So the people of Scotland have voted, and in a very impressive turnout that puts us to shame. Self, for one, is extremely happy that Alex Salmond got whacked in the Scotland independence referendum. On this blog, that might seem heresy, given that Salmond apparently talks a good game at the type of society that is more in sympathy with folks here, liberal and left-leaning, more in keeping with maintaining the social contract, compared to David Cameron and the Conservatives in power in Westminster.
Except that this image of Alex Salmond doesn't necessarily chime with reality, per Ian Dunt at this article at the politics.co.uk blog. Several years earlier, Salmond had sold out his own district to Donald Trump so that his billionaire-birther-bigotness could build a new golf course there (as if Scotland needs another golf course), destroying a precious environmental space in the process. That's not the only way in which Salmond has cozied up to rich right-wing fat cats, as Dunt noted. More below the flip...
Going back to that 2007 story, note how Salmond overrode the wishes of the local council, with respect to that Trump-fueled golf course:
"..... in a surprise move, the Scottish executive announced last night it would take charge of the application, under rarely used powers in the 1997 Town and Country Planning Act, on the grounds it "raises issues of importance that require consideration at a national level".
The documentary filmmaker Anthony Baxter investigated this situation in his documentary film
You've Been Trumped (SNLC'ed
here, BTW). In
this blog post on
The Guardian's 'Comment is free' blog from 2012, Baxter notes:
".....more troubling is the blind eye Alex Salmond (the development is in Salmond's own constituency) and the Scottish government have turned since. When in July 2010 my colleague Richard Phinney and I were arrested and put in an Aberdeen jail cell and charged with "breach of the peace" for interviewing Trump's greenkeeper, the National Union of Journalists called it an "unprecedented" infringement of press freedom. It was also a reflection of the kind of intimidation felt by local residents, who believed the police were firmly on Trump's side in the many disputes that arose during construction.
We put these concerns and others to Salmond - and the cabinet secretary, John Swinney - more than two years ago. But our requests for an interview were turned down."
In a separate 'Comment is free'
blog post from September 2011, Bob Ward noted the environmental destruction that this golf course would cause to the site as it stood:
"The Menie Estate includes a magnificent stretch of sand dunes that form part of the Foveran Links SSSI. This special status was awarded to this 4,000-year-old site in recognition of its importance as the finest UK example of a dynamic system of wind-blown dunes. But the development of the Trump resort requires the "stabilisation" of the dunes, thus destroying their scientific value.
A number of environmental bodies, including Scottish Natural Heritage, objected to the Trump development because of its environmental impacts and argue that the site should be protected and conserved. But the Scottish government has ignored their concerns.
Salmond, the Scottish first minister, whose Aberdeenshire East constituency includes the Menie Estate, has given his full backing to the Trump development. He told the local Evening Express newspaper that "the economic and social benefits for the north-east of Scotland substantially outweigh any environmental impact"."
Baxter has continued documenting the problem in his follow-up film
A Dangerous Game (reviewed in
The Scotsman here). He also has a recent
Guardian 'Comment is free' blog post
here, where he notes that Salmond blew him off when he tried to interview him about the golf course, in contrast to Trump, who's still an environment-destroying jerk, but:
"Whatever you may think of the Trumps, they cooperated fully and answered all of our questions.
The same can't be said of Scotland's first minister Alex Salmond, whose government made the decision to allow Trump to destroy a protected conservation site of special scientific interest, in order to build Aberdeenshire's 62nd golf course.
Our efforts to interview the first minister took up several months. To begin with, his office requested that any interview be played in its entirety in the final film. After we refused, his office scheduled, postponed, rescheduled, then finally cancelled the interview at the last minute.
Among other things, we wanted to ask the first minister on camera about the effect of the Trump golf course development on local residents, including a 90-year-old woman who hasn't had a proper water supply for four years, and about what happened to the 6,000 jobs his government promised when approving the development."
Yes, folks, Salmond is a sell-out. But wait: there's more. Dunt's blog post noted his cozy relationship with Brian Souter, the head of the bus service firm Stagecoach, which included the Scottish National Party accepting a £1M donation for the independence campaign, even though Souter has strong anti-gay sentiments and funded a campaign to keep legislation on the books against "promoting homosexuality, as reported in
The Independent here. Dunt notes Souter's business practices:
"Souter founded Stagecoach with his sister and proceeded to take full advantage of the deregulation of bus services in the UK. He ran free or low-fare bases on local routes to push other firms out the market – a practice deemed "predatory, deplorable and against the public interest" by the Monopolies Commission."
Dunt elaborated further on Souter's homophobia:
'The tycoon had a sideline in anti-gay rights campaigning. He spent a million pounds organising a private referendum across Scotland against attempts to repeal the infamous Section 28 law outlawing the 'promotion of homosexuality'. He warned society was in danger of "imploding" into a "Babylonian-Greek" culture where sex is "primarily a recreational activity", if "traditional marriage" continued to decline.
In 2007, Salmond received a big donation from Souter and called him "one of the outstanding entrepreneurs of his generation". The donation came not long after the party opposed the right for gay couples to be given equal treatment by Catholic adoption agencies and the snubbing of a gay rights debate. One month after the donation, the SNP dropped its commitment for increased regulation of the bus network."
But wait: there's still more. Looking at Dunt's next point, about how the acquisition of ABN Amro was a clusterf&*$ for the Royal Bank of Scotland, Salmond totally was of the "bring it on!" camp:
"Salmond's assessment of good business practice was raised again when it emerged how strongly he egged on the calamitous acquisition of ABN Amro, which sunk the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
In 2007, Salmond wrote to Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin:
'"I want you to know I am watching events closely on the ABN front. It is in Scottish interests for RBS to be successful, and I would like to offer any assistance my office can provide. Good luck with the bid."
It was a remarkable letter to have sent. The Scottish first minister was advising an FTSE 100 company to load up on debt and make a highly questionable acquisition which would later come to destroy it. A few months and £45 billion in taxpayer's money later, Salmond admitted he regretted it. But for many businessmen, the link between friendship with Salmond and policy-making was clear enough."
To explain a bit further, Fred Goodwin was the past head of RBS. (He was also knighted, but that knighthood was later rescinded.) I also refer you to
this August 2010 article from the Scottish newspaper
The Sunday Herald, which tells of how the communication between Salmond and Goodwin only came to light after repeated requests (like the Freedom of Information Act here):
'After stalling for 18 months – and exhausting four different excuses – the Scottish Government was forced to release the Goodwin letter after the Sunday Herald appealed to Scotland’s Freedom of Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion.
Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray said: “This letter is another example of how Alex Salmond was too close to RBS, and his bad judgment.
“There were many warning signals about this disastrous deal but all along Alex Salmond was an avid supporter of ‘light touch’ regulation and giving RBS and other banks a free rein.
“At the very moment the Scottish banking system was on the verge of collapse, Alex Salmond was holding it up as a model to follow.”
Speaking of Gray's 'light touch' (i.e. libertarian no-regulation of big business) comment, Dunt has this comment about the big money backers to Salmond's independence campaign:
"Many wealthy right-wingers behind the Scottish independence campaign have a very different view of Scotland to the one being promoted by SNP's official literature. Social democracy and a generous welfare system are nowhere to be seen in this account. Instead, independence will open up the economy to further private interests as Scotland cuts down on regulations to attract foreign investment.
As Michael Fry, the founder of independence site Wealthy Nation, said: "We must make clear to voters that they can most readily make their country better by emulating their Victorian forebears in the pursuit of profitable opportunities."
If you want a sense of what Michael Fry thinks, he had
this op-ed in
The Scotsman, which said, among other bilge:
"If Scotland is going to have higher economic growth, it can only come from the policies of the Right - it has certainly never come from the policies of the Left, here or anywhere else. So we need to deregulate, to lower taxes, to flatten taxes, to slim down government, to cut out public extravagance and waste."
Sound familiar? Another big money name in the story is Jim McColl, chairman of Clyde Blowers Capital, per Dunt:
"Jim McColl, who is domiciled in Monaco with his £800 million fortune, is an official economic adviser to Salmond. His vision of Scotland is very far away from the aims of campaigners on the street. It is also very different to Salmond's rhetoric, although not to his actions. After all, despite demanding more tax powers for a fairer society, the SNP leader's only actual tax policy is to cut corporation tax by three per cent below the rest of the UK."
So after all this, aren't you glad too that Alex Salmond lost? Granted, who knows if things will get any better with the successor to Salmond as head of the SNP, which presumably is likely to be Nicola Sturgeon. But there's been an awful lot of Kool-Aid swallowing on the image of the SNP, which the reality of a fair bit of Salmond's behavior with big business types counteracts. It's just that not a lot of people seem aware of the latter. (But in a DK series with this title, who cares?)
With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories for the week......