ERIC Pickles has poked fun at George Osborne by tweeting a picture of himself working on a speech and eating a takeaway.

The picture was redolent of one posted the night before the Chancellor delivered the Spending Review speech, which showed Osborne poring over his speech, with a burger and cans of Diet Coke next to him.

In Pickles’ photo - captioned ‘Putting final touches to the LGA speech’ - the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government can be seen sitting at a desk with a salad and some notes - a tongue-in-cheek reference perhaps to Osborne’s tribute yesterday, where he described Pickles as ‘the model of lean government’ after reducing the size of his government department.

The Communities Secretary has reduced the size of his department by 60 per cent, and has got rid of more than 10 quangos.

Osborne retweeted the picture, adding ‘Nice one Eric’ on his own Twitter feed.

Meanwhile, the Chancellor has defended his choice of late-night meal, after it transpired that he had spent nearly £10 on a gourmet burger and fries from restaurant chain Byron, adding: “McDonalds doesn’t deliver.”

Osborne, who admitted he was “partial to a quarter-pounder with cheese”, told ITV’s Daybreak programme: “Well, McDonald’s doesn’t deliver. I was working late in the office.”

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg revealed he is also a fan of Byron burgers, praising their Oreo milkshakes during his weekly radio phone-in on London’s LBC radio station.

A “Classic” Byron 6oz hamburger with lettuce, tomato, red onion and mayonnaise costs £6.75, with fries an extra £2.95. If cheese is added, the price of the burger rises to £7.95.

Mr Osborne ordered the meal from a Byron branch in Waterloo, more than a mile away from Whitehall, with 10 McDonald’s outlets - where burgers start at 99p - closer, the Sun reported.

A Byron spokesman confirmed earlier today that the chain does not deliver.

Osborne said Twitter posed problems for politicians who wanted to give a greater insight into their work.

He told the programme: “As a politician you’ve got this dilemma, which is the only thing people see of you is you’re in the House of Commons, in a TV studio.

“The point about Twitter is to try and tell people more about what you’re doing every day, and there I am working late on my speech, and I’ve got a takeaway hamburger, but it puts you on the front page of the Sun. It’s an occupational hazard.”

Osborne’s picture was retweeted 193 times by other Twitter users, but Pickles’ photo had racked up close to 500 retweets at the time of writing.

THE cost of the police’s computer integration project could rise to a previously “unheralded” £60 million as it may see up to £6 million of staff redundancies.

• The cost of Police Scotland IT integration project may rise to £60m because of staff redundancies

• ICT integration was initally costed at £12 million over the first three years, and was priced at £46m over 10 years only last week

Police and fire controls rooms around the country are also facing closure and some could be shared between the two emergency services, Police Scotland Chief Constable Sir Stephen House suggested.

Sir Stephen told Holyrood’s Justice Sub-Committee on Policing that his flagship ICT integration project - known as i6 - is more than just a computer upgrade.

“We are pitching this as a change programme as i6 will cover 80 per cent of the police’s operational activity, so this is absolutely massive as far as the organisation is concerned,” he said.

The Scottish Government initially predicted that ICT integration would cost £12 million in the first three years, but this soon emerged as an underestimate.

Last week, First Minister Alex Salmond revealed i6 would cost £46 million over 10 years, but today the total cost was put at around £60 million once its whole impact is factored in including redundancies.

A spokesman for police civilian oversight body the Scottish Police Authority said its board was only informed about the extra costs at a meeting in Lockerbie yesterday.

“Police Scotland’s business case outlines the financial cost of i6 at £46 million a year,” he said.

“There is also a wider economic cost associated with developing this programme, with an example being redundancies.

“This only came out in questioning at the SPA meeting yesterday, that there was an unheralded somewhere up to £6 million at a future point which may be required as this new computer system is put in place.

“Obviously it will require not just fewer people in IT to deal with it but also in the admin and constant rekeying. Along with all of the other things the total economic cost is something in excess of £60 million over that 10-year period.”

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has said the Government will not provide any more money for ICT integration, saying Police Scotland can cover it within its existing budget.

Sir Stephen today outlined the savings i6 would make: “The cashable savings are over £61 million and the total cashable and non-cashable savings are estimated to be £218 million over 10 years.”

He also outlined the forthcoming challenges for the force, including the integration of control rooms.

“The police currently have 10 control rooms and we’re looking to rationalise that number down,” he said.

“Without speaking for them I know that the Fire and Rescue Service are in similar situation where they are looking at rationalisation.

“The big question is are we going to look at a joint facility for control rooms? That’s a possibility but it would depend on a lot of complexities around location of control rooms and the age of various assets.

“Police Scotland is very fortunate in many respects that a couple of our larger control rooms, Helen Street in Govan and Bilston Glen in the east, are both very modern indeed and almost state-of-the-art, so we need to be looking at the bedrock of where we build these control rooms.

“Those two are very expensive and useful assets for us. In the north of the country we’re looking at different possibilities.

“Collaboration (with fire) is possible. I think everyone thinks that’s the obvious thing to do. We could probably do it very easily as we could absorb the volume of calls to the fire service in the main without too much trouble.

“But it’s really about what assets they have and what assets we have and where they are located around the country.”

Mr House also suggested his previous power struggle with the SPA has been resolved to his satisfaction.

He previously highlighted a “gobsmacking major problem” with the original SPA relationship which deprived him from control over staff he regarded as crucial to police operations.

When asked if he was satisfied with the current set up, Sir Stephen said: “I almost on principle want to resist saying a simple yes but from everything that I have seen this is a wholly positive development. I think we are in a good place.”

SEE ALSO

• {http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/scotland/police-scotland-to-absorb-most-civilian-staff-1-2973586|Police Scotland to absorb most civilian staff|June 22, 2013}

NEARLY a third of graduates entering employment are finding work in non-professional jobs in the retail and service sectors, but earn more on average than their counterparts across the UK, according to newly published figures.

• Scottish graduates earn more than counterparts from the rest of the UK, new figures show

• 90 per cent of Scottish graduates move on to jobs or further studies within six months, compared to 86 per cent from across the UK

Details released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) show that 63 per cent of those completing their first degree at a Scottish university in 2011-12 found work.

But of those, more than 30 per cent took positions deemed “non-professional” in administration, sales, caring or “elementary” occupations.

Of those completing their first degree, 17 per cent went on to further study, while 6 per cent combined work with further study and 7 per cent of graduates were unemployed.

The average salary for Scottish university leavers was £21,000, compared to £20,000 for those leaving English universities, £19,000 for qualifiers from Welsh universities and £20,000 for qualifiers from Northern Irish universities.

Education secretary Mike Russell said: “These figures demonstrate the advantages of a Scottish degree. While I strongly welcome these figures, we recognise the continuing challenges of securing employment and avoiding underemployment.

“That’s why we are continually engaging with the higher

education sector and employers to improve employment opportunities. For example, we fully support Universities Scotland working closely with small and medium-sized businesses to open up more paid work opportunities for graduates.”

But Robin Parker, president of the National Union of Students (NUS) in Scotland, said: “Graduate unemployment of any level represents a huge waste of talent, and a huge loss for Scotland. However, university graduates are still in a better position to find one of the few jobs available than those who never had the opportunity to make it to university. That’s why it’s so important that universities do all they can to make access to higher education fairer.

“Improving graduate unemployment is not something that can be solved in isolation. Investment in our colleges and universities, coupled with job creation, is a surefire way to grow the economy. That is why businesses, universities and government must work together to improve outcomes for graduates and increase youth employment.”

Alastair Sim, director of umbrella organisation Universities Scotland, said: “These figures show yet again that Scotland’s graduates are the best in the UK. Not only do they outperform the UK overall for rate of positive destinations, have the lowest unemployment rate and can command higher starting salaries, but in terms of professional employment, graduates from Scottish universities rate higher than the rest.”

SEE ALSO

• {http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/education/scottish-uni-students-show-degree-of-pessimism-1-2964155|Scottish uni students show degree of pessimism|June 13, 2013}

YOU’D have to go back to Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher to find a Scottish debut displaying the kind of artistic conviction and promise that writer/director Paul Wright brings to bear on For Those in Peril.

For Those in Peril

Edinburgh International Film Festival - Cineworld Edinburgh

* * * *

Having won the 2011 Bafta for his short film Until The River Runs Red, he’s made an uncompromising and confident first feature, one that takes a difficult subject matter – post-traumatic stress and survivor’s guilt – and shapes it into an experimental, poetic and moving exploration of grief and the toll it can take.

It’s the story of Aaron (George MacKay), a misfit in a small Scottish fishing community who has become the focal point for the collective anguish of the town after surviving a tragedy at sea that has cost five local fishermen – among them Aaron’s beloved older brother Michael – their lives.

Numbed by the loss, Aaron is having a hard time accepting his brother is really gone and begins retreating into a dark, reality-blurring fantasy based on an old folk tale his mother used to tell him as a kid.

Wright depicts this subjectively by using multiple film formats to create visual and audio collages to signify Aaron’s disintegrating mental state (particularly as he gets it into his head he can somehow still save his brother and perhaps the other lost men too).

But he also keeps one foot in the real world by showing the impact of Aaron’s behaviour on his quietly despairing mother, Cathy (Kate Dickie), and his growing closeness to Jane (Nichola Burley), his brother’s fiancé whose presence seems to be the sole ray of light in Aaron’s darkening world.

Dickie, Burley and MacKay all do strong measured work in difficult roles here, allowing Wright to build to a strange and intriguing finale that gives the film a distinct allegorical feel.

It’s a film of rare ambition, one that marks Wright out as a talent to watch.

• Cineworld, tonight, 9:45pm and tomorrow, 12:20pm

THE Hebrides Ensemble played two concerts on Wednesday, as part of this year’s St Magnus Festival. First, at lunchtime, came the annual Orkney composers’ course concert, one of the most satisfying aspects of which was the sheer diversity and variety of creative thinking displayed by the eight emerging composers whose music was performed.

The Hebrides Ensemble

St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall

* * * *

A wide range of skills was on show too. Some pieces, for example Emma Wilde’s Eris, were notable for their structure; others, such as Ri Marannan by Douglas Buchanan, for their ability to get under the skin of their core material; and quite a few were unusual for homing in on the double bass as the most prominent instrument in Hebrides Ensemble’s five-player line-up. All eight composers had imaginative sources of inspiration and not one piece was a dud.

It was hardly surprising that, after performing eight world premieres earlier in the day, the Hebrides initially sounded a little jaded for their own demanding programme in the evening, opening with Penderecki’s powerful Clarinet Quartet and an engaging arrangement for viola and cello of Lutoslawski’s Bucolics, originally scored for piano. Any residual cobwebs, however, were blown away by Bartok’s Contrasts for violin, clarinet and piano with phenomenal playing from Yann Ghiro in the clarinet part specially written for Benny Goodman.

Brahms’ substantial G minor Piano Quartet was fired with authority and peaked in a rousing finale, albeit marred by disconcerting creaks from the temporary staging.

Manorview Hotel & Leisure Group has bought the Busby Hotel in Clarkston and Greenock’s Redhurst Hotel after borrowing £6.25 million from Barclays through the Funding for Lending scheme run by the Bank of England and the Treasury.

Cash from the loan will also be used to refurbish some of Manorview’s four other hotels, which consist of properties in East Kilbride, Howwood, Johnstone and Wishaw.

Jamie Grant, head of corporate banking for Barclays in Scotland, said: “We are increasing our presence in the hospitality and leisure sector, where we believe there are strong opportunities for operators like Manorview.

“The company has been astute in taking advantage of competitively-priced assets coming to the market.”

SCOTTISH firms are missing out on millions of pounds of potential investment from “crowdfunding”, as a report shows that less than 1 per cent of money raised last year in the UK went to recipients north of the Border.

A study commissioned by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and revealed at an event in the city yesterday indicates that out of £200 million raised across the UK using the social media-inspired method, only about £1m ended up in Scotland. Global crowdfunding uptake hit $2.7 billion (£1.8bn) in 2012.

The report’s author, Tim Wright of research group Twintangibles, said the finding is all the more surprising given the trail blazed by Ellon-based BrewDog, the beer company that is raising £4m with its third equity offering to thousands of fans and small investors.

He said: “BrewDog is a terrific statement of what is possible through crowdfunding, although their approach is by no means typical. It’s surprising given their fantastic example that it has not taken off in Scotland.”

Wright said his research had struggled to find a reason for the relatively low take-up north of the Border. He said that although crowdfunding could only ever be one part of the solution to business funding, it would appear that at least some Scots firms could be reaping its benefits.

“There’s undoubtedly an ongoing need for finance and the type of funding being sought was for things like innovation and expansion are things that have the potential to benefit the Scottish economy,” he said. “The typical funding people were looking for was around £50,000, which is very gettable by crowdfunding.”

Stuart Patrick, chief executive of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, became interested in crowdfunding during a visit to the US, when he saw what some American firms had built on the back of it.

He said: “It’s not appropriate for everybody and its got to be done thoughtfully, but having seen the successes that have occurred it would be nuts for us not to look at it.”

RENEWABLES Infrastructure Group, an investment firm focusing on onshore wind and solar power assets, has unveiled plans to raise up to £300 million through a stock market flotation.

The company said it would use the proceeds to buy an initial 276 megawatt portfolio of 14 onshore wind farms and four solar parks in the UK, France and Ireland.

Its investment manager will be InfraRed Capital Partners, which manages HICL, the £1.5 billion infrastructure investment company and the assets will be managed by Renewable Energy Systems (RES), a privately-owned sister company of construction and civil engineering group Sir Robert McAlpine.

Jaz Bains, director of risk and investments at RES, said: “Having been involved in all aspects of the development and operation of renewables over 30 years, we are very excited to be playing a leading role in bringing these assets to new investors.”

RES last month sold a 33-turbine wind farm project in the Highlands to Perth-based energy group SSE, which plans to invest about £200m in the site, near Loch Mhor and the Monadhliath mountains.

Renewables Infrastructure, which has applied to list on the main market of the London Stock Exchange, expects its shares to start trading towards the end of next month. Canaccord Genuity and Jefferies International are acting as joint sponsors and bookrunners for the IPO.

Its plans follow hot on the heels of wind farm investment fund Greencoat UK Wind, which raised £260m when it came to the market in March. Greencoat, which has a 50 per cent stake in the Braes of Doune wind farm near Stirling, floated to buy renewables assets from SSE and RWE.

THE film studio used for up-coming Disney movie Maleficent has warned that rising demand for its facilities from Hollywood producers is leading to a capacity crunch.

Pinewood Shepperton chief executive Ivan Dunleavy said film makers are “concerned” they will not be able to secure the facilities needed as major productions line up to use the group’s studios. It was recently chosen for director JJ Abrams’s highly-anticipated Star Wars movie, with shooting set to begin in early 2014.

Dunleavy said further capacity was a “priority” to meet growing demand and help the UK meet its potential as a movie-making destination. His comments come as Pinewood fights a long-running battle to secure planning approval for a £200 million expansion.

South Bucks District Council rejected its latest application in May after an earlier attempt was also blocked. Pinewood has already lodged its appeal and a public inquiry is due to start in November.

Full-year results posted yesterday revealed that the company has already spent £1.8m on the project, which would double the size of the studios in Buckinghamshire.

Pinewood swung back into the black in the year to 31 March, posting a pre-tax profit of £1.3m, compared with a loss of £1.9m for the previous 15 months.

Film revenues stood at £35.2m, compared with £43.4m in the previous period, after Pinewood bagged a series of major projects, including Maleficent starring Angelina Jolie and superhero movie Thor: The Dark World.

A GROUP looking to snap up hundreds of Royal Bank of Scotland branches has been given a boost after the Church of England emerged yesterday as a financial backer.

The Church’s Commissioners investment body, which manages some £5.5 billion of assets, is understood to be looking to put millions of pounds into the consortium led by former trade minister Lord Davies.

The group is eyeing a substantial stake in the 316 branches, possibly as much as 50 per cent-plus, in conjunction with a preferred flotation of the assets by RBS. It is also believed the consortium has not ruled out taking over the branches completely, although this is thought a less likely option.

Analysts said that the Church of England Commissioners’ involvement could enhance the consortium’s appeal to Chancellor George Osborne and the Treasury amid the continuing sector rows about banking remuneration and unethical behaviour.

The precise amount of the Church Commissioners investment is unclear, but sources familiar with the situation said it was likely to be in the millions of pounds. The Church of England and RBS declined to comment yesterday.

Other members of the consortium are said to include Corsair Capital, a private equity firm where Lord Davies is a partner; Centerbridge, an American investment firm; RIT Capital, a vehicle headed by Lord Rothschild; and Standard Life, the life assurance and pensions group.

It is understood the consortium has one main rival for the branches, an offer backed by more than 20 City institutions, including Foreign & Colonial, Schroders and Threadneedle Investments. Due diligence on the assets being sold or floated is currently going on.

RBS was ordered by the European Commission to divest the branches in return for its £45 billion taxpayer bailout, but lengthy talks with Santander on a transaction broke down last year through a mixture of price and IT issues.

The latest annual report of the Church Commissioners shows that in 2012 it had £991m of investments in quoted UK equities, and £1.5bn in quoted overseas equities.

According to the report, the private equity element of its portfolio achieved a return of 2.9 per cent last year, while it made new private equity commitments of nearly £25m.

Among its holdings are shares in Barclays, and, up until last August, it had 9.3 million shares in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, but divested the latter because of concerns about corporate governance and in the wake of the fallout from the hacking scandal that saw the closure of the News of the World.

Despite holding the Barclays shares, the Commissioners said in the recent annual report of its ethical investment advisory group that the bank’s involvement in Libor-rigging showed that it had “lost sight of its fundamental role in society and its wider obligations”.

The self-styled “ethical” Co-op Bank’s bid for more than 600 Lloyds’ branches – a sell-off also demanded by the EU – collapsed recently amid concerns about a £1.5bn hole in the mutual’s balance sheet.

INTERNET shopping is expected to plateau over the next few years, giving a much-needed reprieve for high streets, a new report has claimed.

Colliers International’s 17th mid-summer retail report predicts that the number of empty shops will fall from 12 per cent of total floor space at present to 7 per cent by 2020.

The property consultancy expects to see a “new wave” of retail development starting in 2014, but this will mainly be in large shopping centres and will not gain significant momentum until around 2018.

Growth areas include “casual dining” outlets from the likes of Nandos and the Tesco-owned Giraffe chain of restaurants, while discount retailers such as the 99p Store are also entering the Scottish market.

The firm added that oil-rich Aberdeen continues to “buck the trend” for slowing high streets, with a low vacancy rate and “keen interest for well-proportioned, prime units”.

Dundee is also expected to receive a boost on the back of its major waterfront regeneration programme.

John Duffy, head of in-town retail for Colliers in Scotland, said: “We’re likely to see a new wave of retail development, which will start in four to five years’ time. The focus of such investment will be in the major regional centres such as Braehead.

“High street vacancy rates are beginning to plateau and, coupled with a slow-down in corporate failures, we expect a less negative impact on the high street than in recent years.

“Our research also suggests internet retailing will be flatlining at 20 per cent of all non-food sales by 2020.

“As a result, online sales will no longer be as much of a threat to high street, as successful retailers will by then have aligned their internet and property strategies.”

But the firm warned high streets remain at a “critical” stage and called for a range of policy changes, including greater flexibility in the planning system and more free parking.

Colliers also called for the Scottish Government to bring forward its review business rates. A two-year delay to the review has left retailers paying higher rates based on 2008 property values.

Peter Muir, ratings director at Colliers, said: “A move to encourage people back into town centres will fail unless the Scottish Government addresses the growing discrepancy between non-domestic rates and the harsh realities of the property market. The move to postpone the 2015 revaluation by two years means rateable values will remain on pre-recessionary April 2008 rental levels. This decision must be reversed.

“Without realistic rateable values, any initiative to bring life back into Scotland’s high streets will turn out to be expensive window dressing.”

Train sets and model maker Hornby has insisted that the failure of the ModelZone toy store chain will have a limited impact on its business.

ModelZone, which has 47 stores across the UK, including three in Scotland, yesterday appointed administrators from Deloitte after succumbing to tough online competition, putting about 400 jobs at risk.

Hornby, owner of the iconic Airfix scale-model kits, said: “Although the news of the administration is disappointing, our account management team has been well abreast of ModelZone’s challenging trading situation and has been able to manage our financial exposure at an acceptable level.”

The firm, which recently said its latest Airfix range will be made in the UK after it suffered production problems in China, supplies more than 700 model shops and retail chains, as well as selling direct to customers over its own website.

BETFAIR is attracting more gamblers to its website with simpler products, the online betting company said, defending its strategy after rejecting a £1 billion takeover bid.

Chief executive Breon Corcoran gave details of the changes in the firm’s final results announcement yesterday. Launched in 2000 as an innovative online exchange where gamblers could bet against each other, the company now also offers more conventional fixed-odds betting on sports events to cater for a broader audience.

Corcoran’s strategy was an important factor in the rejection of a 950p-per-share bid from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners in May.

CVC had wanted Betfair to refocus on its betting exchange, but Corcoran is pursuing a plan to broaden and simplify the product range, bringing the group into more direct competition with more established bookmakers. He is also slimming down Betfair, pulling out of some foreign markets and targeting savings of £30 million.

LAST night another two pieces in the CAP jigsaw were put in place and in both the final decision will rest with the Scottish Government. The first deals with the maximum amount of cash any farmer can receive, with Europe saying it was up to member states or regions to decide.

George Lyon MEP welcomed the devolved decision-making but warned the Scottish Government against introducing such a policy. “With Scottish farmers enjoying the second highest payments in Europe under the historic payment system, in my view it would be utter folly to introduce capping in Scotland as it would signal that we accept the principle of discriminating against bigger farmers,” he said.

The other decision will allow up to 15 per cent of direct subsidies to be transferred to the rural development budget without the need for any matched funding from the government. For those governments wanting to move in the opposite direction, a similar percentage of the budget can be moved.

Any thoughts that decision-making on the new common agricultural policy (CAP) was all but done were dismissed yesterday by Jonny Hall, policy manager for NFU Scotland.

“We are now at the end of the beginning. Scotland now has to get on with the sheer hard graft of putting all the important details into the policies,” he warned at a press briefing in Edinburgh.

And he was backed by Union president Nigel Miller, who said the volume of work that had to be achieved before a detailed implementation plan is submitted to Brussels for approval by the middle of next year could cause “meltdown” in the corridors of the Scottish Government. What was supposed to have been a simpler, less bureaucratic, CAP had, especially in the past week, become much more complex, he said.

He said that there are now so many options in the devolved package approved in Brussels this week – with many of these interacting – that it is difficult to decide which paths to go down.

One route seems a must for the Union and that is Scotland has to use all of the 8 per cent coupled payment option available to it. Miller stressed that this linked support payment might not only apply to the beef sector but also to those keeping sheep in the hills and islands.

While he accepted there was not unanimous support in the sheep sector for linked support payments, because of potential cross compliance problems, he believed those farming the 800,000 or so ewes on the Scottish hills needed an added incentive to keep core numbers of livestock in those areas.

Another coupling option has emerged with what Hall called the French option. This could mean an additional 5 per cent being paid to those farming in some of the more disadvantaged areas. This geographical coupling could help an area such as Orkney which currently looks as if it would lose out financially when payments are made on an area basis.

Miller incidentally did not dismiss the hope that Scotland might still benefit from additional coupled options through England, or the UK government, not taking up their full quota. This possibility has been bandied about for the past six months and appeared to be closed off by UK farm ministers but Miller thought it was still a negotiating point when the four parts of the UK meet later this year to decide the share of the CAP budget.

Miller had earlier said he now felt cautiously optimistic.

He specifically mentioned the changes to new entrants, with the door being opened wider as a plus.

Even the environmental – or greening – policies, which concerned the Union from the early days of the negotiations to the point where they were called a “nightmare”, appeared, he said, to be more workable, with the imposition of environmental focus areas being reduced to 5 per cent of the farm.

Miller admitted the three-crop rule could badly hit some cereal producers but he welcomed the shift of policy whereby the move from the current historic basis of paying support to one based on area payments was more gradual, with a target of a 60 per cent move by 2019 reducing winners and losers.

This slower changeover, promoted heavily by the Irish, would improve stability, he claimed.

EVENTS, anniversaries and birthdays for 28 June

1461: Edward IV was crowned King of England.

1682: Champagne was invented by Dom Perignon, a blind Benedictine cellarman at Hautvilliers Abbey, France, when he discovered a way of preventing carbon dioxide from escaping during fermentation, thus creating bubbles in the wine.

1790: Forth and Clyde Canal opened.

1838: The coronation of 19-year-old Queen Victoria took place in Westminster Abbey.

1905: Russian sailors mutinied on battleship Potemkin.

1910: Westminster Cathedral was consecrated.

1919: Peace treaty between German representatives and Allied powers was signed in the Palace of Versailles, officially ending the First World War.

1930: Frank Whittle patented the jet engine.

1942: British 8th Army retreated from Germans to El Alamein in North Africa; German forces launched counter-attack against Soviets in Kharkov region.

1948: More than 200 were killed in explosion and fire at Ludwigshafen chemical works in Germany.

1964: The first word processor was introduced in the US by IBM.

1990: Reading tests on seven-year-olds in a sample of nine education authorities in England and Wales showed biggest drop in standards for more than 40 years.

1990: The Prince of Wales broke an arm in a polo accident.

1991: Earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale hit Southern California, killing two people and injuring dozens.

1991: Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio, his first venture as a “classical” composer, was heard by 2,000 people in Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral.

1992: Britain held its first National Music Day.

1994: Germany ordered a six-month ban on British beef imports over “mad cow” disease.

1997: Boxer Mike Tyson was disqualified in the third round of his bout with Evander Holyfield after biting a piece off his opponent’s ear.

2004: Sovereign power was handed to the interim government of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority, ending the US-led rule of that nation.

2008: Wendy Alexander quit as leader of Scottish Labour MSPs after Holyrood’s standards committee banned her from parliament for a day for failing to declare donations to her party leadership campaign.

BIRTHDAYS

John Cusack, actor, 47; Howard Barker, playwright and poet, 67; Correlli Barnett CBE, author and military historian, 86; Kathy Bates, actress, 65; Mel Brooks, actor, writer, producer and director, 87; Ken Buchanan, Scottish former boxer champion, 68; Sir Harold Evans, publisher, 85; Rebecca Front, actress, 48; AA (Adrian Anthony) Gill, restaurant, film and television critic, 59; Jack Gold, film director, 83; Mary Stuart Masterson, actress, 47.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1491 King Henry VIII of England; 1577 Sir Peter Rubens, painter; 1712 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writer and philosopher; 1867 Luigi Pirandello, novelist and dramatist; 1902 Richard Rodgers, composer, lyricist; 1918 Viscount Whitelaw, politician.

Deaths: 1836 James Madison, fourth US president; 1855 Lord Raglan, commander of the Expeditionary Force in Crimean War; 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand; 1915 Victor Trumper, cricketer; 1958 Alfred Noyes, poet.

The Scotsman, 28 June 1948

THE suggestion that Scottish Convention should sponsor the formation of an all-party committee charged with the task of inviting Sir John Boyd Orr to contest the anticipated Gorbals by-election as an Independent candidate, “with, the Ulster form of Home Rule for Scotland as the first plank in his programme”, created some surprise at the seventh annual meeting of Scottish Convention in Glasgow on Saturday. “If we could secure the nomination of Sir John in the Gorbals,” said Dr John Macdonald, “it would waken up the Scottish Home Rule movement and it would waken up the British Government, which does not listen to any argument except the force of an election.” Mr JS Thomson said the aim was to give the Scottish National Party another chance to align themselves in the National Assembly with such demands as a plebiscite in Scotland on the question of Home Rule.

George Osborne’s fracking plans feature in today’s cartoon

Illustration by Iain Green

TO Treasury minister Danny Alexander fell the ambiguous pleasure of announcing some of the biggest figures ever drawn up by a UK government for spending on infrastructure, transport projects and energy.

The overall package of £100 billion, coming on the heels of Chancellor George Osborne’s £11.5bn of cuts, suggests an infrastructure programme of historic proportions. The Scottish government will get £300 million to spend as it sees fit, and extra funding specifically earmarked for renewable projects on the Scottish islands.

However, impressive though the totals sound, Mr Alexander’s statement may leave him a hostage to fortune. It includes spending totals that have already been announced; it is a reduction, albeit small, from previous spending commitments, and half of the £100bn total will be for infrastructure projects envisaged for the period 2016-2020 – beyond the life of the current UK parliament.

However, it is right that long-term needs are addressed. And of all the spending proposals signalled yesterday, arguably the most important relate to energy provision. Any doubt on the importance of further investment in this sector would have been dispelled by a warning from industry regulator Ofgem that the danger of power shortages in the UK by the middle of the decade has risen. It said spare electricity power production capacity could fall to just two per cent by 2015, increasing the risk of blackouts. Given this context, it is right that Scotland should seek to be, as the First Minister believes, at the forefront of the renewables revolution. We have the ability to create innovative technology and an environment that offers opportunity in abundance. Investment in new North Sea technology and in sources of renewable power are clearly to be welcomed if we are to address the risk of power shortages and avoid over-dependence on external sources.

But we should be mindful, too, of the importance of other energy sources to ensure that we have a variety of sources to protect us from over-reliance on any one type of supply. A significant part of Mr Alexander’s statement yesterday was aimed at boosting new sources of energy such as shale gas, and new support to help the building of new nuclear plants in addition to a guaranteed price for offshore wind energy. One positive development was the announcement of tax incentives for shale gas projects, coinciding with the publication of a report showing the UK’s shale gas reserves were greater than previously thought. The British Geological Survey estimates there may be 1,300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the north of England alone. However, the statement came with a caveat that the development of shale “will require geological and engineering expertise, investment and protection of the environment”. That said, the Scottish Government would do well to aim for a similar spread of energy investment here.

Free school fruit worth it in long run

Doctors at the British Medical Association conference in Edinburgh have called for free fruit and vegetables to be made available to all children in primary schools. They would like to see existing initiatives in Scotland under which youngsters in P1 and P2 are given fruit and vegetables three days a week extended to cover all primary-age children for the whole of the school week. They also backed calls for the price of fruit and vegetables to be reduced to make them more affordable and encourage people to have a healthy diet.

These calls are wholly to be welcomed and the Scottish Government should give them serious consideration. It is open to the immediate objection that this would be yet another “free” entitlement being taken on by an administration already under pressure for its existing commitments to welfare provision. Where, say the critics, would the money come from?

But the clear advantage of this proposal is that it would help to reduce the cost of dealing with the consequences of poor diet and unhealthy eating later in life. On top of long-standing problems such as tooth decay resulting from sugary products, we are now having to deal with a worryingly sharp increase in obesity and all the attendant problems this brings.

It is piling cost upon cost on a health service budget that is already being stretched by demographic changes. Encouraging a healthy diet early in life would put the health and wellbeing of our children on a sound footing. It will need full support from parents and teachers as well as doctors. But it is a goal that will save resources in the long term and is to be strongly encouraged.

THE era of the political journal seems to have ended, but there is still a need to encapsulate vision in a durable form, especially when it’s a good, nationalist, one, writes Michael Fry

This week I have been making one of my occasional efforts to sort out and possibly clear out some of the thousands of books and other publications that cover almost every spare inch of my flat. I had my eye on one particularly dusty corner filled with political magazines of many kinds, but more especially leftist ones (since I sometimes like to read opinions I despise).

When I climbed up to that particular shelf, I found a lost world awaiting me: Calgacus, Liberation, People’s Voice, Radical Scotland, Red Duster, Scottish Left Review, Scottish Socialist, Scottish Socialist View, Scottish Vanguard, Scottish Workers’ Republic, Socialist Scotland.

I even have a copy of Vanguard from 1920, in which one John Maclean, Soviet consul in Glasgow, calls on the Bank of England to stop printing money. So he certainly would not have voted for David Cameron and George Osborne, but then perhaps we knew that.

Among the more recent publications, the sheer variety struck me. I had forgotten that in the last 20 or 30 years alone, and on only the one side of politics, we had a dozen or so magazines all giving ample evidence of their editors’ and contributors’ intense commitments, not just to socialism but also at least to a Scottish Parliament and in most cases also to national independence.

Where are they now? Have they all vanished? I am not even sure how I could find out. There used to be a bookshop selling such stuff on Edinburgh’s George IV Bridge where I picked up most of the copies I have, but that is long gone.

And we have after all been under right-wing British government ever since 1979, intensified during the Blairite rebirth of imperialism from 1997 to 2010.

Because self-evidently nobody has listened to the Left in all that time I suppose that, just as warriors once turned their swords into ploughshares, so the beardy weirdies have cut up their banners into tea-towels and sold their megaphones on eBay.

None of this need mean in itself that Scottish radicalism is dead, just that it is pursued by other means. Some of those aspirations will have been satisfied through devolution – and by certain standards we do, after all, have a radical government.

Among other things, it exerts itself to show Scotland’s values are different from England’s values, in an effort that may reinforce the political choices ahead.

In Scotland benefits will be universal and we will not count the cost, whether in personal care for the elderly or in higher education for any youngster that wants it, all in complete disregard of their personal background and means. We will balance moral concerns so as to favour minorities that deviate from traditional norms without annoying those who cling to those norms. And we will welcome immigrants that England spurns.

All this seems designed to create a really cuddly kind of country, maybe not in detail so different from the old United Kingdom we would have left behind, but infinitely nicer.

There would be room for everybody, from New Age crofters to crusty old reactionaries like myself. “I ain’t gonna study war no more,” the freed American slaves used to sing, and it would be the same for us.

It appears such an alluring vision that I wonder why nobody has bothered to spell it out at greater and more durable length than is available in newspaper columns or speeches at Holyrood.

I can sum it up in a few sentences but, for slogans to be transformed into social and political realities, somebody sometime has to sit down and do some hard thinking – and some hard writing too.

That was precisely what John Maynard Keynes did with his General Theory, already setting out in the 1930s the policies that Britain would pursue after 1945. That was what Tony Crosland did with his Future of Socialism in 1956, guiding the Labour party out of the mentality of wartime’s command economy. At the other end of the political spectrum, Michael Oakeshott and Maurice Cowling were in their publications during the next decade intellectually preparing the Conservative party for its re-emergence from the era of the welfare state.

Where are the equivalents in Scotland’s national movement? The late Professor Neil MacCormick was a brilliant lawyer, who could set out bold and challenging theses with wonderful conviction and lucidity.

The late Stephen Maxwell cultivated a philosophical cast of mind, but so fastidiously that he barely managed to get himself into print during his lifetime and is mainly represented by a single posthumous work.

In both cases, at any rate, I have to say “the late” – which raises the question where nationalism’s thinkers are today.

The question is worth raising because it is the thinkers that give a clue to the future. As Keynes wrote: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

To be sure, we do not want madmen in charge of Scotland. But it would be nice to know that the nation of the future, inevitably with more serious business on hand than it has now, might be informed by something better than the poll-driven populism that is the present norm in its politics.

The problem with that norm lies in the risk that it is also a bottom to which we all race, a complacent lowest common denominator.

If this populism promises us a paradise, it is a paradise of the past, an eternal couthy Scotland which by its sheer amiability dispels all the British bogies: the faltering NHS, the decaying education, the crime and drugs, the eternal problems of public expenditure. This would be a Scotland not radical but conservative.

It is only by looking to the future that we can even conceive of being radical, of getting to the root of things and changing them for the better.

And it is sad but true that radicalism often involves putting powerful persons’ noses out of joint, challenging vested interests to justify themselves, overthrowing them if they will not. Making a nation independent can in itself not be anything other than a radical move.

It will hardly be achieved by assuring the people that basically everything can stay the same, least of all when we have never managed or bothered or even wanted to think how it might be different.