New Statesman Scotland
Like most folk in Scotland, this diarist received a leaflet and ballot form from bus tycoon Brian Souter's campaign to keep Clause 28 - or Section 2A of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1986 as it should be properly known. It came with a prepaid envelope and the warning that it had to be returned "no later than Monday 22 May". It also carried the assurance that "votes will be counted in exactly the same way as at all elections and referenda", that the count will be supervised by a proper returning officer, and that the media "will be invited to observe the count in progress".
The question now is: will the media bother to turn up? The anecdotal evidence is not good for Souter's campaign. It suggests that, all over Scotland, potential voters are not bothering to return their ballot forms. Wastepaper baskets around the land are filling up with Souter's literature. This diary has not met one person who has yet bothered to mark his cross, stuff it in the prepaid envelope and drop it in the letterbox. No doubt such people exist, but they seem to be few and far between. Perhaps Souter is hoping to argue for a rerun of the 1979 devolution referendum, when an abstention counted as a vote for the status quo. This ploy is not likely to work. Once bitten, twice shy.
Last week in Edinburgh, this diary met an old Church of Scotland missionary grieving over the chaos unfolding in Sierra Leone. He reminded us that, if ever a country was born on a flush of liberal, even radical, enthusiasm, it was Sierra Leone. Its capital, Freetown, was established in the 1780s by English and Scottish abolitionists as a home for freed and runaway African slaves. Thousands of men and women made their way back across the Atlantic to Africa from the West Indies (especially Jamaica) and Nova Scotia. Blacks who sided with George III against the American colonists in the War of Independence were rewarded with free passage to Freetown.
The Royal Navy used Freetown's splendid harbour as the base for its campaign against the transatlantic slave trade. When British frigates captured a slave ship, the "cargo" was brought back to Freetown and released. These "recaptives" (as they were known in the jargon of the day) either stayed in and around Freetown or made their way back to their home villages. In the long and brutal interface between Africa and Europe, this little west African country was the exception to the colonial rule. The old missionary was grief-stricken to see what was happening.
A new twist to an old press rivalry. The newly designed Scotsman (which looks suspiciously like the not-so-new Times) has decided that it is in favour of demutualising Standard Life. The Glasgow-based Herald, on the other hand, believes that Edinburgh's mutual giant should stay just as it is, and has issued stern warnings about what will happen if Australian carpet- baggers and other such folk get their way. But the Scotsman remains adamant that we would all be much better off if the behemoth of Lothian Road were transformed into a PLC and its policyholders trousered the money.
Given that most of Edinburgh's top financiers and accountants appear to be backing the board of Standard Life, it seems to this diary that the Scotsman is in danger of getting seriously out of step with its readership. This raises one or two interesting questions. Could the Herald replace its Edinburgh rival as the noticeboard of the Scottish Establishment? And is Andrew Neil playing into the hands of the wily Andrew Flanagan, the boss of the Scottish Media Group and by far the most powerful media player in Scotland?
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