Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Tories Discover Where That Is

It's nice that the Tories in Westminster seem to have discovered that you can travel north of Carlisle without falling off the end of the world, and that Big Dave Cameron has offered his services to help out the tartan Tories of the SNP with the organisation of the Commonwealth Games. No doubt he'll fly in, meet a few millionaires, and fly out the same day. You wont find him hanging around to see the misery and devastation he's causing in Glasgow and elsewhere.

But just to remind him that Scotland has twice as many Giant Pandas as Tory M.P.s (and you can't say that often enough) and with any luck it'll soon be three times as many if the zoo gets it right.  So here's hoping for one more Giant panda and one less Tory M.P.

Global Cities and Regional Crises. London and Scottish independence

London is a Global City. With New York and Tokyo it is one of the top ranked global cities of the world. At a lower level we probably have Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Paris and a few others. Decisions, social, cultural, political and, especially, economic taken in top global cities are truly global in their effects. They house the real levers of international power.

Having a global city as its capital can bring massive economic benefits to a country in terms of international trade and in attracting international investment and events, and looking in particular at London it is clear that the power of the global city contributes massively to the economic growth and performance of the economy of the United Kingdom. The City of London generates enormous wealth and its contribution to the U.K.'s Gross National Product cannot be overstated.

This means that in national terms the U.K. can be seen as one of the richest countries in the world despite its relative lack of geographic area. It can, and does, demand a seat on the United Nations security council and a variety of other world institutions. Having a successful global city as its capital helps the U.K. punch well above its weight in the world. The result of that is that the U.K. has to fulfil a role in world events and that means becoming involved on a regular basis in the internal affairs of other nations as an international policeman or 'peacekeeper' or some other modern type of colonialism in order to maintain its position as a global power led by a global city.

The real problem, however, of having a global city as the capital city of the U.K. is that, although global cities reside geographically in the countries that they lead, they exist more in another notional country where the only relationships which matter are those relationships with other global cities. Rather than being involved with other parts of the country London has a stronger relationship with New York and Tokyo than it has with Glasgow or Sheffield, Newcastle or Birmingham. Trillions of Dollars are sent whizzing around the globe in milliseconds between London, Tokyo and New York to generate wealth for those cities, but very little of that wealth finds its way out of those cities and into the real wealth creating areas of their respective countries. They are like black holes sucking in wealth and power of which practically none escapes further than the distance of the daily commute to the institutions of wealth and power.

So we end up with travesties like the London Olympics where billions of pounds were raised from the whole country from taxation and lottery funding and poured into the most affluent area of the country. The billions of pounds of returns which we were led to expect, if it eventually materialises will remain with the south east of the country. It will not escape back into the economy of the whole U.K. but it will be traded with New York and Tokyo to generate more wealth for the global city.

Similarly, the high speed rail project which is supposed to increase the flow of wealth to the north will only serve to suck wealth and investment into London, because given the choice, and if it is within easy travelling distance, business in search of higher profits will not re-locate out of a global city, it will re-locate to where the money and the market is. The cities of Manchester and Birmingham are in danger of becoming dormitories for workers who service the bee hive but can no longer afford to live in London.

It ends up in a situation where the south east of the country, in relative affluence, have little or no real understanding of the problems and situation of the other regions. They fail to see the problem because they don't have the problem of poverty and deprivation experienced by those unfortunate enough to live north of the Watford Gap. London has 281,000 millionaires (and it's been said that one in seventeen Londoners is a Dollar millionaire) while 34% of Glasgow primary school children receive free school meals and that tells its own story.

The conclusion is reasonably clear. Scotland would not be deprived of the wonderful economic benefits of the U.K. in the event of independence. They receive very little of the benefit of the sparkling economic performance of the economy of the south east at present and there is no real reason to believe that the black hole of the global city of London will surrender up any of its wealth any time in the near future. That's not how global cities work. Global cities make nothing but money. They trade currency back and forward between themselves and believe that the value of their currency assets is the price the last person paid for them. Until the bubble bursts and the last fool in the chain has to come cap in hand to the rest of the country to bail them out by increasing tax (but never on the rich) and cutting benefits for the vulnerable they have created.

Global cities are only good for themselves and other global cities. For the rest of the country that they occupy geographically they are a curse. A real economy can only be sustained in the long term by real people producing real goods and services in the real world, not in the cyber-world of the global city.

The other regions of England can do little about it because as soon as their representatives are elected into position they are absorbed into the London Parliament and sucked into the black hole to become part of the grand conspiracy. But Scotland can escape, so I'll take my chance on government from Edinburgh.

Paddy's Market

The proposed plans by Glasgow City Council to re-develop the site of Paddy's Market should be a source of some sadness for the people of Glasgow, even if it has become a run-down area. I presume it is going to become another gentrified city centre development for the middle classes to occupy while they consider where they really want to live when city centre lifestyle becomes too fraught (when they have kids).

Paddy's market has a long history. It was where the immigrant Irish of the East end of Glasgow went to buy second hand clothes for themselves and their children after they had been evicted from their lands and suffered from the potato famine. They were welcomed in Glasgow but found the same sort of poverty for working people there as they had left. Paddy's market was a necessary evil. The real sadness is that it still exists today for nearly the same purpose. Among the rip-off DVDs and CDs there are still stalls selling second hand clothes for the really poor. On a recent visit my son remarked that it was terrible that people had to sell this kind of stuff to live, but it is worse that people have to buy this kind of stuff to live.

Re-develop Paddy's Market by all means, but re-develop it as a memorial to the plight of working people. It is a piece of working class history, you might even call it an International Working Class Heritage Site, but there was never a member of the aristocracy living there so it won't count, will it?

The Heilan-man's umbrella (under the bridge at Central Station, for my foriegn readers) also served as a dossing down place for Highlanders dispossed in the Highland clearances, hence the name, and it is still in use by the homeless whenever Strathclyde's finest don't move them along.

Just more working class heritage messing up the post-modern image that Glasgow tries to promote by completely invented heritage like the 'Merchant City'. Real heritage is far too 'gritty' for them.

Lawyers and their Briefs

Just a wee additional thought further to my rant about affordable justice, has anyone else noticed a curiosity I see in Paisley around about the court every day. There are always lawyers running about with large numbers of files piled up on their arms. I assume you see the same thing in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Now I can't believe that people who earn that sort of money can't afford a carrier bag, disposable, recyclable or one of the new high fashion ones that are not plastic and idiots queue for as if they were going to stop making them.

I similarly don't believe that they lack the gumption to go into a shop and ask for a cardboard box, as an intelligent person would do.

I'm left with the assumption that they are afraid that someone might not notice that they are lawyers and fail to pay them the proper respect (bowing and scraping etc). The pile of files is their badge of office.

So I've got a word of advice for them.

The clue's in the name. Get a bloody briefcase you ponces.