A Hurl on a Neugle

A HURL ON A NEUGLE: From The Province Of The Cat. George Gunn on sleazeports, democracy and industrial strategy.

There are many fine things the SNP have done since coming into power in 2007. Keeping the light shining for independence, however flickering the flame has been from time to time, has been one of them. Their social and welfare actions, attitude and instincts mark them out as a left of centre party, no matter what their detractors declare. 2007 was a narrow victory but since then the SNP have established themselves as the people’s choice in every succeeding Scottish and General election. After 16 years this shows no sign of changing. It drives Unionist politicians and the mainstream media mad. The story they seek is how inevitably the SNP will fall and become just like any other political party. The fact is the SNP are unlike every other political party and the real story is in how have they managed to sustain their electoral popularity when every aspect of the established power structures in the UK and in broadcasting is set against them.

This is not to say that the SNP government under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon has been a source of increasing frustration for those of us on the left of the independence movement. Time after time the Tories have presented us with an open goal and time after time we have decided to pass the ball back to our own goalie. Indeed this rather weak metaphor could be stretched to accommodate the amount of own goals we have scored in that time. It could be argued that perpetual caution in the pursuit of Scottish independence is an own goal. That treating this Conservative government as if it was honourable and actually gave a damn about anything other than enriching its members is an own goal. That considering the next General Election as a de facto independence referendum is an own goal. That taking Scotland’s sovereign case to hold a referendum through the Scottish Parliament to the English Supreme Court only to have our sovereignty defined in English terms was an own goal. All these instances, and many others, could be described as “process”, raising that sardonic and enlightening Scottish phrase, “Weel ye ken noo!”

Port of Cromarty Firth

On the other hand no matter how shocking, venal and deceitful the latest scandal to emerge from the ranks of the Tories the British media still treat the Conservative government as if it is legitimate. It doesn’t seem to bother them that Prime Minister’s can secure a £800k “loan” through an individual who coincidentally ended up as chairman of the BBC a week later and who, again coincidentally, had prior to all this donated £400k to the Conservative and Unionist Party. The media have also, it would appear, grown used to the incredulous, when a Chancellor of the Exchequer is accused of being “careless” but not “deliberate” when he failed to declare the £3.7m he owed to HMRC, then meekly report on his dismissal early on a Sunday morning just in time to miss the big weekend deadlines. 

Why should we be surprised by any of this? When people realised that pro-wrestling on TV was fake, they didn’t seem to care. They just kept on watching anyway. This is similar to what it is like dealing with the BBC coverage of Tory corruption and in their treatment of the independence movement in Scotland. The job of poets, dramatists, novelist, journalists – anyone who can string two sentences together and who believes in the latent power and consciousness of our people – is to remind the agents of our oppression that Scotland is not an open air asylum for the feeble minded and that the Scottish people are not helpless wards or incompetent inmates of some vast institution. We must remind them that their version of Scotland is fake. To make us believe their fakery they force the objective world into the framework of their subjective thought, which is what all those who treat thinking with contempt do, and which is the anti-philosophy of the Conservative and Unionist Party who employ such warped perceptions instead of ideology. That and spiv economics and Ponzi schemes. In opposition to this it is easy to see why the SNP have chosen caution as a counter. We are much better and resourceful than the Tories would have us believe we are.

However, in the semi-legal world of Conservative “policy”, process, strategy and strategic planning often get side-stepped for no apparent reason and for no conceivable gain. The announcement that the Cromarty Firth and the Firth of Forth are to be Scotland’s two new “green freeports”, I would suggest, is one such instance of calamitous thinking. Just what the Scottish government realistically hope to get out of this dodgy project is anyone’s guess. 

What is a freeport? Well, freeports, or zones, are designated by the government as areas with little to no tax in order to encourage economic activity. While located geographically within a country, they essentially exist outside its borders for tax purposes. Companies operating within freeports can benefit from deferring the payment of taxes until their products are moved elsewhere, or can avoid them altogether if they bring in goods to store or manufacture on site before exporting them again. 

Kate Forbes, Scotland’s finance secretary, has said:

“I am pleased we have been able to reach an agreement on a joint approach that recognises the distinct needs of Scotland and enshrines the Scottish government’s commitment to achieving net zero and embedding fair work practices through public investment.”

Kate Forbes, who is usually clear headed, is delusional on this. Freeports mean little if no regulation. Worker’s rights and health and safety will be generally ignored. Trade unions will not be represented on the boards of the freeports. Britain’s main maritime union, the RMT, says it supports green job creation but fears freeports could result in workers in some of the poorest communities signing away their rights. Its general secretary, Mick Cash told the press last week, 

“Without strong employment rights, automatic trade union recognition and tax laws that make sure international owners of UK ports contribute, freeports are doomed to fail the communities they are designed to help.”

Taking on and implementing the Westminster scam of freeports is not public investment. It is chicanery and safe hoarding opportunities for spivs. As far back as February 2021 Paul Monaghan, chief executive of the Fair Tax Mark scheme, noted

“These ‘sleaze ports’ are very much mini-tax havens domiciled within the UK. It’s going to leak out into the wider economy – it will result in a massively reduced contribution from business to the Treasury. Businesses which are rooted in communities wish to stay and play a part in society and pay fair tax – why should they be undercut by hot capital and flighty businesses that can exploit these zones?”

Monaghan says the zones have proved magnets for illicit financial flows and criminal activity, adding: “One of the reasons for them existing is the absence of regulations and checks – it’s a consequence of what they are.”

Another danger is that “new” business at the freeports will simply be existing jobs and economic activity relocating from now disadvantaged locations in the rest of Scotland, as the playing field is no longer level. The other aspect of this is that the establishment of freeports bypasses our democratic process. As Robin McAlpine of Common Weal has written (19/01/23),

“Sadly what we are not getting is what we really ought to be getting, which is a proper industrial strategy and a proper economic development plan for Scotland’s coastal and island economies. Far from helping the development of those economies, freeports are likely to damage them.”

Robin McAlpine goes on to say that even with two freeports, Scotland would be a country with very limited ability to trade with the world other than via another country. Almost everything made in Scotland would be driven to England if it was to be transported anywhere else in the world. What Scotland actually needs is an Atlantic trading port on the west of the country and a European trading port on the east with a high speed rail and freight link running between them. We also need a port in the north of Scotland that trades with Iceland, Faroe and Scandinavia with a direct ferry link to Bergen and Copenhagen. Instead of this we are to have two freeports of dubious actuality. 

In his 1943 “autobiography”, ironically titled “Lucky Poet”, the poet Hugh MacDiarmid begins chapter 8 with a description of his life thus, “It’s all just a matter of a Hjok-finnie body having a ride on a neugle.” What the irascible poet meant by that was that his life was a gamble, an adventure. In Shetlandic folk-lore a “Hjok-finnie body” is a Finn who has been buried but who has risen up again. A “neugle”, also from Shetlandic folklore, is a water horse, a kelpie or each-uisge in Gaelic, and is a creature that if a mortal alights it then they are dragged to their doom beneath the water. It was just one of the many metaphors MacDiarmid conjured up in order to delve deep into the mystery of Scotland’s genius for self-suppression. 

Neugles, Rides and Freeports

In Caithness Scots a “ride” on a neugle would be a “hurl” on a neugle. “Hurl” being more anarchic than “ride”. For Scotland to actually endorse and operate two freeports would not be so much like going for “a hurl on a neugle” but going for a “hurl” on the wrong “neugle”. Such a mad adventure may suit the sensation seeking poet but I fear it is not a suitable course of action for an emerging small European nation. 

Freeports, no matter how the Tories try to sell them and how the Scottish government attempt to mitigate them, are an extension of Brexit and tax evasion and a reaction to tax evasion clamp-down which both the European Union and the US government are keen to employ.  A report from the European parliament last year noted that a growing demand for free ports could in part be explained by a recent global crackdown on tax evasion. The US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2014 Common Reporting Standard has made it hard for individuals to escape taxation on proceeds of funds held in bank accounts. Spivs don’t like regulation. Freeports are a harbinger of the corporate totalitarianism that is the Tory wet-dream: 21st century Singapore-like UK as a manifestation of ancient Venice. In many ways freeports are throwback to the Middle Ages and as Guy Debord once wrote, “Fascism is technologically equipped primitivism.”

Even though misinformation and disinformation have infused and distorted our debates about almost every pertinent political problem the question must be asked, what next after freeports, that is if they are established? Will it be corporate cities or fiefdoms, fenced areas out with where the normal rules of Scots law – or any law – apply, run by private companies and policed by private militias in which environmental and workplace protections are almost entirely stripped away?

We are all, we would hope, conscious of facts, despite the media. Likewise I would hope that we are all conscious of values, despite the Tories. But a fact which has no value is not a fact and a value which is not a fact has no value. Freeports have no value for a modern Scotland. That this Tory government is bad for Scotland is a fact. Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove et all can go for a hurl on a neugle of freeports as is their want, but the people of Scotland have to go on a different journey and on a more reliable vehicle. It is called democracy and democracy is the defensive wall that spiv capital is always striving to breach. We need a free country not a freeport. Once that is achieved we can all go for a hurl on our very own neugle. 

 

©George Gunn 2023

 

Comments (9)

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  1. Cathie Lloyd says:

    I’ve not seen the other comments so I hope I’m repeating other comments. What is said about freeports is indisputable. What seems to be missing is the power dimension. My reading is that Westminster has decreed freeports, we are trying to make them palatable. I hope that this doesnt mean greenwashing, but seriously does anyone really believe that our government could have opposed it – politically? A lot of commentary seems to have little awareness of the power dimensions of what happens here. lets not ignore them.

  2. John Wood says:

    Well said, I agree so much. I just wish I could have put this so well myself. The SNP’s problem is that they are afraid of alienating anyone, especially the unbelievably wealthy oligarchs that now believe they own and control us all for their personal gain. If the SNP fails to stand up for the Scots, and indeed for people and planet generally against international psychopathy and totalitarianism, it will have to hand over to someone who will. They cannot dismiss any opposition as ‘Unionist trolling’. There is no such thing as a ‘Green’ Freeport. It is a contradiction in terms.

  3. Alasdair Macdobald says:

    Thank you, George. This is as clear sighted as always.

    One of the reasons I have never been attracted to being a politician, despite being hugely interested in politics and accepting of the fact that politics is actually what gets things done, I am not temperamentally suited to the day to day ducking and weaving, points scoring, tactical switches of direction, etc. that seem to be an inevitable part of the process. And, while I often feel anger at and contempt for and a sense of betrayal by many politicians, I accept, with reluctance, that in the circumstances of the United Kingdom, it’s unwritten constitution and the disempowerment of most of the UK outside of Westminster, this kind of choreography is often necessary to make some progress.

    I wish it were other, but, we are where we are.

    In the course of my employment as a teacher senior manager in education, I often met politicians and, on the whole, I felt most were sincere people and generally acting for the public good. They had a good grasp of issues and a feel for solutions. And that ‘feel’ was largely influenced by what they thought was ‘possible’ – hence the term ‘politics is the art of the possible’. They were pragmatic and, some would claim, ‘realistic’. In effect, they were pragmatically accepting that half a loaf is better than no bread. Some, in the words of the US civil rights campaigners, do ‘keep their eyes on the prize’ and are not tempted by the possibility of gross personal enrichment. But, given the precariousness of politics for those without personal fortunes, many politicians, in the interests of supporting their families and providing some kind of security do have to sup with devils.

    I fully acknowledge the venal mendacity of the ‘Freeport’ concept. They are a con trick. But, in the straitened circumstance many ordinary people in the chosen freeport areas live and the short term gains the freeport can give for some, I think that rejecting such ‘investment’ can alienate a number of people who might otherwise be sympathetic to ideas like independence and the common good. In a political system where so many are alienated by electoral politics, we know from experience that the switch of a relatively small number of people who actually vote can have a significant effect on the UK scale and it’s winner takes all reward.

    1. Wullie says:

      An excellent article Cheorge!

  4. Gordon+G+Benton says:

    I do not want to be seen as patronising, George, but i found your article interestingly literate on a subject about which i have had some direct involvement. Having designed and supervised the the construction of about 60 industrial plants, the large majority of which were brought into fruition, in large part or small, through attracting government investment terms. On serious reflection I cannot think of any stakeholder protesting about the validity and propitiousness of any of these ventures, and from those countless others which i came across over 60 years. Investors came from such as France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, USA, Canada, China, Japan and India investing in such as Kenya, South and South East Asia. In simple terms, and I know nothing is simple, the host countries benefited in ways that would have impossible if foreign investment had been banned. All investments were made on the host country terms – they chose the tax terms, working conditions, and work permits. They realistically joined the Planet business scene.
    You may say “but look here; Scotland is not an impoverished country like these ones you have mentioned: we don’t need to bribe foreigners to invest here, etc “. Even so, but look at each of these country’s economic progress with all the well-being that comes from that.
    Your side-swipe at Singapore caught my attention. This is a Nation, just 60 years independent, that has increased its population from about 2 million to 5.6M+ (now the same as Scotland’s), and i would suggest has largely achieved extraordinary success by attracting the best talents, useful investments, and created a wealth of taxpayers that very few counties in the World can emulate or even hope for. Based on international trade based on free trade and minimal-to-no barriers or tariffs, and assets held by sovereign wealth funds, the country has a AAA sovereign credit rating, and is internationally recognised as world-leading in education, healthcare, quality of life, personal safety, infrastructure and housing (88% house-owning), longest life expectancies, fastest internet speeds, lowest infant mortality rates, with lowest corruption anywhere. This, i suggest, is what Scotland should be aspiring for. Stop whinging. Look at the success stories, and see how we can adapt them to our culture. What foreign investments’ rule do we, understanding our place in the World of business, really want? Ah! detractors will jump in: Singapore hangs drug dealers, and has banned the sale of chewing gum. True; Singapore is an Eastern Asian nation, Chinese essentially, and they will tell you that they have had Emperors for the last 5,000 years, appoint mandarins, the cream of the Nation’s talent to administer their country … and the rest of the population do as they are told. That is their culture. That Scotland might fail on all three accounts, should not mean it must turn it face against what works around the Globe, adapt and get on working WITH everybody else. The Scots Diaspora has been working on this for a few centuries, and now number between 25 and 40 million. They must be the channel through which investment will surely come.
    Scotland is not and has never ever thought itself as the cat’s pyjamas, an’ can dae it a’ oorsel’s. Or is that the message we are sending out to the World now?

    1. John Wood says:

      I have to say that I disagree with this fundamentally, a and agree with George. This is about attracting investment to a particular area at the expense of other areas, investment that will allow companies to exploit Scotland without taking any responsibility for the harm caused. Singapore is a city state, it takes all the investment at the expense of those outwith its borders.

      I we are to worship Singapore (and, frankly, God forbid!) let it cover the whole of Scotland and not just a small corner. And let us actually get some revenue into the public purse from development rather than than let all the profits get re-exported into private pockets while we pick up the bill for the infrastructure, the environment, the social and other costs the Freeport will be only too willing to ‘externalise’. We have seen this sort of rampant exploitation in the 3rd World for a very long time. there’s no reason for us to do this. You give me Singapore; I respond with Norway. A far better model all round.

    2. John Wood says:

      I have to say that I disagree with this fundamentally, a and agree with George. This is about attracting investment to a particular area at the expense of other areas, investment that will allow companies to exploit Scotland without taking any responsibility for the harm caused. Singapore is a city state, it takes all the investment at the expense of those outwith its borders.

      I we are to worship Singapore (and, frankly, God forbid!) let it cover the whole of Scotland and not just a small corner. And let us actually get some revenue into our public purse from industrial development rather than than let all the profits get re-exported into private pockets while we pick up the bill for the infrastructure, the environment, the social and other costs the Freeport will be only too willing to ‘externalise’. We have seen this sort of rampant exploitation in the 3rd World for a very long time. There’s no reason for us to do this. You give me Singapore; I respond with Norway. A far better model all round.

  5. Paul Packham says:

    Well said George. Ireland has always been an advocate of The ‘Freeport’ scheme. Shannon is the largest. That sort of thinking leads to ideas of bigger and bigger tax breaks for the multinational corporations. I’m still struggling to come to terms that the Irish government fought back against an EU ruling that Apple owed them €13 BILLION!! The Irish state of course were defending their corrupt tax regime. And look at public services over there as a result!
    Governments fall for it all the time. The little people must pay taxes ( we will take from them at source), but big people can choose how to pay, and have plenty of ways available to them to avoid doing so at all.

    We need an independent state that can attract investors because of our transparency, accountability and equality. One that shows that tax revenues are spent wisely on social programs encompassing education, health and the arts.

  6. SleepingDog says:

    I thought one of the major criticisms of freeports was that they facilitate crime, just like other tax havens. Well, our Tory crimelords’ flowery descriptions of freeports are as poetic as staged wrestling on television, so what poetry has got to do with objectivity and facts is beyond comprehension. Normally I’d expect us to have lost a war and been forced to sign an unjust treaty before we got freeports foisted upon us.

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