Migration, and Scotland's one-way love affair with Europe

From my Daily Record column today

They say 50 per cent of advertising works 50 per cent of the time. The only problem is you’re never quite sure which 50 per cent. 

On Brexit Day, well the scheduled one on March 29th, the Scottish government launched a glitzy advertising appeal to Europe on the theme of “let’s continue our love affair”.

The £2.1 million advert, funded by public agencies, was screened at international airports like Munich and Paris and in prestigious newspapers like France’s Le Monde, Spain’s El Pais, and Germany’s Der Spiegel.

The beach looked brilliant and the casting agent for the smooth, dark-haired actor declaring “Hey Europe, Scotland is open to you,” must have had the phone ringing off the hook.

But the advert, which we all loved, probably missed its mark. 

Two weeks ago, in a humdrum Commons committee hearing, the romantic strain of the boyfriend on the beach mini-drama took a hard slap from the reality of what European workers think of Scotland.  

MPs were taking evidence on the effectiveness, or otherwise, of a pilot scheme for migrant workers.

Stephanie Maurel, from Concordia, one of two companies handling the pilot immigration scheme for agricultural workers, was asked casually about Scotland’s attractiveness as destination. Casual, in that the assumption of the question was we’re a great place. 

Her answer left MPs shocked.

She said, quite frankly, that agencies like her’s struggle to get people to go to Scotland.

She said: “We think there is more of an issue in Scotland in terms of recruitment, more than England, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

“It is a perception issue to the point that we will get a worker in Bucharest coming into our agent’s office saying: ‘I will do anything but I won’t do strawberries and I won’t do Scotland.’”

“They may never have been to Scotland before or the UK before, yet in their mind they will earn less or will not be treated as well in Scotland. We have videos and leaflets that do an excellent job of showing that it not the case but there is a really strong mindset that potential workers do not want to go to Scotland.”

In case they hadn’t heard, Maurel illustrated Scotland’s reverse attractiveness in figures: “It used to be ten workers for one farm, four to one three years ago. We now have three or four offers for each worker. So, Scotland versus Herefordshire, it is very likely they will take Herefordshire first.”

If they had been showing the “Scotland loves Europe” advert it would have melted in the projector at this point.

As a mainplank of their Remain campaign, and for independence, the SNP government has drummed home how Scotland’s economy will need migrants as the native population gets older.

Evidence of that is all around. In December there were 2396 nursing vacancies in Scotland, 5.1 per cent of all posts.

Scottish Ministers argue for a separate immigration policy and for freedom of movement to continue. This despite figures showing 55 per cent of Scots (about eight per cent less than in England) think there has been too much immigration in the last decade.

For whatever reason (and the weather might be a factor) immigration into Scotland is quite meagre with about 80,000 incoming met by 59,000 on the way out last year.

Overall about 11,000 people came to live here from the rest of the world last year, and a net 10,000 from the rest of the UK.

What’s clear from that is Scotland cannot look on immigration from the EU as some kind of silver bullet to address population decline outside the central belt.

What has to be worked out is ways to make young Scots stay in rural areas or return to them after their college or university education. That means devolving jobs outside cities, more rural housing aimed at single people, policies and spaces that make living there more female friendly.

That involves the hard grind of policy and is less glamorous work than basking in self-reinforcing myths about a Scottish boyfriend on the beach.

Especially when it turns out Europe is just not that into us.

The march of the millenials, bring it on

From my Daily Record column today

THERE have been some stunning sights outside Westminster recently, few of them inspiring.

However, walking across Parliament Square a few weeks ago, paying more attention to my phone than the surroundings, I blundered into one of the climate change school strikes.

The sheer energy, the passion, the justice of what the kids are demanding -that their parents to wake up to the emergency - left me tinged with shame that my generation have not done our duty.

I went to Parliament Square last Friday too, on what should have been a Brexit celebration day but was turned into a Leave means Leave rally against establishment betrayal.

The combination of waxed cotton jackets and the smell of cannabis skunk, the littered beer cans and the Union Flags aloft, made it too easy to dismiss this as an exhibition of fringe English nationalism, with a dark undercurrent of far-right infiltration.

Once these forces are harnessed in England, as they have been in the US, in Hungary and across the western world, politics could go down a dark tunnel.

As the demonstration was going on, Laura Kuenssberg was confronting bumbling populist Boris Johnson about his culpability in unleashing the chaos.

"We're talking in your office while Tommy Robinson is on a stage outside," said Kuenssberg, foreshadowing more than her Brexit Storm documentary, broadcast on Monday.

"Is that who it is?" replied Johnson, clearly caring little about how far the tide runs out from the centre ground.

Who will turn that tide? A 69-year old North Islington socialist who sees himself as more Allende than Attlee? No: the only people who will save us now are the kids.

The name everyone is talking about is Pete Buttigieg (how dare he have a name harder to pronounce than mine?).

He's 37, the eight-year mayor of a small city in the mid-west and a veteran of the Afghan war, and he wants to run for president of the USA in 2020.

If he wins, he'll be the youngest in history.

But Mayor Pete has more government experience than the current president and more executive experience than the vice-president.

He told TV host Stephen Colbert that his youth was his reason to run.

He said: "I belong to the school shooting generation - in high school when Columbine happened.

Our generation provided most of the troops after 9/11, we're at the business end of climate change and the first generation ever to make less than their parents.

"No one has more at stake right now than younger people coming up."

Buttigieg is a long shot and could be steamrollered by machine politics, but British political trends tend to follow the US and he's a signal.

Extending the pulse back to Scotland, it is perhaps already too late for the current cadre of change politicians.

The Sturgeons, Robertsons and Wilsons, all veterans of 2014, will always be viewed by the 55 per cent as the torchbearers who tried to sell them short the first time around.

These ambitious politicians have to realise (they probably do), that to succeed, nationalism must not just change but skip a generation too.

The person who wins politics back for the progressives will talk in the language of "we, the people" without leaving half the population grinding at their identity being misappropriated.

We might go to the despairing bottom of the "us and them" tank before resurfacing with leaders who bring together rather than divide.

But if there is hope, it is with young politicians, people the age Sturgeon was when she entered Holyrood 20 years ago.

If you know any, get them to watch Pete Buttigieg. Get them to be Pete Buttigieg.

Land reform - time to get a shift on

From my Daily Record column

The old hippy button badge used to say: “Scotland 19 million acres, five million people. Where’s my 3.8 acres?” 

Times have changed but the facts about Scotland’s land ownership statistics remain as solid as the ground itself. Very few owners own a large tracts of the land.

Andy Wightman MSP, building on the work of John McEwen, reckons that 432 individuals own 50 per cent of Scotland’s private rural land.

It comes as no surprise then that the Scottish Land Commission, the government quango tasked with reform, identifies monopoly ownership and the concentration of power over land use as the biggest obstacle to economic development in rural Scotland.

I suppose to tackle a problem, you must first identify it, but it has taken a long time for the Commission to arrive at what was bleedin’ obvious to themselves.

The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 and its rights for community ownership remains the single, most effective land reform legislation Holyrood has come up with, and the groundwork for that was laid before devolution.

About 562,230 acres of land is now in community ownership, and the economic and social regeneration accompanying the change in the Highlands and Islands is remarkable.

But these mostly crofting communities are the low lying fruit of land reform.

The big estates, the monopoly board owners are still in place.

The Land Commission report wants to squeeze them gently by putting public interest tests on the sale of land and requiring estates to draw up management plans that involve local communities.

Hmm, tax land holding until the pips squeak, I say. Impose transparent ownership registers and force lairds to live, as crofters must, within 20 miles of their holding. 

The Scottish government has a target of one million acres being owned by communities by the end of 2020. Better get a shift on. 

Josie Duncan aig Gaelictronica, CCA, DiSathairne

Sùil Eile anns an Daily Record

Mar as àbhaist nuair a thig e gu ceòl tha mise air dheireadh a’ thighinn dhan chèilidh.

’S ann air an deireadh sheachdain a chuala mi airson a’ chiad uair guth Josie Duncan, anns an dàrna leth de Gaelictronica ann an Glaschu.

Mar a thuirt mi, tha mi anmoch ag ionnsachadh gu bheil Josie, còmhla ri Pablo Lafuente, mar-thà air duais ceòl Folk a’ BhBC a bhuannachadh.

Anns an CCA bha i còmhla ri Hamish MacLeòid, Leòdhasach eile air na keyboards, agus tè à Innis Tìle, Signy Jakobsdottir, cluicheadair beum-chiùil.

Le fuaim ìosal, eleagtronaigeach, guth geur Duncan agus ruitheam à cultur eile – saoghal eile cha mhòr - bha na thàinig a-mach iongantach agus gluasadach.

An rud a tha fior iongantach, ’s e mar a tha cultar beag a’ toirt dhuinn uimhir de thàlant seinn, bliadhna às dèidh bliadhna.

Tha Duncan agus MacLeòid air suala de ghinealach ùr de sheinneadairean a’ tighinn gu bàrr an-dràsta.

Chan eil ainm aca air a’ chòmhlan ged tha iad le chèile a’ cluich le Inyal. 

Mas ann am Bristol a bha iad, ’s e Florence and the Machine a bhiodh orra, agus bhiodh iad ainmeil. 

Translation

As usual when it comes to music I am late arriving at the party.

It was at the weekend I heard Josie Duncan’s voice for the first time, in the second half of Gaelictronica in Glasgow.

As I said, I am late to learn that Josie, along with Pablo Lafuente, is already a winner of a BBC Folk music award.

In the CCA she was accompanied by Hamish MacLeod, another Lewis islander on the keyboards, and an Icelandic instrumentalist, Signy Jacobsdottir.

The the low electronic sound, Duncan’s sharp vocals and the rhythm of another culture, another world almost, what emerged was surprising and moving.

What is really surprising is how such a small culture produces so much singing talent, year after year.

Duncan and MacLeod and are on the wave of a generation of singers coming to the fore just now.

They don’t have a name for their band although they play together in the group Inyal.

If they were in Bristol, they’d be called Florence and the Machine, and they’d be famous.

Border thoughts - or the Yeats index of how bad the "situation" can be

From my Daily Record column

Prompted by a poem no less I asked, what is the Brexit temperature like in Dublin?

“The nation is holding it’s nerve,” my Irish friend replied with the bedside manner of a solicitous doctor.

The Irish Republic has, of course, the most to lose from  a hard Brexit.

Every sector of the economy, from farming to pharmacy, would suffer a “severe impact” a fortnight from now, according to the Dublin government’s assessment of “the situation”, another lovely euphemism for Brexit from the people who coined “the Emergency” for WWII and “the Troubles” for a bloody street war in the north. 

Like everyone else the Irish government is braced for impact and set aside a grain store of money to compensate for the bodyblow to trade into its biggest market, the UK.

But my pal explained how some in the Irish government have looked over the precipice and gamed beyond a hard exit.

They see a no-deal Brexit not as the end point, but the beginning of the UK’s eventual capitulation to the EU deal that has always been on offer, the only one on offer.

After a few months of no mushrooms on supermarket shelves and a 20 per cent drop in the value of sterling leaving a litre of Spanish holiday lager costing more than a fiver, the UK government will sign up, say some in Dublin.

Starving the Brits into acceptance might have a wonderful historic irony but is as much a flight of fancy as a clean Brexit itself, particularly as the Commons options begin to narrow to Theresa May’s Brexit or a lengthy extension (a political purgatory for us all).

By then someone must start blaming the Irish, whose great success has been to get remarkable solidarity from the EU27 to stop them being picked off by the imperious instincts of the UK.

Brexit is, after all, hopelessly snagged on Britain’s historic relationship with the island and a commitment to the backstop to keep the border between British north and Republican south open.

There were plenty warnings about this lobster creel conundrum during the referendum campaign. But the UK looked the other way, much as it did when the Good Friday Agreement turned Northern Ireland into something that was not wholly British or Irish and anchored in Europe.

The people of Northern Ireland understood this well and voted by majority to stay in the EU. They are, thanks to tribal voting patterns and historic boycotts, mis-served at Westminster. 

The DUP, I expect, will eventually pay a price for being so badly out of step with a place that would rather see itself as a bridge, not a barrier, between the EU and the UK. 

While Brexit has not shifted the dial on Scottish independence, surveys show 62 per cent of people in Northern Ireland believe Brexit makes a united Ireland, and continued membership of the EU, more likely. That doesn’t mean it’s what they want but if you’re young and Norn, and not already left to study at a Scottish University, do the DUP represent the future?

The past is never far behind the future though. The New IRA has claimed responsibility for four parcel bombs sent to three London transport hubs and Glasgow university. The events of Bloody Sunday resurfacing in a court case evoke old hurts and memories.

Even at the height of an Islamist terror threat MI5 still allocates 22 per cent of resources to countering Northern Ireland-related terrorism, all reminders of what is at stake

Often a single line that crystallises as an idea is the spark for an empty column.

This morning it was Radio Scotland’s thought for the day slot which quoted the Irish poet WB Yeats: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” 

It seems apt for the times, doesn’t it?. 

But there is now, apparently, a Yeats index, a ruling that the more quotable Yeats seems to commentators, the worse things actually are.

If the poet has made it onto Thought for the Day “the situation” must be quite bad.

Sùil Eile air "Bana-Ghaisgich"

Airson an Daily Record

"Bana-Ghaisgich", aig Tèatar Finborough, Lunnainn

Tha sin uile air ar beò-ghlacadh leis a' bhàs, Leòdhasaich gu h-àraid.

Tha sin follaiseach sa chiad shealladh aig Màiri Mhoireasdan, agus an caractar aice a' dràibheadh a dh'Ulapul agus smaoineachadh air ciamar a bhiodh i air a cuimhneachadh nan rachadh an càr far an rathaid. 

'S ann mu dheidhinn bàs a tha an dealbh-chluich aig Màiri air fad, "Bana-ghaisgich", agus an cumhachd a tha aig boireannaich air a'chèile timcheall air.

Gu sgileil tha i a' cluich a h-uile pàirt, ceud bliadhna bho chèile, ann an cearcall timicheal call an Iolaire, lachanaich, a' seinn agus a' caoidh na thachair.

Leth-slighe troimhe tha thu a' tuigsinn carson nach robh iad a-riamh a' bruidhinn air an tubaist.  Tha an sgriopt, cuideachd air a sgrìobhadh le Màiri, cho geur agus gu bheil thu air do ghearradh. 

Uaireannan chan fheum thu faclan. Tha Mike Vass air an àrd-ùrlar a' cur ceòl ris a'chall, sliasaidean iarainn an Iolaire a' sgrìobadh ri na biastan.

Nuair a chuireas e air eìdheadh an RNR, 's e aon de na h-ìomhaighean as cumhachdaiche air àrd-ùrlar lom.

Chunnaic mise i ann an Lunnainn. Bidh còisir aig Theatre Gu Leòr ann an Steòrnabhagh an ath sheachdain. Na caill e. 

Translation

We are all obsessed with death, Lewis people in particular.

That is obvious in Mairi Morrison’s first scene, as her character is driving to Ullapool wondering how she would be remembered if she went off the road.

Mairi’s play, “Bana Ghaisgich”, is all about death and the power women exercise over each other.

Skilfully she plays every part, a century apart, in a circle around the loss of the Iolaire, laughing, singing and mourning what happened.

Half way through, you understand why they never spoke about the tragedy. The script, also written by Mairi, is so sharp that it cuts you.

Sometimes you don’t need words. Mike Vass is on stage putting music to the loss, the thighs of the Iolaire scraping against the beasts.

When he puts on the uniform of the RNR , it is one of the most powerful images on a bare stage.

I saw the play in London. Theatre Gu Leòr will have a choir in Stornoway next week. Don’t miss it.

Clusterbùrach - a new ruling

Sùil Eile airson an Daily Record

Aon uair bha iad a’ gàireachdainn oirnn airson ‘s nach robh faclan againn airson rendezvous neo car a’ mhuiltein.

Ach le poilitigs ann an staing, tha a’ Bheurla air ruith a-mach à faclan.

O choinn ghoirid tha bùrach, facal blasda Gàidhlig, air a bhith air a chur gu feum airson cunntas a thoirt air an ath char ann am Brexit.

 Tha “clusterbùrach” air fàs fasanta.  Tha Alastair Caimbeul ga chleachdadh, Mìcheal Russell, Hannah Bardell cuideachd.

Tha e sgrìobhte ann an Hansard agus tha nam pàipearan-naidheachd air droch litreachadh a dhèaneamh air.

Tha cunnart ann gu bheil am facal air a chaitheamh agus feumach air suaimhneas.

Tha Comhairle a’ Chànain (CaC) air a bhith a’ coimhead air a’ chùis agus air a thighinn suas le freagairt shìmplidh.

O seo a-mach cha bhi e ceadaichte bùrach a chleachdach airson Brexit. Ach tha e ceadaichte brexit a chleachdach airson bùrach.

Mar eisimplear: “Nach e tha air brexit a dheaneamh dhen bhiadh.” agus, “Abair brexit, a ghloic.”

Tha e a’ ciallachadh gum feum sinn an litir x a chleachdadh sa chànan.

Ach cha tuirt duine sam bith gu biodh Brexit gun duilgheadas.

Translation

Once upon a time they used to laugh at us because we had no words for rendevouz or summersault.

But with politics in crisis, English has run out of words.

Recently the term bùrach, a tasty Gaelic word, has been deployed to describe the latest twist in Brexit.

“Clusterbùrach " has become fashionable. Alastair Campbell has used it, Michael Russell, Hannah Bardell too. 

The word has been recorded in Hansard and newspapers have mis-spelled it.

There is a danger that the term is becoming worn out and needs resting.

Comhairle a’ Chànain (CaC), the Language Council, has been looking at the issue and come up with a simple solution.

From now on it is not permitted to use bùrach as a term for Brexit. However it is acceptable to use brexit to describe a bùrach.

For example: “Didn’t he make a brexit of the food”, and “What a brexit, you idiot”.

It means we have to introduce the letter x into the Gaelic language.

But no one said Brexit was going to be easy.