Yesterday, I travelled across Scotland to a very windy Prestwick to take part in Radio Scotland’s Big Debate, hosted by Gordon Brewer. There was a big audience in the warm and welcoming Monkton and Prestwick Church Hall. My fellow panellists were Conservative MSP John Scott, SNP MSP Chic Brodie (who used to be a Lib Dem), Herald journalist Alison Rowat and former Labour MP for Glasgow South Tom Harris. Tom has a bit of a reputation for courting controversy and being a bit of a bruiser, so let me ruin that slightly by letting you know that he was showing us photos of his very cute dog before we went into the hall. He would say I started it by showing a photo my husband had sent me of my dog, and he’d be right, but still. He’s actually a good bloke, despite having been Misogynist of the Week on my blog a few years back. He’s a fellow Whovian, so can be forgiven almost anything. Well, maybe not all his gratuitous attacks on the Lib Dems…
It was a lively hour and, unusually, we managed to fit in five questions:
Donald Trump
It’s always good to have a go at the obnoxious, racist, misogynist American billionaire, but what if his investments are creating hundreds of jobs locally, as they are in Ayrhsire? Should they be boycotted? My view was that, much as I wouldn’t go anywhere near them, it should be an individual choice, not a matter of public policy. I added that although I hadn’t signed the petition (for the reasons I gave the other day), it was in some ways heartening to half a million people show a bit of solidarity with Muslims. After all, there have been too many reports of hostility towards them recently. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, a friend of mine was walking down the street and moved aside to let someone pass. She got a whole load of rudeness in return: “I don’t thank your kind” was the horrible response.
Forth Road Bridge
The ongoing problems relating to the closure of the biggest route between Edinburgh and Fife were discussed. Chic’s long-winded descriptions of the actual repair and how it was not, of course, the SNP’s fault sounded a bit like they’d been given to him by the whips. I wanted people to focus only on the current problems and work out what lessons could be learned afterwards. I still worry that if you are a senior manager who commutes between Edinburgh and Fife, you’ll probably be able to cut some “working from home” deal for at least some of the time. If you wait on tables or in a care home, your employers are less likely to be flexible and there needs to be more done to help.
Alistair Carmichael
It’s fair to say that my view that 20 seconds when his brain lost connection with his mouth should not blight 20 years of public service, and that if Alistair were in another party, I’d have given him the benefit of the doubt split the audience, but I did get applause when I outlined how stressful the 7 months of the court case had been, with a worry for him and his family that they could lose their home and that that simply wasn’t proportionate. The desire of some seems to be verging on seeking vengeance rather than justice and that’s just not on.
Holyrood Second Chamber
I didn’t get the chance to comment much on this one, which was around George Foulkes’ suggestion that Holyrood needed a revising chamber. Maybe it does, when you have an SNP majority government that’s very cosy being the establishment and ensures that its members submit to their will.
Obesity
It’s always a particular joy being the fat person on the panel when obesity is being discussed, especially when the likes of Tom Harris say it’s all down to laziness. To be fair to him, he did later clarify that the fat shaming stuff that goes on is not on. How did I respond to him? The discussion reminded me that I need to update this blog post from 2009.
If you want some interesting background noise to whatever you are doing this morning, you can listen to the whole thing here.
I’ve done the Big Debate about 5 times now and this was the one I have enjoyed the most, so far.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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6 Comments
A couple of comments, Caron.
Firstly, in a portfolio piece as you have put here, surely there was space for the widely spread reports on the likely Climate agreement in Paris? This, and its aftermath are likely to dominate politics worldwide for many years, so our commentary on LDV (especially as an environmentally concerned party) should keep up with this. I am amazed that the Big Debate did not include anything of this vital and topical matter.
Secondly, I can understand your wish to protect Alistair Carmichael and his family, but out there there are many other people accused, rightly or wrongly (often a mix of both) of various crimes, misdemeanours etc, and they also have families who have suffered appallingly with loss of job, home, often marriage etc. I agree, if your thoughts are in that direction, that we need to help people through that process. This needs a wider debate on who are the victims in any situation, and the fairly recent attempts to categorise everything as black and white (catalysed through many of our media) should be resisted. The easy classification that X is the perpetrator, Y the victim often needs challenge – it is not always wrong, but quite often is. Who else will challenge this if not liberals?
Tim,
I didn’t write the questions. They came from the audience of the programme. If you wait a few minutes, you’ll see that we have a piece from Ed Davey direct from Paris.
Second, I think that pointing out the effect of legal proceedings that were bound to fail in terms of the stress it had on Alistair’s family is perfectly legitimate. No crime was committed. No law was broken. He did one stupid thing in two decades of public service and was the subject of a politically motivated attempt to subvert the democratic process.
Thankyou Caron – I see Ed Davey’s piece – and I did realise you didn’t write the questions!
In regard to AC, he did something that “politicians” are often accused of, ie lying, rather transparently as it happened, and to damage a political opponent. That was more than “one stupid thing”, it was pretty unethical. What it was not, however, was an attempt to dishonestly damage an opponent in his election locally, so I am not surprised that he won the electoral court case.
I think Tim has a good point that what you say about legal proceedings has wider application, particularly after the “reforms” put forward by Chris Grayling, now partially undone by Gove. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, legal proceedings are drawn out and made more stressful by one or other of the parties, as well as the legal system, and what can be done about any of it is difficult to divine, to say the least… Something to think about though.
The debate/discussion on obesity has ignored the possible role of the Adenovirus AD36. Antibodies against this virus are found to a much greater proportion in obese people than non-obese. A vaccine against AD 36 could reduce obesity significantly. See the discussion at:
Adenovirus 36 infection and obesity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22771001
I can see how Holyrood would benefit from a revising chamber, but it really would be reinforcing the idea that secession is inevitable, methinks. Apart from a head of state and a military, there would be little of the constitutional apparatus of a normal indpependent democracy that Scotland would not then have.
I would have wished that Blair’s consitutional settlement had involved a reformed and elected HoL as the revising chamber for Scotland as part of a federal settlement, but cannot see anyone now in 2015 having patience with that as a solution; surely to many Scots it would feel like a retrograde step. And I think we can be confident that the SNP would never concede giving more powers to new a ‘federal’ entity even if it somehow wasn’t English-controlled and London-based (not entirely sure they’d concede a Scottish-based revising chamber, but it’s at least theoretically possible rather than a complete no-no).