As usual the post-election interviews see more useless comments from most of the parties who seem not to have noticed that the election is over and no-one believed what they said – it never ceases to amaze me that they don’t understand that people won’t remember what they said by the time the next one come along but they might well remember how they said it.

Those who know me know that I don’t trust politicians as a breed, but I do support Scottish independence and am therefore glad to see the SNP victory.In the main I’ve been impressed at the way they’ve got on with governing and actually doing most of what they promised despite being a minority government in the last parliament. That suggests a level of ability to cooperate that seems very different to the attitudes of the old-school politicians, who just seem to spend all their time trying to score political points. They really don’t seem to get the idea that many of the electorate actually want cooperation, that that was supposed to be the whole point of the Scottish Parliament, and that many commentators talked about that and how people wanted it to be different from the endless Westminster confrontation politics and heckling.

I will of course be watching the SNP closely to see whether they change their approach now that they have a full majority and can push through anything they want.

And what of the Labour party, who in my youth I supported. Will they grow up and leave behind the old hectoring approach that has seemed such a fixture of their style and also demonstrated how the electorate had left them behind. The party seems to have moved in different directions in Scotland and England – the English party under Blair (despite being dominated by Scots) moved not just into the centre ground (some would say the right) but also into the middle classes and away from its traditional core vote, but has done so by giving up any idea of a core philosophy that anyone can believe in. In Scotland they seem to have tried to hang on to old attitudes and ideas that were relevant in the old industrial working landscape but which now seem out of touch with modern aspirations and which seem merely empty of direction and equally lacking in meaning and conviction. It will require a complete rethink of considerable intellectual quality, not least in economics but certainly in political and social understanding, for them to rediscover their direction and recover from this debacle.

As for the Liberals it must be wondered if they can survive at all. Their coalition with the Tories and their acquiescence to the simple mantra of cuts and more cuts has marked them as being prepared to give up their principles for power, and that is one thing the electorate will not stand from a party that for most of the last 70 years only had its principles to fall back on. It seems that Clegg has fallen headlong into Cameron’s long term trap – if he can wipe out the Liberals in England then the Tories could have a long-term grip there, and with Labour weakened in Scotland then we could be looking at 20 years or more of a Conservative Westminster.

As for the independence question, if the Scottish electorate realise the above situation then they might just decide that a breakup really is beneficial for them if the alternative is a permanent conflict between opposing parliaments. My guess is that Salmond will hold off on the referendum to give that idea time to sink in.

Firstly there’s the equivalent ratings which are hopelessly optimistic and lead to you buying a second bulb cos the first one has all the brightness of a crusie lamp running out of oil. Then there’s the fact that they seem to be somewhat fragile – the first one I ever bought cracked when I turned it on.

But most damningly the advertised long life that is supposed to save us money and energy is just complete bollocks due to them getting dimmer and dimmer throughout their lives to the point of being unusable. One I put in a table lamp wore out in under 18 months and its replacement is getting noticeably dull after just 5 months.

I reckon we’ve been had. Kinda like carbon offsetting.

That’ll be the same government that builds new airports and runways (and then taxes air flights), that allows local governments to build out of town shopping centres and denude the town centres of shops, that creates housing policies that build houses on estates with no amenities far away from workplaces and shops and then wonders why everyone wants to own a car. That strangles rail investment and avoids integrating transport systems to allow efficient movement across different modes of travel. That allows urban roads to be so riddled with potholes that travelling by bus is a shuddering experience, and who has failed to provide the broadband infrastructure that might allow videoconferencing to become a viable means of business communication instead of some meetings.

Funny how it’s always the people who suffer the most who are asked to take action and/or pay the price while the ones who create the problems in the first place are untouched by the consequences.

They were doing an excellent job of avoiding disturbing the fox and I watched it move gradually closer until it was within about 2 feet of one of the boys, probably hoping that they had some food but showing remarkably little fear of them for such a streetwise creature. It was an enchanting sight.

The fox looked to be in good condition so there must be plenty of food available here in the centre of the city. Good to see such an animal flourishing so close to us. Equally encouraging to see two young lads appreciating it too. It’s so easy to fall for the trap of the tabloid media’s demonisation of young people, and assume whenever you see youngsters at night that they must be up to no good. These two were showing quite the opposite and clearly were delighted to be so close to a wild creature and must have been displaying great patience and reserve to be tolerated and trusted by that fox. I hope they managed to get some footage on their phone and that they continue to be enthralled  by the natural world.

What cataclycm could cause this abberation? Google’s attempt to take over the world of books and the Associated Press’s attempts to battle them in the area of news generation.

Actually given the all powerful search engine’s involvement I’m not sure whether this post belongs here or on my SEO Blog, but I think my history in the book trade means it should be here. Though my time at James Thin Booksellers now seems an age away and most of my reading seems to be online these days, I still love books and have the greatest respect for the people that write them. At one time I also had great respect for quality journalists, particularly those of The Scotsman who were trained under Alastair Dunnett, but I seldom see any these days – the newspapers I used to devour are now riddled with spelling and grammar errors, poor writing devoid of any sense of rhythm, and little recognisable research.

The news moguls are concerned about the use of their “quality content” by other people, often without attribution, and are trying to find ways of getting people to pay for it. They see Google as a major and increasing problem because more and more they are delivering not just search results but sizable extracts, which in our short attention span world can mean that people don’t even need to visit the news sites at all. If they don’t visit then they don’t see the adverts or don’t consider paying for premium content. Since hardly anyone actually buys a physical newpaper these days that’s the end of their business model.

Now it has to be said that Associated Press don’t seem to have much a of a clue about the web and what it is or how it works. They’ve spent some years trying to avoid people linking to their sites  – without paying for the priviledge – and for a while they tried to avoid deep-linking completely. They don’t seem to get that the web is about links. They also seem to have little idea of collaboration or any form of trying to profit from their work other than by direct sales and direct advertising. Essentially they don’t seem to have adjusted to the modern wired world and have decided that Google are their main bogey-man.

Now so far you may not have much sympathy for them, but there’s another side to all this and that’s copyright. If you respect writers (and musicians as well) then you want to see them paid for their efforts or they might just stop producing the literature, quality news articles, or music that we appreciate so much, or at best they might be unable to spend so much time on it and lose quality. For that reason I’m in favour of copyright, although I appreciate that it may need to develop in order to cope with the digital world of the 21st century. While I would be happy to see increased availability of out-of-copyright and some out-of-print material, at the end of the day I can’t agree with breach of copyright.

Some people, particularly in the USA, seem to have a rather extended view of the idea of “fair use” – the principle that allows quoting of work for review or criticism for instance. Plagiarism seems to be all too common and lifting of content just because it happens to be on the web seems to be accepted. It’s in this vein that the increasing indexing and display of site content seems to be considered reasonable. But even if you accept that, how can you tolerate the wholesale copying of books and the assumption that because you did the work of copying you suddenly have the right to make money out of them. I was brought up to understand that the action of copying or storing in a reproducible medium was itself illegal – copyright notices generally say so explicitely – yet some major academic libraries have collaborated with Google in doing this very thing.

Frankly I’m astonished that major publishers didn’t immediately slap court orders on Google to prevent such copying. They didn’t seem to wake up to the fact of what was going on and didn’t protest loudly enough when Google suggested that they could opt out if they wanted to. The principle of copyright should give the owner the assumption that they don’t have to run around opting out of someone else’s attempt to steal their work. Maybe the publishers were hoping they’d get a cut later, maybe they just didn’t understand the internet in the same way as they seem not to understand ebooks.

Google almost got away with it by paying various large sums to writers and publishers organisations but now we’ve got governments intervening as they realise the problems of monopoly that are arising. American federal regulators stepped in to prevent the latest agreement going through following a wave of complaints, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the latest major figure to speak out against the whole idea as she opened the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair a few days ago.

I’m very aware that what I’ve written here is less than an iceberg tip of a very large and complex subject and I could easily spend months researching the various implications. There are, for instance, questions of privacy and confidentiality in accessing the planned book repository, questions about whether Google is trying to make profit from out of print books, and probably many more.

The trouble is we’ve already allowed Pandora’s Box to be opened by allowing the copying in the first place – mesmerised by Google’s self-appointed task to index all the information in the world. What gives them the right to do that? And what do we do if they succeed and establish a monopoly? So just this once I reckon I’m happy to see a media mogul go up against them if it means that this whole subject gets a thorough airing and people and governments realise the implications of allowing copyright to be ignored.

A few months ago I decided to buy a car, something I hadn’t had since 2002. I had resisted this for a long time as I knew the Edinburgh traffic would make for a frustrating commute, and I enjoyed the mile walk across country from the railway station to my current place of work, but after three train cancellations in 10 days including being stranded in Uphall in freezing conditions by a complete shutdown of the line and being left without any information on alternatives, I decided enough was enough and a car was duly purchased.

Now of course this was the worst possible time to switch to road transport as Edinburgh is currently in the throws of traffic chaos with much of the city streets being dug up for the purpose of moving utilities to allow tram lines to be put in.

Now initially I was quite favourably disposed to the idea of a tram system. I am generally in favour of both trains and trams as efficient, fast, and clean methods of transport, having had positive experiences of trains in Switzerland, Austria and Germany, and of trams in cities like Amsterdam and Innsbruck. It’s just that in this country we seem to be completely incapable of running them – they are habitually late, often cancelled and hideously expensive.

If we were getting a real tram network in Edinburgh it might just be worth the current upheaval and disruption; but we’re not. Now that the Roseburn to Granton spur (which should have been cheaper since it ran on a former railway line) has been cancelled due to lack of money, we’re getting a single line. A line that won’t even be useful to most people. It won’t even go all the way to the airport – it’ll stop at a park and ride carpark where travellers will have to switch to a bus – and it will have only one stop in the whole length of Princes Street. Now we hear that some genius in the council has said that since the “diversions” have been so successful they now want to keep Princes St (currently completely dug up and fenced off for the forseeable future) not only free from cars but free from buses as well!!

Ignoring for the moment the incredible idea that having a city reduced to gridlock with the massive increase in pollution and fuel consumption and the loss of working time for our commercial centres could possibly be described as successful, the idea that buses should not be allowed to use the main street in the capital city (and incidentally one of the very few east-west corridors across the city centre) is staggeringly stupid. What do we tell tourists who want to visit attractions in the city centre?

‘No the buses don’t run to there any more and the trams are only an option if you are staying along the Glasgow Road cos they don’t go anywhere else in the city, and even then they only stop in one place along Europe’s most scenic street of over a mile in length.’

They’ll think we’re mad.

And the locals? Well the journey times will all be permanently slower because all the buses will have to take a tortuous route around to Queen Street which is where all the other traffic is as well.

But hey, half the shops in the city centre have closed down because of the tram-related road works in the last two years already, so why would anyone want to go into the city centre? The shopping has been crap for years and most people go to out-of-town centres, Livingston or even Glasgow to shop. And given the planning disasters that the council have perpetrated recently we’ll probably lose our world heritage status anyway so there’ll be fewer tourists. Hmm, why were we putting in trams again?

Listen up council. I’ve lived virtually all of my life in Edinburgh and I’ve always loved it. But if I were 21 again now I’d move somewhere else because you’re making it a nightmare.

Which brings us to drug testing and the announcement that footballers will be required to tell drug testing squads where they are at any time so they can be randomly tested. Now when applied to athletes, who are training as individuals and often traveling to warm weather or high altitude venues, this may have some purpose to ensure there is no out of competition doping; although even there it is somewhat restrictive. The position with footballers is rather different; they play and train every week and are available at their club’s premises at clearly defined times. There seems no reason whatever for additionally insisting that they reveal their whereabouts in the evening and on Sundays. It can only be seen as standardisation for standardisation’s sake, with the base model being a sport which has become a joke affecting one which has no record of drug use – well apart from beer of course.

Personally I’d like to see the traditionally non-olympic sports tell the IOC where to go and to take their drug issues with them, but sadly the lure of money and supposed prestige seem to hold sway with far too many of them. The sight of tennis players half-heartedly competing for gold medals which mean nothing compared to their Grand Slam tournaments is pathetic. An under-23 football tournament that takes players away from their clubs in the middle of the season is beyond pointless.

Now our banking system is in ruins; HBOS, which was a combination of one of the most conservative banks and the largest building society in the UK has lost over 90% of its stock market value and is apparently so short of liquidity that it needs to be taken over by Lloyds-TSB, and all the other major banks need shedloads of public money to carry on. So the man in the street is seeing his savings and investments reduce in value and his taxes going to prop up banks that seems unable to handle money despite giving us a poor service and high charges.

Meanwhile those gas prices that went up are noticeably not coming down despite a major fall in the oil prices that they were supposed to be connected to. Ever get the feeling you’ve been had?

The fact IMHO is that the people who run the money markets are generally pretty clueless apart from the speculators and the occasional guy like George Soros who can see trends before they happen. Most of them are there because of who they know rather than what they know. How many times have we seen competitions where a bunch of schoolkids manage to outperform the advice of all the “best” financial pundits and advisors. And as was shown some time ago the financial system is an almost perfect example of Chaos Theory in action. With the modern inter-connectedness that has been built into the international trading systems chaotic behaviour is a predictable (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) outcome. A downward trend once started is almost impossible to stop. (As I write this I’m looking at the stock markets continuing to fall despite the 1.5.% cut)

Unfortunately the banks and building societies, once the bastions of safe conservative advice, have been sucked into the constant drive for more and more growth and as a result they have tended to dive into markets that would previously have been seen as far too dangerous, simply because to be seen to be lagging behind had become unacceptable when others were forging ahead, no matter how ill-advised such sectors might be.

Sadly there is very little indication that governments are willing to impose any real constraints on the banks or the markets. Maybe they’ve become so international as to be unmanageable, yet if so how come it’s national funds that are bailing them out? Maybe neither politicians or civil servants have the experience to operate in this field. Or maybe the theory of economics and monetary matters just showed once again how incomplete a theory it really is and no-one dares tinker with something that they’ve realised they don’t understand.

(The link at the top of this post is to a post on Robert Peston’s excellent BBC blog which is becoming a must-read for market watchers.)

Last night’s by-election result which saw a Labour majority of 8000 reversed to the Tories could presage more than just a Cameron government. It might convince voters who have previously supported the SNP but backed off from full independence to finally embrace their primary policy.

Despite the Tories having the most lightweight and unknown bunch of shadow cabinet members in history (how many of them can you name?) it appears that the English are so fed up of New Labour and Gordon Brown that they’d prefer anything else – except the Liberals who seem to have dropped off the political map after getting rid of two leaders in recent years. Certainly Brown has been unlucky with the US-created credit crunch and having inherited a series of unpopular policies from a Tony Blair who was increasingly seen as having made us a pawn of George W. I suspect that there is also a backlash against a government that is persistently trying to interfere with privacy and freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism in a way that is completely at odds with any idea of a free country.

Here in Scotland it’s impossible to imagine voters turning to the Tories in the way that appears to be happening in the south, and Labour support has historically tended to be more solid, but any move away from them is more likely to see further support for an SNP which is already riding high and is generally seen as doing a good job despite being a minority administration. The prospect of their wishes being overturned by an English Tory landslide might persuade enough of the Scottish electorate to consider going it alone as a viable option. If that idea starts to gather pace then Wendy Alexander’s attempt to force the SNP to hold a referendum before they are ready might rebound even more on Labour than it already has.

I’ve always loved Scotland, but if I’d known the direction the UK was heading when I was 20 I’d probably have emigrated. The personal freedoms my father and grandfathers fought world wars for are vanishing rapidly. I can only hope that Scotland finally gets independence and moves in a different direction to England.

In the middle ages it was the church that sought to control the people by keeping them illiterate and putting the fear of god into them. Now we’re tagged, satellite tracked and videoed. If you use a loyalty card your spending patterns are compiled, your mobile phone calls are recorded and your movements followed. Now the police are pushing for everyone’s DNA to be permanently stored. Maybe the politicians have responded negatively to that one, or maybe it was a stalking horse; a device to see what reaction there’d be so they could see how much they could get away with while appearing to be the guardians of our freedoms. Were this proposal to go through we’d all be suspects.

Funny how if you go out with a camera and take pictures in the street you’re “acting suspiciously”, and god help you if you’re anywhere near a school when you’re doing it. Yet “the authorities” seem to think they can take whatever pictures they like. Meanwhile we are encouraged to report “suspicious behaviour” that is so vague that everyone could be included – apparently if you have more than one mobile phone it’s a sign you may be a terrorist!? Remember the poor guy who was shot by an armed response unit while walking home with a table leg in a plastic bag because someone thought his Scottish accent was Irish and the table leg was a shotgun. That’s what happens when fear takes hold and everyone turns informer.

People used to come to this country to escape exactly this sort of repressive society! Britain was seen as a bastion of freedom. It’s time we made it plain that we want to get back to that situation.