All power to the workers at the Free Press

It's official - the West Highland Free Press, my old newspaper, has been bought over by its staff from the shareholders of West Highland Publishing, including the founding editor, Brian Wilson.

When the idea of sale was first mentioned there were obvious concerns about what might become of Am Paipear Beag and its tradition of combining local news and radical journalism with lamb sale prices and first rate shinty coverage. This outcome guarantees an independent editorial and commercial future for the paper.

In the West Highlands the newspaper, and its politics, are taken foregranted as part of the landscape but in the context of British journalism it's important too. The Free Press is the only survivor of the flourishing alternative publishing movement of the 1970s and just about the only weekly periodical I can think of, apart from the New Statesman, that maintains a solidly left of centre editorial line. It also just happens to be a very good local newspaper.

Its values and its journalism are safe in the hands of Ian McCormack, at the helm now for 33 years and possibly the longest-serving newspaper editor in the country. The rest of the staff that I know are completely rooted in Skye and I have no doubt they're capable of carrying on what they have been doing to a large degree anyway, running the company smoothly.

Ian (or "James Shaw Grant" as we're now calling him) is the most modest of media barons. He is one of the unsung heroes of the Free Press who kept the presses turning, week after week, when lesser men would have been defeated by faulty technology, power cuts, winter ferry timetables and my bad spelling.

The changeover marks the end of an era for Brian Wilson, though hopefully not the end of his involvement in the paper. You can read Brian's thoughts in the Free Press itself and he gave a stirring and superbly fluent Gaelic interview to the BBC yesterday.

I gave him a quick call the other day to wish him well after handing over ownership of the paper that he founded in 1972 as a long-haired graduate newly arrived in Kyleakin along with Jim Wilkie, Jim Innes and others. He said he felt quite unsentimental about the whole thing and I didn't believe him for a second.

I feel a great attachment to the paper myself, although I only worked there for five years. Brian and Ian set me on the path to journalism and the paper has been the foundation stone for many lifelong friendships. It also nurtured for me an enduring love affair with the Isle of Skye, which I have still to confess to the Isle of Lewis.

The Free Press, I believe, has had a far more fundamental effect on its readers - mirroring and defending the language and the culture of the modern Highlands, broadening and strengthening a sense of community. It can pretty much claim to have vanquished the influence of Highland landlordism through campaigning, exposure, ridicule and by fostering in its columns the debate that culminated in the community land ownership movement.

If you had to sum it up you'd just say the Free Press has made people feel more confident about their own place and that's no small achievement for any paper. A lot of that is due to Brian Wilson who for most of these years has been the embodiment of the Free Press, just as much as the paper made him a substantial political figure in Scotland long before he became an MP.

He told me the other day he didn't want to carry on with the Free Press for another 20 years, but when he has time for reflection he might find he doesn't have that much choice in the matter. I can't imagine the paper without "Brian Wilson Writes", unlesss he starts "Brian Wilson Blogs", and he's always been a late adopter.

The Highlands will have to cope with the change, I'm sure the West Highland Free Press can. Meala naidheachd oirbh.

Nimrod lawyer looks for criminal charges

John Cooper, the lawyer representing some of the Nimrod families in their negligence case against the Ministry of Defence, is considering whether there are now grounds to pursue the private companies named in the damning report into the crash.

He was on radio this morning expressing as much astonishment as anyone else at the incredible complacency within the MoD, BAE Systems and Qinetiq, that were laid bare in the report published yesterday.

The inquiry by Charles Hatton-Cave, a leading aviation lawyer, is the most damning indictment of institutional failure that anyone in Westminster can remember reading.

Here' s a summary I did for the Herald of its main findings:

THE 14 men who died on board Nimrod XV230 on September 2, 2006 stood no chance of surviving the fireball that consumed their aircraft over Helmand Province.

Before the first onboard fire warning lit up their fate was sealed not by any mistaken action on their own part – indeed they appear to have acted "with calmness, bravery and professionalism" in the face of certain death.

They were killed aboard an ageing aircraft, that was overdue for replacement, by three decades of design mistakes, by complacency in the private support industry responsible for
their safety and by a culture of cost cutting at the MoD that valued business models over old-fashioned airworthiness.

Charles Haddon-Cave, the leading aviation lawyer who wrote the highly critical report, identified "a failure of leadership, culture and priorities" as contributory factors.

The largest loss in a single day for the MoD since the Falklands represented a "systemic breach" of the military covenant of care for the armed forces and devastating failings on the part of the Ministry of Defence, BAe Systems and QinetiQ, he said.

He named 10 individuals five from the MoD, three from BAe Systems and two from QinetiQ who bore responsibility for the "yawning gap between the appearance and the reality of safety" in a system not fit for purpose.

CAUSE OF THE CRASH

The earlier RAF Board of Inquiry and the coroner’s inquest found that the explosion was caused by fuel leaking into a dry bay and igniting on contact with a hot air pipe. Fuel couplings should not have been in the same compartment, the inquest was told. Mr Haddon-Cave said that overspillage from mid-air refuelling may also have been a cause.

Once the fire ignited the crew had no means of tackling the initial flames. They issued a Mayday and attempted an emergency descent to Kandahar air base, but at 3000ft the aircraft exploded, broke into four pieces and hit the ground in 12 seconds. The fire, and the bad design that allowed it to happen, could have been avoided if earlier warnings had not been ignored.

The report noted that design flaws introduced at three stages, each 10 years apart, played a "crucial part" in the loss of XV230. A Nimrod Safety Case, drawn up by BAe Systems with help from Qinetiq, between 2001 and 2005 was meant to identify "potentially catastrophic hazards before they could cause an accident"

SAFETY FAILURES

Mr Haddon-Cave said "failure" or "failings" 24 times in his press briefing.

"Serious design flaws" with the aircraft had "lain dormant for years" his report stated.

"Warnings from as early as 1998 that "the conflict between ever-reducing resources and ... increasing demands, whether they be operational, financial, legislative, or merely those symptomatic of keeping the old ac (aircraft) flying" and that close attention should be paid to safety standards were ignored.

As well as a safety review that was "riddled with errors" the inquiry found there was an assumption by those involved that the Nimrod was safe because it had flown successfully for 30 years.

This contributed to the "general malaise" that fatally undermined safety.

ORGANISATONAL
NEGLIGENCE AT MoD

Mr Haddon-Cave accused the MoD of sacrificing safety to cut costs. The department sustained a "deep organisational trauma" during the strategic defence review from 1998 to 2006 that led to a distraction from airworthiness as the priority. .

Senior officers focused on the priority of achieving the "strategic goal " of a 20% reduction in costs in five years against a backdrop of increased operational demands.

"Airworthiness was a casualty of the process of cuts, change, dilution and distraction commenced by the 1998 strategic review. These failures of leadership and the failure to keep safety at the top of the agenda contributed to the loss of XV230." said Mr Haddon-Cave.

One former senior RAF officer told the inquiry: "In the 1990s you had to be on top of airworthiness, by 2004 you had to be on top of your budget if you wanted to get ahead."

Delays in procurement for a replacement for the Nimrod aircraft also contributed.

PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE

The 585-page report singles out 10 people for criticism. Five are from the Ministry of Defence – including two very senior military officers of four-star rank – three from BAe Systems and two from QinetiQ.

At the MOD General Sir Sam Cowan, who has since retired, whose task it was to unite the separate logistics support agencies for the Royal Navy, Army and RAF into a single Defence Logistics Organisation, was criticised for the "Stalinistic efficiency" with which targeted cost cutting by 20% by 2005

He did not give enough thought to the impact of imposing his target and should have realised it
could come at the expense of safety and airworthiness, the report said.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Malcolm Pledger, who has since retired, succeeded Gen Cowan as chief of defence logistics in September 2002 despite later admitting to Mr Haddon-Cave’s review he did not believe he was fully qualified for the job. He was "handed a poisoned chalice" and was torn between delivering the 20% cost savings and supporting the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. That does not save him from criticism,

The report said he should have questioned whether it was "feasible, realistic and sensible" to achieve the 20% goal at the same pace and within the same timescale. "There should, at least, have been pause for thought," the report said.

Air Commodore George Baber and Wing Commander Michael Eagles were slated for accepting the flawed BAe safety case and delegating much of the task to an MoD civil servant Frank Walsh who was "out of his depth" and since retired.

BAe Systems managers Chris Lowe, Richard Oldfield, and Eric Prince bore "primary responsibility" for the company’s failings in relation to the safety case. Mr Haddon-Cave also said defence firm QinetiQ bore a "share of responsibility" for the failure of the Nimrod safety case in not properly carrying out its role as independent adviser.

LESSONS TO
BE LEARNED

Overall, Mr Haddon-Cave said many of the organisational causes for the loss of XV230 echoed other major accidents including the loss of the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, the sinking of the Marchioness and the King’s Cross fire.

He said the MoD was committed to addressing the "numerous weaknesses" in the RAF’s system for ensuring the airworthiness of its aircraft. It has grounded all Nimrods whose engine-bay hot air ducts had not been replaced but the inquiry had found no reason to recommend the grounding of the Nimrod MR2 fleet which is due to come to the end of its service life within months.

The two named RAF officers, who are still in service have been stripped of their responsibilities for safety and the RAF would now consider if any "further action" would be taken against them. A team has been put in place within the MoD to implement the report’s recommendations.

Mr Haddon-Cave concluded: "In my view, XV230 was lost because of a systemic breach of the military covenant brought about by failures on the part of all those involved. This must not be allowed to happen again."

The loss of Nimrod XV230 - a devastating report

It was a solemn and abject Bob Ainsworth, the Secretary of State for Defence, that stood to give a statement on the independent inquiry into the Nimrod crash today after a loud and raucous Prime Minister's Questions.

He gave a full and unreserved apology to the families of the bereaved for an entirely avoidable catastrophe that led to the biggest single loss of life for the Ministry of Defence since the Falklands War.

The deaths of 14 servicemen in the fireball aboard Nimrod XV230 in September 2006 was entirely preventable and was the result of cost-cutting, slack management and an emphasis on business efficiency models rather than military airworthiness within the MoD and the defence industry that maintained and serviced the aircraft.

In short it wasn't the Taliban that killed the servicemen it was "the suits" who inhabit Bae, QinetiQ and the Ministry of Defence.

Liam Fox, the Conservative shadow Defence Secretary caught the tone well: "Cutting corners costs lives. You cannot fight wars on a peacetime budget and there is a moral imperative that those who are willing to risk their lives in the armed service of their country, should know at all times that everything is being done to maximise the chance of success of their mission, and to minimise their risk in carrying it out." Mr Ainsworth could do little but agree.

The actual presentation of the report into the crash of Nimrod XV230 by Charles Haddon-Cave afterwards was the most excoriating and damning condemnation of organisational failure that you will ever hear. Read the entire report here. We'll be providing analysis and reaction in the Herald tomorrow.

His report singles out 10 named individuals for criticism, five from the MoD, three from BAe Systems and two from QinetiQ and if there are no resignations or criminal charges before this affair is over then it will be all the more flabbergasting.

Groundbreaking solution from Gers MP

Lots of black humour going around about Rangers but I’m sure Ayrshire Central MP Brian Donohoe, secretary of the Rangers Supporters Club in the Commons, won’t mind me repeating this contribution.

I greeted him last night with commiserations (okay, I was teasing him) on the dire financial situation at Ibrox . Quick as a flash he hit back: "It’s okay, I’ve negotiated a solution. John Reid has offered to groundshare."

Kelly adopts Holyrood system for MPs expenses

Details of the Kelly report on Westminster expenses reforms leaked late last night. The main proposal is an end to mortgage interest payments for second homes in line with the expenses reforms at the Scottish parliament.

Also a ban on employing family members which, I understand, is more draconian than Holyrood where the family relationship just has to be declared in the register (MSPs correct me if I am wrong please?)

The changes are to be phased in over five years to head off a so-called "wives revolt" by 200 MPs who employ their partners or family members.

Fortunately I was still hanging around at a Whitehall reception when the call came through so was able to catch the first edition of the Herald with the story.

I also did a bit for Newsnight Scotland , which was fine except that they spelled my name incorrectly on the tum-tab. But at least I realised how much I need a haircut.

Actually quite a lot of stories moved late last night. John Reid MP, the former Defence secretary was on his way out of the Milbank studios when I was on the way in. He'd just succeeded in persuading Gordon Brown to reverse the £20m cuts in TA training which is good news for the territorials and good news for David Cameron who has been given a gift for Prime Minister's Questions today.

With the prospect of "El Presidente" Blair having dominated the Westminster day it also emerged late that Gordon Brown will be openly canvassing for Mr Blair at this week's EU leaders summit. More on that today, I suspect, and expenses and the report on the Nimrod crash in Afghanistan.


This from this morning's Herald:

The Scottish parliamentary rules on allowances on accommodation for politicians are to be adopted by Westminster, according to the leaked details of the Kelly report on MPs’ expenses reform.

Like MSPs who have to stay in Edinburgh overnight politicians at Westminster could in future be banned from claiming for the mortgage interest payments for London homes, according to recommendations leaked last night.

Sir Christopher Kelly, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, will propose that MPs should in future have to rent if they require a second home. The move is aimed at stemming public anger that MPs might make a profit during their parliamentary career from rising house prices in the capital at the expense of the tax payer.

According to the report, Sir Christopher will also suggest a reduction in the number of MPs who are eligible to claim the second homes allowance.

Currently, only central London MPs are excluded from claiming for a second home, but under the proposals any MP with a constituency in "reasonable commuting distance" of Westminster will have to meet their own accommodation costs.

The recommendations on accommodation will affect all Scottish MPs who spend up to four nights a week at Westminster before travelling back to their constituencies at the weekend.

Following the retrospective judgements of Sir Thomas Legg on MPs expenses going back five years some politicians feared the Kelly report might take a draconian approach and recommend repayment of any capital gains already made on flats bought under the existing system of allowances. If that does not form part of the recommendations it is expected that most MPs will accept the changes as part of the reform package.

Last week Gordon Brown said that whatever the recommendations the reforms should not act as a disincentive to people considering entering parliament.

As has previously been reported, the Kelly report will also recommend a ban on MPs employing members of their families paid for out of public funds. As with accommodation allowances the change is expected to be phased in over five years in an attempt to head of a "wives revolt" by the 200 MPs who currently employ family members as parliamentary staff.

The chamber twitters into a postal strike

Reprint of yesterday's PMQs sketch almost as it appeared in the Herald ( because don't you love it when the subs cut out your pay off line).

Dr John Pugh, the analogue Lib Dem MP for Southport, has a motion down condemning the growing tendency of hon. members to text, e mail and twitter their way through parliamentary debates. According to his motion "greater interest is shown in e-mails and messages than in the contribution of parliamentary colleagues", although he admits the practice is "at times quite understandable".

Quite a few MPs are getting famous for twittering from the chamber, which for the uninitiated is a 140 character message posted to followers on an internet website. I know, some can’t see the point, but with the price of postage these days...

Jo Swinson, the Dunbartonshire East MP does it - constantly. She’s one of these people who a survey discovered wouldn’t notice a red-nosed, unicycling clown going down the street in front of them because they are too busy tweeting into their phones that they are walking down a street. Tom Harris, the Scottish blogfather, does it but with limited 3G coverage in his Glasgow North-East encampment we are spared his opinions on 1970s tv programmes for another week. Pete Wishart, SNP MP does it, or did , until Labour caught him out slagging off the whole of Prime Minister’s Questions. Not a tweet out of him since, and he was not visible at PMQs yesterday.

That said from a perch high in the press gallery I could hardly see the green benches for all the other journalists twittering into their mobile phones. Alistair Carmichael, Orkney and Shetland, was fiddling with a blackberry, but he could have been playing snake, as twittering is below him.

If all these MPs had glanced up from their phones they would have seen David Cameron and Gordon Brown going ding dong on another form of communication - the postal service. Cameron had accused Gordon Brown of lacking the "courage and leadership" to intervene in the postal dispute. In fact he accused him of "appalling weakness" in not bringing the bill to privatise the Royal Mail to the Commons, but if you were distracted by an incoming text alert you would have missed that.

"This has nothing to do with the dispute," complained the Prime Minister. "Let us urge the negotiation and mediation that is necessary avoid an unproductive strike," said Mr Brown, trying to sound authoritative and reassuring in the face of a winter of discontent.

"What the Prime Minister has just said is complete nonsense," said Cameron. He was talking about the Royal Mail bill which Mr Brown could not get past his backbenchers, not the Royal Mail strike.

Mr Brown, tried posting another letter through the slot and chastised the Tory leader for bringing the Royal Mail strike into "the political arena". There are few things in this world more political than a strike, Mr Cameron reminding him that union militancy was on the increase. At that the Prime Minister ran out of patience, slamming his papers down on the dispatch box (cries of ohh) as he urged Mr Cameron to reflect on whether his remarks were making it any easier to solve the dispute .

"I would have thought they would have agreed with me that this is a counterproductive strike could only be resolved by proper negotiation and arbitration," said Mr Brown sounding sensible.

But, as usual, it was Mr Cameron who came away smelling as fresh as Interflora roses delivered to the doorstep. In the end it’s all about delivery. Mr Cameron speaks the language of the smartphone, and Mr Brown has the communicative power of a second class stamp on a postal strike Thursday

Ludovic Kennedy, the Rawalpindi and the Lewis connection

Tributes have been flowing all day to Ludovic Kennedy, the broadcaster and campaigner, who died late on Sunday evening.

None was more fulsome or eloquent than Dr Finlay MacLeod's tribute on Radio nan Gaidheal this morning. It should be available soon on listen again, as they say on the Beeb, a seo.

Doc Finlay quite rightly made mention that one of the driving forces in Kennedy's lifelong fight against injustices was the treatment of his father, Edward Kennedy, by the Royal Navy, and went on, in the limited time allowed, to mention the poignant thread between that event and the Isle of Lewis.

The Daily Telegraph obituary takes up the background story: "Kennedy senior he had been a naval captain during the First World War, and in 1921 had narrowly averted mutiny by Royal Fleet Reservists by negotiating with the men directly. As a result he was court-martialled and forced out of the navy.

"The naval authorities seemed to acknowledge the injustice when in 1938, aged 60, he was recalled for active service and given command of the Rawalpindi, a P&O liner inadequately converted into a battlecruiser. A few months into the war in 1939, the Rawalpindi was sunk by the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst.

"Ludovic Kennedy heard about the sinking on the BBC nine o'clock news bulletin and immediately rang the War Office to find out about his father. "The Captain? No I'm afraid he's gone," he was told.

"Bitter grief mixed with an unutterable sense of pride proved an emotionally shattering combination which only became more intense when, some years later, he learned the truth about his father's court martial. He would later admit that his concern about miscarriages of justice probably stemmed from his feelings at the injustice done to his father."

There was only ever going to be one result when on October 23, 1939, in mountainous seas in the Iceland-Faroes gap, the Rawalpindi engaged the most powerful naval ship in the world, the German battle-cruiser Scharnhorst.

Outgunned Captain Edward Kennedy, perhaps driven by the sting of his court martial refused the German order to heave to, and in the barrage that followed carried on firing guns with the ship ablaze from stem to stern.

Kennedy died in the action along with 237 of his men. Twelve of the gunners on the Rawalpindi were naval reservists from Lewis and eight of them were killed. The four survivors became prisoners of war.

Among the island dead was Murdo MacKenzie, who grew up on the croft next to ours in Swordale. My aunts, who were schoolchildren at the time, still paint a vivid picture of the day the local postmaster took the first wartime telegram to arrive our village informing our neighbours and relatives Donald and Lily MacKenzie that their son had been lost.

Donald John MacLeod, a maritime historian who documents these island losses, recollects how the shockwaves from that buff-coloured envelope spread. "I was a boy in Uig at the time and I remember the anxiety all over the island," he told me, when I wrote about the event for a piece on Armstice Day.

"At first it was thought the 12 Lewis lads had been killed. Then there was information that all the survivors on the German ship, Deutschland, were Scots - this lifted morale but no more was heard and gloom descended again."

And that was an enduring gloom. Within the month the postmaster was back at Donald MacKenzie's blackhouse door in Swordale. A second telegram: his second son, John, another naval reservist, had also been lost at sea. So the bell kept tolling, through all the villages, throughout the war.

No one on Lewis, as far as I know, took issue with Edward Kennedy's bravery or leadeship that day but the result was that his name, and that of the Rawalpindi, became woven into the wartime history of the island.