Royal Bank of Scotland gets more state aid and lays off more staff

Edinburgh MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is about to pump a massive £38billion into the Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland.

The Government is keen to get these two banking giants to restructure and sell parts of their empire off - as Tavish Scott and the Liberal Democrats first demanded over a year ago, as we were in the run up to the Glenrothes by-election.

One year on, in the run up to the Glasgow North East by-election the Labour government once again listens to the wisdom of the Liberal Democrats.

So, the Royal Bank of Scotland's response to getting another handout, this time £25billion, with a further £7billion available as well - yahoo - let's make another 3,700 people redundant.

The taxpayer, you and me folks now own 84% of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

As 2009 as gone on there has been a wave of redundancy announcements from RBS totalling around 16,000, and now on the day the government pumps in a further £25billion they announce a further 3,700 redundancies, this time from the branch staff.

There are currently 25,000 retail staff within the RBS branches across the world, but not now 14.8% of those are about to lose their job - great Christmas present from the bank.

Let us not forget their slogan - make it happen - well perhaps now with nearly 20,000 being made redundant and the fact the we own most of the bank perhaps the management team at RBS could get off their backsides and make it work.

They should be ashamed of themselves. Let's hope they don't award themselves any bonuses.

Flooding in Aberdeenshire and the North East

The recent heavy rain, especially yesterday where in Aberdeen 39mm and in Edinburgh 32mm fell in the 12 hours from 6am to 6pm yesterday has caused havoc in the North East of Scotland with the main rail line between Edinburgh and Aberdeen has now closed.

The centre of Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire (where the Edinburgh to Aberdeen rail line goes through) is underwater after the rivers Cowie and Carron both burst their banks, in the village of Huntly also in Aberdeenshire around 100 people have been evacuated as the local river burst it's banks and Arbroath in Angus is virtually cut off as well with both the rail and roads in and out of Arbroath impassable.

At times yesterday rail passengers on trains from Edinburgh going through to Aberdeen were forced off at Arbroath, where they were then advised that alternative rail replacement buses could not be organised because of the heavy rain leaving a lot of folk either stranded, relying on people to come and get them or heading back to Edinburgh.

Tayside police were advising drivers to stay at home and only drive if really necessary following landslides at Brechin and Arbroath.

The rain was so bad yesterday that the SPL match between Dundee United and Rangers was abandoned at half-time.

I hope all my friends and colleagues in the North East are okay?

According to the BBC website the following roads remain closed, but obviously do check before you travel in the North East today, from St. Andrews upwards on the East coast;

• 
  The A96 at Huntly and between Keith and Fochabers.
• 
  The A92 between Johnshaven and St Cyrus.
• 
  The A947 Cowie to St Catherines.
• 
  The A920 Dufftown to Huntly road.
• 
  The B993 Kemnay to Monnymusk road.
• 
  The B977 Esht to Dunnecht road.
• 
  The B9016 Buckie to Keith road.
• 
  The B9170 between Inverurie and Olmeldrum and between Darra and Cummingston.

The following roads are only passable with care:

• 
  The A98 Fraserburgh to Buckie.
• 
  The A96 Inverurie to Huntly.
• 
  The A93 at Banchory.
• 
  The A941 between Rothes and Criagellachie.
• 
  In Tayside the A92 is closed at Inverkeilor, it has now re-opened at westbound traffic at Ardestie. The B955 Aylth to Meigle road is closed.

In Fife all roads are now open again although the police say they are monitoring the situation.
The following rail lines are closed due to flooding. Inverness to Aberdeen, although there are trains running between Aberdeen and Elgin. Services between Aberdeen and Dundee are suspended.

MSPs and paying for poppy wreaths

This sensitive issue surfaced earlier in the year when MSPs expenses were revealed and it was obvious that some MSPs had claimed money back for poppy wreaths when they attended a Remembrance Sunday event.

Now the body that governs Holyrood’s expenses system has decided that politicians should be allowed to charge the taxpayer if they are representing the parliament at a wreath-laying ceremony.

What a load of utter rubbish.

Firstly, the MSP does not represent the Scottish Parliament for anything whatsoever, they represent their constituents.

Secondly, the whole ethos behind the wreaths is to remember those who have given their lives while serving their Queen and Country. Surely, then £100, top estimate for those MSPs who attend a number of remembrance events is hardly a lot to pay out once a year when you earn £60,000?

£100 once a year - versus the soldiers who died in battle. Hardly something to moan about.

I would be appalled if any Liberal Democrats MSPs, MEP or MP claimed these as expenses.

I know some have in the past and I have been very happy to share my views with them and certainly would do so again if they repeated their mistake.

Tuesday 3rd November - UPDATE

Over at SNP Tactical Voting, Jeff puts a counter argument to this discussion. I do disagree with Jeff, it isn't just about the cost as he claims, it is the principle of why a poppy is worn and why we remember the 11th hour, of the 11th day on the 11th month each year.

An MP, MEP, MSP or even a Councillor chooses to be there as I did when I was Parish Councillor - with no allowances to claim -I paid for my poppy wreaths each year to be laid in my area because I was there from choice not duty.

There are also good blog posts over at Subrosa and Stephen's Linlithgow Journal.

The Reevesometer blog stats

As last month, thanks again to Stephen Glenn, I am going to continue a summary of my visitor stats according to google analytics for October 2009.

I did this last month for the first time and it was quite interesting for me just to see, a couple of others said it was fun, bless them for that.

The busiest day on my blog last month was Monday 26th October when the fury of the Caroline Righton smear story broke.

Last month I had 2,549 absolute unique visitors up from 1,311 in September. They made 3,877 visits and 4,975 page views.

So, my top 10 referring sites for the last month were;

1. Twitter (2)
2. Facebook (7)
3. Lib Dem Blogs
4. Lib Dem Voice (5)
5. Blogger (4)
6. Norfolk Blogger (new)
7. SNP Tactical Voting (8)
8. Scottish Round up (13)
9. Conservative Home (18)
10. Networked Blogs (3)

Lat month I wrote 66 blog posts, the highest amount I have ever written in one month, and it has been an enjoyable month.

The top 10 stories by direct page views that you've read most were;

1. Caroline Righton and Tories in dirty campaign tricks - shame
2. The Caroline Righton smear campaign moves onto Wikipedia
3. Right wing homophobic paper strikes again
4. Le Grand Bleu yacht update
5. Jan Moir's homophobic column in the Daily Mail
6. Guardian injunction and twitter # trafigura
7. Caroline Righton and her dirty tricks smear campaigns
8. Postal strike - who is benefitting?
9. Labour's Glasgow North East by-election gaffe #3
10. Karen Whitefield MSP in Glasgow North East by-election email cock-up

So this month's mixed bag is about Labour gaffe's in the Glasgow North East by-election, Jan Moir's homophobia and Caroline Righton & the Tory smear campaign in Cornwall.

The visitors to my little blog came from 54 countries this month, up from 36 last month, the top ten were as follows;

1. United Kingdom (-)
2. United States (-)
3. Canada (4)
4. New Zealand (7)
5. Ireland (11)
6. Belgium (3)
7. France (6)
8. Germany (7)
9. Guernsey (new)
10. Australia (4)

Why do Caroline Righton and David Cameron's Tories remain silent about the smear campaign?

Over a week ago Caroline Righton made a desperate, but untrue smear attack on the Liberal Democrats candidate for the new St. Austell & Newquay seat in Cornwall, Stephen Gilbert.

Last Sunday I blogged, "Caroline Righton and Tories in dirty campaign tricks - shame" this is all about a twitter comment from Stephen Gilbert: "was at meeting about regeneration of major town (declined by Tory PPC; Tory PPC at a publicity stunt (declined by me)"

The Conservative candidate, Caroline Righton then shared this on her email but alleging that Steve had actually sent this out with this next piece added in "D***h**d!!!"

From Sunday to Wednesday, there was nothing but silence from Caroline Righton and the Conservatives. Strangely the Western Morning News bottled out of covering the story, I assume because they coudn't get a comment from Caroline Righton, but actually I feel they should cover this because it can all be independently verified.

On Wednesday, I blogged again, "Caroline Righton and her dirty tricks smear campaigns" when Stephen Gilbert's local party wrote a letter to David Cameron.

Then on Thursday things took a slightly different turn when it was discovered on Caroline Righton's Wikipedia page that her staff had obviously been caught clearing the page and actually trying to delete the page, resulting in a discussion between Wikipedia officials and her staff.

My blog post about this is here "Caroline Righton smear campaign moves onto Wikipedia".

Across on Lib Dem Voice, you can read what other bloggers have written about this. There have also been discussions on Conservative Home and the Vote 2007 sites.

Most people realise Caroline Righton has made a major mistake, but her silence and that of the Conservatives is deafening. To those who are saying we are mounting a witch hunt, utter rubbish, and also, be under no illusion, if this had been one of our candidates having done this to a Conservative candidate we would never hear the end of it from the Tories, such is their double standards.

Caroline Righton needs to apologise to Stephen Gilbert and do it now.

Scottish Lib Dem Conference aftermath

Well, there were shocks and strange decisions yesterday at the Scottish Liberal Democrats conference in Dunfermline.

According to the media, we were holding it behind closed doors to keep the splits private, erm wrong, it was behind closed doors because only Party Members can vote on amending our Constitution, why would we let anyone else in on that?

The decision for this conference to be a Members only event was taken around 6 or 7 months ago, long before the decision to discuss Independence was taken. The SNP are obviously unhappy today as they assumed we would split, splinter and crumble.

Sorry to disappoint Alex Salmond but we are stronger than that, some may say it's because we are made and Bru'd in Scotland from girders, to pinch a slogan from a well know drink.

There were shock decisions as I said before, don't get me wrong, not many expected cream cheese in their ham & cheese rolls or food left over from the lunchtime fringe events!

I jest, as Caron muses, with 60 pages of constitution to go through and therefore 441 potential votes, oh yes, and there is the Party's AGM to start the morning off there was plenty for the Party Members to get their teeth into.

My view on the day, a good day, with some great speeches and debates and the aftermath?

A strong Party, a strong Leader, Tavish Scott who is leading us into the General Election campaign positive, strong and determined to win more votes and win more seats and replace the Labour Party.

Don't forget, the SNP may have the minority government in Scotland, but for Westminster, where the SNP are irrelevant and the Tories one MP even more so, it is only the Scottish Liberal Democrats who can replace Labour in Scotland - it is we who are second with the number of MPs going into this election and with the polls only putting us 4% apart it is the Scottish Liberal Democrats who are marching forward, upwards and onwards.