In case you missed it, the MTV Europe Awards came to Leith last week. In what was unquestionably the biggest pop music event of the year, 1 billion viewers in 120 countries saw stars like Kylie Minogue, Sean Paul, Kraftwerk and Beyoncé strut their stuff in front of the world's media.

Knowing my 'Flag' credentials were unlikely to get me past security (I must have a word with Jim about getting some kind of press pass!) and not fancying joining the 8,000 revellers at the free concert laid on in Princes Street Gardens, I decided instead to settle down in front of the TV with a few cold beers to try and watch the show through the eyes of a non-Scot.

I'm glad I did, as the show itself was stunning. The individual performances were tremendous and in terms of promoting Scotland, MTV did us proud. The lead up programmes and main event itself were interspersed with footage shot around the capital and the 'kilts and haggis' image was sent up in grand style.

A tartan streak ran right through, from the stunning backdrop to the free concert of Edinburgh Castle, to hostess-with-the-mostess Christina Aguilera telling how she'd been described earlier as a 'radge wee midden'. To ram home the message, visitscotland.com ran adverts during the breaks. However, the biggest impact is likely to come from the succession of artists prepared to say how great a time they were having in Scotland.

Having someone like Justin Timberlake come on stage and tell 1bn people that he was out for a meal the previous night and 'you just don't get nicer than you guys', is the kind of advertising that money can't buy. Edinburgh already had a tall reputation overseas for its Hogmanay celebrations but the MTV awards gave Scotland several hours of exposure to a mass, youthful global audience.

On the night, the winners took their gongs away with them to the after-show parties in Edinburgh's most fashionable nightspots. However, now the circus has moved on, it will be Scotland that benefits as a younger generation puts our country on their list of 'must visit' places. For that alone, I'll say the words I never thought as a teenage music fan I would ever hear myself say - thank you, MTV.

Whether MTV viewers or not, everybody likes a bargain, especially when it comes to cheap flights. Since the advent of Ryanair and Easyjet, people have become used to flying around the UK and Europe for fares that are often lower than the airport taxes which governments slap on top.
This growth in cheap travel has been very good for the domestic economy, too. A study published last week by Scottish Enterprise Ayrshire showed that those arriving on Ryanair flights into Prestwick Airport last year stayed an average of 2.4 nights in Scotland and spent £90 million in the process, £18m of which stayed in Ayrshire.

The message from the study is clear - if you open up airports to budget airlines, the local economy will reap the benefits of direct links to European destinations. Which makes it all the more surprising on the surface that state-owned Highlands and Islands Airports (HIAL) are still faffing around in a dispute with Ryanair over how much the Irish carrier should pay in landing charges if they were to fly to and from Inverness Airport.

HIAL operate Scottish 10 airports. Inverness, their largest airport, carries nearly 500,000 passengers a year. With airlines such as British Airways, Easyjet and SAS spinoff Snowflake already committed to the airport, it can be argued that they are doing quite nicely as things are, and have no need to cut landing charges for one airline when everyone else is quite happy to pay the asking price.

However, what skews the economics against cuts in landing charges is the dreaded PFI development of the terminal at Inverness. A project that would have cost under £10m by paying up front, will instead cost closer to £35m of public money once the full costs of the PFI project have been met.

Even if HIAL was of a mind to, cutting charges at Inverness could damage the revenue needed to finance the PFI repayments in future years. This puts them in the invidious position of being key to the city's future economic success, but having to put repayment of an overpriced PFI project ahead of pump priming that success by attracting more carriers and routes.

However, Inverness isn't the only example of airport management that's holding Scotland back. The British Airports Authority (BAA) still sees Heathrow as its flagship and is arguing that future passenger numbers will need yet another terminal at the London airport. This is despite the fact that much of the demand is artificial, created by passengers from Scotland and the north of England who are forced to use Heathrow as a hub by the lack of direct flights from local airports.

If their prize asset does well, BAA as a company does well and ever other airport can go hang. Neither Edinburgh nor Glasgow will ever be a hub airport like Heathrow, Schipol or Charles de Galle. However, they do have the potential for many more flights to Europe and North America, if only they can escape the blinkered approach of BAA management.

So how to break the logjam? It is important that the policy of expanding Heathrow at the expense of direct flights from elsewhere is brought to an end immediately. In so doing, it is vital to bring the management of airports closer to their passenger catchment areas, so that there is a closer link between the success of an airport and the success of the area it serves.

If Highland Council ran Inverness airport, it could cut landing charges, knowing that the resulting increased tax revenues would more than cover the costs of doing so. In this spirit, other local authorities could take over the running of HIAL airports. Similarly, if the local authorities around Edinburgh and Glasgow ran their respective airports, they could begin to compete with Heathrow for direct connections to the rest of the world.

If local authorities didn't want to get involved in running the BAA airports, private companies could still have a role, providing the BAA monopoly is broken. To that end, no organisation should be allowed to operate another UK airport within a 250 mile radius of one they own. This would stop anyone from owning more than 1 Scottish airport, or from owning the big 3 together in the UK, Heathrow, Manchester and Gatwick.

In the end, diversity of ownership, close local ties and the ability to react to market conditions are what will allow the success of our airports.  Isn't it time we set our airports free from the dead hand of PFI and monopoly control?

A classic Labour spin when confronted with any kind of debate is to paint a grotesque caricature of their opponent's position, accusing them of advocating an unacceptable alternative. It doesn't matter if no-one is actually advocating this alternative, the point is to polarise debate between the 'reasonable' Labour position and the 'extremism' of their opponent. A false choice is thus presented to the public, designed only to make the government's preferred option seem more palatable.

Another favoured gambit when encountering choppy political waters is to tell us repeatedly that 'what matters is what works'. Earlier policy decisions yielding adverse outcomes are all in the past and can't now be changed, the argument goes. It then becomes vital to 'move on' and not waste time analysing the wisdom of these previous choices or to try and undo what has been done.

These ploys rely on voters having short memories and being credulous enough to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Depressingly, in most cases they seem to work and as such, both were much in evidence both before and after the war in Iraq. Sadly, it looks like we're about to be subjected to more of this spin cycle as Labour tries to foist compulsory ID cards on us by 2013.

ID cards, we are told by Home Secretary David Blunkett, are a necessity. They will help stop illegal immigrants and prevent benefit fraud by stopping people from using multiple identities. They will act as a deterrent to crime and terrorism. In short, they will make our lives safer and easier, so what reasonable person could possibly be opposed? After all, isn't it true that people with nothing to hide will have nothing to fear?

I consider myself to be a reasonable man. As I know exactly who I am and have no difficulty in proving who I am if needed, I am totally opposed to this scheme. Quite apart from the civil liberties implications, it will mean law-abiding citizens having to pay a Poll Tax of up to £80 for a combined passport/ID card, irrespective of ability to pay.

However, lets leave cost aside for a minute and examine the other arguments. Anyone employing a non-legitimate worker already knows exactly what they are doing, as every adult over the age of 16 has a National Insurance number. If they can't provide this number, all is not in order. If this doesn't concern an employer now, why should the introduction of ID cards make the slightest difference?

The next canard is that ID cards will somehow reduce benefit fraud. However, if David Blunkett bothered to speak to his colleague Andrew Smith, the minister for Work and Pensions, he would learn that most welfare fraud is caused by people claiming extra benefits to which they are not entitled, rather than by claiming to be someone else.

Just as criminals are unlikely to leave ID cards at the scene of a crime, those intent on carrying out terrorist acts are unlikely to be deterred from doing so by a little bit of plastic, no matter what information it stores. The unpalatable facts which Blunkett and his cronies refuse to face up to is that the benefits from any crime prevented by ID cards will be entirely disproportionate to the cost of their introduction, and that not a single life will ever be saved at home or abroad by introducing ID cards in the UK.

In recognising threats to our freedom and safety posed by criminals and terrorists, we must recognise that a threat also comes from our own government. With the introduction of the snoopers charter that is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers act and the post 9/11 introduction of detention without trial, Blair's Government is shaping up as being the least liberal since World War 2.

ID cards do little to reduce crime in countries where they are in operation and revealingly, there has been no drive to introduce them in the USA, even in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. If introduced, all that will happen is that ordinary people will be inconvenienced in their daily lives while criminals will be able, as they always have been, to escape detection by using forged documents and operating outside the law.

The goal of terrorists everywhere is to cause maximum disruption to daily life and to alienate citizens from their governments. The crude and simplistic 'solution' of introducing ID cards, however well intentioned, will be the first sign that the feeble-minded authoritarians in our government have allowed terrorists their first triumph.

London Labour bankroll Scottish campaign
SNP, 12 November 2003

Commenting after the Electoral Commission today published details of campaign spending in excess of £250,000 by registered political parties seeking election to the Scottish Parliament on 1 May 2003, SNP National Treasurer Jim Mather MSP said:

" Jack McConnell's election campaign was again clearly bankrolled from London.

" Four years ago, 90 per cent of Scottish Labour's election spending came from London. This year they've again show no ability to run their own affairs and plainly relied on handouts from London.

" Scottish Labour must come clean about who and where the money has come from.

" There is never going to be a level playing field if the big London parties can simply swamp Scottish elections with cash from their dodgy donors, big business backers or London-based trades unions."

Supreme Court plans undermine Scots Law
Holyrood, 11 November 2003

Shadow First Minister Mr John Swinney MSP has today (Tuesday) renewed the call from the SNP for the repatriation of the Scottish judicial system "once and for all" following mass criticism from Scottish lawyers that plans for a British Supreme Court will undermine Scots law. Mr Swinney said:

"This new criticism of plans for a British Supreme Court proves that the best way forward for Scotland is to repatriate the Scottish Judicial system.

"Not only is there the concern that a new Supreme Court will ignore Scottish interests, but it begs the question that if criminal appeals can be heard in courts in Scotland why not civil cases?

"Scotland has had its own laws for centuries and this is a great opportunity for us to take charge of our justice system.

"The Government at Westminster has to take these concerns into account and repatriate Scottish justice once and for all."

Exec cash must be spent on road maintenance
Holyrood, 11 November 2003

Shadow Transport Minister Mr Kenny MacAskill MSP has today (Tuesday) called on the Scottish Executive to ensure that all money meant for road maintenance is spent in the proper areas by local authorities to stop Scotland becoming full of pothole cities. Mr MacAskill said:

"It is the failure of a significant numbers of local authorities to make sure that road maintenance funds are spent on the upkeep of roads and pavements which is resulting in rubble roads across Scotland.

"Edinburgh is one example that is particularly shameful, as motorists and pedestrians can confirm, it is becoming a pothole city.

"The Scottish Executive must ensure that adequate funding is made available for road maintenance and that the money is used for the purpose specified otherwise Scotland's road infrastructure will grind to a halt."

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SCOTTISH FOOD, TRADITIONS AND CUSTOMS
(if you have any suggestions on what you'd like us to include email peter@scotsindependent.org

See our Scottish Food, Traditions and Customs in our Features section

DATES IN HISTORY

SING A SANG AT LEAST
(compiled by Peter D Wright)

"That I for poor auld Scotland's sake
Some useful plan or book could make
Or sing a sang at least ........"

- Robert Burns

In Perth there lived a bonnie lad,

A brewer tae his trade, oh;

And he has courted Peggie Roy,

A young and handsome maid, oh.

 

Chorus :

Wi' a fal dal didle um a die dum doo,

Wi' a fal dal diddle um a die doh.

 

He courted her for seiven lang years,

A' for to gain her favour;

But there cam' a lad oot o' Edinburgh toon,

Wha swore that he would have her.

 

"It's will ye gang alang wi; me,

And will ye be my honey;

It's will ye gang alang wi' me,

And leave your brewer laddie?"

 

"Oh, I will gang alang wi' yoy,

And alang wi' you I'll ride, oh;

I'll gang wi' you to the ends o' the earth,

Tho' I'm spoke to the brewer laddie. oh"

 

The brewer he cam' hame at e'en,

A-speirin' for his honey;

Her faither he made this reply,

"She's no' been here since Monday."

 

Oh, wasna that an unco ploy,

Wouldna anyone been offended?

To court wi' a lad for seiven years

And leave him at the end o't.

 

"Oh, be it so and let her go,

For it shall never grieve me;

I'm a lad, that's free, as you can see,

And a sma' thing will relieve me.

 

"There's as guid fish intae the sea,

As ever yet was taken;

I'll cast my net and try again,

Although I am forsaken."

 

She's rambled up, she's rambled doon,

She's rambled through Kirkcaldie,

And mony's the time she's rued the day,

She jilted her brewer laddie.

 

He's ta'en his course and away he's gane,

The country he has fled, oh;

And he's left nae sark upon her back,

Nor blanket on her bed, oh.

 

The brewer lad set up in Perth,

And there he brews strong ale, oh;

And he has courted anither lass,

And ta'en her tae himsel', oh.

 

Ye lovers a', where'er ye be,

Just let this be a warning;

And never slight your ain true love,

For fear ye get a waur ane.

See the SING A SANG AT LEAST in our features section

A KIST O FERLIES
A Keek at the Guid Scots Tung

By Peter & Marilyn Wright 
(Note: All words underlined in this section are RealAudio links)

See Scots Language in our Features Section
for other poems, stories, songs, sayings, jokes and words in the Scots language

THE MONTHLY PRIZE CROSSWORD

Each month the Scots Independent Newspaper offers a prize crossword and we're now offering this online in the Flag in the Wind as well.   Should you complete the crossword by the deadline you can fax it over to the SI and the first correct one opened on the closing date will win a £10.00 book token.

SI Prize Crossword No. 47 NOVEMBER 2003
[Click here to bring up the crosswords]