Ian Hamilton QC

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The author is one of the blog’s regular commentators. She has appeared before and I value her opinions. I have no idea who she is beyond what she discloses in gremio of her piece. I don’t agree with much of what she says but it is worth considering: especially if we are ever to be governed by a coven of overgrown private schoolboys.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Just Hand Me The Matches

By Mrs W

I once joined in a lively online discussion about education on a social parent forum attached to a well known distance learning university (you know the one). I stated my case and concluded that, as far as I was concerned, all private school should be burnt to the ground. Like a woman possessed, the self proclaimed lead apologist for “parental choice” rounded on me, accusing me of calling for children to be murdered asleep in their beds. I think I touched a nerve. This wasn’t the only indicator that she wasn’t altogether comfortable with the decision she had made to pay for her children’s education. She also volunteered at her local state secondary as a student mentor, a sort of pastoral care under the budget add-on. She caricatured the “good enough for other people’s children but not mine” attitude towards state education that sickens and baffles me, and she couldn’t see it. She considered herself an altruist in every way. The state school was wonderful, the children fabulous, the teachers hard working and dedicated, but not enough, apparently. When faced with this passive aggressive do-gooder who I could just picture taking god to the natives in imperial times, I did what any reasonable person would do. I told her to go bile her heid. Bleugh.

Ignoring the fact that a private sector in education seeks to commoditise learning, optimise life chances and elevate children to a position of privilege based solely on the earnings of their parents… I can’t stomach that they are permitted  to do this disguised as charities. John Connell states the case for the abolition of charitable status for independent schools much more eloquently than me and has come up with The Water Aid Test, a neat little way of separating the charities from the … not charities. But isn’t it a case that’s beginning to be a bit… overstated? oft stated? sick of being stated and nothing being done to change it? 

Parents who write the cheques for school fees often defend their fagging establishment of choice’s tax free status by moaning that they’ve already paid tax on their earnings so why should they pay twice? Because make no mistake, as soon as fee paying schools become tax paying schools the fees will rise before profits are allowed to fall. I’ve heard some parents go so far as to call for a tax rebate to cover little Cosmo’s education, after all why should they subsidise the state sector if they have no intention of using it? Poor rich people. They really don’t get enough in the way of tax breaks do they?

Anyone who whines about their taxes paying for the education of subsequent generations needs to think long and hard about lifespan development and where that road might take them. Every childless person who wishes to secede from funding schools and teachers for our young and every parent buying private education who demands that the government pay them for the privilege, needs offered a wee contract. Just a straightforward wee contract. One in which they agree never to call on the services of our state educated children without sticking their hands in their very deep pockets first.

I’m not sure how many future Social Care Assistants on minimum wage Glenalmond College churns out in a year, but I’m guessing not many. So the opter outers better make sure there’s plenty left in their own personal pot to pay for someone to wipe their arse and spoon their porridge in should they need it. And they better hope the poor sod can read and count well enough to make sure that’s the right pills they’re swallowing in the dark, you know, should they need it.

Every BUPA bed in an NHS hospital is a bed denied an NHS patient and every child in private education is funding denied a state school. Come the revolution I’ll burn the bloody lot down, but I’ll phone first. Honest.

Steven Purcell has done much for the Glasgow he and I love.

Now he has been laid aside by sickness.

He is the political opponent of many. Indeed I also oppose him in many things. Yet he is one who loves our country just as much as I do. He deserves our good wishes and our generous thoughts.

In these first few days of the new Scotland we are all making let us resolve to be generous to one another, opponent and proponent alike.

Steven Purcell, I wish you well. May you make a speedy recovery and soon be with us again.

Ian Hamilton

A PERSONAL MESSAGE

Iain has just had heart by-pass surgery. It is not now a serious operation but it seems so at the time. I know. I had it ten years ago.

Iain, Scotland has need of you. We are all cheering for you. There are only a handfulof journalists in Scotland with the objectivity you have and you are Dean among them all.

Ian

By Ian Hamilton

For two thousand years there has been no one so disdained as the informer. Two thousand years ago Judas informed on his Teacher to the Pharisees: then he took his thirty pieces of silver: then he repented and gave the money back: then he hanged himself: then the Pharisees wouldn’t touch the money and the thirty pieces of silver went to buy The Potter’s Field. Now Jim Murphy MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, wants to make a Judas Iscariot of us all.

Do not think I imagine things. On 9th February of this year 2010 he is quoted in the Herald as saying that anyone knowing of benefit cheats should report them. In return the informer will get a share of the money saved by the Department of Social Security. He wants this proposal to be part of Labour’s election manifesto. He has put the idea up to Ed Milliband who is to run Labour’s election campaign. He would turn us into a nation of bounty hunters. There will be an informer among us all. Is this how we wish to live, rich and poor alike?

In a poor family where there is even a little carelessness the children go hungry. In a rich country where the greedy take too much the children go hungry. In this rich land of Scotland one quarter of our children live in poverty. Is it too much, Mr Murphy, to ask you to think of them? Can you not imagine what it is like when someone is tempted to get a little more?  Can you imagine how your fellow MPs felt when they were led into temptation? Can you see no difference between them and the working man out of a job who cheats to get a little more? I reproach you. You never reported your fellow MPs although you should have known what they were at.

There are times when I can find something to laugh at in the antics of myself and others. Unlike so many I am not too offended by the greed of our bankers. If we are daft enough to offer them millions they would be daft if they didn’t take them. I would throw a stone through Sir Fred’s window if I happened to be passing that way but I would do so with a certain amount of good humour. ‘There you are,’ Sir Fred I would say. ‘From Paisley to Paisley,’ for I too was once a Paisley schoolboy.

But I am hit with a sort of horror by the cold cruelty of Jim Murphy. There is no laughter in what I write. The Labour Party once existed to look after the weakest in society.  It set up the Welfare State, an example to the world. We of the left, whether of the Labour Party or in the SNP truly believe that it was a terrible heresy to say, ‘The poor ye shall always have with you.’ We hope to abolish poverty, at least in Scotland. Now we are invited to spy on the poor and told to keep an eye on what they get. Worse the poor are invited to spy on one another and are to be bribed with the pieces of silver that even the Pharisees wouldn’t touch and that went to buy the Potter’s Field.

Mr Murphy MP, Cabinet Minister, Secretary of State for Scotland, successful man,

I look on what you say and I despair.

By Ian Hamilton QC

Donald Dewar was like his statue. He was head and shoulders above his peers so long as he stood on a plinth. No plinth available he gathered nonentities round him to make him look big. They are still with us. They are the Scottish Labour MSPs.
 
Remember how carefully the Labour Candidates for Holyrood were chosen.  Remember how Donald rejected Dennis Canavan. Dennis was too much of a rival. Henry McLeish, Jack McConnel and Wendy Alexander were to be the core of his government. The rest didn’t matter. Now Donald is gone. One by one Donald’s reserves have been tried as party leader. Henry McLeish, that decent man, resigned. Jack did his stint and Wendy was an academic not a fighter. Now we are left with an uncouth rabble. Most could never have earned a livelihood outside Labour politics. Leading them is a gray man called Mr Thingumy. Not only does he not have a name. As soon as you look away you’ve forgotten what he looks like. We shall call him Mr Gray.

His lamentable performance when challenging Nicola Sturgeon on her letter to a sheriff was not his fault. He couldn’t do any better. He didn’t know it is unseemly to ask MSPs to put their hands up. It is not surprising that the Returning Officer had to call for order several times and indeed rise to his feet, only the second time this has been necessary in the history of Holyrood.

Nicola need have no fear of this mob. (Strange how everyone calls Nicola by her first name and no one knows who Mr Gray is.) In equiperating knife crime with fraud Mr Gray showed a lamentable lack of common sense. There is a world of difference between them. Crimes against the person with a deadly weapon require a prison sentence. Crimes of dishonesty are in a different category. If there is a breach of trust, if the sum is large, if the crime has been previously committed are relevant matters as is the length of time over which the crime took place. In these circumstances (and I am not discussing this case which is still sub judice) the sheriff needs all the help he can get. In asking for a non custodial sentence an MSP is pursuing government policy. Keep prison for serious crimes against the person. It costs £50,000 a year to keep someone in prison. Every penny is needed for two aircraft carriers and the son of Trident. Mr Gray should know these are Unionist priorities. If he doesn’t our sheriffs do.
 
I was once a sheriff and a weary job it is. I read many letters put up to me. They helped focus my mind. A sheriff is there to stand between justice and the screaming mob we saw in Holyrood, bent only on punishment. Punishment? Would that a sheriff’s job were so easy! There are so many other things to be taken into account. There are the side effects. Are there children to be considered? Will the accused lose his job? Will dependents become a burden on the State. Has there been a previous offence? Has restitution been made? What are the chances of reoffending? Will there be room in prison? The public perception of the crime comes at the very end of all these. No sheriff is there to please the public.

As an old lawyer I’m wearied at the fuss. There has been no sleaze. No one went behind anyone’s back with a letter to a judge. I don’t think Nicola was at fault. If so it was in suggesting that there might be an alternative to custody. An alternative to custody should always be considered in non violent cases. If to suggest it is a sin it is a venial one. I have often seen such suggestions from trained social workers. This is a highly technical area of opinion about which Mr Gray knows nothing. There are other more important matters on which he has no policy. Should fines and compensation be recoverable by civil diligence or under the Proceeds of Crime Act? Does Mr Gray even know what this means? He made no mention of it as well he might. I find it more difficult to understand how anyone can lead a once great party who doesn’t know the difference between dishonesty and knife crime, fines and fine recovery, civil diligence and The Proceeds of Crime Act. These are the building bricks of a justice system and they were never mentioned.

Stick where you are, Nicola. You’re doing a fine job.

Sometimes the comments I get are of greater interst than the pieces I write. Four weeks ago I wrote about a national insurance fraud committed by an imaginary single mum. Mrs W, who is quite unknown to me, has just put on a comment which has resulted in the following exchange. These comments are pretty well lost below so I repeat them here. They may be of interest in the present newspaper fuss about Ms Sturgeon.

MrsW February 10th, 2010 at 11:14 pm made this comment:-

“The more you have the less you pay for it” seems to extend to benefit fraud too.

I’d be interested to hear your opinion on this one. I am having trouble accepting anything in Nicola Sturgeon’s defence.

February 11th, 2010 at 6:01 pm I replied
Dear Mrs W,

An MSP who is also a minister has two rolls to play. First she has all the duties of a minister.

Secondly she has her duty to her constituents. She has written to the Sheriff in this case in her second capacity. Testaments as to character and suggestions as to sentence are frequently put before a judge who can follow them or ignore them as he/she pleases. When I was a sheriff I always welcomed them. It is a rotten job.

Sentencing in the sheriff court is a far more difficult task than sentencing in the High Court. This man seems to have mended his ways and has repaid a great deal of the money. He is selling property to repay the rest. A judge must always ask himself the question, ‘What good will this sentence do to society?’

People like yourself, and I write in sympathy not to attack you, always feel that someone who has done something wrong should be punished. (If someone stole my car I would want to hang him up by the thumbs.) A judge, any judge, has other matters to consider and in particular the effect on wife, children and the wider society. It is a difficult job.

The newspapers have seized on this not in any moderate way but because it is a good story. The real place to call Nicola to account is Parliament but unfortunately we don’t have a sufficiently informed opposition. Thw twin duties of minister and MSP are always difficult to balance and you are right to have doubts. I may be wrong but that is the way I see it. I would write this same note whatever the politicaal party of the person criticised.

I hope this note has helped you.

Ian
MrsW Says:

February 11th, 2010 at 9:03 pm

It has and thank you for taking the time to reply. Though I think you misjudge me! I am SO far from the hang em high and punish the buggers brigade. Really. I don’t think I’ll ever fathom using prisons to incarcerate fine defaulters, benefit frauds or penniless parents who steal a chicken to feed their family. Or even naked ramblers. That the bigger fraud was perpetrated by someone with the means to pay it back just aggravates his crime imho, certainly when compared with the young mum who has no capacity to make recompense at all and thereby finds herself in Corton Vale. I appreciate that one sentence fits all is a ludicrous scenario - I just wonder if these two cases have slipped through a dimension portal from Opposite Land!
Ian Hamilton Says:

February 11th, 2010 at 9:59 pm

Mrs W. You may be right. This is what democracy, and a blog, is all about. So that people like you and me can agree and disagree. This must have been a difficult decision for Nicola. She may have taken the wrong one but I wouldn’t blame her if she has.

Comments like yours make me feel that this blog, which is like shouting into the wind, is really worth while.

Ian

By Ian Hamilton

David Cameron, that last dreep from a flaccid prick, has come to Perth. He’s here to tell us how poor Scotland is. That’s his message to the Tory conference, poor souls. They are the no hopers for themselves and us. They are the last few sad readers of the Herald. Go home, Dave and count the union’s chickens. We Scots are coming down on you for our share.

As I have so often said, we are a United Kingdom. The property of the union is held by England in trust for us all. When we leave we will take our share, assets and liabilities together.

First we must take 9% of the atrocious national dept these spendthrifts have incurred. That’s only fair. Then we must take 9% of the assets of the Union. That’s only fair too. One will be set off against the other. Have you thought of that, Mr Cameron?

Let’s start the division. First there’s Trafalgar Square. On one side is the National Gallery, built since the Union. We could have that towards our 9%. We could sell it to Tesco for a fortune. Maybe that’s not fair. Let them keep the National Gallery and we’ll take the pictures inside. They belong to the Union too. In the Square there’s Nelson’s column. We’ll take the column and they can keep Lord Nelson. He’s their hero; not ours. Once cleared of trash like Nelson we can sell the Square to the Chinese. They could use their diplomatic immunity to build a new embassy on it. Now for Whitehall.

Every piece of real estate we’re walking past belongs to the union and 9% of it belongs to us. Offset its value. That makes our share of debt get smaller with every step. You think I’m joking? I couldn’t be more serious. Glasgow was the second city of the Empire. Clydeside was the Empire’s workshop.  Scottish Regiments fell to win the Empire. Our forefathers didn’t live in slums and work for starvation wages and die in battle so that England could take the wealth of the union. We will have our share, Mr Cameron. Walk on.

At last we come to the plum of plums. We come to Downing Street. Maybe we should be generous. Maybe we should let them keep Whitehall and take Downing Street instead. We could use number 10 for the Scottish Embassy. Or sell it to Starbucks. Although Starbucks might not want it considering what’s gone on inside

This Downing Street nonsense is not just a frolic. I use it to show that the assets of the United Kingdom as well as its liabilities must be fairly divided.  One ninth of the value of the assets far outweighs one ninth of the national debt. Let us depart like Ireland without any counterclaim against London and without burden of the debts their spendthrift ways have put upon us. An exception will be the lavish foreign embassies we built when we were a ‘Great Power.’ We shall need a share of them to house our Scottish  embassies. 

Let there be no more exceptions. The Scottish banks only became Scottish when they bankrupted themselves under London’s lax banking rules. They were and are international banks and any help they got was to prop up the ungoverned financial system England forces on us. There must be no bitterness. Let us each say, ‘The deaths you died we also have died. The paths you trod we also have trod. Now it is time to part. Let us go our ways in peace.’

Scotland will do well enough. We have our oil. We have our wind and wave and hydro power and the power of the tides round our shores. We shall have our self confidence. Our will is to build a country on the motto, fair shares for all. That is the only remedy for a fractured society.

By Ian Hamilton

In these pages, either directly or by subtlety I have tried to convey an old message. None of us is getting out of here alive. While we’re here we have a duty to help our neighbour. The best society is one where we recognise that we are all in this together.

We cannot all be together where some are earning millions and others so little that they are deprived even of hope itself. Incomes can be capped. Billions more can be spent on education, particularly on primary education. A child should be taught its worth from its earliest age. Primary teachers are more important than professors and should be paid more.

I exaggerate for effect. There is need for exaggeration. The problem of production of wealth has been solved. We have failed only and grievously in its distribution. Not so long ago farmers were paid to grow weeds. That was a wicked and demoralising admission of failure. Let us start on the problem of redistribution now. An election matters not at all. It is only sent to delude us. We are being asked to choose between one set of managers and another. That is all. No one, except in Scotland, is going into this election with an ideal.

The ideal is one the Labour Party advocated long ago but has now abandoned. There should be no great gap between rich and poor. The best among us will work for the satisfaction they get from their jobs and knowing they are at the top of the earning pile. I remember how my father, and many like him, took more satisfaction from what they did than from what they got.

Redistribution of wealth has been used in the smaller European countries who don’t go to war and who spread their wealth among themselves and others. They don’t have a fractured society. They live safe lives. Their rich don’t need to hide in gated communities like the one Donald Trump is building for a few millionaires in Aberdeenshire. If they are afraid of the society they have helped to create they should change society, not hide from it behind locked gates. A gated community of the rich is foreign to the Scottish conception of the equality of humankind. Do I have to quote, ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’?

There are many others of a like mind. Below I append the figures of this blog for the year 2009. I have a lot of readers. The table shows not far short of three quarters of a million hits in eleven months. The real significance is in their increase and 2010 is increasing even more.

I believe Scotland should join in the chorus of the small nations. Money is not enough. We must care more.

Here are the figures for 2009. You will note that a change of server meant there are no figures for January. They are lifted directly, if a little incoherently from the files of my server.:-

Month Hits Files Pageviews Sessions KBytes sent
     
December 2009
115050 34408 29871 36918 501968
November 2009
100154 23347 21512 34781 357452
October 2009
99348 36556 30054 25314 503821
September 2009
76730 29487 23101 19521 416342
August 2009
55516 24363 18513 12579 302292
July 2009
47940 20884 19639 10623 283272
June 2009
50615 18699 19782 13422 248976
May 2009
57231 22290 20978 14239 272149
April 2009
58220 26436 25454 14777 290311
March 2009
54297 25973 25135 11680 258998
February 2009
57665 31603 26069 7025 201329
January 2009 0 0 0 0 0
     
Total 772766 294046 260108 200879 3636906