Patrick Harvie calls Alex Salmond on his green credentials

At the start of last weeks Scottish National Party conference last weekend First Minister Alex Salmond said:

"We [Scotland] are leading the global revolution in clean, green renewable energy, and we can and should be at the cutting-edge of pioneering carbon capture technology."

This week however, co-convenor of the Scottish Greens Patrick Harvie asked just how green can Alex and his SNP be? In his speech he said:

"Alex Salmond now has a very clear and simple choice - he must either fail on Scotland's much-vaunted climate change targets, or he must drop his unconditional support for the fossil fuel industries. 

"First, the new coal-fired power station at Hunterston must be blocked. Then he must rule out shale gas extraction, which his energy minister has refused to do. 

"Then, because CCS [carbon capture and storage] can never be applied to most uses of oil anyway, he must drop his support for dangerous deepwater oil drilling in Scottish waters."

The SNP are of constantly on about how they are not benefiting enough from the North Sea oil and gas industry. "Black gold" is the jewel in their crown for their being able to finance their dream of an independent Scotland. There has never been any secrecy about that not from the 70s the whole way through to the present day you will hear some SNP elected representative or candidate harp on about it being Scotland's Oil. Yet they continue simultaneously as Patrick has pointed out to try and balance appearing green with energy while looking to extract as much money as possible from fossil fuels.

So Patrick is right to ask what is it to be Alex? Oil, gas and shale or renewables?

In Which I Agree with Patrick Harvie

With a headline like that I can imagine James MacKenzie writing a press release before he goes to bed this evening. Go ahead James I don't mind.

Earlier today at the Green Party conference, they passed a motion supporting the AV referendum. This Tweet from Patrick Harvey is one I and many other Lib Dems will agree with.



That is just the point we have needed to get a party that believes in proportional representation into Government at Westminster to make even this baby step toward fairer voting. It should not be the end goal as we should represent the people's views and like Patrick and the Greens I believe that needs to be in a proportional system.

The Yes to Fairer Votes campaign is now up and running at their Website. We now have less than eight months until the vote on 5 May next year. Less time that is takes for a baby to go full term, yet this campaign makes sense and the arguments coming out in support of the status quo First Past the Post show how they take for granted that the current system works for their own ends not those of the voters.

So yes we need to get this referendum and then to get a yes vote to continue to make progress in fairer votes.

Time to Move Alex

The message was clear just over an hour ago. When the SNPs budget failed to be passed when Labour, Lib Dem and Green MSP all voted against it. The Tories had changed it by 0.171% which was not enough for either Labour or the rest. Patrick Harvie said the the £22million injection was not enough and the Nats had eroded what less than a month ago looked like the two votes that would have tipped the balance.

So what exactly went wrong. The Greens said there were too many caveats announced by Finance Minister John Swinney in his summing up of the motion. But the eleventh hour horse trading by sum was blamed on the Lib Dems using Mike Rumbles to negotiate, but when it appears that even those that looked more likely to be on board Harvie and Robin Harper of the Greens it all came down to the Presiding Officer's casting vote. Who voted as precedent dictates for the status quo.

So is this the end of the honeymoon? Must Alex Salmond stop spouting the hyperbole and actually start to work at being a minority government? He has to be able to build bridges (and I don't mean over the Forth) in order to be able to move on. But move on he must do. The message of this messy budget is that moving on was not what he was doing energetically enough.

Three parties said it wasn't enough, the Tories decided that the miniscule addition they achieved was enough once more to side with the Nats. Scotland needs a strong budget and for all but the Nationalist members that wasn't what they saw and many of the remainder had doubts. Doubts which were not assuaged by Salmond or Swinney.

It is a disaster for the First Minister to have in the past mouth had a agreement with the Greens and then to see that ripped up in his face at the eleventh hour. The budget slipped like sand through his hands quite possibly because like King Canute he refused to budge even when the waves were lapping at his throne.