THE FLETCHER FORUM

Published by the Andrew Fletcher Society,
8 Greenhill Place, Edinburgh EH10 4BR
email: fletcher@emplus.demon.co.uk

March 1996 - Number Five

"Edward can steek my mou wi a word, but truth he canna ding - it will speak on when he and I are dust, and never will be silenced." Wallace to Edward I of England, from The Wallace by Sydney Goodsir Smith (1960)

ABOUT THE ANDREW FLETCHER SOCIETY.

The Society takes its inspiration and its name from the great Scottish patriot and thinker of the eighteenth century, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun. It is an independent organisation which exists to stimulate discussion of ideas, issues and developments affecting the life of the nation. This it does by the publication of papers and the organisation of meetings and symposia.

Fletcher Forum - Issue 5

Editorial - If we go, they go too !
Losing the Heid - George Rosie
Britspeak

EDITORIAL - IF WE GO, THEY GO TOO!

In discussions of the Tartan Tax, we need to ask: what are we being asked to pay for? Currently, Scots pay for their share of a UK Government, based in London, which deals with two main areas of business: internal and external. If Scottish affairs are devolved, this leaves Westminster with responsibility only for English affairs and external affairs.

English affairs are obviously none of our business. Our only liability from then on is for our share of the external affairs budget. This demands that the management of the external affairs of the UK must be detached from the internal affairs of England. Any other arrangement is unfair, and the current preoccupation with whether more or fewer Scottish MPs should be involved with English affairs is a red herring. In a nutshell, you can't devolve Scotland without devolving England as well.
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LOSING THE HEID - by George Rosie

Read to the Andrew Fletcher Society, 6 May 1995

Scottish industry, Scottish commerce and Scottish finance are being steadily and remorselessly stripped of all power. Why is this happening, what is it doing to Scotland, and what can we do about it?

The good news is that Scotland is not a poor country - on the contrary, we have a remarkable number of first-class economic assets of world class, which have been developed by Scots. The bad news is that we no longer own them.

As George Rosie points out, this disaster was predicted by Andrew Fletcher in 1707, and it follows inevitably from the lack of any form of protection for Scottish interests under the present system of government. The most important question, in many ways, is the last raised by Mr Rosie: what can we do about it? Proverbially, a Scot does not fight till he sees his own blood. We are seeing it.

A few years ago Les Wilson of Scottish Television and I made a programme which we called 'Losing the Heid'. It was not about outbursts of uncontrolled rage - although there were times when I came pretty close to that - it was about the way in which Scottish industry, Scottish commerce and Scottish finance was being steadily but remorselessly stripped of all power. It had been - it still is - a bad time. In the preceding years company after company had been taken over and reduced to the status of a branch. Headquarters after headquarters were closed down and moved furth of Scotland, usually into England. The Scottish economy, it seemed to us, was quite literally 'losing the heid'. We made what we thought was a well-researched and telling programme that pointed out something that should concern us all.

I've got to say that we were wrong. Nobody was interested. Nobody paid the slightest bit of attention. So far as I can recall, not one newspaper - not even the Scottish newspapers - even bothered to review the programme. It sank without trace. The facts that we had dug up went by the board. The argument went unchallenged. The Scottish economy kept on losing the heid. And the process went on.

It's still going on, and I'm still worried. In fact, I'm even more worried. In the spring of 1995 we lost again. The so-called Scottish Lobby failed to persuade Her Majesty's Government to keep Scottish Nuclear intact. The Government let it be known - ahead of the official announcement - that Scottish Nuclear and its English counterpart will be made as one before they are privatised. Scotland and the Scottish interest is to lose control of yet another important part of the economy.

We are told that Ian Lang triumphed by persuading the Cabinet that the headquarters of the new company must be located in Edinburgh. This is good news - good news, that is, for British Airways and British Midland, because it means that the Edinburgh-based executives of the new company will spend most of their time in the air en route to London. Until, that is, they find that they really must find a headquarters in London. Because, as sure as night follows day, that is what will happen.

Meanwhile, we hope against hope that the English voter will deliver Tony Blair and with him our own Parliament, but they'd better hurry, because it a distinct Scottish polity ever does emerge, any identifiable Scottish economy may have ceased to exist. There may be little or nothing left. The politicians in the old High School may find themselves haggling over a collection of branch factories, regional offices and local distribution depots which can be whipped away at any time - as we have seen so often over the past fifteen years. An Assembly or Parliament trying to raise taxes from a branch-factory economy is not in the strongest of positions. External ownership imposes some fairly strict limitations.

WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING?
In the past ten years or so the haemorrhage of corporate power and influence out of Scotland has been prodigious. Many of Scotland's biggest, best and most eminent companies - the House of Fraser, Anderson Strathclyde, The Distillers Company, Arthur Bell, Britoil, British Caledonian, Loganair - have slipped into non-Scottish (usually English) ownership. The takeover and merger zeal - some would say 'mania' - of the 1980s boosted - some would say 'exacerbated' - a process which had been going on since the end of World War I, and which owes as much to old-time Socialist enthusiasms as it does to unbridled capitalism. And which - to some extent at least - accounts for the unconscionable nervousness of corporate Scotland about any constitutional change. If your bosses in London, New York, Frankfurt or even further afield are fretting over the future of a country about which they know little or nothing, their unease is guaranteed to make their Scottish managers want to hang on to the status quo like grim death. Better the devil you know.

Just before the last General Election I talked to the Managing Director of a Glasgow company which is now the subsidiary of an English corporation. He told me, and I quote: "I'm getting telephone calls from London twice a day demanding to know what is going on up here. My Board's grasp of Scottish politics is non-existent. They seem to think that Charlie Gray of Strathclyde Regional Council is Enver Hoxha re-incarnate, and that Home Rule means Tirana on the Clyde. It's daft, but there you are." Yes indeed. Here we are.

And in a way it's hard not to feel some sympathy for the corporate bosses, wherever they are. Harassed by see-sawing interest rates, beleaguered by recession, beset by uncertainty, besieged by nervous shareholders, fearful about predators, anxious about the implications of the Single European Market, any constitutional change inside Britain, such as a Parliament in Edinburgh, or anywhere else for that matter, is the last thing they need. So perhaps it is hardly surprising that the main boards in London or Houston or Tokyo are inclined to lean on their Scottish managers to do whatever they can do to preserve the status quo.

And the fact is, whether we like it or not, there are more and more such non- Scottish boards presiding over Scottish companies. The extent to which the economy of Scotland is now owned, and therefore controlled, outside of Scotland is only beginning to emerge. Firm statistics are notoriously hard to come by, but a study by Glasgow University academics, Ivan Turok and Ranald Richardson, suggests that in the takeover-happy 1980s, almost 250 independent Scottish companies were digested by outside predators. Most of the raiders came from London and the south-east of England.

In a paper published by the David Hume Institute, Sir Gerald Elliot, one-time Chief Executive Officer of the Christian Salvesen Group, calculated that between 1985 and 1987, Scotland lost control of more than twenty per cent of its listed industrial companies. Twenty per cent in three years.

Management consultant Denis Henry has spent years compiling a database of major Scottish industrial companies. In 1974 there were 150 on his list. Twenty years later there were just over 70. He makes an interesting point. "It used to be the weak sisters and the lame ducks that went", he said. "Not any more. In recent years we've seen some of the best performers in the Scottish economy, firms like Anderson Strathclyde and Arthur Bell, being taken over. And that is very bad news for Scotland and the Scottish economy."

No sector has been immune. Engineering firms which have slipped out of control include Anderson Strathclyde, Thor Ceramics, John Brown Engineering, Barr & Stroud, Shanks & Co, The North British Steel Group, Carron Phoenix, Bruntons of Musselburgh, Eadie Brothers, and many others. The list is long.

Among the textile companies which have gone the same way are Coats Patons, Don Brothers Buist, J & J Crombie, Dundee Textiles, John Laing of Hawick. Most of Scotland's paper, board and timber companies have been snapped up: Thomas Tait, Caberboard, Culter Guardbridge, William Somerville, Brownlees.

More recently we've seen Scotland's biggest home-grown grocery chain, the William Low Group, go the same way. The business was sold to Tesco, the family firm of that (how shall I say?) renowned Thatcherite, Lady Shirley Porter of the Westminster City Council. Lady Porter's gain was Dundee's loss. Hundreds of head office jobs went down the tubes.

It is also worth reminding ourselves that less than twenty-five per cent of the Scotch whisky industry, our pride and joy on the world stage, is now owned in Scotland. The rest is owned in London, the USA, Canada, France, Spain, and Japan. Let's remind ourselves that powerful chunks of the Scottish media - the Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, the Edinburgh Evening News, the Aberdeen Press and Journal, the Evening Express - are owned in Canada via Watford. Scotland's biggest-selling tabloids, the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail, are part of the London-based Mirror Group. BBC Scotland - as has been made very plain in recent years - has always been a satrapy of London. Hardly a programme of any real substance, for radio or television, can be made without budget approval from London.

High profile institutions like the Gleneagles Hotel, the Turnberry Hotel, the Old Course Hotel in St Andrews, are all owned a long way from Caledonia stern and wild.

THE NEW COLONIALISM
One operation that particularly intrigues me is that quintessential Scottish firm, Highland Spring. You've seen the bottles on most supermarket shelves, mineral water, both fizzy and flat, piped out of the ground at Blackford near Auchterarder in Perthshire and bottled on the spot. Decked out with pictures of bens and glens. What could be more Scottish? It's bogus, of course. The company is owned by Arab interests through a corporate body set up in Liechtenstein. The main shareholder is a one-time Arab diplomat, Mohammed Al Tajir.

Now, what Mr Al Tajir and his associates have done is very interesting. They bought the land around Auchterarder and with it the water under the land. Having acquired our natural resources, they add value and sell it back to the natives. It is classic colonialism, and we are the colonised. For some of our foreign masters we hew the wood; for others we draw the water.

And while our great mutual funds remain largely untouched, apart from Scottish Mutual which was swallowed up by Abbey National, and the Life Association of Scotland which went to the Dutch in the 1960s, the Scottish financial sector has seen a number of sell-outs in recent years. The stockbrokers, Wood Mackenzie, have gone to County Nat West; the Clydesdale Bank to the National Australia Bank; World Markets to the Bankers Trust; TSB Scotland to the TSB Bank.

Nor is there much hope to be found in the much-vaunted Silicon Glen, the computer and electronics industry. Silicon Glen is made up almost entirely of American and Japanese branch factories: IBM, Hewlett Packard, NEC, Motorola, OKI and all the rest. The home-grown presence in the Glen is minimal to invisible. We cannot, I think, complain too much about that kind of inward investment. It brings jobs and a measure of prosperity (sometimes short-lived) that would not otherwise have existed. The fact that most of the jobs are low-grade, unskilled jobs for women is another matter.

And just about the only exportable Scottish success in the North Sea Oil province has been the Wood Group of Aberdeen. The three big production platforms, at Nigg, Ardersier and Methil, are all owned furth of Scotland, as is the module-building yard at Arnish Point near Stornaway.

Of course the takeover business has not been all one way. A handful of Scottish-owned companies were very aggressive during the 1980s, notably General Accident, Dawson International, Stagecoach, Kwikfit, Hewden Stewart, and the Weir Group. All made forays south of the Border and overseas, often with great success. In the case of Stagecoach, with so much success that the Government recently felt obliged to rein them in. But the impact that such Scottish acquisitions can make on the huge economies of, say, London and the south-east, or the Eastern United States, is negligible.

THE MECHANISMS AT WORK
It seem to me that there are three powerful strands in this process which is stripping Scotland of its industrial, financial and commercial autonomy. Let me try to tease them out.

1 Hostile Takeovers

The open nature of the British stock market makes Scottish (and, indeed, other British) firms vulnerable to foreign predators. They are easy meat. Very few European countries have company structures which are so accessible and so vulnerable. It was hostile takeovers that lost us the House of Fraser - Scotland's biggest retailer; the Distillers Company Ltd - Scotland's biggest whisky maker; Anderson Strathclyde - Scotland's biggest maker of mining equipment; Britoil - Scotland's biggest industrial company, now subsumed into British Petroleum. And if Ernest Saunders is to be believed, the whole idea for the takeover of Distillers by Guinness came not from him or from within Guinness but from the merchant bankers - I think it was Morgan Grenfell - who went on to make millions from the deal.

2 Friendly Takeovers and Mergers

Not all takeovers are hostile. Far from it. The big majority are friendlys. And they are not confined to tired old family firms whose owners are looking to retire to the golf course. There is a distinct - and some would say, alarming - tendency among the most enterprising of Scotland's firms to sell out once they reach a certain size. Often this is done for what is claimed to be the best of reasons: access to more capital, bigger and better markets, better technology, better research and development prospects, and so on. Companies which have gone this way include high-grade electronic firms like Fortronic, MESL, Domain Power, Office Workstations, as well as, to mention them again, the William Low Group. Also in this category is British Caledonian, once Scotland's biggest airline, and now the charter arm of British Airways.

3 Nationalisation

When the Labour Party or the Scottish TUC complain, as they do, about the hostile takeovers of Scottish companies (with the consequent loss of jobs in Scotland), the nationalisation factor in the equation is never mentioned. This is probably because it goes against Scotland's political grain. But it should be mentioned, because the great nationalisation programmes of the Labour Governments of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s stripped the Scottish economy of control over its heavy industries. And the Scottish economy was extraordinarily rich in heavy industries. It was through socialism that we lost control of our coal mines, railways, steel mills, gas industry, ship- building firms, and aircraft builders. It was done with the finest of intentions and the best will in the world, but nationalisation was a devastating blow to industrial Scotland.

And when the private sector was privatised by the Thatcher regime in the 1980s, hardly any of it came back into Scottish hands. Somehow we never found the money or the nerve to buy those industries back. Others did. Almost all the Scottish shipyards nationalised in the 1970s are now owned by UK or foreign groups. Yarrow Shipbuilders is part of GEC; Scott Lithgow belongs to Trafalgar House; Upper Clyde Shipbuilders went to UIE of France; Govan Shipbuilders to Kvaerner Industries of Norway; Hall Russell of Aberdeen was eventually sold to A & P Appledore of England; the Robb Caledon yards at Leith and Dundee were just closed down. The only Scottish-owned shipbuilder of any size is Fergusons of Port Glasgow who have found a niche making small ferries, lighthouse tenders, etc.

When they nationalised and then privatised British Steel, none of it came back to Scotland. When they nationalised and then privatised British Gas, none of it came back to Scotland. When they nationalised and then privatised British Coal, we were left with one - just one - deep coal-mine, the pit at Longannet. Scotland did manage to hang on to Scottish Power and Scottish Hydro, but we will lose control of Scottish Nuclear, and Scottish Nuclear provides more than half our electricity. Scotland is probably the most nuclear-reliant country in Europe, which means that most of our electricity will be provided for us by a company owned outside of Scotland.

Some of these privatisations have been well publicised. Other have been sneaked through. Take, for instance, the ports of the Clyde and the Forth. Both these institutions were built up with huge sums of public money. In fact, Edinburgh almost bankrupted itself in the nineteenth century extending Leith Docks. But now, thanks to the Ports Act of 1991, which allowed the so- called Trust Ports to turn themselves into public companies, they have been privatised, sold off to the highest bidders. Now the great harbours of Scotland, which were once held in trust for the people of Scotland belong to City of London institutions like Schroder Investment Management Ltd, Smith New Court, the Morgan Grenfell Group, and a swarm of others. Any profits being made - and there are profits being made - will go to line the pockets of the City of London.

In other words, we are stuffed when we are coming, and stuffed when we are going. We've been in a no-win situation. We've lost out to unchecked socialism and we've lost out to unchecked capitalism.

DOES IT MATTER?
All of which raises the question: does it matter? After all, most of the companies which have been taken over are still operating in Scotland, still producing revenue, still providing jobs (though perhaps not as many as before). Some of them, Distillers for example, appear to be in better shape than when they were in Scottish hand.

Well, I think it does matter, and a growing number of Scottish industrialists, financiers and commentators seem to agree. They are saying that this steady haemorrhage of power and control is bad for Scotland's economic health. It is producing what the economist Neil Buxton called "the neutered cat" syndrome. There is no visible deterioration, the cat still walks, stretches and purrs, but it has lost the ability to reproduce, in company terms, to grow, adapt or innovate.

SIDE-EFFECTS
One man who has strong views on this - and he is no nationalist - is Bruce Pattullo of the Bank of Scotland. He argues that the loss of corporate headquarters is damaging in a hundred subtle ways. Not only does it remove decision-making from Scotland but it also leaches away high-grade work for professionals : accountants, lawyers, advertising agents, designers, architects, printers, even caterers. Pattullo argues that the sheer quality of work generated by a head office is beyond anything that a branch office, no matter how successful, can offer.
Pattullo explains the importance of supplying services to a head office. "It means that the local legal firm has to have senior partners of the very highest calibre", he says, "and that all goes round in a virtuous circle and creates employment, and intellectual challenge and job satisfaction for professional people working in Scotland."

WHERE THE MONEY IS MADE.....
But it matters in other ways, too. It can distort the way that Scotland is seen by Government and, more importantly perhaps, the way Scotland sees itself. Let me explain what I mean. Take the case of the Guinness subsidiary, United Distillers, once known as DCL, the makers of Bells, Johnnie Walker, Dewars, and White Horse Whisky. At the last count, Guinness made profits of £702 million. No less than £561 million of that, or around eighty per cent, was generated by the gin and whisky makers of United Distillers.
But if, as seems certain, Guinness pays its huge tax bill through its head office at 39 Portman Square, who gets credited with generating the revenue? Why, the pen-pushers and keyboard operators of London, that's who. The way things are organised, the wealth created by the distilleries around Scotland is credited to London and the south-east of England, which has the effect of making London and the south-east of England appear economically much stronger than it is, while at the same time making Scotland appear much weaker than it is.

Similarly, all the corporation tax that British Petroleum, Shell, Esso and all the rest have to pay from the flow of oil and gas from Scottish waters is attributed to London and the south-east of England. Now multiply that by the number of head offices there are in London, and you can see why that region appears to make such a huge contribution to the gross domestic product of Britain. Heads they win, tails we lose.

A CONSTITUTIONAL PROBLEM
Like much else in Scotland, this is an issue which goes to the heart of Scotland's constitutional position. On the one hand it seems absurd for Scots to get all hot and bothered about one British company taking over another British company. On the other hand, it is hard for many Scots, and not just political nationalists, to watch great chunks of the Scottish economy being bitten off and carried away over the Border or overseas. A branch factory economy is an unsatisfactory replacement. When the economic going gets tough (or sometimes as soon as the tax incentives run out), the branch factory is the first to be closed. When wages get too high, then it can be easily shifted into one of the world's sweatshop countries. And, as we have seen so often in the past fifteen years, there is nothing we can do about it.

Well, we cannot say we were not warned. Andrew Fletcher himself told us what was likely to happen. He saw very clearly the perils of allowing control over the economy and society of Scotland slip away. Let me quote one of his speeches to the Scots Parliament.

"So long as Scotsmen must go to the English court to obtain offices of trust or profit in this kingdom, those offices will always be managed with regard to the court and interest of England."

For "English court", read "English and foreign-owned corporations" and you have as good a description as any of the fix in which we find ourselves. The question is: what do we do about it?

Copyright and all rights reserved, George Rosie 1996
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THE ROAD TO FEDERALISM: BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND A HIGH PLACE.

by Dr John Sleigh
First published in The Scotsman.
Dr John Sleigh is a retired Medical Officer of Health living in South Wales.

If there is way out of our present mess, it lies with the young, and it is pleasant to read from time to time in the Press that they are actively concerned with constitutional reform, and that some realise that there must be an option to direct action, which so many of the young (and old) are now despairingly contemplating. Among the alternatives, a federal arrangement, under which several devolved parliaments would be established within the UK under a federal parliament, which may be taken to be a continuation of the Westminster Parliament, are regularly proposed. However, this suggestion by young people is flawed by a naïveté which arises from a lack of appreciation of the cynical self-interest that motivates their elders.

A federal state is proposed as an alternative to the current perceived options of independence or devolution. The difference between federalism and devolution, in practice, other than that of the survival of the devolved parliament being dependent on the whim of the federal parliament (but let Westminster try to abolish the devolved parliament once granted) is surely dependent on how heavily the federal parliament leans on the devolved parliament.

This is the same sort of issue as that which occupies Europhobes. It all depends on what one means by federalism. To the Continentals, it means transferring down to whatever level is appropriate the administration of whatever can be transferred down (subsidiarity). To the Tories, it means transferring everything up to the top (Brussels bureaucracy). It is pretty obvious that in Europe the national parliaments would not take lightly to becoming glorified county councils. In a federal Britain, with England the overwhelming force in the federal parliament, it would not be so obvious that the Continental view of federation would triumph.

Scotland in a European federation would be much more likely to get a square deal than Scotland in a British federation. Scotland should take whatever degree of self-government it is offered, and build on it.

The "West Lothian questions" is a red herring. The Scottish members sitting together could deal with Scottish questions, the Welsh members sitting together with Welsh questions, and the English members sitting together with English questions, while Parliament as a whole dealt with British questions. Each body might then be better able, in the light of its practical experience in government, to agree how it might like this internal organisation to evolve. This might be better than the current interminable delays in devising a formula for the composition of a Scottish parliament, due to disagreements whose real origin - though this has never been admitted - has owed more to the cynical self-interest with which each faction has endeavoured to preserve its own position on the payroll, and, wherever possible, to improve it.

Proportional representation is agreed by separatists, devolutionists, and federalists, to be an absolute essential if discussion of further evolution is to be properly balanced, something impossible under the present "first- past-the-post" system. Ideally, the first Act of the new Parliaments should be to introduce PR, followed immediately by new elections. It looks as if instead we are to get some sort of variant on the German system where some of the members, probably the majority, are elected by first-past-the-post, and the rest are added from a list of supporters of the various parties to make up something akin to what the voters voted for. This would not be so bad if the list represented the preferences of the electors supporting the parties, but intolerable if it represented that of the party machines.

What we are not likely to get, because it would not suit the political parties, is the single transferrable vote in multi-member constituencies. This would give the choice entirely to the voters, who would be able to put in order of preference in each constituency candidates of their own party, or even of all parties, who supported various issues on which they felt strongly. It would ensure that all issues which commanded reasonable support obtained adequate representation. For example, this is how to ensure that more women are elected to Parliament, not by some artificially-imposed quota.

Finally, the second chamber and the monarchy. The obvious start is to abolish the rights of hereditary peers. Perhaps we could then look at how other northern European countries, not evidently less successful than our own, choose their second chamber.

As for the monarchy, it has not covered itself with glory recently. Again, the other northern European monarchies look considerably more attractive. But how to reform? If our good-for-nothing aristocracy faded away, our monarchy would probably remodel itself on Hollywood. Perhaps a Head of State on the lines of a German-type presidency would be an improvement.
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DICTIONARY OF BRITSPEAK.. Continued from the last Forum

Brit: in England used by 80% to mean, English; in Scotland used by 19% to mean the same thing.
Anglo-Irish talks: talks between the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, see United Kingdom.
aye: a term of contempt, repeated use of which may lead to imprisonment.
benefit: a slang term for cash which is given to the unemployed (qv) for the National Lottery, cigarettes, drink, and so on, so mostly reverts to the Government in various forms, though it might be better spent on Polaris, Trident, and other job-creation projects.
Britain: England.
British Army:
(1) an organisation, mainly of men with little formal education, in which men from the unemployed classes are disciplined by their betters (men from the upper classes), and taught how to kill people;
(2) an organisation in which 40% of the shop-floor workers are Scots;
(3) an organisation in which 80% of the front-line troops are Scots.
British film industry: a now obsolete industry based in London; the English film industry.
British flag: also known as the Union Jack: the English flag. Not quite sure what the odd bits in the background are, perhaps something to do with our colonies, probably.
British government: a minority government representing 28 out of 100 voters in the United Kingdom; see also democracy, mandate, south east.
British team: English team (now rare)
Budget: an annual confidence trick, or magical trick, which produces something out of nothing and leaves everyone better off and no-one worse off.
budget: money that must be spent before 31 March whether you need to or not, otherwise they'll give you less next year, see job-creation.
central parts: Midlands of England (National Weather, 13.12.93).
Children's Society: a London-based organisation concerned with the welfare of English children.
Church: Church of England; a quasi-religious governmental organisation or quargo which sends 24 independent representatives, appointed by central government, to the House of Lords; once said to be the Conservative Party at prayer, but unable to move with the times quite as rapidly as the C.P.
citizen: an English person who is free to make his home wherever he wishes within the UK, or the EU, or anywhere else, for that matter; see market forces.
citizens' charter: a jolly good idea, bringing democracy to the masses, so that they know who to complain to in British Rail or the NHS and so on.
civilisation: the English way of life, comprising tea, cricket, democracy, firm government, market forces, etc etc. See racist:
consultation: a request for opinion and information regarding proposed changes of any kind, originally part of the democratic process, now a practice frequently used by the SSS to ascertain the view of groups and individuals on specific issues, so as to identify those who disagree with central government and to make sure their opinions may be completely disregarded.
country (eg 'the country', 'this country)': England (as in National News any night).
down south: England
Elizabeth I: a Queen of England who conquered Scotland (Englishman on train, Nov 1992).
Elizabeth II: what is there to explain? (Englishman on train, Nov 1992)
Englishman: someone often called Anderson, Bowman, Burton, Clarke, Coutts, Davies, Edwards, Gillespie, Henderson, Hume, Griffiths, Jackson, Kennedy, Milligan, Morgan, Ross, Saunders, Scott, Shaw, Taylor, Thomson, White, Williams, or Wilson, who lives and works in England; a white person who speaks the Queen's English; a black person who is good at sport.
environment: green stuff one can build on; a land bank, see green belt.
ethnic: something belonging to a lower form of life; people without culture or civilisation, particularly if they speak English with a funny accent and make jolly useless things like funny hats for Oxfam to sell to undergrads.
Europeans: funny foreign chappies who shake hands every morning and speak English with a funny accent, see ethnic, foreigner. (Sir Leon Brittan seems to get on with them, but he's almost one himself.) See Yerp.
fair play: any game with complicated rules, which may change at any time without notice; the British way of doing things.
far north: SW Scotland, Galloway (Morris: The Age of Arthur, p337.)
far south-east: Kent? (National Weather, 13.12.93).
far south-west: Devon and Cornwall (National Weather, 13.12.93).
foreigner: anyone who does not speak the Queen's English.
GATT: a treaty to encourage growth and development world-wide; a good thing since 'anything that opens up markets is good' (Leon Brittan, December 1993) (see also market forces)
government: as in 'the government'; see British Government.
green belt: green stuff one can build on; a land bank, see environment.
hallmark: a sign of guaranteed high quality; a sign of wishful thinking, as in the phrase 'all the hallmarks of the IRA'.
industry: something clever chappies from the lower classes get involved in since they can't do the kind of work we do; any kind of dirty or lowering activity.
Lallyland: a never-never land where there is an endless supply of public money and everything will be all right if it is always used up before the end of the budget period. From US Lallaland, a never- never land, etc.
Law Society: the English Law Society.
lobbying: a good old British practice, where someone is persuaded by various means to do something in the interests of the lobbier, often to provide employment, or award a contract, or pass a piece of legislation; see British, corruption.
local government: a lot of loonie lefties who spend too much money and need strong management (qv).
London: England; the capital of England, see central government.
nationalist: (1) a Scottish loony; (2) a proper attitude to one's country (qv).
management: no real idea; something to do with spending money?
mandate: the opinion of a minority concentrated in the south east but with solitary representatives dispersed throughout the country(qv); a misplaced illusion of being all-powerful or godlike.
market forces: a system which allows those with money to force the sale of anything belonging to anyone with less money; economic warfare.
nation: England, as in "the nation".
National Health Service>: (1) a public service which spends far too much money and so needs more and more very highly paid managers; (2) a public service which responds to increased public need by reducing its public facilities.
national news, weather etc: anglocentric news/weather.
national: English, as in national register, national computer, national office,
national sport: English sport.
national quality press: "Telegraph, Times, Guardian, that kind of thing" (Stewart Cruikshank, in a programme filmed in Scotland about Scottish music, ITN, 15 Dec 1993)
north east: a remote place north of Watford.
North Stirlingshire: West Perthshire.
Northern English: Scots (ref: Channel Four chat show, 28 April 1993).
nuclear power: jolly good stuff, so long as it is somewhere as far away as possible, like the North of Scotland.
nurses: wee girls who get everything done for them and who would only waste the money anyway.
(FLETCHER PUBLICATIONS)
Land Ownership and Use, edited by John Hulbert (1986), price £2.75
Unitax: an alternative national and local tax, by Malcolm Slesser (1989), price £1.50
THE ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION OF TEN POUNDS (CONCESSIONARY RATE FIVE POUNDS) IS NOW DUE FOR THE YEAR 1996-97 AND MAY BE SENT TO THE TREASURER
8 GREENHILL PLACE,
EDINBURGH
EH10 4BR.
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