whereas car journeys are only given, for some reason, as 43 billion kilometers travelled but assuming 16 kilometers ae the average, which is probably high considering most train journeys are to & from work, we get 1 billion kilometers.

EUROPEAN BLACKOUT

"A power shortage in Germany triggered a cascade of blackouts across Europe, halting trains, trapping people in elevators and plunging millions of homes into darkness. But the situation appeared to be back to normal on most of the continent by Sunday.

The private German company, E.On AG, said the problem began in its network in northwestern Germany, possibly after it disconnected a high-power transmission line to allow a ship to pass safely on the Ems River. But it stressed the cause was still under investigation.

Swathes of Germany and France were badly hit by the cuts late Saturday. Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain were also affected.

The German power company RWE AG said a shortfall in supplies to the European power grid caused many substations to shut down automatically."

This is a sign that the grid is working at maximum capacity. A whole load of substations all trip out one after the other because each closure sends the next into overload. Any problem of "overdemand" is at least equally one of undersupply & in this case is because Germany isn't building the power supplies it needs because nuclear, the obvious one, isn't politically popular, & windmills don't work. That this is happening so early in the winter, in what is agreed to be a light winter, so far, is very troubling. With Scotland about to lose 35% of our nuclear & 50% including the high emission coal plants when new EU rules come in in 2015, can we be far behind?

And can we expect our politicians to accept that it is purely because of their own gross irresponsibility when it does?

STERN REPORT - BJORN LOMBERG'S DISSECTION

This is a review of the Stern Report in the Wall Street Journal by Bjorn Lomberg, the academic who started as a Green supporter & decided to investigate the case being put by the warming skeptics. On finding that they were correct he had the honesty to say so & got vilified by Gren eco-fascists as a result.

His review proves that on a number of points Stern has lied used figure from reports he likes while, presumably deliberately, missing out further figures from the same report which harm his case.

It can be read on http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182

Since we live in a country where Channel 4 news can specific state that they "are going to report all sides" of the reaction to the Stern Report & then allow not one word from anybody skeptical, I suspect the mainstream media will be protecting you from hearing anything about this.

A CALL FOR YOU TO BECOME ACTIVE IN POLITICS - Preferably 9% GROWTH but whatever party you choose - Democracy doesn't come free - we have to work at it

The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.
--Plato

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
--Mark Twain

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
_ Pericles


http://www.toolz4schoolz.com/misc-government.shtml
Other political quotes worth reading. I would be interested in any others.

ONLY 28% OF CIVIL SERVANTS THINK SCOTLAND HAS SOUND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

This recent article in Scotland on Sunday reported how, in their assessments 99.6% of Scottish civil servants found themselves to be either effective or exceptional.

Further down, after pointing out that even within the service this was found embarassing was this

The report comes in the wake of another internal survey which found growing concern within the civil service that it was not performing well. Only 27% of civil servants believed that the Executive makes good use of public money.

The survey found that only half believed any checks were made before money was spent. Only 28% of staff said they believed there was a culture of sound financial management.

Previously the 9% Growth Party has said that we could achieve major efficieny improvements merely by modern management, not hiring into Ministries which have not achieved a 2% shrinkage annually & freezing spending. Almost any private industry expects to achieve productivity increases of 2% a year.

This news of a major lack of financial control suggests that there is even more room for improvement than previously thought.

INDEPENDENCE - SoS LETTER

Last week Scotland on Sunday did an article about independence possibly being inevitable. Written more in terms of relaxing to the inevitable than pleasure:

Such a scenario is currently being painted by former SNP MSP Mike Russell who, along with businessman Dennis MacLeod, has written 'Grasping the Thistle', a 250-page prospectus charting a new way forward for the independence movement. The pair contend that the gradualist approach is the only possible route. "What we may need," they argue, "is devolution stage two, a necessary staging post on the way to the future. Some might call such a staging post a New Union - a constitutional watering station which allows Scots to continue to move forward, works as a means of persuading those who are still reluctant and opens up new opportunities by removing the economic disadvantages of the old Union."

All matters reserved to Westminster would be devolved to Holyrood, apart from foreign affairs and military command, they suggest. By doing so, the Scots - and the English - would have a chance to test the waters before deciding whether to make the break.

I put up a comment

The status quo is not an option if only because the English correctly feel that Scots voters have more power than English ones.

A fully federal system whereby England had its own Parliament, or better yet several regional ones would be best. Federation allows each unit to try different solutions to similar problems & find which works best (this is known as the scientific method). In that case unsuccessful solutions can be as useful a learning experience as successful ones. Despite the complacent Labour view that our economy is somehow doing well, we have been very successful at providing 'orrible warnings.

The SNP also believe in federalism it is just that their federation would be led from Brussels & Scotland would be an even smaller & more powerless part of it.

Which is pretty much my position. I do not exclude independence from England if it is clearly to our advantage or we are forced into it by English Tory intransigence (many southern Tories are licking their lips at the thought of a UK without Scots Labour voters), but believe we have so very much more in common with England & Wales than the EU states that a Federation of Great Britain is the preferable solution. I do not see the point of a Scotland as a "separate" part of the EU.

Yesterday I got an email from Scotland on Sunday saying they were producing a follow up article tomorrow using some email comment & that mine were "among those that stood out". I'll look forward to it.

FOLLOW UP
This is the letter on the letters page rather than part of an article. It is under a photo of a slatire & a headline calling for independence despite the letter not doing that. http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1526382006#new

OFFICIAL COST OF EU REGULATION

Whether one approves of EU membership or not this statement from an EU official should get wider reporting

He said new evaluation methodology of the administrative costs of EU legislation - including "gold plating" of laws by some member states - put the annual burden for business at up to €600bn ($756bn, £405bn) compared with the original estimate of €320bn. That figure does not include the compliance costs of the laws.

Proportionately this should be about £50 billion for the UK (or £800 per person) plus the money we pay for membership.

For some reason Westminster has always disagreed with estimates of the cost of EU membership but declined to produce an official figure. This is a situation where Holyrood would be able to produce an official estimate of costs for Scotland.

30 SHOWCASE TECHNOLOGICAL PROPOSALS FOR SCOTLAND

These are 30 aspirations (an electoral codeword for promises that you won't be held to) for Scotland.

They definitely do not take priority over cutting business taxes & more direct methods of growing the econmy. They are more like the icing on the cake of economic success. Nonetheless since some cost nothing, the vast majority are relatively cheap, by the standards of Holyrood, & all but the 30th (which is really the seed for an internationaly funded venture, albeit started here) could together be achieved for the same cost as the LDs proposed £3 billion Glasgow-Edinburgh bullet train they are definitely practical as well as visionary.

Some of these are also variants on policies mentioned elsewhere & indeed #2 is a zero cost pedestrian alternative to part of #21.


Zero or negative cost

1) Instead of paying for the Red Road flats to be demolished give them to their occupants, on condition they sign up to a good factoring agreement. Any unoccupied flats or where the occupants choose to be rehoused rather the ownership to be offered free to neighbours or sold at auction. These flats used to be Europe's highest & are still impressive. It would be interesting to see if private owners & private enterprise can run them morsuccessfullyly than the Council or GHA. Require the samofferer to be made for any other blocks of flats which GHA wish to demolish.

2) Paint a big orange line along the pavement between Glasgow Central & Queen St stations with the distance in metres written so that strangers know the way.

3) Immediately allow First the right to run a hovercraft across the Forth to Edinburgh - skip planning controls,
environmental impact statements, inspections, long lunches discussing it etc etc. 16

Under £100,000 (administrationion costs only)

4) Run a public competition for proposals to showcase technology projects costing under £1 million.

5) Invite tenders for the building of an arcology (a town enclosed as a single building) of 10,000 homes somewhere in the Highlands or Borders with a low population. Such an arcology not to be subject to any planning permission but must carry long term building insurance.

6) Pass a motion in Holyrood stating that we have a national goal that Scots should be at the cutting edge of scientific achievement & Scotland should, proportionately to our size, contribute to space development at least as much as any nation even Singapore.

Under £1 million

7) Add a glass bridge between the 2 towers of Kelvingrove Museum. This was actually proposed but turned down on the grounds that it was not in keeping with the Victorian architecture of the building. I personally think that maintaining Victorian traditions, in architecture or otherwise, is part of our problem. I also
think walking such a semi-invisible bridge would be an experience well worth having.

If, since the revamp of Kelvin Gallery is already complete,this cannot be done there may be other projects which could similarly be made memorable.

8) Put online video cameras on the top 100 sites of scenic or historic interest in Scotland.

9) Organise & put up prize money for an annual Road from The Isles hovercraft race - starting from Portree in Skye & going by sea to Blackwater reservoir, Loch Rannoch, Loch Tummell to end at Pitlochry. I personally think such a race, apart from encouraging individual engineering & Highland tourism has the potential to be
more exciting than Grand prix racing.

£1 million to £5 million

10) Establish an International Space Law Institute with regular conferences. The objective being to work out rules which will enable private enterprise to work in outer space.

11) Build a copy of the Skylon in George Square (The Skylon was a 300 ft needle held in place by suspension wires built for the Festival of Britain & demolished in an act of political malice & vandalism by the incoming Tory government - it is perhaps the only truly "iconic" building which has been demolished - it should be possible to replace it in even more modern materials held up by carbon nanotubes for a
relatively small cost.

12) Replace the TV tower at Livinston with a taller tower up to 3,000ft above sea level with a a lift going up to reinforced glass platform, or platforms from which you would be able to see most of Scotland up to the Highlands. Put a major visitors centre at the base with interactive exhibits & around a map of Scotland in the floor illustrated by photos taken from the platform.

13) Place a lasar in central Edinburgh & another in Glasgow & 1 hour after sunset to 1 hour before dawn have their beams cross about 5 miles up midway between purely for the fun of it. (This will require health & Safety approval).

14) Build a Buckydome cover to McCaig's folly in Oban, make it watertight & add floors, provide a moving staircase to it & turn it into a visitors centre for the history of the lordship of the Isles, with a view of the islands from the dome. For this to be able to achieve the necessary popularity it necessary to have already automated the rail line.

15) Roof over the pedestrian area of Glasgow. Sauchiehall ST, Buchanan St, Gordon St, Argyll st possibly also providing walkways at first floor level. Thus giving the whole area many of the benefits of mall shopping without destroying the traditional appearance.

16) Establish an equivalent to the Nobel prizes in subjects not covered by the Nobels because they didn't exist back then. eg Computer programming, space engineering, nanotechnology, genetic design

17) Provide legal aid to individual inventors to register patents worldwide(repayable if the patent proves sufficiently profitable).

£5 million to £20 million

18) Give a £20 million X-Prize for the first Scots probe soft landing on an asteroid.

19) Build an automated monorail from Glasgow Airport to Paisley Gilnmour St station thus providing speedy access to both Glasgow Central & Prestwick Airport. An offer to quote for this at about £20 million has already been made by Ultra but the Scottish Executive have decided that they would rather have a conventional rail link direct to Central at +£200 million. The reason given being that since their option
would avoid transferring from one system to another it is worth the extra money.

20) Fully automate Glasgow's Underground. Docklands Light Rail is able to work without drivers & running such a system is very easily within the capacity of modern computer systems. Such systems are even being considered for running road traffic which involves many orders of magnitude more decisions. A fully automated system would be able would allow many more carriages to run & 24 hour running because not limited by driver availability. It would thus also have considerably higher carrying capacity & lower running costs.

21) Build a Glasgow monorail. Minimum from Central to Queen St, maximum - from Buchanan St opposite Queen St on up to Sauchiehall St out to the west end, Byres Rd & either Partick station, or along Gt Western Rd to Anniesland or to Maryhill shopping centre.

Up to £100 million

22) Make a 5 hour DVD of Scotland's history. Hire somebody, not part of Scotland's small media, probably from Discovery Channel, to put it together, print up 200 million (at 10p a shot), give it out in Scots newagents & post 1 to every household in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealnd & the USA. Produce a permanent online
library of Scots history articles & accessible acceesible free & with links provided on the DVD.

23) Automate the Glasgow-Edinburgh train on the lines previously discussed with the Glasgow Underground. While the computerisation should still be fairly cheap, in some ways cheaper because rolling stock which cannot be updated could still be transferred to other lines, an impractical operation on the Underground. However if the trains are to be run on the basis of single carriages roughly once a minute some redesigning of platforms would be required. This would not be as fast as a bullet train but, because carriages would leave every minute rather than every 15 it would save an average of 7 minutes. Unlike the Bullet Train it would still be able to stop at Falkirk & Haymarket from which half of current journeys either start or end(alternately only some carriages need do so allowing through carriages to cut times further). It could also be easily linked to Turnhouse Airport by a connecting line. In practice, a much cheaper 24 hour automated system should carry many more people between Glasgow & Edinburgh than a bullet train.

24) Build an automated overhead monorail from the far side of the Forth Rail Bridge to Prince's St in Edinburgh. Use the fact that the rail bridge was, because of the Tay Bridge disaster, a heavily overengineered structure & should be easily able to bear the load of a monorail above the rail tracks. An overhead monorail into Edinburgh would not be subject to traffic jams as trolleys are & have the same cost savings as other automated rail.

25) Provide an automated walkway from Turnhouse airport to stations on both adjoining lines or, if the Glasgow/Edinburgh link is built build a loop to the main terminal.

£100 million to £1 billion

26) Widen the M8 & connect it as motorway to the Edinburgh bypass.

27) Build a deep ocean thermal differential power generator & use it to build a permanent sea base owned by Scotland. (See http://www.4literature.net/story/2002/7/28/115247/145

28) Provide bursaries of £10,000 per person & £30,000 per school for the top thousand Higher results in maths & hard sciences. (£40 million a year, £400 in 10 years)

Over £1 billion

29) Automate all of Scotland's train services. This can be done over a period of years. Scotland has a relatively limited rail track & this is something in which we could easily become a world leader. A particular line for upgrading would be the West Highland Line from Glasgow low level to Loch Lomond, Oban & ultimately Fort William. This line has only very few trains per day & thus id relatively simple to automate. If run by an automated system it would be possible to run carriages regularly all 24 hours a day making the Highlands fully accessible from the Central Belt & vice versa. Another advantage of an automated system is that it would make movement of containers in single units practical making them fully competitive with roads.

30) Establish an X-Prize commission giving the full Moon and solar power satelite prizes proposed by www.jerrypournelle.com (Friday post) but only applicable to fully Scots programmes. Offer to make this an international prize compatible with any other country or federative state (eg individual US states) willing to join the fund & contribute proportionately to their GNP. Initially this can be funded by devoting any increase in the Scots Lottery profits plus £49 million (equivalent of our ESA contribution plus any private donations matched by an equal government contribution.

In fact since awarding X-Prizes, or ony other sort, doesn't cost anything unless somebody wins them & it is improbable that the entire world space effort could be organised from Scotland it is highly unlikely that anybody would immediately win a prize for a Moon landing from Scotland. The real effect of this would be to encourage other nations to also join in in this scheme making the x-Prize organisation & the new space race a truly international enterprise albeit growing from a seed planted by Scots.

£600 MILLION AIRPORT LINK - SCOTSMAN LETTER

The Scotsman have published the first paragraph of a letter from me today on an ongoing discussion of the proposal to spend £600 million on a rail link to Turnhouse airport:

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1432432006#new

The SNP's objection does not appear to be to a rail link to Turnhouse airport in principle (letters 26th sept) but to the Executive's desire to spend £600 million on a tunnel under the runway when it would be perfectly possible to build a station on the main line to Glasgow (possibly the Aberdeen line as well) connected to the airport by a moving walkway for probably only a few hundred thousand pounds.
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Unfortunately they decided not to publish the remaining parts or to name my new persona, which is a little surprising since they have regularly mentioned Ian Brodie's Scottish Enterprise Party which is not noticeably larger. My addition has been put on the comments section. A slightly different version of the full letter was yesterday sent out some other Scottish papers.
_______________________________________

Recently the executive decided to spend £200+million on a rail link to Glasgow airport despite having a proposal to build a a monorail to Paisley Gilmour St for £20 million (there being trains from Paisley to Glasgow & indeed Prestwick every few minutes). I happen to know this because, as, at the time, a member of the Liberal Democrats I was invited to find some company interested in quoting for a monorail (or arguably brushed off with that suggestion) & when I did so was informed they didn't really mean it & such a proposal would have to come from the party leadership. Such a monorail would also have improved access between Glasgow & Prestwick airports allowing them to act somewhat as a hub.

Equally on several occasions your columns have featured proposals from Roy Pedersen & others to build a tunnel under the Forth at between a half & a quarter of the £1 billion expected for a bridge. This has also been rejected by the Executive for no clearly defined reason.

Like Adam Smith I am in favour of government being willing to invest in our infrastructure but it should be done on sensible terms not always going for the ridiculously expensive option.

DO OUR MEDIA DELIBERATELY LIE ABOUT "CLIMATE CHANGE"

Here is a quote from Newsweek magazine:

“There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth.”

A headline in the New York Times reads: “Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output.” Here is a quote from Time Magazine:

“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.”

All of this sounds very ominous. That is, until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek Magazine and The New York Times, and Time Magazine in 1974. http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,944914,00.html

They weren’t referring to global warming; they were warning of a coming ice age.

------------------------------------------------
This is part of a very thorough & intelligent speech by Senator Inhofe of the US on the whole global warming fanfare. It is long & detailed but worth reading. It is impossible to imagine any of the persons in Holyrood making the equivalent.

In dissecting the case he shows exactly how the media & "environmentalist" politicians have lied, over years, to frighten us with the fear that we are all doomed by global warming so that we will let them have more power over us. Anyone watching the papers or TV can now see how the phrase "global warming" is being thoroughly revised into "climate change" thus leaving the way open to another round of scares about global cooling.

I accuse the BBC, who have a legal duty to impartiality, of having been in the lead in pushing the eco-fascist warming scare & denying any coverage to those who express doubts.*

*There goes the chance of the 9% Growth Party getting anything remotely like the coverage the Greens get from the "impartial" BBC - but losing zero chance isn't much loss.

LETTER IN FRIDAY'S SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL

With a recent Horizon episode (13th July) on the pointed failure of radiation released at Chernobyl to produce a 10s of thousands of deaths predicted & indeed the possible benefit of low & intermediate level radiation (an effect known as hormesis) perhaps your readers would be interested in an even more clear cut case.

In 1983 a group of 180 apartment buildings was completed in Taiwan. Somebody had made a serious mistake. They had mixed into the concrete a considerable amount of highly radioactive cobalt 60. This meant that ultimately 10,000 people lived in buildings for from 9 to 20 years so radioactive that they received an average of 74 mSv of radiation per year in 1983, declining thereafter as cobalt 60 has a half life of 5 ½ years. This compares with a rate of 0.5 mSv above background which is the normal maximum exposure for radiation workers & total of 15 mSv maximum safe limit for land fit for habitation according to US government standards. According to the linear no threshold (LNT) theory currently in use world-wide for assessing nuclear risks there is no lower limit to the level at which radioactivity kills (hence the term "no threshold") & this, inhabited for a decade & a half before the radioactivity was traced & measured, should be the site of a truly massive cancer death rate. It isn't.

A thorough & methodical tracing of all the 4,000 families by a team led by W. L Chen of Taiwan's Director of Medical Radiation Technology of Taiwan's National Yang-Ming University (the full report is available in English on http://www.jpands.org/vol9no1/chen.pdf ) has resulted in an unequivocal & spectacular result. Cancer rates in that highly radioactive building are down to 3.6% of prevailing Taiwanese rates.

For many years there has been an unfashionable alternative to the LNT theory called hormesis. This is an effect, long observed in plants & cultures, whereby intermediate level radioactivity actually stimulates life & improves health. < There has been significant evidence for this (the deaths at Hiroshima did not appear to fit the LNT pattern, there are places in India & Iran with background radiation of 15mSv or higher with no observed increase in cancer & numerous studies of radon in homes have found a reverse correlation between radon levels & cancer - deleted >. Nonetheless, such has been our fear of all things nuclear that the LNT theory has been absolutely accepted despite the fact that there has NEVER been any actual evidence for it. This study, however, is so detailed, has such well-defined boundary conditions & in proving a reduction in cancers of 96.4% has such a clear result that there can no longer be any intellectual doubt whatsoever. Radioactivity, up to 50mSv, is good for us.
Yours Sincerely
Neil Craig

BLACKOUTS ARE COMING

HUNTERSTON CLOSES IN
2011, IN THE NEXT 12
YEARS SCOTLAND WILL
LOSE HALF OUR
ELECTRICITY & HAVE
MASSIVE WINTER BLACKOUTS
THE OLD PARTIES ARE
GOING TO DO BETWEEN
VERY LITTLE & NOTHING
TO STOP THIS

VOTE
9% GROWTH PARTY
IN MAY
WE CAN HAVE UNLIMITED
NUCLEAR POWER AT 1.5P
A UNIT (FRENCH PRICE)
BUT ONLY IF YOU VOTE FOR IT

9% GROWTH Party IN MAY
9percentgrowth.blogspot.com/

9%
GROWTH
________
NO BLACKOUTS
____________
NO VINDICTIVE
BANS
____________
WE CAN HAVE UNLIMITED
ELECTRICITY PRODUCED
AT 1.5P A UNIT (FRENCH
PRICE), GROWTH BETTER
THAN IRELAND'S (THIS
YEAR IRISH WEALTH
PASSED AMERICA'S),
MOPDERN HI-TECH LOW
COST HOUSING & A
COUNTRY TO BE PROUD OF

9% GROWTH IN MAY
9percentgrowth.blogspot.com/

9% ECONOMIC GROWTH

Let no politician from any other party tell you that just because they have only been able to grow Scotland at 1.5%, 9% is not an entirely possible goal. Ireland managed an average of 7% over many years & a peak of 10.5%, China has averaged 10, Russia & the Baltic states have averaged 8% & world average growth is now calculated at 5% annually. We can get as far above the world average as we have been below it.

If we do not improve our economic performance the people of Scotland will be poorer than the average Chinese in 25 years time which would be a dreadful legacy to leave to the next generation.

Ireland & most of the others did this by cutting Corporation Tax to 12.5% & cutting regulations. We would do so also & expect, with Scotland's more entrepreneurial tradition, higher educational standards & scientific & technology base, together with the guarantee of unlimited inexpensive nuclear electricity, to do even better. While ultimate authority for corporation tax lies with Westminster Scotland could negotiate a cut so long as we were willing to fund it.- alternately Holyrood has the authority to provide rebates directly to businesses equal to a proportion of their tax. An increased Gross National Product, by definition, provides the best overall income to everybody.. To often politicians are beholden to special interest groups, of left, right or more often of government jobsworths all of whom may see getting a larger slice of the national cake for themselves as better than increasing it for everybody.

This http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=032805E gives a detailed run down of the causes of Ireland's success.

WE CAN MATCH & EXCEED IRELAND'S SUCCESS - THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FOR SCOTLAND'S FUTURE & ONLY THE 9% GROWTH PARTY IS WILLING TO GO TREAT IT AS SERIOUSLY AS IT DESERVES (though to be fair the SNP have made some stab at trying for 4% & the Labour party said at the last election that growth would be their "first priority" but have done nothing since)

NUCLEAR POWER

Scotland is facing the loss of 50% of current electricity generation beginning with Hunterston in 2011. If we do nothing by then we will face massive winter blackouts & deaths.

24,000 British pensioners already die annually because of fuel poverty. We can & should build reactors like those of France which provide 85% of that nation's power at 1.5p a unit (& allow them to make major exports - 5% of UK electricity is French nuclear). Even Labour who are, belatedly, coming round to nuclear, intend to spend 5 years licensing French or Canadian reactor types & checking to see if Hunterston can be used as a a site before even starting to build - this is ridiculous when we face blackouts in 2011.

HOUSING

A century ago a house & car cost about the same. Cars have since improved far more than houses because housebuilding has been so firmly regulated. We would introduce a Housing Act removing most restrictions on housebuilding, except in national parks & conservation areas. We would also use a limited programme of guaranteed purchase to encourage the introduction of mass production off-site processes to industry (nearly a century after Henry Ford applied them to cars).

SMOKING BAN & NANNYING GENERALLY

A recent House of Lords report confirmed that the smoking ban was not scientifically justified on health grounds.. The initial US figures which set off the whole passive smoking debate/rant said the passive smoking killed 3,000 Americans annually. For reasons given in the speech below even this is a figure which can't be considered proven, but even accepting it for the sake of argument on a population basis that is equivalent to a Scottish death rate of 50 annually. The current First Minister promised that his ban would save 1,000 lives in Scotland annually - this is a statement which obviously cannot be justified as even slightly truthful on factual ground & if elected I promise to say so, in Parliamentary language naturally.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=062706A

X-PRIZE FOUNDATION

An X-Prize is a prize awarded for some scientific or technical achievement. The recent $10 million dollar prize for the first private enterprise spaceship was done on this basis & another exists for the first orbital flight. We should set up an X-Prize Foundation for Scotland funded primarily from Scotland's share of the National Lottery money plus any private donations all matched £ for £ with government money. Such prizes have a very good record throughout history of stimulating inovation. They also have the considerable advantage over most government activity of not costing anything if they don't achieve results. Hopefully this could be expanded to cover all of Britain in time

AUTOMATING OUR RAILWAYS - GLASGOW-EDINBURGH

Docklands Light Rail runs fully automatically, Currently apparently serious consideration is being given to establishing a bullet train between Glasgow & Edinburgh despite it being costed at £3 billion. The current line could be automated for a small fraction of that cost, since it would involve only electronic controls with very little rebuilding. It would provide a system almost as fast, since wating time would be eliminated, far cheaper to run, more flexible & useable 24 hours a day.

MONEY

Any politician who says that you can get everything without some cost is selling you a line. I promise to treat the electors like adults. Currently 54% of Scotland's GNP is government spending. No independent free enterprise economy has or can sustain such a rate. Scotland also spends 25% more per person on services & gets, on balance, worse service for it. We will support modern efficient management without idealogical strings. We will freeze all current ministerial budgets & put a limit on hiring new civil servants in any department which has not achieved 2% manpower cuts annually (this is less than the normal retirement rate & sp can be done without redundancies). We would also look at each ministry for areas where costs do not match achievements or indeed, as often happens, conflict with other government spending & cut ruthlessly.

For example Scottish Enterprise spends £500 million annually. If we accept that politicians spending our money are less adept at picking business winners than experienced investors spending their own then obviously the Scottish Enterprise money could be much better motivated by spending SE's money on business tax cuts. We accept that there are cases where politicians have a strategic overview that allows them to choose options not, in practice, open to normal investors but the fact that so much of SE's money is being wasted on such things as making "Scotland a world leader in windfarms" show that there decisions have been made entirely on political rather than economic interests. This is a complete waste of money.

There is no serious doubt that industry would benefit more from having its taxes cut by that much. We would continue this process even after growth has been achieved & would therefore, in due course, but only when financially prudent, make the 3p "tartan tax" income tax cut available.

HIGH RISE HOUSING IN GLASGOW

The GHA have decided that high rise housing is no longer politically correct. Rather than knocking down some of the highest blocks of flats in Europe we wouild encourage GHA to offer them FREE to their occupants, subject to a strong agreement with professional factors. Experience worldwide ()& in the Glasgow Harbour development) shows that high rise living can be very attractive when well managed. Since it doesn't involve the expense of demolition or of rehousing many occupants this would actually save money as well as allowing people to keep their homes.

POLICIES NOT RELEVANT TO THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT

EU membership costs Britain £40 billion a year in direct payments & regulatory costs. The EU is also the slowest growing area of the world, worse than Africa. We would seek only associate status like Norway or even, if invited, join NAFTA.

We absolutely oppose the illegal wars which politicians so often see as "making their place in history". We support the rule of International Law & oppose our illegal wars. Both because the destruction of International Law makes the world a much more dangerous place & because it costs us far more than any benefit. For the cost of taking & holding Kosovo (about $50 billion) we could have had the Moon, Earth orbital industry & solar-power satellites, for the cost of Iraq ($500 billion) we could have had the entire solar system & probes to nearby stars for humanity.

Immigration cannot continue at current rates without damaging Britain's present culture. The suggestion that Scotland needs immigrants to replace people we are losing is rubbish - we lose many of our best people to migration because we have a badly run economy & have a low rate of childbearing because regulation prevents the building of inexpensive family homes - these are both the fault of bad government & will not be permanently masked by immigration. It is worth noting that both Japan & Korea have a 0.00% immigration rate & while this is so low as to discourage cultural innovation we could certainly improve the situation massively.

There is no evidence that global warming on a catastrophic scale is taking place. During the late Roman period grapes grew in York. During the medieval warming period there were dairy farm in Greenland. Both were warmer than now & were prosperous times. In the words of the writer H.L. Mencken "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary". Global warming, & the previous scare by "environmentalists" that we were heading for a new ice age if we didn't dismantle our economy are hobgoblins put about by politicians who want to control you.

The 9% growth party is not about controlling people, it is about letting us (both Scots & the entire human race) achieve our potential.

PREVIOUS IDEAS

Undernoted are a series of policy motions & speeches I created while a member of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Last December the Party Executive voted that I should be expelled on the grounds that these ideas, some of which I had mentioned in letters to newspapers, were "illiberal". After a vigorous defence in which I was able to show that they were all in the mainstream of classic liberal opinion this initial charge was withdrawn & I was, instead, expelled on a charge of openly objecting to being expelled!

ENTERPRISE MOTION

Creating a favourable environment for business & recapturing Scotland's spirit of enterprise & innovation were central aims in the Party's 2003 Election Manifesto.

Conference notes:

1 the importance of creating an environment favourable to business in Scotland.

2 the key long term role that sustainable economic growth must play in ending poverty.

Conference therefore calls on the Scottish Executive to

(i) set up a Parliamentary Committee charged with actively reducing the burden of legislation on business, particularly small businesses

(ii) provide special assistance to individuals & small businesses seeking to register international patents & copyright

(iii) ease building & zoning regulations outside conservation areas

(iv) make a substantial reduction to corporation tax in Scotland

(v) target skills training on areas of high unemployment

(vi) benchmarking growth in Scotland against growth in the UK as a whole & in other OECD countries

(vii) undertaking not to increase the real tax take on business by more than 1% per annum until growth has exceeded the average of the UK & OECD
----------------------------------------------------

Scotland's economy is in serious trouble. We are consistently growing at at least 1% less than the UK as a whole. Currently we are marginally poorer than Spain which makes us the 2nd poorest western European country after Portugal & if either we discount the receipts & multiplier effect from the Barnet formula or wait a few years we will be the poorest. On the other hand Ireland which was in a not much better position in 1989 is now per capita the world's 4th wealthiest sizeable country.

What happened is that in 1989 they started liberalizing the economy - reducing business tax substantially & cutting regulation. This has received an undeservedly slight amount of coverage in our media & is often claimed to be put down to Ireland's independence (1921) or joining the EEC (1974) or having citizens abroad sending back money (19th Century). Since their spectacular growth of up to 9% per annum was first measured in 1991 I think the cause is fairly obvious. Note that this achievement has not been made by 5 year plans or starving the peasantry to buy machine tools or building nuclear power stations or any major sacrifice (although the politically correct brigade are now sacrificing their pubs).

This motion was designed to gently start things here going in the same direction.

(i) is designed to put cutting red tape on every MSP's agenda. I am not one of those who believe MSPs are lazy or in it for themselves - it might be better if they were not so hard working. Those who enter Holyrood want to achieve things & the traditional way of doing so is to pass a law or regulation. Unfortunately all such have side effects & when taken together can produce an impenetrable hedge of regulation. Setting up a commission to cut regulation is handing the MSPs pruning shears & giving them a job to do.

(ii) Small companies are far more innovative than large ones - this has been proven time & again. On the other hand they don't have as large legal depts. By taking on the legal burden of securing patents worldwide we could encourage innovative small businesses here & in the long term it would be repaid manyfold.

(iii) See the building motion for arguments.

(iv) Corporation tax is actually a reserved matter but I have no doubt that if we went to Westminster & offered to pay Scotland's share of this out of our current grant (& the Treasury experts were to assure Gordon Brown that this would have a net positive effect on our & therefore 8% of the UK economy) he would accept. Assuming that our corporation tax is, like our income tax, 7% of the UK's a 50% cut would cost a bit over 1 billion. This would cause some pain but without it the programme is just waffle. This is the only part that costs serious money, cutting regulations actually saves it.

(v) Obvious

(vi) Basically Jim would have to stand up in Parliament & accept plaudits or brickbats on how we are matching our targets. Concentrates the mind wonderfully.

(vii) This is a self denying ordinance not to kill the goose after it starts laying. Currently an undertaking not to increase industry taxes by more than 1% costs us nothing. With the economy growing at roughly that rate, we can't anyway. While such a party promise cannot be legally enforced parties do not like to be seen to openly lying. This would help to create an air of business confidence in our long term future & a justified confidence if it was kept.

SCOTTISH SPACE MOTION

Conference calls on the Scottish Parliament to offer a prize of 20 million pounds to the first Scottish group to soft land a vehicle on an asteroid by 2050

This is the wording of yet another motion I had put to conference, in 1992. The fact that it was rejected for debate with considerable amusement did not particularly surprise of distress me.

Though I had proposed it in a slightly tongue in cheek attention grabber it is a quite seriously useful proposal. The prize is 3 times that put up as the X-Prize for the first commercial space trip, of which nobody had heard then, but which has since produced Burt Rutan's successful Spaceship one.

The total cost of this would be a maximum of 20 million over 48 years.

The advantages, as I saw it, would have been
1) It would be valuable publicity - this is the sort of thing the media lap up though perhaps not totally seriously (the subsequent popular reaction to Beagle 2, even tho' it failed strongly suggests to me that it would have been popular)

2) It would have encouraged the satellite manufacturing industry ($1 billion a year & growing 20%) to locate in Scotland which is exactly the sort of hi-tech we need.

3) The next generation of space development (after we have got cheap launching) will involve the sort of technology that a small remotely handled probe going to the asteroid belt would make a test bed for.

4) Anything that could give us a claim to a hunk of millions of tons of heavy metals including several % gold & platinum would be likely to be cost effective.

5) If it doesn't succeed it wouldn't cost anything - somewhat unlike every other government programme.

6) I think space development is the most important human activity since, at least, the age of Columbus & I would like my country (Scot or UK) to be part of it. In 100 years time nobody will know what a Black Watch does but they may know who first landed on an asteroid.

7) If it was proposed & was not legislated into existence on the grounds the "space travel is utter bilge" the party (or individual heh heh) would later be able to say I told you so.

On a larger scale something similar would work for the UK.

HOUSEBUILDING

1) Replace the Town & Country Planning Act 1947 effectively denationalising the right to develop land. Retain controls only in National Parks, Green Belts & Conservation Areas.

2) Produce a national scheme of building type approval rather than the current site by site approval which causes immense duplication of effort & prevents the mass production methods used successfully in other industries.

3) Benchmark a target of 30,000 new build homes per annum as the only way to stop house price inflation.

4) Make land hoarding uneconomic, introduce a Land Valuation Tax on empty land & property within 1/2 miles of a built up area. Such taxation not to apply to National Parks, Green Belts & Conservation Areas. To keep this revenue neutral business rates to be reduced by an equal amount.

5) Provide an interest free bridging loan of 20,000 pounds to any off site manufactured home for the period from completion of manufacture until installation & a grant of 5,000 pounds to direct purchasers of such homes, so long as they are for their personal use as first homes. This system to last only until the benchmark figure has been reached.

Much of this is taken from Why is Construction So Backward by Woodhuysen et al

The intent of the motion was to make more houses available more cheaply to everybody. Some years ago a US report said that at least 40% of housing costs were regulatory. My long term bet for the UK now would be 75%. The order & reasons for & against as the clauses were voted down were:

1) To allow people to build pretty much as they want. There are Highland towns which are being killed because young people cannot afford houses because unbuilt plots cost 40,000 each (320,000 an acre) while farmland on the other side of a fence costs 1,200 an acre - the objection was that there was no way conference would support this, which I recognise as true & was willing to cut

5) This is to kickstart the industry. Most builders have relatively little capital but any bank shown a guarantee to purchase like this would be much more willing to lend, the flat rate of loan/grant particularly helps low cost housing - the objection was that we should not interfere with the free market to help a rising industry

4) Self explanatory - the objections were that we should scrap doing this & come back with a general land tax later & that it is improper to make anything revenue neutral when taxes can be increased

3)Self explanatory - the objection was that there are other ways of damming up demand for example raising taxes

2) By producing a national approval scheme builders of prefabricated properties would be able to mass produce knowing that purchasers were automatically able use their house without piddling changes - the objection was that we have to much mass production, housing has been getting worse since the building of canals allowed the mass production & transportation of bricks, creating central planning restriction in addition to rather than instead of local would be ok

CONTACT

If you would like to help this movement or just to receive future communications please email crgn143@aol.com
write to 9% Growth, 200 Woodlands Rd., Glasgow G3 6LN
phone 0141 353 3975

Neil Craig

FREE TRADE - Confernence Speech Oct 2005

I will support anything in the above relating to Western protectionism & the need to help the 3rd world. It is immoral that the average European cow receives a subsidy of £900 whereas the average Sierra Leonese lives on £300 a year.

However, sections 1 & 2 of the motion call for protectionism, particularly of "domestic food production". This is not a new idea. Britain used to do this until, with the rise of the urban working class & the Liberal Party, they were able to force the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1842. Since then Liberalism & free trade have been synonymous to everybody's benefit. Fairly free trade has worked for South Korea, Singapore & the US. Protectionism failed North Korea, Burma & Ethiopia. India, China & New Zealand all used to practice protectionism & had low growth. All have now moved to fairly free trade & have high growth.

To tell the people of the 3rd world that they will develop by protectionism is a cruel deception which runs counter to all historical experience.

Section 3 call for the creation of an OPEC style cartel for ALL other commodities specifically for the purpose of "raising prices" & "ending (over)-supply". What this means, on the ground, is that somebody somewhere is going to be physically prevented from making a living.

In the case of coffee, the primary target of the self-styled "fair trade" movement, this will be Vietnam. This country, which our ally bombed, if not "into the Stone Age" as they promised, certainly into generations of poverty, is now developing by, among other things, competing successfully in the international coffee market.

But if "over-supply" is to be prevented how will our cartel enforce renewed poverty on the people of Vietnam? By the use of Agent Orange perhaps for that is where this proposal leads.

The good intentions of the proposers are not in doubt but good intentions are not enough. We are talking about the lives of billions of people & we have to get it right. This motion does not do so & I ask you to reject it.
---------------------------
Free Trade is the basic principle on which the old Liberal party was founded AND IT WORKS. The party have turned their back on 2 centuries of liberalism & all common sense in adopting a motion that holds North Korea & Burma as more successful economies than South Korea & Hong Kong.

INDUSTRIAL POLITICAL CORRECTNESS OFFICERS - Speech against what became SLD policy - Oct conference 2005

Section 1 here is absolutely correct - Scots have a history of creating & developing businesses worldwide & WE desperately need to let them do the same here.

Unfortunately there is NOTHING in this motion which does that.

In the Allander Report on growing the Scottish economy one complaint was the propensity of politicians to make all the right noises about growth & then go do whatever they wanted in the first place.

That is what this motion does.

In a similar way Jack McConnell has said that growth is his "first priority" but, apart from being the man who raised business rates in the first place, has done nothing. However the fact that he said it proves HE knows growth is the first priority of voters. If we are ever to EARN a position as Scotland's largest party it will be because WE have provably made economic growth our true first priority.

Instead this motion would load wealth creators down with an entire new class of inspectors, committed not to any measurable standards but merely to general political correctness, rigidly enforceable on anybody who has to do business with the 54% of the economy that is the state. If this motion had been made truly voluntary I would have had no problem with it but a compulsory enforcement of government political correctness inspectors is a bad thing.

Scotland has had the lowest growth rate in Europe, itself the slowest growing continent on Earth.

That is why WE have recently cut business taxes & Nicol Stephen said, at Federal Conference, that we need further cuts to kickstart growth as Ireland has so spectacularly done.

I believe that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with Scotland which would make it impossible for us to match, or exceed, Ireland -

Their growth of 7% a year over 15 years has nearly tripled their GNP while ours has gone up barely 20%.

Ireland achieved this, not just by cutting business taxes, but also by cutting regulation.

This motion, obviously, does the opposite.

Worse - section 3 calls for wealth creators to be made "accountable" for satisfying the "expectations" of all & sundry including "special interest groups".

This is a blank cheque which could stifle any growing business.

Finally - will political correctness inspectors increase productivity & cut costs?

It says so right here on the tin in section 4 - & I do not believe it. If it were so the directors of Asda would not have to be forced to ask the builders of Holyrood how to cut costs.

If you are also unable to believe this PROMISE you CANNOT, cannot, in good conscience, vote for it & I ask you not to.
-------------
They could & did.

SPEECH AGAINST BANNING SMOKING - SLD Conference 2nd Oct 2004

On motion to ban smoking in public places:
Section (a) of this motion calls on us to support it only if the case is clearly proven. It isn't. A BMJ statistical analysis found only slight statistical significance when 48 studies were combined. Looked at separately only seven showed significant excesses of lung cancer meaning 41 did not. Further the combined risk was merely 24 percent, also called a "relative risk" of 1.24. Such tiny relative risks are considered meaningless, given the myriad pitfalls in epidemiological studies. "As a general rule of thumb" says the editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine Marcia Angell, "we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more" before even accepting a paper for publication. According to the National Cancer Institute "Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small & are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias or the effect of some other effect not evident". The main exception to that rule comes when the study is extremely large, but such was not the case with the BMJ analysis. The studies showing excess disease comprised only 1,388 people in total. By contrast a recent study implicating obesity as a cause of early death contained more than three hundred & twenty THOUSAND subjects.

So where does this leave us? Do we know passive smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. No. But we do know that either it does not, or that if it does the risk is so tiny as to be unmeasureable. Does this mean that passive smoking poses no health risks? No. It makes sense that it would aggravate asthma if nothing else. Does it mean that just because smokers arn't murdering other people, they're not still engaged in a nasty, expensive habit that greatly increases their own chances of sickness & premature death? Definitely not. But it does mean that we cannot legitimately limit people's freedom on the basis of this alleged risk to others.

Over the next few years Ireland & New York will be able to produce substantial statistical populations & they may prove the banner's case. Or they may disprove it. Or & this is my bet, modern air extraction systems, which can remove 96% of smoke, may be proven effective. We shall see.

Some years ago, to the obvious embarassment of the leadership, the federal party voted to examine lightening the criminal burden on cannabisusers. I remember a TV news programme immediately after in which a Mr Michael Howard we were wrong because nobody should ever, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever even think about thinking about any sort of reform. With it's well known commitment to balance the BBC then interviewed his shadow, Mr Jack Straw who said his opinion was a little more hardline than that. He has clearly changed his mind.

I was very proud of our party that day. It seemed to me that we were acting in the best traditions of classic Liberalism. Having been the first to call for some decriminalisation of cannabis, despite some dubious medical claims, I would be sorry to see us leading the way towards the effective criminalisation of tobacco. Thus I urge you to reject this motion.(they passed it by a large majority - we will see)

(I would like to acknowledge that the section "A BMJ ......... Definitely not" was listed almost verbatim from http://www.sepp.org/reality/pseudosci.html a site I reccomend to anybody who believes themselves a free thinker on environmental subjects)________________________________________________

SPEECH ON REDUCING LANDING CHARGES AT ISLAND AIRPORTS - Easter 2004 conference

I wish now to speak particularly in favour of section A of the motion about Highlands & Islands airports.Currently we subsidise these airports by 2/3rds of their operating costs & have done so for years with no disapproval from the EU. The rest is raised from landing charges. Unfortunately traffic at these airports is so small that the landing charges per person are nonetheless prohibitive. I checked recently & found that a flight to Barra would cost £27 but it would cost £33 to land.Much of the cost of these airports is because they have the same regulatory framework as larger airports. For example approximately 20% of running costs are for security. This, for example means £16.62 is spent per head on keeping bin Laden out of Tiree. Equally each airport is required to keep its own fire brigade. Firemen at Heathrow expect to go through their entire working lives without having to attend a fire – nonetheless when dealing with 30,000 people a day this is a necessary cost. I would argue that it is not when dealing with 5,000 people a year. There are other ways to save expense such as putting the management out to tender & putting runway maintenance in the lands of local authority roads depts. If we could reduce running expenses by 1/3rd these airports could be run with no landing charges at allThe Scottish Parliament has authority over this regulatory regime. The whole point about devolution is that from a nearer perspective it is possible to produce solutions which would not be apparent from London. This is a clear example & we should use it.High landing charges are the main thing detering low cost airlines. In the example I gave earlier the total cost was £60. Were there to be no landing charges it would be £27. Were a no frills airline involved I expect it would roughly halve & were the number of passengers to skyrocket, as seems likely it could halve again. Here we get to the point where, assuming a monorail connection to Glasgow as I suggested earlier, it would be possible to get to Barra from Glasgow for roughly the price it now takes to get a taxi to Glasgow airport.2/3rds of Highland Air passengers are tourists who, quite reasonably, complain about the fact that it is more expensive than flying to Paris. The benefits to the Highlands & Islands & to our share of the world's fastest growing industry, tourism, of making travel accessible can hardly be underestimated. Certainly Barra can never hope to match the attractions of Eurodisney but we should not be so modest as to forget that, for a significant portion of the populations of Europe & America, Eurodisney can never hope to match the attractions of Barra.Consequently I ask you to support the motion & I hope our party in government will make use of such a mandate.

MY PRO-NUCLEAR SPEECH FROM 2001

SPEECH TO LIB-DEM CONFERENCE 27/10/1 NEIL CRAIG

I wish to speak specifically against the amendment to this motion. Unlike the motion itself which gives reasons for its case, the amendment simply states as a matter of doctrine that nuclear energy must be disposed of. Since this means the loss of 40% of Scotland's electricity within 10 or, with a certain amount of juggling, 15 years I think we are owed a solid justification. Since the main motion hopes for an increase from 11 to 21% of our wind, water & solar capacity this still leaves an overall reduction of 30% on our current capacity. Assuming that over the next 10 years the economy will grow at 2.5% we will have a shortfall of nearly 60% of current capacity. The only option other than rationing is a massive programme of building coal, gas & oil generators & which would obviously involve tearing up the Koyoto Treaty. For the Scottish Liberal Democrats to vote for such a policy would be, & would be seen to be, grossly irresponsible. The example of California should be a warning. There the richest part of the richest society in the world is suffering regular power blackouts because for the last 20 years political considerations have prevented the building of generating capacity.

At the slight risk of being burned at the stake as a heretic I now intend to speak in favour of nuclear power.It has been calculated by Professor Cohen of Pittsburgh that, even if there were no other source, uranium particles recovered from seawater could keep our present nuclear power industry going for 5 billion years, whereas the sun is expected to explode in five & a half. It must therefore be considered as pretty sustainable. In general terms nuclear energy is competitive with coal & significantly cheaper than oil or gas. The French are currently generating 77% of their power atomically. They are also profitably selling power to all their neighbours, including us.

The basic arguments used against following their example are the risk caused by accidents, waste disposal & leakage of low level radiation. They are all wrong. The worst accident was at Chernobyl in 1986 caused by the Soviet notorious neglect of safety. As a result 10/20,000 deaths were predicted. Despite the most minute tracking of variations in cancer rates the total currently stands at 45. By comparison in another Soviet accident, in 1989, 570 people on a train died in a gas pipeline explosion. The total of deaths in the following 15 years is 2, in Japan. Bearing in mind that we are talking about creating nearly 20% of all humanity's energy for that period this is a safety record not even approached by any other industry in human history. At the same time to mine coal we tolerate the deaths of hundreds of thousands annually worldwide from black lung & an unquantified but large number from emphysema when we burn it. Waste disposal is truly a non-problem. Reactor waste is very nasty stuff but there is no technical difficulty in turning it into glass producing an entire cubic metre per reactor year. This can be stored in a very deep hole where it will be safe for millions of years. This is not even a problem for our remote descendants since a highly radioactive material is, by definition, one with a relatively short half-life. After 10 years reactor waste radioactivity is reduced a thousandfold. After 500 it is less radioactive than the ore originally mined. This is also why decommissioning reactors is normally unnecessary. Just lock the door & leave it. Recent research on radiation has shown it is not the threat we thought. Classically estimates of the danger of low level radiation have been based on the theory that there was a linear progression from say 5000milliSieverts (a level which will kill 50% of people within a month) to zero with no safe limit in between. Purely because it was a very conservative assumption it was proper to use it when we had no better model. We do now. Following the failure of Chernobyl to satisfy the theoretical predictions statistical examinations have been made of victims of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombs, people who worked with radium & most importantly hundreds of thousands of tests of radon in homes. The results have consistently shown that at low levels, below 150 milliSvs radiation has no bad effect. Indeed the radon tests have actually shown a negative correlation between radioactivity & cancer. This is not as strange as it seems. Many things are dangerous in large dose but beneficial in small. 1 aspirin may cure you but 1000 will kill. By comparison you & I will normally have a dose of 2mSvs a year, nuclear workers & uranium miners get 2.5 & airline pilots, because they work at high altitude, get about 6.

In conclusion it is clear that the only thing we have to fear from nuclear electricity is fear itself. This is not a good reason to prepare ourselves for blackouts. The human race has an unlimited future if we will only reach out for it.Anyone who wants to check what I have said should surf www.world-nuclear.org or www.formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ nuclear

What is the 9% Growth Party?

The Classic Liberals for 9% GROWTH PARTY is committed to long term growth at a rate reaching & ultimately maintaining 9% per annum. Experience with the world's most successful economies shows that this can be achieved by the policies of Liberty & the economic ideas close to those of Adam Smith & the founders of Liberalism. We also believe that virtually all economic progress follows from scientific & technological progress, that high technology is inately more efficient & thus less polluting & that scientific progress embodies the the best of the human spirit.

Neil Craig
classic liberals for 9% GROWTH Party

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