Local choice and democracy: normal life versus tobacco control

How local is democracy? This question arises in relation to the news that elections to local health boards will not now occur, as reported by columnist Lesley Riddoch here. (Her recently published book Blossom covers similar arguments.)

She talks about how to make Scotland blossom: how to arrange matters so that far more of its population can access its natural resources. One major point of comparison is that 'local' in Scotland is fairly meaningless, considered in the example of, say, Strathclyde or the Highland Region, where populations under regional administration are vast, as is the area covered. 

Every way you measure it, Scotland is doing badly. In Norway, with genuinely community-sized, tax-raising municipalities of around 14,000 people, election turnouts range from 70-82 per cent and one in 80 Norwegians stands for election. In Scotland, community councils have a tiny average annual budget of £400 and no statutory clout and services are provided instead by large council bureaucracies for an average 162,000 people. These “local” councils receive most of their cash from central government. Turnout in the 2012 elections was 38 per cent and one in 2,071 Scots stood for election.

I am just reading another book about how multiparty democracy and proportional government make for a greater diversity of political parties, and the paragraph above goes some way to explaining why this doesn't seem to happen in Scotland. More centralised administration yields fewer parties, lower political participation, and lower living standards generally. Scotland is far from being the worst governed country in the world, but it seems to have much to learn about increasing democratic participation.

If Scottish democracy is characterised by a shortage of public representatives below regional council level, ASH Scotland represents a stark contrast in its flow chart illustrating the Scottish Tobacco Control Alliance. This is top-down stuff, but they are organising the whole country into tobacco control groups at all levels. (All right, not quite the whole country.) Topic groups, smoking cessation groups, working groups, member organisations, overseen by the SCTA, ASH Scotland, and further up the tree the European Union, the UK government, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and overall the Scottish government 'involving the tobacco control community in developing and implementing policy'.

It's an impressive level of networking, but it should not be top-down, and is crushingly narrow in its outlook. We have huge problems in our country of chronic ill health, poverty and under-representation, but the answer seems to be – just don't smoke.

Even people who do support certain tobacco control initiatives should worry about the centralised nature of this drive for greater tobacco control which is entirely centre funded, has tentacles throughout and beyond all health boards and is mirrored by the absence of any real local democracy.

Land ownership and the Scottish effect

This is an interesting audio clip if the idea of rectifying some of Scotland's hugely imbalanced land ownership system where (last time I looked) it seemed that less than 10 per cent of the people own more than 80 per cent of the land. Lesley Riddoch is an advocate of land reform and also an advocate of renewable energy. She is concerned for example that any benefits from renewables at present will go straight to the pockets of large landowners (pointing out that around one-third of Tory MSPs currently benefit from them).

However it is what she says around eight minutes into the clip that explains why I am posting the link here. In the course of writing a book she cites an anti-poverty campaigner called Cathy McCormack who 'proved because she managed to team up with some academics to prove how dampness could be at the source of the Scottish effect, because it weakens all the organs of the body over a lifetime'.

Well! I learned something like that when I was at school in the 1970s – how dampness and bad housing were at the root of the public health crisis in Scotland. Somehow along the way, the explanation morphed into a public health crusade on people's habits, and immense pressure brought to bear on making people see themselves as the author of their own misfortunes, particularly when it comes to ill health. The fact that Scots are paying disproportionately high prices for fuel, when they need more of it to sustain living standards that are achieved without fuel expenditure in warmer climates, is a real cause of concern for public health, but will you catch ASH Scotland campaigning for Scots to have more influence in landownership and use decisions, or in any meaningful way to be in charge of their own destiny?

The piece in general talks about how Scots seem resigned to the fact that their land is there to be milked for value by 'absentee landlords', and whatever form of fuel we rely on, the people enriched by it are the owners of big companies and corporations or (in the case of renewables) large amounts of land. Lesley Riddoch's co-presenter points out that no change in the fuel regime will be achieved without both independence and withdrawal from Europe (where corporations appear to rule).

I haven't done the sums on renewables, but it seems that choice of fuel is a smaller consideration than who controls the prices that people pay for fuel, and how much is charged. All decisions that will sway the independence referendum, if campaigners can persuade the Scottish people that they will be more relevant to political processes by voting yes than they are at present. Time will tell.

One Fine Issued at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee

On the second day, they managed to impose a £50 fine on someone for dropping a cigarette butt. Well, that's democracy in action. ASH Scotland couldn't resist including this report in their daily news bulletin, even though there was no url as the story appeared only in its paper edition.

The enforcement officers came to Ninewells on Monday, at the start of what is expected to be a year-long campaign. Smokers were approached. but since they complied when requested to stub out, no fines were issued.

You can almost hear them counting the cost of this exercise. Why don't they just open a large, pleasant, airy waiting room with ashtrays and tea and coffee facilities and the doorway area will be cleared of smokers in a trice.

Incidentally, it was good to see the contribution from Lesley Riddoch to the NHS Grampian debate on Monday. It is only available to subscribers unfortunately but we have had the benefit of correspondence from readers since it appeared: A ban too far yesterday, and Smoking ills today.