27/06/2013 Newsnight Scotland

think they want to know? No, there is a lot of ignorance out there, a

MSPs skip off on their holidays this evening, but what have they achieved

this year? In fact, what has the Scottish parliament ever done for

you? And the sorry tale of what happened when this Himalayan bird

met a Hebridean wind turbine. Good evening. No watching videos for the

MSPs on their last day of term. However, this year's legislative

programme has been, well, a little thin. Alex Salmond has said that

even the independence campaign is still in its phoney war phase. So,

what do your MSPs do for you? Andrew Black looks back on the year in

Parliament. It has been an eventful term at Hollywood and in Scottish

politics. Here are a few of the more memorable events. -- Holyrood.

Joanne Lamont questions how universal benefits can be paid for

in the current climate... I will not tolerate a country where the poorest

pay for the tax breaks of the rich. The Edinburgh agreement, setting out

the terms of the 2014 independence referendum, was signed. Ireland

Chile Europe minister said an independent Scotland would he

welcomed into the EE you with open arms, but warned that the process

may take time. Scotland would have to apply for membership, and that

can be a lengthy process. Legislation to cut Scotland's's

legal aid bill was passed, but provoked anger from lawyers.

profession will be left to recover these contributions from the poorest

people in society. The spending watchdog raised concern about the

NHS waiting time system, after one authority was caught fiddling the

figures. The Government said action was being taken. I am not saying

there is no problem, what I am saying is, the problems identified

are all being addressed. The Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson,

who once true a line in the sand on the Scottish parliament's powers,

gave her support to further devolution. A Parliament with the

full responsibility for raising the money spends will never have the

authority of the people of Scotland. MSPs passed laws on hedge

rage, to tackle disputes on overgrown evergreens. Scotland's new

national police force went on the beat, and despite a power struggle

between its chief constable and the police authority, ministers said

crime was at a record low. And some of the UK government's welfare

reforms kick in. Westminster ministers said they were fair, but

there were protests on the streets. The SNP government's vision for a

tobacco free Scotland took another step forward, with the introduction

of a display than in large shops. The Scotch Whisky Association

launched a legal bid to block minimum alcohol pricing. Mark

McDonald, Scottish National party... The SNP's Markworth. Won the

Aberdeen by-election. The Justice committee voted in favour of court

closures. Ministers said modernisation was vital. I have

failed to change the mind of the Cabinet Secretary, as to the closure

of the court. I regret that. Can I ask why you voted to close your

local court case today, the Government brought forward a bill to

introduce gay marriage, and MSPs past legislation allowing 16- and

17-year-olds to vote in next year's independence referendum. I am very

confident that for young people on their own personal journey to

independence, the argument that Scotland should take responsibility

for the decisions which will allow us to build a country which is

wealthier and fairer, a country which can speak with its own voice

in the world, will have enormous appeal to young people, and to the

population generally. It is the argument that I believe will win the

day. So, it gives me great pleasure now to ask for support of the motion

today, to approve the Scottish independence Referendum Franchise

Bill. We issue or a good recess and I now close this meeting. I am

joined by the four-month Lord Provost of Glasgow Michael Kelly,

and in Edinburgh, by the Scotsman commentator, and once a member of

the Scottish Constitutional Convention, Joyce McMillan. Joyce

McMillan, do you get the impression that people are impressed by what

the Scottish Parliament gets up to? Not really, but I think you would be

struggling to find a country in the Western world at the moment where

people are very impressed with what they're Parliament gets up to.

Obviously, the Scottish Parliament has its issues, but I think if you

are looking for a point of comparison, then it is actually not

looking too bad compared with Westminster at the moment, which

increasingly seems to me to be a Parliament existing in a bubble,

largely unaware of the needs of 99% of the population. So, it is not a

vintage era for representative democracy, but on the whole, I think

you would be hard pushed to argue that the Scottish parliament is much

worse than most of the other parliaments in the Western world,

and in some respects, it is better. Of its legislation is

forward-looking, some of its procedures are quite enlightened, it

is not besmirched by the same amount of alleged corruption and influence

peddling as Westminster is. So, I think, on the whole, it is doing not

too badly in what are very difficult times, given the looming referendum

question and the difficulty of proceeding with any other policies

until that is resolved. What do you make of it? I think that basically,

we have got government on hold here, because the SNP have got one

priority, which is to try and get a yes vote. So, when Alex Salmond came

in with a minority, he wanted to convert it to a majority, and he

thought the best thing to do what to do nothing. And he did nothing, he

did it very well, using his personality, rather than the law. He

secured his majority, then, the mistake he made was to push the

referendum until the very end of the term, which has made that everything

else has had to be tailored to suit what is coming. It is not as if what

the Scarlet Parliament did -- what the Scottish Parliament had when the

Liberal Democrats and Labour were running it had the approval of the

whole population? No, but now you have a party which wants to replace

the current system with a different system, so that nothing can happen.

The last piece of dramatic legislation they introduced last

year was to ban singing at football matches, if we remember that, which

is a blatant attack on civil rights. That has now been thrown out by the

courts. So, when the SNP government have made legislation, they have

made a mess of it, and I think they are learning the lesson, so they are

not going to do very much. Party political points now made, you can

now move on. But my point about when Labour and the Liberal Democrats

were running things, there has always been an issue that when

people think of the government, they would look to the Scottish

Parliament, or would they look to Westminster? Joyce McMillan clearly

thinks that to some extent, they are looking to the Scottish parliament -

do you think that is the case Wanstead -- do you think that is the

case? I do not think so. The big, important decisions are still at

Westminster. Budgetary control, for example. It is a fundamental thing.

If you do not control that, you can only make marginal decisions. But

even in the distribution of the money which is coming to Scotland,

vocal government, for example, which understands local needs very well,

has been starved of funds. You were on the Scottish Constitutional

Convention - I was listening to a radio programme this afternoon about

this chap, a British Indian chap from Walsall, born in a village in

India, and he decided to walk from Walsall to his village in India,

10,000 miles, it took him 19 months, and he said, when he got there, he

sat down on the step and thought, was that it? Could that be a

metaphor for the Scottish parliament, really? Actually, I do

not think so. I might be a bit partisan, in a sense, because I was

part of the campaign for a Scottish parliament. At the time, it was

envisaged as a Scottish parliament within the UK, but times have

changed. Nobody ever thought the SNP would win such a massive majority in

the Scottish Parliament, but it had, so Alex Salmond had no option but to

bring forward this referendum. I never thought in my lifetime that I

would see a government passing a bill at Westminster which amounts to

the near privatisation of the National Health Service, with very

little objection from the people south of the border. Times change.

You are both making party political points. I am not. I am object into

the fact that at Westminster, we now have three parties well to the right

of centre, to the right of the International monetary fund, which

is saying that we were not doing the austerity correctly. It seems to me

that if you have a Parliament at Westminster which is not offering an

alternative, then that changes the political landscape quite radically.

So, I am glad that we have a Scottish parliament. Its members are

not always terrific at what they do, but nonetheless it represents a

certain level of democratic safeguard for the people of

Scotland, if they want to use it, and it is up to the Scottish people

how it is used, who dominates it, who they vote for, and what kind of

a presenter takes they have, but at least we now have that kind of

democracy. -- what kind of representatives they have. What

could they do to get you excited? Of course you are right in saying that

many of the macro economic levers are not in the hands of the Scottish

Parliament. But they do have control over things like the National Health

Service, for example. Some big programme of reform here, would that

get you excited? One thing which has worked since devolution, and I would

come meant all parties on that, is preventative medicine, the attempt

to control alcohol, a well thought out programme on obesity, things

like that. I think those have worked. I think the intention of the

parliament was that it would be cross-party. The whole point of the

electoral system was that no party could win overall control. Alex

Salmond turned that around with a brilliant election campaign, and now

we have got a party which does not want the parliament, but wants to

focus on another issue altogether. In a sense, the last four or five

years have not been a proper test of devolution. It is only once we

resolve this question of yes or no, and devolution is established as the

permanent Way forward in Scotland, and I think it will work better.

Write the way through, it has not really established this cross-party

working, there was so much idealism about, it has been pretty much the

Westminster system transferred to Edinburgh, hasn't it? I certainly

think it has slid towards that over the years, just as it has begun to

slide a bit in other areas, including the representation of

women, actually. So, yes, in that respect, the Scottish Parliament has

been a bit of a disappointment to those who campaign for it. But that

is not the same as saying that it should not be there. I do not think

anybody is saying that. One contradiction is that in the opinion

poles, people say it should be there, in fact, they want more

powers for it, but then sometimes do not quite know what it is

responsible for, compared to Westminster, and the rest of it.

Generally speaking, people appear to think that it would be more

interesting if it was responsible for more. I just wish that we had a

situation where we could have a referendum on much greater powers

for the Scottish Parliament, on which 80% of Scottish voters could

agree, and then we could have a serious discussion about policy,

rather than this very divisive discussion about independence. I

think it was inevitable after Alex Salmond got such a large majority,

so we should not blame him, but nonetheless, it is not helping the

quality of political debate in Scotland. There are things that

could be done to improve the working of the Scottish Parliament, to make

it more interesting and to give it more powers, but as Michael says,

went out earlier this week that a Himalayan bird rarely seen in the UK

had been sighted in the Western Isles. Birders descended on the Isle

of Harris to see the bird, only to witness it fly into a wind turbine

and die. This is the text-white-throated needletail, a

member of the swift family, it is the fastest bird in the world,

supposedly, capable of reaching speeds of 70 miles per hour.

Unfortunately hitting a wind turbine at that sort of speed proved fatal.

We were watching the bird at the time through the telescopes. It was

mostly a silhouette, you could see it pass you and see its colours and

everyone was happy. It flew past the wind turbine and it hit it. Fellow

birdwatcher James Hanlon also witnessed the white-throated

needletail's tragic demise. A short while ago I asked him to describe

what he saw. A fwhub of us had travelled to the western isles to

witness this occurrence. It is an extremely rare bird, only seen

around ten times before in Britain. We travelled from all parts of the

country. We were watching it yet on and off for quite son time, it was

wheeling around quickly over the moorland. At one point it flew

around a wind turbine. At the time I was giving a commentary to the guy

next to me, telling me where it was, as it was hard to follow at speed.

As it flew around the turbine it seemed to disappear behind it and

suddenly fell limply to the ground. There was a crowd of 12-15 people,

maybe half of whom were watching the bird at the time. As you can

imagine, it was a shock to witness it hit a turbine and fall to the

ground. Do you know if it hit the turbine's body or whether it hit a

blade of the turbine? To my eyes it seemed to head towards the centre of

the turbine rather than the edge of the blades. I can't imagine that it

did fly into the wind turbine body. It must have been hit by a blade. I

certainly got the impression it was at the base of one of the blades

rather than near the tip. What makes the incident seem so bizarre is that

when you see pictures of the area it is not as if this was a big wind

farm. There was one turbine and nothing else in the whole area?

is quite incredible. It was one turbine, a small one at that. It

serves the local community. It is not part of a large wind farm. Many

of which are in the area. It was small turbine. The bird flew by and

it seemed to collide with the blade and fall limply to the ground.

Absolutely shocking to see. I've never seen anything like it. I know

birds do get hit by wind turbines, especially large birds of prey. I

have seen it on the internet, but to see it happen in front of us was

shocking. We have to put it down to some extent to a freak, it doesn't

tell us anything more general about wind turbines if this was a little

one stuck in the middle of nowhere? We know bird strikes do happen,

especially with large birds of prey. They are not always killed. They do

sometimes survive. I think what this does, because it has happened in

such a prominent way, with such a rare bird, in front of an audience,

I think it really brings to the for the arguments here that these bird

strikes do have to be considered when evaluating wind farm sites.

They obviously are having an impact on our birdlife. Obviously this was

a tragedy for this particular need need but it is not -- for this

particular white-throated needletail, but in general these

aren't endangered birds are they? No, they are not endangered at all.

The white-throated needletail I think has been seen ten times in

Britain. They are native to Asia. I think I've seen one in Australia

years ago. Obviously the species is not at risk, but what it does show

is that wind turbines can be a threat to birds. In the area we are

talking about it is a very important area for large birds of prey like

golden Eagles and white-tailed Eagles. In your capacity as bird

expert, how on earth would a little bird like this, I know swallows, it

is like a swallow isn't it? They go to Africa over winter and come back

here, but how on earth would a bird that winters in Asia and Australasia

end up in the western isle? Birds arrive here from all corners. We get

large numbers of birds from across Asia. We get overshoots from the

south, from Africa. No-one knows fully why they arrive here. There

are various ideas, such as reverse migration, where young birds go the

wrong way and head off in the wrong direction. But every spring and

autumn we are inundated with rare birds from very far afield. It is

not that often we get ones from as far afield as where white-throated

needletail come from. I'm curious as to what motivates people like you,

called twitch ers in the trade I believe, to travel all these

distances when if someone spots a bird and people would immediately,

within a day's notice, fly to somewhere like Thailand to spot a

bird. What's the motivation for doing that? That's a hard question

to answer. I've had a fascination with birds since I was a young kid.

I've always had an interest in rare birds. I find them fascinating. I

want to travel... When did you find out this bird was there? That would

have been, the last two days have been a blur really. We are still on

our way south a London on a very long trip. We've been on the road

two days. I think I found out about it Tuesday afternoon. We set off at

midnight on Tuesday. Right, so basically you just dropped

everything and went up there? I had a window of a couple of days

where I could do it. I won't get in until about 3. 00am tomorrow and

then I'm off on holiday with the family, so I would say it is a

pretty tight window. I was working the evening before we left as well.

It is a tight window. We had a couple of days. We've squeezed a

trip in, but yeah, it is not easy to drop everything and shoot offer

especially when like me you have a family. A quick look at tomorrow's

family. A quick look at tomorrow's Millions face higher taxes to cut

the deficit. That's all we have time for. We'll be back next week.

If we get sunshine in Northern Ireland it will be late in the day.

Drizzly rain for most of it. Sunshine in the afternoon in

Scotland. A fresher feel in the afternoon after the rain. We could

get 20 degrees possibly in Dundee. The rainband sinks south in the

afternoon into northern England. For a while in eastern England the rain

could be heavy. This rain could affect Wimbledon early on. That

pushes away and we get sunshine. Humid air across the south, through

the Midlands and Wales. If the sunshine does come out, temperatures

could get as high as 22 or 23 Celsius.

The city forecasts for Friday and the weekend. Manchester becomes

drier and warmer on Saturday. Belfast, always pretty cloudy over

the coming few days, with rain not far away. Sunshine lifting

temperatures in London. Brightening up in Birmingham.

The picture for Saturday. We've got rain coming into Northern Ireland,