I generally enjoy The Big Questions on Sunday morning. Last Sunday they touched on immigration – always a hot topic. Specifically, mass immigration that gives oxygen to UKIP. I rarely find myself on the same side as Peter Hitchin but who can argue that it is a matter of historical fact that New Labour set out to create mass immigration as a means of engineering the demography of the UK in the belief that would keep them in power. This seems to be a pattern with Labour – they will sacrifice absolutely anything in their craving for power.
This was not an economic policy it was entirely designed to keep New Labour in office and that is a fully documented fact. What is did, as is so often the case with New Labour’s ‘smart ideas’ is create a massive backlash that reeks havoc for generations.
Like most people in the UK I am an immigrant – in fact I am a first generation immigrant coming in from Belgium. When people meet me, talk to me or listen to me, they think, broad Glaswegian. I even spent 25 years in the City of London, but still they think, broad Glaswegian.
Glasgow has always had a substantial immigrant population. But immigration in Glasgow is nothing like immigration in London. Immigrants coming to Glasgow generally integrate. One of the great qualities of Glasgow is that it always offers a welcome to anybody regardless of ethnicity, religion, colour creed or other orientation if you embrace the Glasgow culture. Over time, you even get to influence that culture – and so we all prosper and live in relative harmony. If anyone is in any doubt, have a watch of Still Game and see if you don’t agree that Navid is one of the main characters.
Of course, it would be silly to imagine that all was rosy. All my life I have been aware of a number of ‘secret societies’ within Glasgow and across Scotland. They stay below the surface and remain anonymous until that is, they feel their society is under threat – we witnessed that at the referendum and we got a glimpse off how widespread it really was.
Immigrants have flocked to Glasgow in their tens and hundreds. At that level they don’t put immense pressure on the shared resources nor do they undercut the indigenous workforce. Far from perfect, the Government and Local Authorities plan, budget and grow our services year on year. If 100,000 immigrants with skills but used to working for £1 a day arrived in Glasgow in a month we would see a very different situation. It is highly unlikely they would integrate into the community. They would put pressure on all the shared resources and snap up all the available work places, because they would work for peanuts.
Some people will claim there is a minimum wage and that keeps everything under control??. Would these workers be claiming the minimum wage? – aye right! would their employers be claiming they should or insisting on it? aye right!
I have just described London. After living and working in London for 25 years I can tell you that that is exactly what London is like.
I am not blaming the immigrants for this issue. Their plight is extreme and I would do exactly the same as them. They are often the very same people who are being disadvantaged and exploited by this situation that was created deliberately by New Labour.
Some say that we should pick and choose the best immigrants, the most useful and the highest qualified immigrants. They say we should restrict benefits etc to discourage only the most industrious. I say this is completely elitist.
How do you judge skills and abilities of people coming in from other parts of the world? Is that the yard stick of people. In my experience, attitude, work ethic and reliability are some of the best qualities of a worker. How do we judge that? We can’t – at least not quickly.
So how do we better manage immigration? What we need is a Growth Strategy. We need to work towards a self sustainability index – in other words, the exact opposite of globalisation. I believe that much of the ills of the world are caused by globalisation.
There is a country that provides us with a sort of a blue print for this concept of non-globalisation; Cuba. Cuba is the exact opposite of globalisation – the US has made sure of that. They have a reasonably good tourist industry and, to date, offer one of the most fascinating holiday destinations in the world. Cuba has been forced to be pretty much self sufficient due to American embargoes. However, they have one of the best education and healthcare systems in the world. The people in Cuba are generally happy and healthy and they do like their music. Give Cuba 10 years of globalisation and American internal influence and it will be unrecognisable as a country for ever. The only thing that has held Cuba back has been their ability to develop a proper trade balance. By Trade Balance I mean wholly self sufficient but with the ability to export their surplus and import their luxuries. Given that, if the world economy goes into melt down, Cuba would have to hang on to its surpluses and forego it luxuries. Now that sounds like real hardship??
My blue print for a fully functioning independent country would be Cuba ++.
To become a Cuba ++ we would need a growth strategy. This is a strategy that develops good housing and services, good education, good healthcare and good food and essentials for its population. Essentially, this is all done internally. We don’t import anything, and I mean anything. You will notice that I did not say create work. The job of creating this society automatically creates the jobs and there will always be work to be done.
SCOTLAND – AN AUTONOMOUS SELF SUFFICIENT COUNTRY?
Of course, you need to kick start a country to get something like this off the ground. So, I will try to apply the concept to Scotland. A great place to start with, AND the kick start is ‘surplus’. Does Scotland have any surpluses? This is the point where I must get more ink as there is so much to say. Surpluses, boy do we have surpluses. Where do you start? The basics, perhaps.
Water. Scotland has some of the best water in the world. We have ten times more than we need, and as I look out of the window, there is a whole lot more falling from the sky. What we don’t need we sell abroad. In comes the dough!
Energy. We are surrounded by a sea of oil, filled to the brim with gas and we sit on a bedrock of coal. We have shale, peat and timber a plenty. We have massive mountains for HEP. We have some of the windy-est place on earth, we have some of the stormiest, waviest coastline in the world – and that does not run out. Despite earlier claims by one UKIP’r what do we do when the renewables run out. We have nothing but energy. What we don’t need we sell – the world needs energy and we are open for business – In comes the dough!
Education. Scotland has a long history of academia. The enlightenment of the 18th century was not a chance encounter. We had 5 universities when London had 1. Scotland has a global reputation especially in engineering, medicine, law, finance and software. We have and can easily create more and more places for international student – and guess what? this could be one of our main immigration streams. Here comes the dough!
Whisky. We produce o much whisky we are selling it off. Scotch whisky is the best in the world – bar none. This is a massive market and we can increase our output. Here comes the dough!
People. You only have to look at the higher echelons in London commerce to appreciate that Scots are sought after for their business and managerial skills. These are services we can sell all over the world but keeping the earnings in Scotland. We have more people than we need to develop the country – in fact we have a surplus and we can grow some more. Here comes the dough!
This is just a snapshot of how Scotland can generate revenue that can be inwardly invested to create growth within the country. This is the basis of the Growth Strategy. The ‘Gordon Brown’ school of economics where you give the riches to the financial markets and it trickles down is totally misguided. Revenue from our surpluses should be invested directly in our country’s basic needs for housing, education, health, food on our table and infrastructure. This is the classic self fulfilling prophesy.
The biggest company in the world is Apple. What do they sell? iphones, tablets, computers? NO, they have only one thing for sale and it has been the same thing since they started: BRAND. If Apple did hamburgers, MacDonalds would close the next day!
Why is brand important? There is nothing more important. There are a few great brands that we all know – but is there a brand country? Of course, Germany is a brand. If you see ‘made in Germany’ on a product – look no further. Not so long ago, there was another brand country – Scotland. If you want a big ship – it must be Clyde built – 80% of ocean going liners and really big ships were built on the Clyde, yes, the Clyde. Since the demise of the Clyde, world shipping has INCREASED by 400%. Hop aboard the Enterprise – who’s the engineer, who is always the engineer? Scotty. If you make a list of the countries that formed the modern world, then remove all those that used genocide to do it – that’s right, you are only left with a few, especially Scotland. Scotland INVENTED the modern world. So where is that brand now? actually, brand is like ideas, you can kill off the people but the concept, you can’t kill. Our brand was suppressed while our assets were being plundered – think they made a TV programme about it – ‘The neighbours from Hell’. Our Growth Strategy must re-invent the Scottish Brand. The world loves Scotland and Scotland loves the world.
In terms of our Growth Strategy, we have the skills, we have all the raw materials, the surpluses provide us with the funding so all we need is the master plan and the people.
Let’s look at feeding our people. Scotland is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. The lowlands has vast arable land ideally suited to agriculture. We have the gift of the Gulf Stream and we have water a plenty. OK, we don’t have an abundance of sunshine but we can work around that in these technological days. Of course, there is the small matter of some of the finest food for humans that just swims in our international water. Another abundance. The best way to suppress a people is to tell them they cannot feed themselves. Scotland can feed itself with no difficulty and we can generate surpluses to generate even more income. So let’s accept that with a little ingenuity we can feed our country, and feed them well.
There is another commodity we have in abundance. Beauty. Scotland is one of the oldest and most beautiful places on earth. We are famed the world over for our hospitality. Properly managed we can have one of the most popular tourist destinations on earth – and that’s without Donald Trump’s bloody golf courses – of course we also have some others that just happen to be amongst the most famous in the world.
So, just to recap. Scotland can not only be an independent country, it has the capability in abundance to be a fully autonomous, self sufficent country. Scotland can welcome immigrants who are prepared to work to develop the country and integrate to become a part of the country as it evolves.
Just as Scotland gave the world the Enlightenment in the 18th century we can give the world, in the 21st century, a blue-print for autonomous co-existence.
But why would autonomous co-existence be important? if we look at the flip side we have globalisation and intolerance. As I said earlier, globalisation sounds like a nice concept. People say, in an affectionate way, ‘the world is getting smaller’. Many people enjoy foreign holiday. Not very many people actually do foreign holidays in a civilised manner.
There is something very bizarre and worrying about foreign holidays – something very grotesque. Hands up anyone who has gone to a country like Tunisia for a beach holiday. My hand went up – fortunately, some years later my brain kicked in. We go to a holiday compound, a beautiful 5 star hotel where we are caged in, or rather the indigenous people are locked out. We splay ourselves out on their beautiful beach while the lucky amongst the indigenous clean our toilets, make our beds and mop up our sick from the night before when we gorged on a cocktail of wines and spirits. The others look into our compound and wonder. Sometimes we venture out into the dwellings of the peasants and their shops. We are dressing inappropriately in our best bib and tuck and although we have wallets bulging we love to barter the peasants into the dirt and come away with a vase that we later leave in the airport lobby. I think this is very English, very feudal. They love to walk amongst their ‘2 weeks’ subjects. They love the feeling of superiority, the elation and if we drop a coin we don’t pick it up because that would mean stooping and we don’t do stooping in poor countries, because we are kings and queens. Today this may be Tunisia but it could be any one of ten thousand destinations in poor countries.
You have to ask yourself one question – Why? Why would you want to go on holiday to a poor country. If you were truly honest with yourself, I am guessing you won’t be looking in the mirror for some time.
So that’s foreign or should I say global travel and holidays – in room 101.
So what about global trade? Actually, it is much more than global trade, it is the entire global workplace. Contrast this with your local area. How many people would say they live in the world? Over generations we have built up and developed our local communities. We pay out taxes, our local authorities and government get their budget to develop our communities. We have our local shops, local infrastructure, local services, local entertainment and local(ish) health facilities. Over generations what we have put in sort of balances what we get back and we have the community and culture we have earned ….. and then we go to work.
Do we work locally? Yes, if you are are gardener. What about if you work in a bank? Almost every aspect of your work is influenced by global market levers. So what is wrong with that – some might say. How many jobs can you think of that are truly local? a bus driver? where did the bus come from?
Expressions like the ‘world is getting smaller’, the ‘global village’ sound like euphemisms for a desireable outcome. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In the last 30 years or so we have been subjected to the hard reality of globalisation. Here are just a few examples from an almost limitless pool.
Outsourcing or off-shoring became a buzz expression in the 90’s. Companies in the UK had staff at the front end taking customer queries, handling concerns and managing the company’s brand. Many were employed in these vital jobs. Along came some telecoms technology, including call centre technology, voice response scripts and digital comms. These were key enablers to get rid of thousands of staff and transfer the front end of companies to a call centre in India where workers read from a script and work 16 hours a day for pennies. It costs the company a lot in terms of their business relationships with their customers but they save a fortune in staff costs. Try speaking to someone in BT in your first language?
When I went to school (spit) I knew I was venturing out into a competitive work place. There could be dozens after the same job – but I fancied my chances. Not now, there can be millions after the same job. Jobs can be shipped anywhere and picked up be people in other countries with little or no infrastructure who are able to work for a shilling a day. Good luck to them – but very bad luck to us.
When we produce products they are unit priced based on our capital costs. This includes our labour costs which are generally high. These products must compete in the world market where labour cost are minuscule compared to ours and we become noncompetitive. In India, millions of people died of starvation – not because they did not have food but because they could not afford it – they had plenty, but the world markets dictated price and pitched this well above what millions of people in India could afford. The US create massive gluts of many foodstuffs. With all the millions starving in the world it is easy to see what we can do – dump it in the sea to preserve world market prices. How utterly immoral?
We have a great set of rules and values in this country and we like to follow them. Not so other countries. They sign up to just about anything then do as they like or what suits them. If we try to sell a tee shirt produced in this country for £5 we find we can get one just as good at 2 for a pound, produced in a sweat shop. If we produce an electrical item at £50 we try to sell it against a similar item for £4 produced as counterfeit in China. The markets are flooded with Chinese counterfeit goods. People know they are not as good but at a tenth of the price people are prepared to accept lower quality and failure.
I could go on and on with this all day but here is another example that is close to my heart. Many of our companies struggle for investment, R & D, good links from education to work bench, the latest technology and subsidies. Unfortunately, there are policies and restrictions placed on a lot of this. Governments cannot subsidise their manufacturers, companies cannot cross-subsidise to remain competitive and we are shackled by accounting practices and listed company constraints that put us in a straight jacket commercially. Nevertheless, we follow these rules to the letter. Other countries, our competitors, pay lip service to these rules, with impunity and grab our business, unhindered.
And of course, as businesses, especially manufacturing becomes very portable and trade unions are too prescriptive, business owners take their investment out, relocate to another company where they can do as they please and pay the local work force a pitance. But they take their customer base in this country and hide behind a company front that ensures their profits sore, they pay their taxes in another company, they trade with our customers and not only are our people thrown on the scrap heap – but the country must now picks up the benefits tab for these poor people whose lives have been wreck by globalisation.
Globalisation is am almighty curse of the modern world. I repeat. Scotland has the wherewithal to become truly self sufficient. But we also have the ability and the passion to work with other countries or trading partners to help them to become more and more self sufficient.
If this world shook off the shackles of globalisation (which has become just a fancy word for capitalism) and developed, country by country into real or pseudo autonomous, self sufficient states the world would be richer, healthier, happier and at peace with itself.
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