Prondzynski Report: the Principals Fight Back.

    It didn't take the University Principals long to mobilise against the reforms to Scottish higher education governance recommended by the report last month chaired by the principal of Robert Gordon University, Ferdinand von Prondzynski.   Universities Scotland - the principals' trades union - has condemned attempts to rein in principals' pay - Prondzynski said bonuses should be frozen until further notice - as an invasion of academic freedom.  They are appalled by the suggestion that staff and students should be involved in the selection and remuneration committees for principals.  They don't want trades unionists on university governing bodies and they hate the idea of elected chairs, even though the four oldest Scottish Universities already have elected Rectors chairing courts.

   So, we must have got something right.

The status quo isn't what it used to be.

 The status quo isn't what it used to be. In the old days, you knew where you stood when you voted No to constitutional change. You would be voting for things as they are - whatever arrangement happens to apply at the time of voting. Not any more. This weekend it is impossible to say what the current state of play is on the constitution because all the unionist parties are proposing radical changes to it.

The status quo is now a process not an event, to paraphrase Donald Dewar. There was David Cameron last month, after his meeting with Alex Salmond, announcing that there could be “more powers” for the Scottish parliament. A week later, Alistair Darling – no enthusiast for fiscal autonomy - caught the bug and announced that to be responsible a parliament “should raise the money it spends”. Last week, leading figures in all three unionist parties got together to promote “devoluton plus” under which Scotland would acquire powers to raise income tax, corporation tax and oil revenue, while leaving VAT and National Insurance with Westminster.

Now, this weekend, the new leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Johann Lamont, has announced that she will lead a new commission on devolution, a kind of Calman plus, to look at new fiscal powers. This parallels the commission already set up by the Scottish Liberal Democrats under their former leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, to look at a federal option. And there is the Future of Scotland initiative – an umbrella of various “civic Scotland” groupings like churches, charities and trades unions, who met last week looking at form devolution max .

Suddenly you can't move for commissions on fiscal devolution. It makes the unionist demands for an early referendum on independence look oddly premature. If there were an early ballot, what on earth would Scots be voting for? Independence is clear – sort of. Alex Salmond at least seems to know what he is talking about. But on the other side there is now a shifting kaleidoscope of constitutional formulas occupying the unionist space.

The unionists' priority of course is come up with a something, anything, to block the march of the SNP, following its election landslide victory in  May. Figures like Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, have been urging the Scottish Labour party up to understand the extent and significance of its defeat and start thinking constructively about more powers for Holyrood. But Lamont, who says she will be leading the No campaign with Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown in support, is still grudging about what she calls the “virility” test of more powers. She is even hinting about powers being taken away from the Scottish parliament – not so much devolution plus as devolution minus. Right now, bizarrely, the UK Labour party seems more radical on the constitution than its Scottish counterpart.

So, where does all this leave the state of the union? Do we have any clear idea where the status quo is going? Well, they haven't said it explicitly, but the parties are clearly heading very rapidly towards a consensus on devolution plus, if only because there really is nowhere else to go. The Scottish parliament, to satisfy voter opinion, simply has to have a new funding arrangement more radical than that offered in the current Scotland Bill. The idea of splitting income tax between Holyrood and Westminster, proposed by Calman in 2009, was always a difficult sell and it is now well past it. Devolution max is a bit too like independence, since it involves Scotland raising all taxes and sending a contribution south for common services like defence.

Devolution plus is the only credible unionist destination short of independence. It is the unionist Maginot Line – the line beyond which Alex Salmond shall not past. It is also almost certainly what the Scottish voters would vote for – if the unionist parties would only let them. Perversely, all three unionist leaders are still insisting that there should be no opportunity for Scots to have a say. But how else are the voters to have any confidence that this better devolution will actually happen? Unionists can't simply offer promises of what might be if the Scots are good boys and girls and reject nasty Mr Salmond. Everyone knows that if the referendum returns a No to independence in 2014, then the unionist parties' enthusiasm for more devolution would rapidly evaporate. If they refuse a second question or a second ballot, then the only alternative would be to move a new Scotland bill, replacing the one limping through the House of Lords. But come the referendum, if all the unionists offer is jam tomorrow, I wouldn't put it past the Scottish voters to back independence in order to be sure that they get a better devolution.

Devolution: plus, max, minus and squared.

 Readers of this column will be aware that I've been complaining about by gob being smacked on a regular basis by the twists and turns of unionist policy. Each week a new destiny is revealed for Scotland: independence light, devolution max, devolution plus, skinny devolution lite with a shot of max... You could be forgiven for thinking that the politicians are few clauses short of a full constitution. But bear with me because there could just be a happy ending here.

This week senior figures in all three unionist parties in Scotland, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour, came together behind a new constitutional settlement called devolution plus. This is essentially the formula devised by the Reform Scotland think tank, which seeks to ensure that the Scottish parliament raises the vast bulk of the money it spends. In other words, that it pays its way. In a sense this is Calman reloaded, an extension of the plan devised in 2009 by the commission set up by the unionist parties after the SNP victory in the 2007 election campaign.

Calman was widely criticised for his plan to split income tax between London and Edinburgh. This was a difficult proposal to explain, let alone to implement, and many economists believe it would be deflationary. But the worst thing about Calman, and the Scotland bill that implements it, was that it failed to live up the principles set out so cogently in the main body of the report - that a parliament should be responsible for raising its revenue in a way that it is accountable, equitable and transparent. Devolution plus puts the Calman principles into practice in a way that is fair and that people can understand.

Under devolution plus, Scotland gets income tax, corporation tax, various other taxes and a geographical share of oil revenue. The UK keeps national insurance and VAT – reasonable because these taxes need to be more or less consistent across a monetary and customs union, which is what the new Scotland would be. This may not be “full fiscal freedom”, as the SNP have described it, or even devolution max, where Scotland raises all tax and sends a contribution south for common services like defence. But it's very close to it. If this scheme were implemented, Holyrood would have the vast majority of the powers it requires to pursue an independent economic policy, to the extent that this is possible within a monetary union where a UK central bank sets interest rates.

Riding for a fall with the Murdoch hunt.

Why do they do it? Why do political leaders, even in Scotland, worship at the tawdry court of the Sun king Rupert Murdoch? What to they think they'll gain? Murdoch is the most toxic brand in British public life, his crude right wing publications a byword for bent news and illegal practices like phone hacking. Yet there he was, the “Dirty Digger” as Private Eye calls the boss of News International,  sneaking into Bute House by the back door on Wednesday for tete a tete with Alex Salmond. Even as the claims of a “network of police corruption” by the Sun,were still reverberating across the Leveson inquiry. And on the very day that James Murdoch resigned in disgrace from his post as chairman of NI. How many votes does Alex Salmond want to lose?

Of course the First Minister insists Murdoch was just there to talk about jobs over "tea and Tunnocks caramel wafers" as one of Scotland's leading employers. But if he thinks Scottish voters will believe that then he is out to lunch. Salmond also says that he made his views clear about Leveson and newspaper ethics. But this came rather hollow from a politician who had just leaked the date of the Scottish independence referendum - 18^th October – to give the super soaraway Sunday Sun a front page splash for its first edition. Is that really the kind of behaviour we expect from our First Minister?  That he sells his referendum for a sycophantic tweet from Rupert Murdoch? It's not even as if the Sunday Sun actually supported independence. It won't unless and until Murdoch becomes convinced that the referendum is a certainty. The Sun doesn't lead opinion - it follows it. Why don't politicians understand that.

The new Scottish Labour leader, Johann Lamont, made a spirited attempt to embarrass Salmond at First Minister's Question time. But it rebounded badly, not least because of Labour's own record of cosying up to Rupert. Salmond read out the guest list for Murdoch's summer champagne party, which included Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. He might also have reminded Lamont about that summer sleepover party that Gordon Brown's wife Sarah organised for Rebecca Brooks when she was editor of the Sun - at the Labour Prime Minister's official residence at Chequers. Wonder if she brought her gift horse from the Met?

Workfare, Poundland, A4e - all up in smoke.

   We believe that it is entirely wrong-headed and snobbish to look down on our pre-teen chimney interns for the very valuable work they do for themselves and for the community. Spending ten hours a day sweeping the majestic smoke stacks and fireplaces of Britain is not a waste of time but essential grounding for future success in the world of work. After all, everyone has to start somewhere, and going up a chimney is as valuable a learning experience as going up to college. The fact that these young people aren't directly remunerated is quite beside the point. The experience they gain from this Mandatory Work Activity is worth far more to them in the long run than mere wages.

Or so they might have put it in Dickens' day. Ridiculous to compare Victorian forced labour to stacking shelves on the government's mandatory work experience programme? In terms of personal risk, perhaps. But what is interesting is the similarity of the arguments used than and now in defence of the practice of getting young people to do dull and routine work for nothing. There was fierce opposition to attempts to stop thousands of unpaid children being sent up British chimneys, and it wasn't finally abolished until 1875. The argument was that the young sweep would, after seven years apprenticeship, become a journeyman sweep, and have a skilled trade. That the trade largely involved getting other young children to go up chimneys was not seen as a problem.

The point is that forcing people to work, effectively, for nothing has been around a very long time, and it is unjustifiable whether it is up a chimney or in Poundland. Yet, under the government's work experience schemes, thousands of young people are being forced to work for eight weeks without pay and without any job at the end of it. And they risk having their benefits cut if they drop out of the job after the first week. This is American style workfare in action. Tough love. It is also an open invitation to exploitation.

Independence. It's all in the mind.

In first ordinary philosophy seminars students used to debate the question of whether we can rely on the evidence of our senses to give us an accurate account of the real world. Is this a real table before me, or am I just dreaming or imagining a table? I've been having similar problems with the referendum debate.

There was Alistair Darling, the former chancellor and an ardent fiscal unionist, saying at the weekend: “Most people think the present settlement does need to change and my view is that any parliament that can spend money but doesn’t have the pain of raising it isn’t satisfactory.” Well, actually most people in the Labour party do not think the present settlement needs to change – at least not in the direction of fiscal autonomy, or devolution max or federalism or whatever you like to tall it. Or so I thought.

I was under the impression that only relatively dissident figures like the former FM, Henry McLeish or the former Labour minister, Malcolm Chisholm, had been talking about giving the Scottish parliament the power, through income tax and other taxes, to raise the money it spends. But clearly I've been relying on my all too fallible senses here, and Alistair Darling agreed with them all along.

Bankers - maybe they do get it after all.

Maybe they do get it after all. Bankers are beginning to realise that their greed and insensitivity to public opinion is damaging them where it hurts: in their reputations and their balance sheets.  Barclays says it intends to slash earnings and bonuses in its casino-banking investment division, and the chairman of RBS, Sir Philip Hampton, has discovered – rather late in the day it has to be said - that banker pay is too high and needs to be “corrected”.

Stephen Hester, the chief executive of state-owned RBS last week handed back his £1m bonus (though he keeps his £1.2 million salary and annual £420,000 pension contribution). Bob Diamond, head of Barclays investment division has reportedly put his £10m bonus on hold this year. Damned decent of him. When he accepted his £6.5bn bonus in 2011 he said that “the time for banker remorse is over”, but it seems to have  come back again. Bankers have finally realised they are on the road to perdition. But why now?

Look no further than the man formerly known as Sir Fred Goodwin, who had his knighthood rescinded last week. Suddenly all the sirs and lords sitting around the boards of British banks have realised that public alienation can have a cost after all. That they can't just thumb their noses at voter opinion and sneer at politicians indefinitely. It's time to make nice and show a little restraint.

This is the answer to all those who said getting Her Majesty to repossess Fred the Shred's knighthood was a waste of time. It is also a rejoinder to those defeatists who say that nothing can be done to rein in the kleptocrats of British banking because they will just leave the country taking their banks with them. In reality, few of our financial elite want to become voluntary exiles from their country of their birth. Even fewer want to join a club of dishonour that includes the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, and the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu.

Scotland's universities are of the people and for the people.

It's a truism that post-industrial nations like ours live by their wits – but that doesn't make it any less true. Whatever Scotland's constitutional destiny, the practical reality is that the education of its people will largely determine their quality of their lives. There really is no alternative to the hard graft of learning, now that heavy industry is long gone, and the false gods of Scottish banking, like Fred Goodwin, have been torn down and trampled into the dust.

Fortunately, Scotland has a unique advantage for a small nation of five million in having at least five world class universities – more in the 'QS top 200 even than much larger countries France – and one of the best educated workforces in the world. Yes, most of them take their qualifications south because of the lack of job opportunities here - but that's another question. Scottish higher education is an industry in its own right, drawing ever greater numbers of international students to study and benefit from our comparative advantage in the learning business.

But there is much more to this than just crude economics. Scotland's universities have never been regarded as mere education factories – they have a distinct egalitarian, or equalitarian tradition, summed up in that much-misunderstood phrase, the “democratic intellect”. There has been much debate about what George Elder Davies, who coined that phrase in the sixties, really meant. But Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, Principal of Robert Gordon University, in his report published yesterday, has finally discerned its settled meaning. Scotland's universities should seen as engines of social and cultural improvement - not just for the benefit of the individual, but for society as a whole. In this, the Scottish universities are markedly different to those elite universities, in America and south of the border, that increasingly regard learning as a commodity to be bought and sold, and students as consumers of a product sold at a price determined by the market.

Prondzinsky - universities report

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/axe-bonuses-and-limit-pay-of-university-principals-says-government-report.16564569