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by Stephen Duncan MSc
Managing Director, Balanced Fitness Ltd

The importance of dealing with the whole person and not just individual symptoms or conditions

Most of us want to lose weight. That is a given even for the majority of people who don’t even regularly exercise. However we are all different – so we all work differently. This means some people who want to lose weight may also have constant headaches, back pain and struggle to get a good night’s sleep. It would be quite common to find that same person also has bloating and irregular bowel movements. Some others will also want to lose weight but have a chronic medical condition such as diabetes or arthritis. The question then becomes should we all exercise and eat in the same way to lose weight?

Stephen Duncan Balanced Fitness

Stephen Duncan
Balanced Fitness

There is a well-known phrase: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
Henry Ford (1863-1947), American founder of the Ford Motor Company.

So eating less and exercising more, looking at the examples above, may not be the answer for everyone. You need to look at the whole person. Back pain will affect the choice of exercise and even the fun in exercising. Digestive problems can impact on how the muscles of the midsection function, the core muscles.

Food allergies can lead to the nerves surrounding the digestive system to basically switch off the deep stomach muscles – the result: bloating and a distended tummy. So instead of exercising endlessly to burn fat off your stomach, this “pooch belly”, your health could be improved by finding out if some of the food you eat every single day is creating a kind of ‘two steps forward one step back’ approach to your exercise and diet plan.

Getting the balance right between diet and exercise

Getting the balance right
between diet and exercise

Even those with medical conditions will typically follow the long held view of weight loss — just cut calories and exercise more. However, here again the subtleties of the condition need to be considered. If you have arthritis, the exercises need to be carefully selected and the intensity and effort you put in to your workouts managed. This means the basic arithmetic of calories in versus calories out has to be shifted to the cutting calories side.

Now, what if this person also has digestive issues? There have been many links researched between the function of your digestive system and the amount of inflammation in your body – arthritis is considered an autoimmune condition. In an autoimmune condition, the body in essence attacks itself and causes inflammation which leads to the breakdown of tissue in that area. Certain foods can increase inflammation in your digestive system and this can ultimately contribute to an increase in arthritic symptoms. So eating the wrong food leads to more inflammation and further reduces the ability to exercise. Those on calorie counting diets soon could have nothing left to cut if the inflammation gets bad enough from eating the wrong food!

Knowing the limitations of your own body is vital to good health

Knowing the limitations of your own body
is vital to good health

Eating an anti-inflammatory diet, free from foods you are intolerant to, would be one major step towards losing fat and placing less emphasis on the need to cut calories or constantly upping the amount of exercise.

Knowing more about the whole person will modify the program for weight loss. Different people can have the same symptoms but for different reasons. You can have digestive issues not just as a result of a food intolerance but from poor posture which alters how the digestive system functions and in turns processes or digests your foods. The digestive issue could also be caused by a response to stress or a digestive infection such as H.Pylori. Some figures indicate over 50% of the world’s population could be infected by this bacterium. It is the main cause of inflammation in the digestive system and in turn this effects protein digestion.

So if you start to look at your weight loss program as all about how to improve how you function as a whole person, taking in to account your hormones, immune system, detoxification and also digestive system, you will know the bigger picture. Maybe this time, finally, you will have the missing pieces to the jigsaw that is you, helping explain why cutting calories and exercising more was merely helping you contribute to the same repeating cycle of failure and worsening condition.

There are people who study the field of nutrition and use lab tests aimed at getting to the bottom of how you function as a whole person. Finding out what is going on in the inside will provide the answers to why your weight loss program has yet to work for you. A more whole person approach makes for a more holistic weight loss program.

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About the author: Stephen Duncan is an Executive Health Coach. He holds a BSc Hons degree in Developmental Biology and an MSc in Coaching Studies. A certified Advanced Metabolic Typing™ Advisor, Stephen is the Founder of Balanced Fitness and has 20 years in health & fitness.

A new report, Putting Progress at Risk, shows that poor countries around the world are cutting back their spending on agriculture and health as a result of the global economic crisis. Despite their efforts to overcome the crisis by increasing their own revenue-raising efforts, less than 1 country in 5 is spending the recommended level on agriculture and only 2 of 5 are spending what the World Health Organisation recommends on health.

Although many had managed to increase spending in these areas and in others that benefit poor people such as education, this was funded by a large increase in borrowing. Fears about rising debt, combined with recent aid cuts mean they are now cutting back. Cuts to agriculture threaten to exacerbate an already dire situation – 1 in 8 of the world’s people will go hungry tonight. Reductions in health spending threaten to undermine recent progress in combating malaria and HIV/AIDS and reducing the number of children dying before their fifth birthday.

Judith Robertson Head of OXFAM Scotland

Judith Robertson
Head of OXFAM Scotland

The report is based on data from a new Government Spending Watch database, a joint venture between Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) which monitors spending in 52 low income countries. It finds that poor countries lost $140bn in revenues due to the crisis – a situation compounded in the last two years by aid cuts. As a result, between 2008-13 40 per cent of their extra spending has been funded by borrowing, much of it expensive – for example off-budget private infrastructure finance initiatives and domestic and external commercial bonds.

Matthew Martin, Director of DFI, said: “Developing countries have made huge efforts to overcome the economic crisis and reach the Millennium Development Goals, but the international community has not been delivering on its promises.

“Without higher aid flows, countries are being forced to choose between sharply increasing debt burdens or sacrificing spending on food, hospitals and schools.”

Judith Robertson, Head of Oxfam Scotland, said: “The idea that developing countries have somehow come through the economic crisis unscathed is wishful thinking. Rising debt and falling aid are forcing poor countries to cut support to the poorest at a time when they need additional protection from climate change and rising food prices. Dismal levels of investment in agriculture is one of the main reasons why 1 in 8 people in the world are hungry – the evidence is that things may get worse before they get better.”

RwandaOxfam is one of almost 200 organisations which have joined together as the Enough Food For Everyone IF campaign to call for action to tackle hunger at this year’s G8.

The database tracks trends in poor countries’ expenditure on areas needed to reach the Millennium Development Goals: agriculture, education, environment, gender, health, social protection and water and sanitation. It measures spending against agreed international targets.

Fewer than a quarter of countries are spending what is needed to deliver education for all or to meet targets on water and sanitation.

Spending is also worryingly low on social protection to fight inequality, climate change and gender. Virtually no donors are funding poor country spending on climate change or social protection.

All of these have been identified as key to global development progress after the MDGs expire in 2015, by a UN High Level Panel considering successors to the MDGs, which is co-chaired by David Cameron.

Last year, the Scottish Government launched the world’s first Climate Justice Fund, £3m over 3 years to help some of the world’s poorest communities adapt to climate change. Oxfam welcomed the Climate Justice Fund, which it campaigned for, but has called on the Government to build on it with resources matching the International Development Fund, by the end of this Scottish Parliamentary term.

Street scene in Mogadishu <em>Picture: ctsnow</em>

Street scene in Mogadishu Picture: ctsnow

By Caroline Gluck

It’s hard to blend in during a community visit when you’re wearing a heavy flak jacket. But here I was in Mogadishu, the conflict-ravaged capital of Somalia, dressed not in the hijab I had just bought in Kenya, thinking it was culturally appropriate, but strapped into a bulletproof protective vest, weighing 10 kilos or more, slowing down my movements as I ran about trying to film the work that Oxfam is supporting and marking me out clearly as a foreigner.

I was part of the first Oxfam visit to Somalia by non-African staff in years. The country has been mired in civil conflict for the past 20 years, but now severe drought has pushed millions into desperation. The United Nations has declared six areas of the country famine-affected – more than a quarter of the population had been displaced by the crisis and conflict, with several hundred thousand fleeing into neighbouring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia. And inside the country, many more are displaced. Hundreds of thousands have taken shelter in makeshift settlements and camps around the capital, Mogadishu.

I visited some of those camps with two Oxfam partners, Hijra (Humanitarian Initiative Just Relief Aid) – which specialises in providing water, sanitation and hygiene – and SAACID (a Somali word meaning “to help”), whose therapeutic care centres for malnourished children and mothers are supported by Oxfam. But we were under strict security rules and told not to linger in one place for too long.

Somalia is not like most other countries. While the security situation has improved in central Mogadishu, no one takes things for granted. People still worry about getting shot or abducted, cars being targeted and explosive devices going off.

Gunshots often ring out – sometimes fired into the air by government forces or peacekeepers simply to clear traffic jams because there are no working traffic lights in the city.

Outside the capital, the security situation is even tougher. Fighting continues among the country’s rival groups and thousands of people find themselves trapped between different forces, unable to freely move and access basic food and health services.

Those who have made it to Mogadishu, often after long journeys by foot, as they flee conflict and famine, end up in the overcrowded makeshift camps dotted around the city. They live in densely packed areas in huts that are made out of plastic sheets or rag cloths supported by twigs.

It was in these crammed camps that we spent some of our time seeing how Oxfam-supported projects are providing help to those desperately in need.

Clean drinking water and sanitation is a priority, especially as the rainy season is approaching and there have already been deadly outbreaks of diarrhoea and cholera. Hijra has been installing water tanks, tapstands and chlorinating water. They have built latrines and helped and trained communities to form volunteer water, environment and sanitation committees to make sure the water sources aren’t contaminated. One group of people were energetically sweeping up garbage as we arrived to look at how the community got their water.

In Siliga camp for thousands of the displaced, I met mother of seven, Habiba Osman. “There is no problem with water now,” she said. “We have plenty of water all day long.”

She explained that so far, apart from a worrying outbreak of measles, disease outbreaks had largely been kept under control. “We have been given chlorinated water, jerry cans and soap. And we’ve been given hygiene training. We don’t have many problems here, thanks to God”, she said. “But there is a lot of hunger. We don’t have proper food distribution but we do have enough water.”

But we had lingered long enough and it was time to get back into our vehicle to our next location.

My glimpses of the city, behind the tinted windows of our car speeding as fast as it could to avoid being a sitting target, were tantalisingly brief. The legacy of war was obvious: there were many wrecked or bullet-marked buildings. But the city also showed surprising signs of brisk daily life. There were colourful hand-painted shop signs, while some traders sat on the dusty roadside, touting their wares, normally small collections of fruit and vegetables. Some sat behind sandbags, which might offer some protection if fighting flared up. Signs of commerce and of food availability were evident: but for many who fled from hunger and drought, the prices were way above what they could afford.

That’s why the centres that offered some basic help were packed. At one community based therapeutic care centre run by SAACID, staff were working flat-out as mothers and their children continued to stream in.

In one area, health promoters were explaining good healthcare practices to young mothers, and why it was important to breastfeed; in another, children were being vaccinated against measles; and in yet another section, the frailest of children were being assessed and weighed. Almost all were malnourished, some dangerously so. Mothers coming here will receive therapeutic food to help their child’s recovery.

Hawee Mohammed, 35, had brought in her seven-month-old son, Ibrahim. He weighed just 4.7 kilos – almost half the normal weight for a child of his age.

The family moved to Mogadishu from Bay region, an area declared famine-hit by the UN after their animals died and the children got sick. Hawee told me Ibrahim’s twin brother died of diarrhoea and she was desperate to get help for Ibrahim, who had a high fever.

“There are many people who are in a similar situation to me, or even worse off”, Hawee said. “The situation is terrible.”

As in most crises, it is the youngest who are the most vulnerable. Hundreds of thousands are dangerously malnourished in a country which has the world’s highest mortality rate for children under the age of five.

They desperately need help. The famine in Somalia shows no sign of easing and tens of thousands of people have died. The UN says 750,000 people are at risk of starvation. As I saw on my visit, aid is getting into Somalia. But the problem is that it is still nowhere on the scale needed.

– Caroline Gluck is a field-based press officer for Oxfam.

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<em>Picture: lydiashiningbrightly</em>

Picture: lydiashiningbrightly

By John Knox

Like a tolling bell, the unemployment figures in countries across the world tell us something is wrong. It is not just that we are in a temporary recession. There is a long-term problem. Creating jobs for young people in particular is one of the great challenges facing our economic and political systems. I want to suggest three solutions built around natural resources, the “infinite industries” and localism.

Scotland’s latest unemployment figures are depressing enough at 7.5 per cent or 204,000. But they are a slight improvement on the last set of figures and they are less depressing than the numbers for the UK as a whole, 7.9 per cent or 2.5 million. Alex Salmond says this a sign that the Scottish government’s policy of postponing public sector cuts for as long as possible is working and he is calling on the chancellor George Osborne to follow his “Plan MacB”.

And if you want to see how cutting public spending at a time of recession is working, or rather not working, then visit Greece where unemployment is 12.6 per cent, or Ireland where unemployment is 13.7 per cent, or Spain where 20 per cent of the working population are hanging around market squares waiting for work.

The American Congress is finally beginning to see the sense of increasing government debt to fund a recovery programme and President Obama has announced a $447 billion jobs plan to get teachers back to work, schools and roads repaired and firms back to hiring new staff.

But all this is simply repairing the damage done to our economies by the bankers. Their antics have left the UK economy 10 per cent worse off. We hope to crawl out of this recession in the next… well it make take ten years if the coalition sticks to Plan A. But recovery plans do not address the long-term problem of providing a growing population with worthwhile, economically viable employment.

For this, I think, we need to think about expanding our economy in three directions. The first is our physical need for new sources of energy, compatible with a sustainable environment. In Scotland, the government has a plan for 100 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020, providing 130,000 jobs. Across the world, there is a huge physical need for energy, water and food, again to be balanced with protecting our atmosphere, seas, rivers, lakes and forests. There is plenty of work to be done, but it still won’t employ everybody, especially those living in our expanding cities, now half the world’s population.

So the second area where I see expansion is in what I call the “infinite industries”, where there can never be over-production. I’m talking here about science, education, health, social work, the arts and sport. All of these are labour-intensive industries and they are industries which do not easily move abroad to cheaper suppliers. They also provide attractive, worthwhile careers, the kind of work people actually want to do.

The third suggestion I have for job creation is “localism”. There is a great fashion for centralisation these days. It is said to be made more efficient by cutting the cost of “backroom activities”. So instead of 32 clerks in each local authority doing the accounting, wages, billing and procurement for the police or fire service in their area, you have 32 clerks doing it all in a new building in Fife.

You still need 32 clerks because there is the same amount of work to be done, only this time the clerks do not know the people or circumstances they are dealing with personally and are thus liable to miss out on obvious efficiencies or improvements. And incidentally, the age of the computer has made localism more possible since no one needs to re-invent their own accounting or information system – they can download the best from elsewhere.

Localism also produces a higher quality of job, since each local operator is responsible directly and individually for his or her output. The local manager really can manage and not just follow instructions from central office.

And the issue of “quality jobs” is very important. People want to have worthwhile work to do. It harnesses their creativity and their enthusiasm and is more “efficient” in the full meaning of the word. The economy should adjust to this fact. It’s a question of putting people first, not the system.

And here the ideologues are wrong. To say either the public sector or the private sector has a monopoly of wisdom is a mistake. Both have a part to play. Right now, the coalition is putting its faith in the private sector, hoping it will produce the jobs that people want to do. The results, though, are not encouraging. In the UK as whole, in the three months to June, the private sector only created 41,000 jobs, many of them part-time. Meanwhile, the spending cuts resulted in the loss of 111,000 jobs, most of them full-time. In Scotland, the figures are happily lagging behind because of the Holyrood government’s policy of postponing cuts till this year.

It is true that the private sector provides more than half of all employment in Scotland and that the number of small or medium enterprises is growing, slightly. But they only account for a little over one third of the economy (37 per cent of turnover), and most of them are one-man businesses in the service sector: joiners, plumbers, window cleaners, taxi drivers etc. The number of large private businesses (over 250 employees) has in fact gone down in the last year to just 2,260. And all these valiant enterprises, large and small, are being hit by the cuts in the public sector.

The number of jobs in the public sector in Scotland has gone down in the last year by 25,000 to 595,000. And both of these downward trends – in the public and private sectors – have hit the recruitment of young people especially hard, leaving us with youth unemployment of 20 per cent (73,000 16- to 24-year-olds.)

I am not saying the private sector never produces jobs. It has surprised us with its enterprise in the recent past, with whole new industries such as white goods, flat-packed furniture, computers, mobile phones, music, sport and entertainment programmes. But it has largely failed to produce well-paid, steady, quality jobs in alternative energy, science (except perhaps the biological sciences), education, health, social welfare, the arts and the environment. And here the government needs to step in to encourage firms to invest and grow by providing the infrastructure for their industries to flourish – broadband, railways, roads, an education system, basic science research.

It is all very well for the governments both north and south of the border to talk of training programmes and welfare-to-work schemes, but they do rather depend on there being jobs at the end of the process. And right now the jobs are not there. Both the public and the private sectors have failed to produce them.

And the same issue is plaguing countries across the globe, from the USA to India and from the Arab world to old battered Europe. “Gie us a job” can be translated into a thousand languages, but its challenge is the same.

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Graves of children who died from malnutrition, Dadaab <em>Picture: Andy Hall/Oxfam</em>

Graves of children who died from malnutrition, Dadaab Picture: Andy Hall/Oxfam

By Nicole Johnston

Secretly, I was rather dreading Dadaab. For weeks I’d seen the images on TV: babies so emaciated they looked like a bundle of twigs wrapped in cloth; elderly people dying, their faces shrouded in a cloud of flies. I was bracing myself, mentally preparing to try to bear the unbearable and do the best job I could.

I hadn’t reckoned on being buoyed by the incredible energy that is generated by the half a million people living in the world’s biggest refugee camp, by engaging with people as three-dimensional human beings instead of cardboard cut-out caricatures of suffering, and most of all by their hope.

This is not in any way to diminish the real tragedy that is unfolding in the Horn of Africa – and will continue to unfold if the famine worsens in Somalia, as the United Nations predicts. But while those terrible pictures of death and suffering – the “famine pornography” as it has come to be known – are undeniably part of the picture, they are not the whole picture.

What those images do not show is the incredible resilience of the refugees, their ability to envision a better life for themselves and their fierce dignity in the face of experiences that would leave most of us crushed.

What humbled me most were the many stories I heard about villagers who themselves had almost nothing, sharing food and water with the refugees as they fled Somalia, simply because their humanity would not allow them to turn starving people away.

I met a man who had walked for five days – in the “wrong” direction, against the streams of people leaving – to rescue his late brother’s child before turning around and collecting his own family for the 30-day trek to Dadaab.

In Ifo camp we met a refugee who had been been diagnosed with breast cancer, had a tumour removed in Somalia and subsequently lost her breast. She reminded me that being a refugee does not exempt you from the other horrors of life. Along with her four children and elderly mother she had been taken in by a member of the longstanding refugee community in Ifo, who has managed to build a brick house. “I couldn’t let this woman go stay in a tent – it is my responsibility to help her and make sure she is taken care of,” her host told me, surprised that I would even ask why she was helping.

Doctors in the camp say her cancer is too far gone and there is nothing more they can do for her, but that hasn’t stopped volunteers from Global Somali Emergency Response – a group of Somali students from the across the diaspora – raising money to try and help her access more specialised treatment.

We visited her several times, and each time we joined the road to her house, total strangers would flag us down and say “Are you going to visit the sick lady? Please try to help her.”

During Ramadan I was touched to see members of the long-term refugee community distributing dates, milk and maize meal to newly arrived refugees. Abdulahi Mohamed Sahal has lived in Dadaab for 20 of his 23 years, his family having arrived during the last major famine in the early 1990s. “This food is a welcoming gift from our community, bought with donations from mosques. We see people who are hungry, so we should help,” he explains simply.

Within days of arrival, those refugees who have the means will set up small shops, while others will sell their skills as tailors or teachers. Many will sign up for “cash for work” programmes run by NGOs such as Oxfam, where refugees and members of the local host community can earn money by digging trenches, laying water pipes and casting latrine slabs. Parents club together to pay a teacher to run a madressa, where children sit in the open air under the harsh sun. They have no books, blackboards or pencils, so they practice writing on wooden boards using home-made ink. No one I met was sitting around with their hands out: everyone was making a plan to improve their lives.

The reality is that people in Dadaab are as complex and human as anyone else, anywhere else: on more than one occasion we were told to bugger off by people who have had enough of foreigners with notebooks and cameras. Those who portray the refugees as either uniformly tragic, or as unvaryingly grateful happy people do not do justice to their humanity.

What the TV cameras cannot capture is the energy and commitment of the scores of aid workers in the camp. The majority of the people who work installing water tanks, processing refugee documentation and distributing food are Kenyans – a far cry from the stereotype of the “White and Western” aid worker who parachutes into a context they know nothing about.

Many of them are Muslim and I was awed by their capacity to work a full day in the field, in extreme heat and dust, while fasting. The feminist in me enjoyed the fact that our team is managed by a group of no-nonsense East African women, all experts in their technical areas – and nothing like the stereotype of the disempowered African woman.

It was gratifying to see their hard work bearing fruit and to witness how donations from across the world were transformed into tangible humanitarian aid: clean water running and latrines built, sleeping mats, soap and pots and pans for new arrivals. It was good to witness progress in improving refugees’ living conditions, as families were moved from Dagahaley into newly erected tents in the Ifo II camp, where there are much needed facilities such as schools and clinics.

But most of all, as an African this crisis has also increased my conviction that we can make a difference. It has galvanised our sense of ubuntu, with ordinary citizens across this continent showing solidarity with fellow Africans. The fundraising efforts of groups such as Kenyans for Kenya and Gift of the Givers have encouraged people to dig deep for the crisis, with citizen contributions often surpassing the amounts donated by national governments.

While the amount pledged by most African governments in Addis Ababa recently was – as civil society coalition Africans Act 4 Africa put it – “paltry”, the bright spot of the day was an address by 11-year-old Andrew Adansi from Ghana. He became a media darling when he was so moved by TV reports on the plight of Somali children that he raised money from his school friends. To date, he has raised $4,000, and wasn’t taking any prisoners at the African Union: he warned the leaders who hadn’t coughed up that he would visit them personally to collect their cheques.

There is a Somali proverb that says “If people come together, they can even mend a crack in the sky.” It won’t be easy, but my experience in East Africa has shown me that the will and the courage are there.

– Nicole Johnston is an Oxfam regional media and communications coordinator for Southern Africa.

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Scotland from space <em>Picture: NASA</em>

Scotland from space Picture: NASA

The Caledonian Mercury is politically neutral. The Caledonian Mercury does not endorse any viewpoint over another. The Caledonian Mercury is a forum to celebrate all the voices of Scotland.

The Caledonian Mercury does not have a position Scottish independence.

But I do.

I support Scottish independence. And I want to write about it – as an individual journalist, not as Editor of The Caledonian Mercury – because there are so few pro-independence voices in the media. Those of us who believe the Scottish people are capable of governing themselves have a duty to speak up. Indeed, the anti-independence attacks have started already.

Alex Salmond has called for an end to “fearmongering, negativity and scaremongering” and insults to the intelligence of the people of Scotland.

Aye, guid luck wi’ that, Eck.

The SNP should force through the independence referendum right now. Momentum is a precious thing. When it’s with you, you can move mountains. When it’s gone, it’s gone for ever.

Right now, the Unionists are in complete disarray. They are down. Kick them. Kick them now, kick them hard. Do not give them time to regroup. There is a “perfect storm” for independence: an SNP overall majority, cut-mad Tories running wild down south, disgust with Westminster corruption, despair at the City-focused UK economy and a desire to try a different way.

But storms pass.

The more the SNP waits, the more time there is for the no doubt well-funded “No” campaign, the Unionist parties and the media to drip poison in the electorate’s ear: “We’ll be like Iceland”; “We’ll be kicked out of the EU”; and the current favourite: “People who voted SNP didn’t realise the SNP supports independence.”

The people of Scotland have spoken. And they have said they no longer want our country to be a dark, craven, backward appendix ruled by “business as usual” politics. To be sure, it is “business as usual” that will kill the SNP. Let the ghost of 1997 guide Alex Salmond’s footsteps. After you have won people’s hearts, you must not squander their affections.

It’s time to deliver independence: that’s what SNP government is for.

The secret to success for independence will lie not in an appeal to Nationalism. I speak here as one of Scotland’s army of ex-Labour voters.

Despite the impending “No” campaign propaganda about “divorce” and “separation”, the change to full nationhood is a comparatively modest affair. An administrative tweaking of the Scottish parliament’s powers so that we can bring local solutions to bear on local problems that are peculiar to our corner of the British Isles.

It is not a dramatic wrench but an evolution from devolution. It is only sensible that the solutions to our Scottish problems of poverty, health, crime and alcohol be determined here, on the ground, in Scotland.

There will be no Tartan Curtain at Berwick. There will be no passport required to go shopping at the Metrocentre. The United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland will remain Scotland’s biggest trading partner, our strongest ally and our closest friend.

I love England. I’m proud to share the British Isles with it. I love the music of Elgar, the writing of Orwell, the buzz of London – one of the great cities of the world. And I will still be able to access all that after independence.

The independent Scotland I want to see owes little to Braveheart, Bannockburn, Mary, Charlie and Bob. The Scotland of the future needs to follow in the footsteps of David Hume, James Watt, Thomas Carlyle, James Young Simpson and Keir Hardie. It must be a Scotland that builds on our intellectual heritage and our spirit of entrepreneurial invention. We must celebrate excellence in education, declare war on poor health and fight the evils of poverty with the renewed vigour of a self-confident, self-governing people. And we must welcome all those who seek to live here.

Scots built the British Empire, for good or ill. Scots built the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Scots invented much of the modern world. Scots are different from the rest of the United Kingdom as we have proved at election after election. And Scots can manage our own affairs, using the resources that God gave this wonderful, wild country.

But let us not tarry. The naysayers will gnaw at our doubt-ridden souls like a Lovecraftian horror. And every second we waste allows the old fears and doubts to be paraded in front of us.

We have a choice: we can be a lost, timorous enclave of wannabes, bleating about the 1978 World Cup and looking for handouts from an institution 400 miles away. Or we can roll up our sleeves and sort ourselves out.

Starting now.

Now that I have got that of my chest, let me reiterate that The Caledonian Mercury has no political stance and will celebrate all voices in the coming debate. The Caledonian Mercury might have had an easier ride had it been a cheerleader for the SNP. But it is neutral because the independent Scotland I want deserves independent journalism: fierce, critical, intelligent.

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Nick Clegg <em>Picture: World Economic Forum / Moritz Hager</em>

Nick Clegg Picture: World Economic Forum / Moritz Hager

There is Nick Clegg, sitting in the deputy prime minister’s office at Westminster. He calls through to an aide: “Has it arrived yet?”

“No,” replies the assistant. “It must have got lost in the post.”

“Yes. It must,” murmurs the deputy prime minister to himself. “There’s a lot of that happening at the moment.”

Mr Clegg has got his invitation to the royal wedding, but what he doesn’t seem to have got yet is the one he really wants – an invitation to take part in the Scottish election campaign.

Here we are, a full three-and-a-half weeks into the campaign and only one of the main UK party leaders has been north of the border to campaign.

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Ed Miliband arrived in Scotland today to look at helicopters in Aberdeen and chat to call centre workers in Dundee, but David Cameron has been too busy bombing Tripoli and keeping immigrants out of the south-east of England to come north and Mr Clegg – well, it really looks as if he is still waiting to be asked.

A Lib Dem spokeswoman said today that Mr Clegg had not been on a campaigning visit to Scotland yet. “He will be coming,” she said, but added: “There is no date yet.”

Tavish Scott, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, was asked earlier in the campaign about Mr Clegg’s absence and insisted he would be coming to Scotland – at some stage.

But other comments made by Mr Scott seemed to suggest that he would rather sleep on a bed of nails than have his UK leader join him on the campaign trail.

How can you possible invite your leader to campaign with you when you admit publicly that the coalition he has embarked on is your biggest “difficulty” on the doorstep?

How can you want your national leader anywhere close to your campaign when you are doing all you can to distance yourself from him and everything he does?

“Being connected to the Conservatives is not terribly easy for the party,” Mr Scott said yesterday, in what was the biggest understatement of the campaign so far.

And, if this is what he is saying publicly, just imagine what he is saying in private.

Mr Scott knows the Liberal Democrat vote is being hammered. Traditional Lib Dem voters have decided to punish the party for its coalition with the Conservatives and for the compromises it made in return for power.

Despite the fact that Mr Scott can do nothing about that – and, despite the fact that the coalition decision has little to do with the domestic political issues at the heart of the Holyrood campaign, the Scottish Lib Dem leader is getting it in the neck – and he knows it.

Mr Scott has been doing the round of television, radio and online interviews this week – and, at some points, he has looked so weary that some observers believe he has almost given up.

Anyone who saw the way he almost gave in to the mauling dished out by Gordon Brewer on Newsnight Scotland this week will not forget it. It was as if Mr Scott agreed with the prognosis that his party was stuffed because of the Westminster situation and there was nothing he could do about it. He just sat there and took it without fighting back.

There was one bright spot, though, amid the gloom this week. On Tuesday morning, Mr Scott went to a sheep farm in the Borders and delivered a lamb. He did it personally. Dressed in a green John Deere boilersuit, Mr Scott did a passable impression of James Herriot, stuck his arm in and came out with a lamb.

As one of those present remarked: “That was the most useful thing I have ever seen a politician do.”

Mr Scott, a sheep farmer by trade, has rarely looked happier. Indeed, if things deteriorate any more on the campaign trail, maybe he should think about returning to his farming roots full-time – it can’t be any worse than having to take such a relentless pounding as he has been doing every day.

Lambs notwithstanding, the big set-piece event of the week was the launch of the SNP manifesto, at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

It was an expensive production, in more ways than one. The event was bold, slick and brassy with a huge screen, loud music and Alex Salmond on stage on his own under a single monster word: Re-elect.

The message was clear: this was about re-electing Mr Salmond as first minister – whatever platitudes he made about the great “team” he had behind him.

As for the manifesto itself, it was also big and bold. The glossy document – in an odd A3 size – was packed full of carefully crafted pictures and graphics, including wedding pictures, baby pictures and an obituary section.

But that might possibly have had something to do with the lack of real meaty content elsewhere. The most used phrases in the document were “continue to” and “build on”, because this was more of a recap of what had already been done than a strong, defiant agenda for change over the next five years.

The top ten priorities said it all. Number one was a council tax freeze. This has already been in place for four years, is in the pipeline for two more and the manifesto announced that it would be extended for another three years (even though this isn’t strictly within the gift of the Scottish government).

The second-top pledge was protecting the health budget, which has already been ring-fenced and protected, and the third was to keep the 1,000 extra police officers, which had also already been achieved during the last parliament.

So the top three pledges had already been made, were extensions of policies already adopted or were merely continuations of policies already in progress.

The other priorities followed a similar line and only the pledge to hold a referendum on independence at some time in the next five years will actually need any specific primary legislation of its own.

Anyone who doubts how far the SNP has moved should compare this year’s manifesto with the documents produced by the party in the run-up to the 2007 election. These were all about immediate action, a programme of change for the first 100 days and a whole host of new legislative proposals.

All that urgency and drive has disappeared. Indeed, it is almost as if, having learned the lessons of the last four years when the SNP found it almost impossible to achieve anything of any real substance because it was in a minority at Holyrood, the party has now decided not to push for anything of real legislative substance at all.

There were, though, some ambitious pledges in the manifesto, chief among them being the commitment to meet all of Scotland’s domestic electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020.

The Greens launch their manifesto next Tuesday and it is difficult to see how they can top that. However, don’t put it past them to be hastily rewriting their manifesto over the weekend (using even more recycled paper) and inserting a new pledge to meet 150 per cent of Scotland’s domestic energy needs from renewables by 2020 – just to show they can’t be out-greened by anyone.

Watch this space…

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coslaBy John Knox

Three cheers for COSLA. No it’s not a new brand of low-cost pasta or a caffeinated drink. It’s the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the umbrella organisation for Scotland’s 32 local councils. And, despite being made up of respectable councillors, it has thrown an exploding tomato into the election campaign.

Pat Watters, COSLA’s wise and gnarly president, has accused the four main parties of “offering the electorate little more than political junk food – options which are short-term, unsatisfying and leave a bad taste.” By contrast, Watters says the COSLA manifesto – entitled Positively Local – is the “healthy option, the salad and fruit alternative.”

What Watters is talking about is centralisation. He says plans for a central police force and fire brigade, for a central care service and for parts of the education system to be centralised are crazy. He says rejigging the structure of public services does not address the fundamental problems.

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His manifesto says Scotland is already one of the most centralised countries in Europe and it has led to resources being heavily weighted towards reactive care and crisis management, eg a concentration on hospitals instead of health and prisons rather than the fight against crime.

“Centralising control and decision-making may feel like taking action,” the manifesto says, “but it will lead to weaker democracy. It will take power out of the hands of individuals and communities and concentrate it at Holyrood or with distant and faceless bureaucracies.”

It calls for a new emphasis on “outcomes” rather than “inputs”. So less talk of police numbers and more on how to reduce and prevent crime. Less counting of teachers and more counting of pupils achieving good results. “We should be less focused on how quickly an ill person sees a consultant than on why so many people are becoming ill in the first place.”

The theme of the councils’ manifesto is the “integration” of local services. Health, education, employment, social care and crime are all intertwined, each has a knock-on effect on the other, especially at the community level. So it’s important that each department of government dovetails with the others – and that, say the councils, can only be done at a local level.

All of this is not what the four main parties want to hear, nor is it popular with the public, who tend to blame “the coouncil” when things go wrong. It’s not the councillors who are making the cuts, they are only implementing them. The total local government budget this year is £9 billion, down from £9.5bn last year and about a third of the overall Scottish budget. On top of that, a council tax freeze has been imposed by Holyrood and supported by all four main parties.

What councillors of all those parties are telling their overlords in Edinburgh is that their various plans for centralising services are “clumsy and disjointed” and will not yield the efficiencies claimed for them. They point out that there have been 20 major structural reforms of the public services in the UK since 1980 and none have been delivered on time and on cost.

Take, for example, the police reforms advocated by the SNP, Labour and the Conservatives. A single police force, they claim, will save £150m a year. But most of that can be achieved without any reorganisation, simply by cutting top salaries. And the cost of creating the new single force is estimated at £92m, probably an underestimate when you consider that local commanders will need to be appointed.

On police numbers, the councils say, recruiting more police officers – at the expense of backroom staff – simply means more officers doing clerical work and at greater expense.

All of this is not special pleading, says Watters, nor is it a call for local government to be left alone. “This is not about self interest or simple protection. I have always said that I would be prepared to hear any proposals for public sector reform as long as they can be evidenced and as long as they deliver community benefit. That is why our manifesto calls for a rational, mature debate on the process of public sector reform in Scotland.”

The manifesto sets out six principles for reform: changes should lead to better outcomes, they should be integrated, they should improve local democracy, strengthen communities, they should favour early intervention over late reaction and citizens should have a clearer view of their rights and responsibilities.

Devolution, it seems to me, has got stuck in the sluice gates at Holyrood and COSLA’s Positively Local campaign is trying to build up enough pressure to flush it through. There are plenty of options for further devolution. I would give councils charge of the NHS, enterprise, water, higher and further education, environmental protection and tourism. All of which could be achieved without a major reorganisation of local government but by the long-promised bonfire of the quangos.

But getting the parties in Edinburgh to loosen their grip on the levers of power is not going to be easy. Judging by their promises so far, it looks like they are still addicted to junk food and won’t be taking the salad and fruit option any time soon.

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Christine Jardine

Christine Jardine


We’ve invited those in the election firing-line to send regular bulletins about the personal side of campaigning. Christine Jardine is the Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate for Inverness and Nairn.

There are moments in an election campaign when you see with absolute clarity why you are committed to what you are doing, and are reminded why you got involved in the first place.

I had one of those moments this week.

Amid the media-induced frenzy over manifesto policy commitments, the blur of brightly coloured party posters and the constantly ringing mobile phones, I found myself standing on a doorstep in Inverness in the rain waiting for another door to be opened.

Who would it be this time? A parent worried about the effects the current local authority cuts would have on their children’s education, a carer worried about whether the support they need to look after their elderly parents would continue to be available, or a businessman worried about whether they could survive until we reach the light at the end of this particular economic dark tunnel?

As I waited I felt, not for the first time, the huge weight of responsibility that goes with the determination to make a difference.

Come 5 May, I am hoping that voters all over Inverness, Nairn and Strathspey will put a cross beside my name. Choose me and the Liberal Democrats to provide the solution to the challenges that face Scotland.

And what can we offer in return? We have our manifesto and commitment to raise funds to invest in a long-term strategy to provide jobs, restore excellence to our education system and protect our local service and keep decision-making close to the communities dependent on them.

But we have more, much more than that.

I introduced myself to the elderly lady who opened the door. We discussed my background, my politics and what Liberal Democrats are committed to doing for Scotland’s future. We talked about pensions and the council tax. But she had heard a lifetime of promises from politicians and said so.

As I was about to go, I said there was one promise that I could make her. That I would work hard, I would listen and that I would always put what was best for Inverness, Nairn and Strathspey first.

She smiled and shook my hand. That was the only promise she had wanted.

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Glasgow Airport Rail Link terminus <em>Picture: Thomas Nugent</em>

Glasgow Airport Rail Link terminus Picture: Thomas Nugent

Iain Gray launched the Scottish Labour manifesto today with a pledge to create 250,000 new jobs.

    The Scottish Labour leader unveiled a manifesto packed with spending commitments, at the heart of which was a pledge to help youth unemployment, create more training places and protect students from fees.

    Mr Gray insisted that his party’s plans had all been costed and were affordable, arguing that most of the extra money needed would be found through departmental efficiency savings.

    But Labour’s plans were derided as unrealistic and unaffordable by the party’s opponents.

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    Among the pledges made in the Labour manifesto were the following. Promises to:

    * Create a Scottish Jobs Fund, creating 10,000 work placements for unemployed young people at a cost of £40 million.
    * Introduce a minimum wage of £7.15 an hour, starting in the public sector, at a cost of £20 million a year.
    * Give a guaranteed modern apprenticeship to everyone who wants one.
    * Aim for 60,000 new green jobs in renewables by 2015.
    * Double the Saltire Prize to £20 million.
    * Complete the Aberdeen bypass, the M8 upgrade and the M74 interchange as well embark on continuous improvements to the A82, A1, A9, A77, A75, A95 and A96 and the M8, M73 and M74.
    * Improve the Edinburgh-to-Glasgow rail service, cutting journey times to 40 minutes.
    * Reinstate the halted Glasgow Airport Rail Link at a cost of £200 million.
    * Create new jobs and specialised training for 1,000 teachers.
    * Make sure students have to pay no tuition fees or graduate tax.
    * Introduce free swimming lessons for primary school pupils.
    * Restart Project Scotland.
    * Widen access to music tuition.
    * Protect the health budget.
    * Ensure there are no compulsory redundancies in the health service.
    * Halve the current cancer waiting time.
    * Seek the complete abolition of hospital parking charges.
    * Have no prescription charges.
    * Protect frontline police jobs.
    * Introduce mandatory jail sentences for knife carriers.
    * Create a Victims’ Commissioner, a Victims’ Fund and a new Charter for Victims’ Rights.
    * Keep short-term prison sentences.
    * Start a first-foot scheme to reduce the size of deposits for first-time buyers, indemnifying mortgage payments.
    * Freeze council tax for the next two years.
    * Create a Housing Advisory Service.
    * Create a new City Growth Fund to support cities.
    * Create a Scottish Film Champion.
    * Scrap the Council of Economic Advisers.
    * Scrap the Scottish Futures Trust.
    * Make savings in health by merging special boards and by amalgamating IT services.
    * Create a single police force.
    * Create a single fire service.

    “The choices we make now about where we spend the money,” said Mr Gray, “and – yes – where we cut the money, will set us on our path for the next decade. The question is where we want to go together.

    “By 2020 I want to create a new Scottish economy, built on high-tech engineering and modern green manufacturing. I want a flourishing private sector exporting high quality products to growing markets abroad. I want excellent public services that deal with the challenges of our aging population. I want a confident Scotland, comfortable with its place in the world, that cares for all its citizens, is proud of our past and hopeful for our future.”

    And he added: “I want all of that for a reason, because there is a moral imperative to what we do. Labour believes that a more equal society is a stronger society, that one man, woman or child in poverty is an offence against us all, that our government exists not merely to govern well but to make change for the better, to progress the lot of those who have least and to make this country live up to the potential of all of its people.

    “These are the principles that have guided my politics and have led me to this point, where I am asking for support for my programme to be the First Minister of a Labour Scottish Government.”

    But his opponents were quick to deride the Labour manifesto.

    “Iain Gray’s party threatens Scotland’s progress and Scottish jobs,” said SNP campaign director Angus Robertson. “Under an SNP Government, Scotland is the only nation in the UK with rising employment and falling unemployment. Scotland has lower youth unemployment than the rest of the UK, and Iain Gray voted AGAINST the Scottish Government’s measures to keep driving it down – such as the record 25,000 apprenticeship places this year.”

    And George Lyon, for the Liberal Democrats, said: “It was the Labour party’s failure in Government that caused youth unemployment to soar. Scots will not give them a second chance to make the same mistakes again.

    “Governments don’t create jobs, the private sector does. Labour’s fantasy wish-list of unbelievable jobs numbers is no substitute for a proper plan that creates the conditions for economic growth.

    And he added: “Their only big idea is to lock up 4,000 more people every year in already overcrowded prisons.

    “But nowhere in their manifesto does it say how they will find the money to build the four new Barlinnies needed to house them all.”

    David McLetchie, for the Tories said: “One word was missing from the manifesto – sorry – for creating the financial mess and crisis facing our country.

    “Labour’s wage pledge might mean a pay rise for some, but it will mean a P45 for others.

    “Labour’s aspires to be the next government, but they can’t even produce a comprehensive analysis of their spending commitments for the next four years. Uncosted and incredible.”

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