Now the parliament is here there is a tendency to argue about, for example, the annual budget as though the Finance Minister at Holyrood is in some way comparable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Westminster. Thus Ken MacIntosh - remember him, Mr Miliband? - complained during today's budget debate that:

John Swinney talks of a budget for jobs and growth but there is no sign in this budget of a government grabbing the economy by the scruff of the neck - no sign of the dynamism needed to galvanise the economy, no sign even of a government taking all possible steps to protect jobs and create employment.

I would argue that the quality of governance in the US tends to be low precisely because of a continuing tradition of Jacksonian populism. Americans with their democratic roots generally do not trust elite bureaucrats to the extent that the French, Germans, British, or Japanese have in years past. This distrust leads to micromanagement by Congress through proliferating rules and complex, self-contradictory legislative mandates which make poor quality governance a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US is thus caught in a low-level equilibrium trap, in which a hobbled bureaucracy validates everyone’s view that the government can’t do anything competently. The origins of this, as Martin Shefter pointed out many years ago, is due to the fact that democracy preceded bureaucratic consolidation in contrast to European democracies that arose out of aristocratic regimes.

[M]inisters are expected to unveil measures to increase the price of alcoholic drinks according to how strong they are. This could be done through higher taxation per unit, minimum pricing per unit or simply higher levels of duty for strong drinks. Ministers will also encourage companies to produce weaker alcoholic drinks.

Prime Minister David Cameron is known to have sympathy with the idea of minimum pricing, which medics say could save nearly 10,000 lives per year if set at 50p per unit.

Granted, the 2008 number of said alcohol-related deaths (a wonderfully inexact term, incidentally) was a slight increase on the figure for 2007 but, rather more importantly, should be considered in the context of an overall reduction]]> Alex Massie Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:00:36 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/7637625/does-iran-actually-want-the-bomb.thtml The obvious answer to this is, Yes of course it does. Were I advising the Iranian regime I'd probably be pretty keen on developing a nuclear capability too. At the very least I should certainly want Iran's opponents to think Iran has serious nuclear ambitions. And yet, I'd also appreciate that if Iran's opponents really believe Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear weapon then the game enters a new and complicated phase that is dangerous for Iran too. So I might actually want Iran's opponents to be unsure or confused and prefer it if the question of Iran's nuclear desires remained ambiguous. That way, I might argue, Iran could enjoy some of the benefits of being a would-be nuclear power without taking on the risks of being so.

All this, of course, is entirely speculative. Nevertheless, like James Fallows, I was struck by this recent, woefully under-reported* exchange at a recent Senate hearing** in Washington between Senator Olympia Snowe (RINO-Maine) and James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence:

Senator Snowe: I gather we agree with the fact that Iran has not made the decision to weaponize at this point. Director Clapper, do you agree on that?

General

Does this make Santorum the comeback kid? Up to a point. The catholic vote over at National Review is breathless and excited this morning and that's their prerogative. Let's see what he can do in a primary before we get too excited, OK? (Nor is it actually clear, to get technical for a moment, how many delegates Santorum will win from these caucuses. That ain't been determined yet.)

There's a school of thought that wonders what might have happened if conservatives had swung behind Santorum, rather than the preposterous]]> Alex Massie Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:10:22 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/7635115/halftime-in-america.thtml

Is this Chrysler ad, aired during the Superbowl, political? Sure it is, in the way that almost any call to ur-American greatness ends up being political. But it's not necessarily an endorsement, even of the dog-whistling variety, of the present administration. You can make a substitution too, after all. Mind you, it is tricky to imagine a British equivalent of this advert that would not be subjected to much mockery and laughter. Cue the old saw about two countries divided by a common language.

Flower of Scotland is really a dreadful dirge. The one time it is acceptable, however, is when England come to Murrayfield. 'Tis 30 years since I first attended the Calcutta Cup. That was a 9-9 draw courtesy of the English prop Colin Smart who, in the dying moments, yapped at the referee causing a Scotland penalty to be advanced into the English half and therefore just within Andy Irvine's range. The great man duly kicked the goal to earn a draw. Happy, relieved times. The following year I visited Twickenham for the first time and, lord, if you had told my eight year old self that would be the last Scottish victory in south-west London for 30 years, that wee boy would have wept. Then there was 1984 which was braw, 1986 which was astonishing (though I wasn't present on that occasion) and, of course, the daddy of them all: 1990.

Since then: bleak times, with just three triumphs over the white jerseys. Notionally, Scotland are slight favourites for tomorrow's encounter, a status which]]> Alex Massie Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:29:30 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/7626330/mike-russell-and-the-mythical-antiscottish-conspiracy.thtml Mike Russell is a genial chap who, most of the time, is not much of a fool. Most of the time is not all the time, however, and this week he has, inadvertently, illuminated some of the reasons why the SNP struggles with what the Americans call "high-information*" voters. Mr Russell, the Scottish government's education minister, became the latest senior SNP figure to accuse his opponents of being "anti-Scottish". This is an increasingly tedious line of attack and one suggesting both a certain defensiveness and a bleak lack of imagination. There is also a Boy Who Cried Wolf problem: kneejerk suggestions that policy differences are motivated by anti-Caledonian spite or treachery diminish the salience of the real thing. Then again, 'tis always easier to impugn motives than grapple with the substance of the issue.

In this instance the issue is university funding. The Scottish government's aversion to tuition fees is a respectable position. It comes at a price, however, and part of that price may be a squeeze on funding for further education colleges. Rather than admit this, however, Mr Russell worked himself into a bonny lather to complain:

The people of Scotland rejected it [tuition fees]

[I]t might be worth raising the question with the Argentinians. We've got absolutely no money. I really doubt we have much stomach for another Falklands War, and then another. They are clearly passionately keen to acquire some territory with rich resources, high GDP and as much sentimental value as you can maintain for something 300 miles from your coastline. It might be worth a lot of money in the future, but actually we could quite do with some money now, this second. Perhaps we can suggest to President Kirchner that half a trillion pounds would be quite a reasonable sum for this archipelago of 778 mostly charming islands. They wouldn't have to pay all at once.

When Aden was abandoned by the British in 1967, Philip Larkin wrote rather an imperial poem saying: "Next year we shall be living in a country/That brought its soldiers home for lack of money". Well, we've been living in that country for a long time now – all my life, and probably yours, too.

Anyone who knows anything about the Americans would know better than to describe the Afghan war as "a neocon fantasy". Sir Simon Jenkins does not fall into this category. Anyone who deplores the way the Afghan war sprawled out of control (and Sir Simon Jenkins is definitely in this camp) has had a decade to come to terms with the fact that their fellow travellers in Washington are the dreaded, despised so-called "neocons" themselves. Donald Rumsfeld, whatever else you may care to say about him, was not keen on occupying Afghanistan. Sir Simon boasts of ownig "two dozen" books about the war]]> Alex Massie Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:38:32 +0000