The BBC TorchCam page makes for strangely compelling …

Comment posted For the record: the 2012 Olympic Flame in Argyll by Mairi.

The BBC TorchCam page makes for strangely compelling viewing …! http://www.bbc.co.uk/torchrelay. You can get your fill of this spectacle, and I agree – the logistics are super-impressive.
Also, the ‘grey’ men and women running beside the torch bearer are Met Police officers, I believe. Specially trained for all sorts of security operations. Look closely and you see the radio microphones in their ears.
Cast your mind back to Beijing, and how the relay became a focus for protesters, and who could blame them. Who’s to say that those with a-campaign-needing-PR/an-axe-to-grind (take your pick) wouldn’t similarly seek to exploit the UK high profile torch procession? In the event, the fact that upwards of 7,000 genuine community champions have been selected has produced a positive event, one that only a fool would seek to interrupt.
So for either eventuality – fool or campaigner/axe-grinder – I am glad that Myles, and the other torch-bearers get the protection they deserve.

Recent comments by Mairi

• Strachur Post Office under threat of closure
  When in fact the various parties should focus their energies on working together to get the best for local businesses, like Charles’. That blame game never won any jobs.
• Proposal for independent Scotland to share UK welfare system admin to 2020+
  That conclusion – ‘to continue sharing’- is only worth anything if both parties agree to share. And there is no sign that the rest of the UK would find anything in this that would benefit them. So why would they agree to share?

  With that in mind, I think Jerry McIver nails it in comment #1 above. Why would England and Wales want all their DWP administration services done in a foreign country? What do they gain? Can it be done better and cheaper in a different foreign country? Or somewhere else in the rUK, like the north-west of England, or south Wales?

  These decisions will – on both sides – be hard-nosed, with little room for sentiment. Inevitably.

• DVLA: one example of what demerging means
  Service level agreements and penalties are notoriously difficult to get right – people rarely foresee all the future circumstances that might warrant their application.

  And if you get to the stage that you need to deploy penalties, things are in a mess, and the voting public will – rightly – have little patience. They expect public services to be delivered in a transparent way, with democratic scrutiny.

  It’s not unknown for out-sourced contractual arrangements that go wrong – often with faults on both sides – to result in lengthy and expensive legal wrangles. Not a place a newly independent country wants to find itself.

• Proposal for independent Scotland to share UK welfare system admin to 2020+
  “is it fair that the taxpayers in the rest of the UK should pay for all the costs in separating out those assets”
  asked Lundavra.

  Exactly – good shout. If I live in Wales, didn’t ask for this change, was given no say in whether or not it should happen, then that makes a strong argument for saying ‘No’ – I shouldn’t pick up the tab for any of these consequential costs.

  Whoever pays – one thing’s for sure: The lawyers would earn big-time.

• DVLA: one example of what demerging means
  I have a big problem with the overseas out-sourcing of public services in a newly independent Scotland. In some exceptional circumstances it can – perhaps – be justified. But it’s almost become the preferred modus operandi for the SNP. They seem to want to use it wholesale, and this starts to weaken democratic accountability. Never mind that it completely undermines the whole notion of what is independence.

  At the moment these DVLA services are subject to direct democratic oversight and accountability. As of now, the standards and performance of the DVLA are – ultimately – the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Transport. He or she can be called before OUR Parliament to answer questions, must cooperate with OUR Transport Select Committee, be directed to appear in front of any special inquiries, and generally be answerable for public services like the DVLA, in all of the UK, including Scotland. That is a cherished, democratic principle.

  How does this work in an independent Scotland? Do we try to hold a foreign minister to account? Or ask the Scottish Minister with the responsibility for overseeing this outsourced arrangement to answer questions about the service and its performance? If there are problems, I can see a scenario where one points the finger at the other, and we end up with a classic fudge. No-one was at fault , or worse, It wasn’t me – the bad boy did it and ran away.

  Of course, the most bizarre of these is the outsourcing of our very currency to what would then be a different country. Staying with the Pound would mean “out-sourcing” all the big monetary and fiscal levers to that foreign government. With absolutely no democratic accountability available to Scots. It really feels like our parliament and government would be emasculated under such arrangements.

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