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A CRACKDOWN on the spiralling cost of public inquiries in Scotland is set to be launched by the Scottish Government, amid concerns they have become a “cash cow” for lawyers.

It follows recent revelations that the Penrose inquiry into infected blood has cost £9 million, and could rise even further, while the Shirley McKie fingerprint inquiry cost almost £5m. Massive legal fees are behind much of the costs.

Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill has ordered a consultation into the way inquiries are run and has confirmed the costs are to come under scrutiny.

The convener of Holyrood’s justice committee, Christine Grahame, says greater scrutiny is needed over the way fees are handed out by inquiry chiefs at a time of chronic pressure on the public purse. She has called for an investigation into a “fixed fee” system or even a “taxation” system which operates in other courts and means auditors will check claims submitted by advocates have been “properly earned”.

The Nationalist MSP said: “The idea is that you do have a third party checking accounts. It’s public money and at a time when every other penny of public money is subject to scrutiny.

“Public inquiries are not granted casually, but we need to be sure that it’s properly applied.

“I’m not saying it’s improperly applied, but what need to find out, and what taxations would show, is that the public purse is being spent in a proper fashion. It would be open and accountable.”

The justice secretary revealed in a parliamentary answer to his SNP colleague on the subject of inquiry costs that a consultation into the way they operate closed last week.

“We will be considering all aspects of the current rules in the light of the consultation responses,” he said.

The consultation is into a proposed series of changes to the way costs are worked out and includes tightening up the timeframe in which awards are made.

Public inquiries are chaired by independent figures, usually judges, into scandals or tragedies that have given rise to major public concern.

The inquiry into the ICL-Stockline plastics factory explosion in Glasgow cost £1.9m, more than twice the cost of the inquiry into the Scottish Parliament’s Holyrood building fiasco, which came in at £717,400.

The latest moves come as demands grow for fresh public inquiries into the scandal over PIP breast implants and the recent Legionnaires’ outbreak in Edinburgh.

Scottish Tory deputy leader Jackson Carlaw backed demands for a crackdown.

“It is crucial we find a more streamlined way of getting to the end of these inquiries without costs escalating out of control,” he said.

“Before such cases are embarked upon, certain costs can be agreed and cut-offs imposed.

“Many of these inquiries are of crucial importance, but that does not mean they can become cash cows for lawyers or anyone else quoting ludicrous sums for their time.”

But Liberal Democrat justice spokeswoman Alison McInnes warned against any knee-jerk reaction.

“Public inquiries are a bastion of democracy,” the North East MSP said. “They allow the public to ask real questions and receive genuine, independently prepared answers in return.

“Whilst these figures might seem ludicrous, they should not be allowed to deter from the absolute necessity of the Inquiries Act in Scotland.”

The Scottish Government disclosed last month that the “interim cost” of Penrose inquiry currently stood at £8,788,901. This followed a long campaign highlighting the fact that hundreds of people in Scotland, including haemophilia sufferers and other patients, had been given contaminated NHS blood in the 1970s and 1980s.

Setting up the inquiry was a key commitment of the SNP when it came to power in 2007, but the costs prompted opposition politicians to question whether it had been conducted in the most efficient manner possible.

The inquiry began taking evidence three years ago and the public hearings drew to a close last month.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We are happy to consider any suggestions Ms Grahame has for improving the conduct of public inquiries.”

New laws covering the operation of public inquiries in Scotland came into force four years ago.

Since then, four inquiries have been set up – into the Stockline factory explosion, the Shirley McKie fingerprint row, the infected blood scandal and the C difficile outbreak at the Vale of Leven Hospital in Dunbartonshire in which 18 people died in 2007 and 2008. The last of these is ongoing.

Despite concerns about the growing cost of Scottish public inquiries, there is still some way to go before they reach the sort of figures seen elsewhere in the UK.

The Saville Inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shootings in Northern Ireland, which saw Paratroopers open fire in Londonderry, killing 14 people in 1972, cost £195m.

It prompted an angry broadside from UK Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, who branded the burden to the public purse a “disaster”.

He said: “I’m anxiously considering how we can stop such inquiries getting ludicrously out of hand, in terms of cost and length, as the Saville Inquiry was allowed to do.”

A DRIVER was yesterday banned from the road for a year after the deaths of a “loving and caring” couple.

Gary McCrohon crashed into another car while driving his Nissan Skyline on the A944 dual carriageway between Aberdeen and Westhill on 18 February, 2009.

The 33-year-old, of Aberdeen, lost control of his sports car and smashed through the central reservation into the other car.

William Cable, 79, and his wife Elizabeth, 78, could do nothing to avoid the collision and died at the scene.

Their red Vauxhall Corsa was forced into the air by the impact and landed upside down in a field. .

McCrohon was charged with death by careless driving following a lengthy police investigation, but denied the offence. Yesterday, a jury of nine women and five men found him guilty of the lesser offence of careless driving by a unanimous verdict.

The jury took just over two hours to reach its decision following a five-day trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court.

McCrohon was fined £1,000 and disqualified from driving for 12 months.

Relatives of Mr and Mrs Cable paid tribute to the couple after the case and said they hoped lessons would be learned.

A family spokesman said: “The tragic loss of loving and caring parents, and grandparents is difficult for all to come to terms with.

“From today it is time to move on. The family can only hope and wish lessons will be learned and from that the loss of a life on the roads will be avoided.”

A CALL for a public inquiry is often the first refuge of the political scoundrel. It works like this: Something goes wrong for which the government of the day might be responsible.

A politician, usually in opposition, demands something must be done and calls on ministers to set up a public inquiry.

If proof were needed of this frequent and depressingly predictable course of events in politics, Labour yesterday called for a public inquiry to look at the cause of the outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease even before the health and safety officials have finished their investigations into what happened in west Edinburgh.

Making the point that calls for inquiries are now so frequent that their impact is greatly reduced does not, however, imply that all such calls are without merit.

There are sometimes cases where the public interest can be served by an official investigation which leads to recommendations which improve the way we run affairs in the public realm. The problem is that even when such inquiries are justified they tend to cost large sums of public money.

There is plenty of evidence. In Scotland, the Penrose inquiry into the Hepatitis C and HIV infection via contaminated blood has already cost the taxpayer almost £9 million. Lord Gill’s inquiry into the explosion at the ICL plastics factory in Glasgow cost nearly £4m. The Shirley McKie fingerprint inquiry cost close to £5m. South of the Border the Bloody Sunday inquiry cost £195m.

That the Scottish Government has recognised there is a problem, and is trying to do something about it, is welcome. Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has launched a consultation into the way inquiries are run, including looking at the costs. This is a step in right direction, but what might be considered by way of change?

One suggestion, from Christine Grahame, the Nationalist convener of Holyrood’s justice committee, is for a fixed fee system for lawyers. This has attractions in terms of saving money, but while we may not feel particularly sorry for well paid lawyers, if inquiries go on for a long period of time they have to be paid.

It might, therefore, be better for the consultation to start by accepting there are too many inquiries, and look at other ways on investigating areas of public controversy.

Why, for example, are inquiries usually presided over by a judge with all the participants represented by advocates? Is there a case for making more use of professional arbitrators to resolve disputes? Could there be a role for one senior expert figure, rather than a whole courtroom full of lawyers, to examine and rule on some controversies?

The length of time public inquires take, and the cost to the public purse, help no-one, particularly those who may be the aggrieved party. Justice delayed is justice denied. There must be a better, quicker, fairer, cost- effective way of holding public inquiries.

Cooking up a storm

And the award for the most pettifogging, inept, bureaucratic, jobsworth, foot shooting council in the world goes to… roll of drums… Argyll and Bute. It is impossible to overstate the lack of understanding of public opinion demonstrated by this authority in banning nine-year-old Martha Payne from taking pictures of school dinners – sometimes featuring distinctly unappetising fare – for her blog.

The ban had been imposed by her school after Martha cooked a meal with chef Nick Nairn and was pictured with a flaming frying pan, under the headline: “Time to fire the dinner ladies.” The decision was supposedly taken because the school’s dinner ladies took offence, but provoked outrage. Martha attracted thousands of messages of support including one from school food campaigner Jamie Oliver.

After local MSP and education secretary Mike Russell piled in, the authority’s leader, Roddy McCuish, revealed he had instructed apparently reluctant council officials to reverse the ban and praised Martha as “enterprising and imaginative”. Forced by worldwide opinion into this U-turn, he admitted the council was wrong and the ban should not have been imposed in the first place.

Martha took pictures of the meals as they were and gave her opinion. She should be praised, not punished. Once the school and council knew it has happening and she had a global audience they should have made sure they were providing good, attractive, healthy meals to the youngsters in their care. It could have been a great advert for the authority. Instead they banned a nine-year old girl from revealing reality. That is shameful.

THE campaigns for and against independence are entrenched, high on hot air, low in substance and capable of irreversible harm, writes Gerry Hassan

The times they are a changing all over the world, from Greece and Spain to the USA and China. There is unrest, voices of protest rising and authorities reacting with confusion as they cling to the wreckage of failed economic orthodoxy.

At the same time, the battle of Scotland unfolds; one that isn’t life or death or black and white, thankfully. But to some it seems that way.

The official independence campaign saw John Swinney this week declare his support for a “highly integrated UK financial services market”; Alex Salmond was sanguine at the Leveson inquiry when asked about British or Scottish media solutions. This isn’t exactly the separatist fanaticism painted by some opponents.

On the other hand, the pro-union campaign with its “positive” slogan, “Better Together” is portraying a “Better Yesterday” Britain, the mythical land of post-war social democratic fairness and order that never existed and we can’t return to.

The contours are clear. We have two significantly flawed campaigns facing each other, both of which are conservative and cautious, high on rhetoric but little substance. This is CFC Scotland: content-free campaigns and we have to be wary they don’t irreversibly harm our political environment.

Neither side seems to have much appetite to address the big challenges and issues Scotland is going to face. Much easier for each to pose an abstract vision of independence versus a fantasy version of the union.

Scotland’s future should instead be about bringing to the fore the questions we face as a society. Then we could work out which kind of constitutional settlement most aids the kind of Scotland we aspire to.

These will include some of the fundamentals that are shaping our society. There are the demographic pressures building in Scotland. We have an ageing population as more of us live longer, with resulting pressures on public services that are difficult for politicians to address because elderly voters turn out more to vote. Look at once rabid-right-winger Michael Forsyth defend bus passes for the affluent older voter.

There is also the issue of how we nurture young people. It is true that public bodies now talk of early-years intervention, but we need to address more important things, the power of emotional literacy, the issue of love, play and relationships.

We have huge strains and tensions in our democratic system for all the rhetoric of “new politics” a decade ago. Scotland is a truncated democracy where the voices of “forgotten Scotland” have been ignored by our political class for at least a generation.

Then there is the size and nature of our public sector and how we afford it. We will soon face the biggest public spending cuts since the war, and somehow we have to find a way to avoid the twin cul-de-sacs of the accountant-consultant mindset and the traditionalist defend-everything approach.

Related to this is the question of distributional choices and consequences. The people who gain most from our public services are the middle class who know how to work the system, advocate and protect themselves; and the people who it least helps are those who most need it. We need to start revisiting this and asking if affluent Scots cannot make a contribution to the greater good.

Baby-boomer Scotland is one group that is asset-rich and gained from the bulge in property prices, and who could contribute something back to help young people get into the housing and job markets.

There is the question of how we want to do business. After the crashes of RBS and Rangers FC, two of the most totemic Scottish global brands, can’t we at least reflect on the limits of freewheeling socially irresponsible financial-bubble capitalism?

We need explicit debate about Scotland’s future and about what different futures might look like. We cannot hark back to the past. Part of Scottish opinion seems permanently to live in the world of 1945-75 and yearn for the return of the British post-war settlement and the ordered, managed society that went with it.

We cannot go back to the near past because it was a product of numerous factors, one of which was the nature of the international system of global capitalism with fixed exchange rates. All of this began to fall apart in 1971 with the abandonment of the Bretton Woods world system of monetary management.

We have to aim our aspirations and dreams higher. We can’t have pseudo-participative democracy forums or the Potemkin village gathering of ‘civic Scotland’ as the answer. That is what one version of the great and good have always done: talked the peoples’ talk while hoovering up the committee places and making sure they remain centre stage.

Instead, we have to try to change and widen this debate from the 1980s frame of mind. Independence and pro-union supporters have to recognise that unionism and nationalism are not enough on their own to debate and decide the future. We need different ideas: communitarianism, self-determination, new economic thinking.

Fundamental to this is the relevance of empathy, dialogue and listening, and being able to recognise that, whatever your views, the other side(s) have a rationale and legitimacy. Too many nationalists think there is no case for the union, and there are too many unionists who have no insight into the power and pull of the call for independence.

I think we need, first, a campaign against CFC (content free campaign) Scotland and secondly, one for a different Scotland. That requires a real debate. One where we pose the difficult, painful choices about what kind of Scotland first and foremost, and ask ourselves what do we want to be?

From that we could then explore whether we want to be independent or not. And in the process we will have positively sketched out the kind of future we want and shown a self-government of the mind which will aid us getting to where we want.

WHAT were you doing last Tuesday? If you are like me, the details are foggy. But then if I don’t go through my checklist before I leave the house each morning – keys, wallet, phone, fags, bus change, shoes, my head – the likelihood I will find myself without them increases dramatically.

But if I really think about it, I can probably fillet out a few details of the day without having to refer back to my diary. It is not like it was that long ago. But then again it was probably like numberless other Tuesdays, which involves that most contemporary of occupations – sitting at my desk staring at a computer, then having wine.

But what if you could remember the full details of what you did that day in full, breathing and smelling technicolor? And not only this one, but all days of your life, stretching back to childhood? If you did, you would have a condition known as hyperthymesia, which is also known as highly superior autobiographical memory.

Cases of this form of total recall are rare. It has been estimated there are only 20 people on the planet that have it and only two cases that have been documented by science. One is the case of a young man known as “HK”, who is blind, but when asked by researchers to describe what happened on 2 January, 2001, he can recall the details vividly.

Of course as this is science, the dweebs chose a number of dates, cross-checked them with family, friends, newspapers and other sources and then quizzed him. His answers about the independently verified details were 100 per cent correct, particularly those that occurred after the age of 11.

The lucky thing was he seems pretty calm about it. He revealed that he enjoyed waking up thinking about what had happened to him in previous years on the same date. He told the researchers that during the day memories would often enter his consciousness, triggered by news, smells, sounds and emotions.

Quite frankly, I couldn’t think of anything more distracting. People with this ability talk about how real their memories are, as if they were experiencing them again like they were watching them in a cinema.

So while they remember pleasant birthday surprises, walks on the beach and their first kiss, what about recollections of those painful, frightening or excruciatingly embarrassing times?

Imagine being able to relive for the rest of your life, and in the most scintillating detail, the day that you wet yourself after getting a bit carried away on the neighbour’s trampoline and being mocked by their evil progeny. Yes this did happen to me, possibly when I was seven, or maybe five. In fact I can’t remember. But I can still feel the mortification of it. If you could choose to relive any memory, surely the danger would be that you would be drawn to the intensity of the awful ones and worry them like a sore tooth.

Maybe the worse things about bad memories, what gives them their power, is the way they can sneak up on you and clobber you from behind when you are feeling vulnerable. Or how they leak into your dreams when your waking vigilance can no longer keep them at bay. For those who are habitually anxious or depressed, wallowing in past disaster is a real concern.

Another person who claims to have superior autobiographical memory is actress Marilu Henner. Best known for her role in a hit TV sitcom of the late Seventies, Taxi, she has published a book about her unusual talent. She has surely experienced up and downs – currently she is on her third marriage – yet she recently told an interviewer that her ability to remember everything makes her feel that her life is “significant”.

Our man in the report, HK, told his interrogators that while bad memories came to his mind just as often as the good ones, he was able to choose to focus on the ones that were more pleasing. And although most of us don’t have the ability to process our memories in the same way as these unusual human beings, perhaps that is the trick.

It even suggests that having a clear recollection of the events that terrified you, or that made you angry or confused, would in fact have their sting removed, knowing you survived them, or by being able to frame them in the light of being older and wiser.

THE Edinburgh office market received a double boost as two major lets have been revealed in the capital.

Flight search firm Skyscanner has signed a lease on new headquarters that will allow staff numbers to double to 300 over the next two years.

The technology firm will consolidate its current three offices into one at Quartermile One on the former Edinburgh Royal Infirmary site.

Shane Corstorphine, chief financial officer, expects the company to add 30 staff this year, bringing the number of Edinburgh-based employees to 180. The new building will become its global headquarters and it will open two further global “hubs” over the next 12 months in addition to its Singapore office, which opened in September.

One of Edinburgh’s other new developments will become home to NHS 24 which has agreed to take up the rest of the available office space at 102 Westport.

In April semiconductor company Broadcom took 6,136 sq ft at Westport.

The firm is relocating 28 staff from St Andrew Square and joins other tenants, Quayle Munro and Sainsbury.

Once upon a time, it was all about fast food. After generations of cooking from scratch, technology suddenly made eating quick and simple. In the home, the Pot Noodle came to symbolise the fast food revolution.

Add hot water, wait a couple of minutes and, eureka, you had a meal that was quick and convenient. They may have tasted like rubber bands boil-washed with gym kit but the Pot Noodle was quick and convenient.

The same applied to fast food outside the home where the drive-through meant you could buy a burger without having to even waste time getting out of the car.

Then, just when food was at it’s fastest, the slow-down started.

Twenty years ago, Carlo Petrini’s fight against a McDonald’s outlet in the centre of Rome sparked the start of the Slow Food Movement.

It aimed to reconnect people with the pleasure of good food and the story of where it comes from. Today, the organisation has more than 100,000 members in 130 countries and tomorrow marks the start of Slow Food Week across the UK.

In Scotland, chef Tom Lewis is hosting a special dinner at his Monachyle Mhor hotel, near Balquihidder, and special events are planned around the country.

In Edinburgh, chef Neil Forbes has been a long time supporter of the Slow Food Movement.

“Slow Food encompasses what I believe is the right way to eat.  There are health benefits, of course, but I also believe that it leads to a more enjoyable way of life by getting people back into the kitchen at home,” says Neil.

Nowhere is the slow-food message more apparent than at the Scottish Cafe and Restaurant at The Mound. Owner Carina Contini’s father came from the land where the movement started. Now she’s making sure Scotland lives up to the founding principles.

On Wednesday, a special slow-food menu will celebrate the best Scottish seasonal and local produce with a special twist. Some of it will come from a garden that the Continis have created on the outskirts of Edinburgh

“By growing our own produce within a five-mile radius of the city we are cutting back on food miles, developing heritage varieties where possible, but most of all really connecting with the seasons.

“We’re also using all our coffee grounds and vegetable food waste for compost so we’re recycling wherever possible. Slow food for me is about making good choices about food”

If you read this column, you already care about food and probably try to make good choices. But this week I talked to someone who repeatedly referred to food as ‘fuel”. For people like them, Slow Food Week is the chance to reflect.

One of the Scottish distilleries that featured in Ken Loach’s new hit film The Angels’ Share has plenty to celebrate itself, discovers Brian Ferguson

IT became a centre of excellence for industrial and mechanical engineering in 19th century Scotland. Despite being hidden away on the banks of the River Teith, Deanston, in Perthshire, is still seen as one of Scotland’s finest mill villages. These days, the place where sheets and towels were produced for Cunard liners, the workers had their own currency and was home to Europe’s largest water wheel, is home to what is proudly promoted as the country’s “greenest distillery.”

However, despite a unique claim as the only whisky distillery in Scotland to be converted from a previous industrial use, Deanston’s managers admit it still feels like the industry’s “hidden secret.”

Now it is set to cash in on Scotland’s growing whisky boom – and the distillery’s own new-found fame after featuring in Ken Loach’s hit new comedy-drama, The Angels’ Share – by converting disused spaces into its first visitor centre and cafe. The distillery runs on what is reputed to be Scotland’s purest river water, shuns modern technology to produce its amber nectar, with no computer technology to be seen anywhere in the production process, and can create enough of its own electricity to power the whole village.

The neat little rows of former cotton mill workers’ homes, known as divisions, have hardly changed since they helped house the 1500 workers who would have worked in one of the biggest local employers of the day.

These days, the building, converted into a distillery in 1966, has a workforce of just a dozen, who handfill the bottles themselves.

The Burns Stewart Group, which bought Deanston in 1990, has ploughed £600,000 into the creation of the distillery’s first visitor facilities, which are predicted to attract 15,0000 visitors a year. They are the latest signs of growth in an industry already thought to be worth £30 million to tourism alone, thanks to around 1.3 million visits to distilleries and whisky centres last year.

As with most distilleries, it is the unique selling points of Deanston that its staff are keen to point out. Distillery manager Callum Fraser said: “Most whisky distilleries were purpose-built over the years and a lot are much older than Deanston. However we are very unusual in that the building had a previous industrial use, but is still very much intact.

“The techniques and production methods we use are pretty much as they were. They are very traditional and we don’t use any computer technology anywhere in the process. We’re one of the few distilleries in Scotland to use all-Scottish ingredients, including our barley, and obviously still use the water from the River Teith, which powers the whole distillery. We produce enough electricity here to supply the whole village.”

Central to the new drive to promote Deanston is an attempt to revive interest in its history as a forerunner in the industrial revolution in Scotland. It was run by famous entrepreneurs like James Finlay, who transformed it into the leading cotton mill of early 19th century Scotland, and manager James Smith, who built the rows of neatly-designed accommodation down the river for the workforce.

Many original features of the building have remained intact while old photographs and grainy film footage provides a glimpse of what life was like for the workers crammed into the building. A highlight of the distillery tour is the atmospheric main warehouse, where hundreds of barrels are now matured, but which was once the main weaving shed for the mill, with 300 looms in action at peak production times.

Mr Fraser added: “It’s the industrial history of the building that makes it so special here, but it is also the care and attention that goes into the production process that the staff have so much pride in.”

Andrew Mitchell, chairman of Burn Stewart Distillers, added: “The distillery and the former cotton mill at Deanston tell such a riveting and important story about the handcrafted production of whisky, the heritage of this stunning building and its place within the community and Scottish history.

“From the unique open air mash tun and vaulted maturation warehouse to the solid granite staircase, visitors will feel a real sense of the tradition, the sense of community, the hand-crafted whisky process and the proud self-sufficiency of the distillery here.”

Deanston was lucky enough to be one of three distilleries chosen to be featured in Ken Loach’s hit new film The Angels’ Share. An award-winner at the Cannes Film Festival last month, the film tells of a group of troubled youngsters from Glasgow who hatch a plan to steal a rare cask after a visit to a distillery – with the latter scenes shot at Deanston.

One of its stars, Jasmin Riggins, returned to the distillery to help launch the new visitor facilities, where a poster signed by the cast has pride of place in the new shop. Mr Fraser said: “It’s quite a dark film in places, but it can only be good for the industry if it persuades more people to try whisky for the first time, and it’s been very good for us so far.”

Although the film is not benefiting from the kind of marketing muscle VisitScotland is throwing behind Disney-Pixar film Brave, chairman Mike Cantlay postponed his trip to the US for its world premiere to drop into Deanston yesterday.

He said: “Scotland is the home of whisky and, with whisky distilleries and visitor centres adding some £30million to the Scottish economy each year, they have a vital role to play in bolstering the country’s tourism offering and ensuring a truly memorable visitor experience.

“With this in mind, I am delighted to see such an innovative and important development here at Deanston –- adding to what is already a very impressive distillery.”

The coalition’s hopes that the UK might crawl out of recession in the second quarter were dashed yesterday after official figures showed the trade deficit has widened to its highest level in almost seven years.

The goods and services deficit – the gap between imports and exports – rocketed to £4.4 billion in April, up from £3bn in March, as exports to the eurozone plunged.

April’s trade gap was the highest since August 2005 and the second widest since comparable records began in 1992.

The increase was driven by an 8.6 per cent drop in exports, including a 6.8 per cent fall in exports to the EU, the UK’s biggest trade partner.

However, the decline in exports to non-EU countries was even sharper, with a 10 per cent drop to £11.8bn as markets such as China, the US and Russia bought fewer cars and pharmaceuticals. Analysts at the CEBR said this was an “unwelcome development”, as emerging economies were the UK’s best chance for export growth in the midst of the eurozone crisis.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, described the figures as “truly horrible” and said they highlighted the mounting impact the weakening global economy is having on the UK.

He added: “We already know that manufacturing is likely to act as a drag on the economy in the second quarter, with output falling 0.7 per cent in April and on course for a further decline in May.

“With the extra bank holiday already estimated to result in a 0.5 per cent loss of GDP in the second quarter, there seems little chance of the UK escaping another quarter of decline.”

Chancellor George Osborne and Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King unveiled plans on Thursday night for a £100bn emergency bank funding scheme to kick-start lending to households and businesses in a bid to boost growth. Under the “funding for lending” scheme, banks will have access to cheaper short-term loans, but only if they increase lending to the non-financial sector. The Bank will also provide short-term liquidity to help the banks.

Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, described the move as “welcome, but limited”.

He said: “The funding for lending scheme helps the supply of money and the demand for it, by lowering the cost of borrowing. But the core problem remains. Companies alarmed by the euro crisis will not be eager to borrow regardless of the cost.”

The UK entered recession after the economy shrank 0.2 per cent in the first three months of the year, following a 0.3 per cent decline in GDP in the final quarter of 2011. Economists warned of further contraction on the back of yesterday’s figures.

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said: “With the trade deficit widening in April and construction output again disappointing, the chances of the economy avoiding further contraction in the second quarter are dwindling.”

Official construction data, also released yesterday, showed output fell 13 per cent in April compared with the previous month, driven by a fall in government projects such as housing and infrastructure.

Scottish Building Federation chief executive Michael Levack said: “If the UK government is serious about rebuilding economic confidence and ending continuing job losses in the construction sector, it needs to change course and start investing in the infrastructure the sector and the economy as a whole so desperately need.”

FIVE people who caught Legionnaires’ disease have started legal action that could see them receive compensation for becoming infected.

The news came the day after a second man in Edinburgh died of the illness, which has infected 89 people, and as Edinburgh city council served an improvement notice on the National Museum of Scotland as part of the ongoing investigation.

Lawyers acting for the victims say they are awaiting the results of the investigation into the source of the outbreak to decide whether patients can seek compensation. They say if individual companies or the authorities are found to have been negligent, they will seek financial settlements for the victims.

Elaine Russell, a partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell, said: “While compensation is something that could be relevant if there is negligence involved, it is still early stages and we have only just been instructed to act on their behalf.”

She said any future claims would also depend on how the disease had affected each individual’s health and impacted on their quality of life.

Ms Russell said all five victims wanted answers as to why the outbreak had happened and reassurances from the authorities that measures would be taken to ensure it did not happen again.

Yesterday, the city council said the improvement notice served on the National Museum of Scotland related to staff training issues and not the operation and maintenance of cooling towers under investigation as a possible source of the outbreak. A distiller and a pharmaceutical manufacturer have also been served with notices as part of the investigation by health and safety experts.

The Scottish Labour Party has called for a public inquiry into the outbreak.

Shadow health secretary Jackie Baillie said: “I would urge the Scottish Government to agree to a public inquiry. This should not have happened and a public inquiry will ensure we learn lessons and try to prevent this happening again.”

No new cases of the disease were reported yesterday, with the total number confirmed still at 41 and suspected at 48.

Health secretary Nicola Sturgeon said the worst of the illness appeared to be over. “It is reassuring that the number of cases involved in the outbreak remains static and this is further evidence that the outbreak has reached its peak,” she said.

Nine patients remain in intensive care and seven outwith the NHS Lothian area continue to be treated for the illness. All of them had visited Edinburgh in recent weeks.

Dr Duncan McCormick, a consultant in public health at NHS Lothian, warned more cases could arise and said he could not rule out further deaths.

He said: “The outbreak does appear to have peaked. Unfortunately, that does not mean that, despite the best possible treatment, patients who are already ill may not deteriorate over coming days. It is also the case that we would expect the number of confirmed cases to rise, as suspected cases become confirmed.”

The funeral of father-of-two Robert Air, 56, the first man to die of the illness, took place yesterday. A second man, aged in his 40s and who lived in the Gorgie area, died on Thursday evening.

Both had “significant” and pre-existing underlying health conditions, officials said.

Six companies in the city are being investigated over the disease.

DATING website operator Cupid has further acquisition targets in its sights, chairman George Elliot told shareholders at yesterday’s annual general meeting.

The Edinburgh-based firm is on course to hit full-year targets, with house broker Peel Hunt pencilling in a profit of £16.5 million, up from last year’s £11.3m.

Elliot said: “We are currently investigating several acquisition opportunities, which are within our normal pricing and performance parameters, and will update progress as and when appropriate.”

Analysts also expect Cupid to push further into the smartphone market in the second-half of the year with its “exciting new products”.

Paul Morland, an analyst at Peel Hunt, said: “This up-beat trading statement should reassure the market that Cupid’s strategy is working and profitable growth continues to be rapid.

“Sales look to be ahead of expectations and profits in line, as Cupid continues to invest in marketing in its newer geographies, while profits impress in the more-mature UK and Australian markets.”

Shares closed unchanged at 200p.

PETER RANSCOMBE

FOR a positive outlook, embrace the negative, writes Oliver Burkeman

For a civilisation so fixated on achieving happiness, we seem remarkably incompetent at the task. One of the best-known general findings of the “science of happiness” has been the discovery that the advantages of modern life have done so little to lift our collective mood. The awkward truth seems to be that increased economic growth does not necessarily make for happier societies, just as increased personal income, above a certain basic level, doesn’t make for happier people. Nor does better education, at least according to some studies. Nor does an increased choice of consumer products. Nor do bigger and fancier homes.

Perhaps you don’t need telling that self-help books, the modern-day apotheosis of the quest for happiness, are among the things that fail to make us happy. But, for the record, research strongly suggests that they aren’t usually much help. This is why, among themselves, some self-help publishers refer to the “18-month rule”, which states that the person most likely to purchase any given self-help book is someone who, within the previous 18 months, purchased a self-help book. When you look at the self-help shelves with a coldly impartial eye, this isn’t especially surprising. That we yearn for neat, book-sized solutions to the problem of being human is understandable, but strip away the packaging, and you’ll find that the messages of such books are frequently banal. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People essentially tells you to decide what matters most to you in life, and then do it; How To Win Friends and Influence People advises its readers to be pleasant rather than obnoxious, and to use people’s first names a lot. One of the most successful management manuals of the last few years, Fish!, which is intended to help foster happiness and productivity in the workplace, suggests handing out small toy fish to your hardest-working employees.

As we’ll see, when the messages get more specific than that, self-help gurus tend to make claims that simply aren’t supported by more reputable research. The evidence suggests, for example, that venting your anger doesn’t get rid of it, while visualising your goals doesn’t seem to make them more likely to happen. And whatever you make of the country-by-country surveys of national happiness that are now published with some regularity, it’s striking that the “happiest” countries are never those where self-help books sell the most, nor indeed where professional psychotherapists are most widely consulted. The existence of a thriving “happiness industry” clearly isn’t sufficient to engender national happiness.

Yet the ineffectiveness of modern strategies for happiness is really just a small part of the problem. There are good reasons to believe that the whole notion of “seeking happiness” is flawed to begin with. For one thing, who says happiness is a valid goal in the first place? Religions have never placed much explicit emphasis on it, at least as far as this world is concerned; philosophers have certainly not been unanimous in endorsing it, either. And any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that evolution has little interest in your being happy, beyond trying to make sure that you’re not so listless or miserable that you will lose the will to reproduce.

Even assuming happiness to be a worthy target, though, a worse pitfall awaits: aiming for it seems to make it much more likely that you’ll never attain it. “Ask yourself whether you are happy,” observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill, “and you cease to be so”.

At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly. Making matters worse still, what happiness actually is feels impossible to define in words; even supposing you could do so, you’d presumably end up with as many different definitions as there are people on the planet. All of which means it’s tempting to conclude that “How can we be happy?” is simply the wrong question – that we might as well resign ourselves to never finding the answer, and get on with something more productive instead.

But could there be a third possibility, besides the futile effort to pursue solutions that never seem to work, on the one hand, and just giving up, on the other? After several years reporting on the field of psychology as a journalist, it finally dawned on me that there might be. I began to realise that something united all those psychologists and philosophers – and even the occasional self-help guru – whose ideas seemed actually to hold water.

The startling conclusion at which they had all arrived, in different ways, was this: that the effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative – insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness – that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy. They didn’t see this conclusion as depressing, though. Instead, they argued that it pointed to an alternative approach, a “negative path” to happiness, which entailed taking a radically different stance towards those things that most of us spend our lives trying hard to avoid. It involved learning to enjoy uncertainty, embracing insecurity, stopping trying to think positively, becoming familiar with failure, even learning to value death.

In short, all these people seemed to agree that in order to be truly happy, we might actually need to be willing to experience more negative emotions – or, at the very least, to learn to stop running quite so hard from them. Which is a bewildering thought, and one that calls into question not just our methods for achieving happiness, but also our assumptions about what “happiness” really means.

• Oliver Burkman’s The Antidote is published by Canongate next week. He will be discussing happiness at a Canongate Talks at 2pm at the Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Centre, 4 Walker Street, Edinburgh, on 23 June at 2pm. See www.canongate.tv/talks

IS THE gap between independence and fully-devolved fiscal autonomy within the UK shrinking, asks Alf Young

Could it be that all those voices from civic and business Scotland calling for a third choice in the 2014 referendum may have their way, after all? No, not because nationalist and unionist politicians are poised to bury the constitutional hatchet and strike some improbable deal to include a second question on devo plus or devo max on the ballot paper.

Rather, by the time we get to make our choice on Scotland’s constitutional future, might we be unable to get a proverbial sheet of rice paper between what the SNP actually means by independence and what most people think of as fully-devolved fiscal autonomy within a continuing United Kingdom?

I ask because that’s where the debate appears, inch by painstaking inch, to be heading. For the SNP leadership – but not for all nationalist foot-soldiers – the union of the crowns of Scotland and England now appears sacrosanct. We are promised a continuing social union with the rest of these islands, from Strictly Come Dancing still on the television to English ales still on tap in your local Wetherspoon’s bar.

We know the nationalist government in Edinburgh is keen to preserve the UK-wide market in electricity, not least because it wants to sell some of the fruits of its promised renewables revolution to our nearest neighbours, but also because it wants those same consumers to continue subsidising the massive investment required through their gas and electricity bills.

There is also support for continued freedom of movement across Scotland’s borders with the rest of the UK; for the retention of a customs union; and the extension of the proposed new high speed rail link out of London beyond the English Midlands to this side of the Scottish Border.

This week, in a major speech at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney put important new flesh on the SNP’s recently-formed desire to keep sterling as Scotland’s post-independence currency. Back in March, when George Osborne was briefing that, if it voted for independence, Scotland would have to join the euro or launch its own currency, Alex Salmond insisted: “The UK Government would have absolutely no power to stop an independent Scotland from using it (the pound).”

The first minister was right, in the sense that Panama or Equador are free to use the US dollar, with absolutely no influence over American monetary policy. However, on Monday, Mr Swinney went a great deal further. “Our framework is one of monetary union with the rest of the UK,” he told his audience. “Regardless of what may be said in the heat of constitutional debate it would simply not make sense for anyone to resist the creation of a formal sterling zone and the mutual benefit it would bring.”

He didn’t stop there. Mr Swinney publicly endorsed, without reservation, the UK coalition’s plans to abolish the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and shake-up the way financial services are regulated in future. “As the Bank of England takes on the role of regulator for UK financial services – a very sensible and long overdue position – retaining the pound will preserve the highly integrated UK financial services market,” he said.

There wasn’t so much as a whiff, in his remarks, of the kind of criticism coming from others, including the departing chief executive of the FSA, Hector Sants, that the coalition’s reforms are putting far too much regulatory and monetary policy power into the hands of one individual, the man or woman who succeeds Sir Mervyn King as the next governor of the Bank of England.

A party that was wedded, for so long, to embracing the euro at the earliest opportunity, now appears so obsessed with detoxifying its own currency options post-independence, it will say and do almost anything to strike a formal monetary union with the rest of the UK. So cross-border regulation, UK coalition-style, is fine. Nicola Sturgeon has also raised the prospect of an independent Scotland paying the Bank of England to continue as lender of last resort to banks here. All the SNP wants in return is one seat on the Bank’s nine-strong monetary policy committee.

What next? The Scottish Government is said to be preparing its own banking code. But now that the Westminster coalition has announced its somewhat watered-down legislative plans to implement the Vickers Commission’s proposals on banking reform, who would be surprised if the SNP gives that Cable/Osborne package the thumbs-up too?

Even if Sir John Vickers thinks the UK Government is being too soft on some issues, like the adequacy of the proposed controls on bank leverage.

There is, however, one daunting obstacle in the way of creating the formal monetary union with the rest of the UK which Mr Swinney now seeks. The main power the SNP will not surrender, post-independence, is outright control of fiscal policy. How Scotland chooses to tax and how it chooses to spend. That is what independence is fast coming to mean. Full fiscal autonomy, exercised by an independent nation state that, because of the euro’s woes, now also needs to keep the pound as its currency.

But the euro’s woes are directly attributable to the creation of a monetary union where the 17 members continued to pursue their own individual tax and spend policies. And now that experiment has gone off the rails, the only-touted answer is tighter fiscal discipline across the zone as a whole and more Europe, more political union. Even David Cameron and George Osborne are egging them on.

The UK, as is, has avoided that fate. And the reasons are obvious. As Paul Krugman put it in a lecture last month at the London School of Economics: “The UK has all the advantages of its own currency and a single national government.” But if the SNP has its way, that single government will go, the currency union will be renewed, and tax competition north and south of Hadrian’s Wall (notably on tax on corporate profits) will become the norm.

Mr Swinney claims “it would simply not make sense for anyone to resist” such a proposition. I can safely predict now the UK Treasury will resist it, tooth and nail.

The SNP will put it all down to unionist intransigence. London will respond that it is not prepared to lay down the conditions for visiting a eurozone-style crisis on the economies of these islands, whatever their constitutional destinies.

If it’s smart it will also tell the SNP: You can have your formal money union, if Scotland votes yes. But only if Scotland agrees to a binding fiscal pact with the rest of the UK, prescribing such things as national spending profiles and permissible degrees of tax competition.

Convergence would then be virtually complete. Such a settlement would end up looking very much like devo max, even if that option never actually appears on any ballot paper.

EMBATTLED Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey has stepped down immediately from the newspaper group after her departure was brought forward by six months.

The publisher of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, as well as the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror, announced that it had hired head-hunters Egon Zehnder International to search for her replacement.

Bailey’s earlier-than-planned departure follows the arrival on 29 May of chairman David Grigson, who replaced Sir Ian Gibson – a move that was also brought forward.

Trinity Mirror said group finance director Vijay Vaghela will take on the chief executive duties, working with Grigson, until a permanent successor is appointed.

Bailey announced last month that she planned to step down amid a furore over executive pay and performance at the group, but was originally expected to leave by the end of the year.

The firm suffered a revolt over its pay plans at last month’s annual general meeting, with nearly half of shareholders who voted giving the thumbs down to the directors’ remuneration report. Investors were angry at Bailey’s large pay packet in the midst of falling profits and sales.

Trinity Mirror has been one of a number of firms to face the wrath of investors as part of a so-called “shareholder spring” that has also claimed the scalp of Aviva chief executive Andrew Moss.

Trinity Mirror, which publishes 160 local and regional newspapers, including the Ayrshire Post and Stirling Observer, has seen shares slump from more than £7 in 2005 to around 26p valuing it at £66.4 million.

It has suffered sharp falls in advertising revenues and circulation, as has the rest of the industry.

Scotland’s Munros and Corbetts must be protected from wind farms, according to the country’s leading mountaineering organisation.

The Mountaineering Council of Scotland yesterday launched a “Manifesto on Onshore Wind Farms”, claiming: “Scotland can achieve its aims for renewable energy without industrialising our most important mountains.”

The council, which represents more than 11,000 hillwalkers and climbers, is calling for a moratorium on commercial wind farms which encroach on the country’s highest peaks: Munros, over 3,000ft, and Corbetts, between 2,500ft and 2,999ft.

Ron Payne, the body’s director of landscape and access, said: “The mountains and wild places of Scotland are a national asset beyond price, yet they risk being irrevocably damaged.”

THE London Metal Exchange (LME) looks set to be sold to the operator of Hong Kong’s stock exchange in a £1.4 billion deal that will bring closer ties to metal-hungry China.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing is offering £107.60 for each of the 135-year-old exchange’s 12.9 million shares.

The deal, which will allow the Hong Kong exchange to expand into dealing in areas such as iron ore and coal for steel producers, needs regulatory and shareholder approval.

‘Gold rush’ easing, says pawnbroker

Pawnbroker Albemarle & Bond has said the high street “gold rush” caused by consumers looking to raise cash by selling jewellery has slowed sharply.

The firm, with more than 170 stores and about 40 “pop-up” shops, said growth in the value of gold it bought had slowed from more than 50 per cent in the first half of its financial year to mid single digits in the last eight weeks. As a result, full-year profits are expected to miss market forecasts.

Ryanair defends its Aer Lingus stake

Budget airline Ryanair yesterday said it was confident that regulators would let it keep its 30 per cent stake in Aer Lingus after the Office of Fair Trading referred the matter to the Competition Commission.

The OFT expressed concerns that Ryanair was in a position to “influence the commercial policy and strategy” of its rival.

Ryanair said the move was a “waste of public time and resources” as European regulators had no objection to its stake, built up six years ago.

SCIENTISTS believe they have discovered a gene which may cause a person to become an alcoholic.

Researchers said the findings added weight to the argument that alcoholism is a disease, but said it would be years before the full role of genetics is understood.

However, Scottish experts warned against waiting for a “sexy” scientific solution to the problem of alcohol abuse.

A team from Washington University in St Louis studied genetic variations in which large parts of genes had been either deleted or replicated, known as copy number variations (CNVs).

CNVs are already known to influence autism and schizophrenia, and scientists looked at two chromosomes where they found a significant link between certain CNVs and alcoholism.

Professor John Rice wrote in Alcoholism: Clinical & Exper-imental Research that the variations were “statistically significant” but “the effect on risk is modest”.

He said: “It will be a challenge to understand what gene[s] are causing this association and how they work to increase one’s risk for alcohol dependence.

“Our results need to be replicated in independent samples. It is important to note that the associations are modest, so these findings cannot be used to predict who will become an alcoholic.

The results open up a new line of investigation, but it can take many years before we have a true understanding.”

Dr Laura Williamson, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Institute for Applied Health Research, Glasgow Caledonian University, said this was not the first such discovery and people with alcohol dependency were still waiting for a “miracle cure”.

She said: “Given the stigma that already impedes recovery from dependence because people will not enter treatment, the discovery of an ability to identify who might develop an addiction problem, with treatment readily available, may in fact make the plight of the dependent and their families worse. People who are found to carry the gene may be denied life insurance or other benefits. Lots of ethical issues are raised by the ‘discovery’.

“Recently released hospital statistics show a gross disparity between those in high and low socio-economic groups. The poorer people are, the more likely they are to suffer of alcohol dependence or addiction. Women in Scotland are nearly twice as likely as English counterparts to have addiction problems with alcohol.

“So we need to help dependent drinkers in Scotland, not wait for some miracle, sexy science solution which may help in the future but, in the interim, will brand them as having a stigmatised condition.”

Barbara O’Donnell of campaign charity Alcohol Focus Scotland, said that the “pro- alcohol society” presents a “very challenging environment” for those with a dependency.

She added that in the interim, Scottish Government policy was to change the environment, not genetics, “through alcohol control measures, restricting affordability and availability, which will have a positive impact on the whole population, especially those struggling with alcohol dependency issues”.

Fewer Scottish farmers will be taking their European support payments in euros this year, according to Jimmy McLean, head of agricultural services with the RBS Group, who said the prediction of only 10 to 15 per cent of potential euro recipients was based not only the views from within the bank but also from talking to other agricultural consultants.

There is still time for farmers to elect to get their subsidies paid in euros but McLean said, with the fluctuations in the currency market, the decision was much more difficult to make this year.

Of more direct interest to all farmers who will get their single farm payments from the beginning of December onwards was McLean’s prediction that this year’s subsidy would be based on an exchange rate of approximately 81p. At that level, payments will be 6-7 per cent less than they were 12 months ago and will be the lowest for the past four years.

Looking ahead to how he saw farming in the coming year, McLean, speaking at RBS Group headquarters in Edinburgh, said the prospects still remained good and that agriculture had a positive and sustainable future.

Admittedly, those in the sheep and dairy sectors faced more challenges this year, with the sheep industry and its high reliance on exports being particularly vulnerable to the value of the euro.

He attributed the recent fall in farm gate milk prices to a fall in dairy commodity prices last autumn brought about by increased supplies from the southern.

This was a classic example of how exposed farming was to fluctuations in world markets. In itself, volatility was not new and farmers were used to dealing with it. But it is the degree of volatility in the market nowadays which was presenting additional challenges.

However, the overriding message was that food production was now a high priority around the world.

After reporting that UK bank borrowings by the farming industry had increased by some 2.5 per cent in the past quarter, McLean said this showed banking was still very supportive of the industry.

His colleague James McCann, a specialist in economics, predicted that, for those borrowing money, bank interest rates would continue to be a very low levels. “We do not expect to see the central bank increase its rates until 2015,” he said. There may have to be more quantitative easing to help the economy as he pointed out that the country was already in recession and “nine out of ten pounds of planned spending cuts have still to be implemented”.

THE prospect of a “chaotic” Greek eurozone exit is becoming more likely, regardless of the outcome of crucial elections in the country tomorrow, Gordon Brown claimed last night.

The former prime minister said the single currency was reaching a “day of reckoning” and suggested France and Italy would follow Spain in needing a bailout.

It came as the International Monetary Fund issued its latest assessment on Spain’s economy, saying the outlook was “very difficult” and that the government was likely to miss its deficit reduction target.

Mr Brown said the Mexico G20 summit of leading economies, which starts on Monday, was the “last chance” to sort out the turmoil. In an article for news agency Reuters, he claimed even German banks might need extra capital. “Whichever way the Greeks vote in Sunday’s election, a chaotic exit from the euro is becoming more likely: its tax revenues are collapsing, not rising as promised,” he wrote.

“Unable to regain access to markets, Portugal and Ireland will soon have to ask for their second IMF programmes. Sadly, Italy – and potentially even France – may soon follow Spain in needing finance as the European recession deepens. Even German banks, which are some of the most highly leveraged, are not immune from needing more capital.”

He went on: “This newly discovered but elemental characteristic of an economic union – that a lender of last resort is essential – will have to be acknowledged for Spain, Italy and possibly even France, as well as for Portugal and Ireland and for Greece, too, if they stay in the euro.”

Prime Minister David Cameron last night held a video conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian prime minister Mario Monti, French president Francois Hollande, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council president Herman van Rompuy.

A No 10 spokesman said: “Leaders agreed the need for countries to continue to take the necessary action to secure global economic stability and to support growth. These issues will be the focus of discussions at the G20 meeting.”