From small acorns

August, my birthday month. I was delighted to see my name bracketed with that of Barack Obama in The Guardian‘s 4 August birthday notices. As a present, my dear brothers David and Euan and my Best Man, Alan, clubbed together to commission a portrait of me. It was painted in oils on a very large board, by Pittenweem artist Joe Murphy.

Jenny I battled the mud to go and collect it – and had, by the by, a wonderful morning looking round many of the exhibitions in this unique festival, where around a hundred local convert their cottages and houses into temporary art galleries. We were particularly impressed (of course) by Joe’s powerful portrait and the hugely original scrap metal sculptures down by the harbour by Helen Denerley, as well as by the many talented professional artists on show.

This is the first year in a decade that I have missed arranging my usual little concert to raise money for Childline during the Festival. but I did appear to relaunch my biography at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Given the weather and the fact that it was in the evening, there was a really good turnout and Ruth Wishart interrogated me in a lively and colourful interchange between her, me and a thoroughly good audience. We only made passing reference to the riots in London, but I’ll make this the subject of my considerations now.

There has been a predictable series of analyses of lessons to be learned and a plethora of suggested actions to be taken to make sure it never happens again (which conjure up images of King Canute). I have a strong suspicion that the riots will turn out to be yet another wake-up call that echoes around the national consciousness for a few weeks and then, like so many others, will be filed for reference. Most of the low points in terms of reactions have come from the Prime Minister himself. Cameron has made a complete mess of it, from claiming responsibility for instructing the police in how to perform their duties, to condoning the encouragement of the legal profession essentially to undermine and break the law itself by fast-tracking prosecutions, to completely misdiagnosing the situation with his asinine descriptions of  ’a sick society’.

If society in Cameron’s terms is ‘a patient’ and Government ‘the surgeon’, then society has been left on a trolley in the corridor for far too long.

Within Europe, the UK has among the lowest rates of investment in children’s services and the lowest investment in integration of children’s and family services. We have the highest percentage of our population in prison (despite claiming a lower crime rate than many other countries). We have one of the highest rates of reoffending. In particular in comparison with Scandinavian countries, we have lower paid and lower skilled operatives in child care and custodian services. For instance, in Norway prison officers are trained for two years. In the UK they are trained for six weeks.

Inequality is possibly a critically important factor in what may be described as a general malaise. We have much higher than average rates of mental illness, family violence and public disorder than most other European countries, combined with the effects of having one of the highest differentials in the world between our lowest paid and our highest paid workers. We need to think about whether this latter differential could be a major cause of tension within our society.

In a book called The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, a compelling argument has been put forward to make this case, using facts and figures that have been in the public domain for decades. Just for your consideration, I’ll take Norway as an example. In the UK, CEOs of big companies earn around 35 times the national average wage. In Norway, the figure is less than 7 times the national average wage. In Norway, middle earners can expect to pay 50% of the earnings in taxation. In return, they get first class social services, first class medical services, first class education and transport. I think we have a lot to learn.

I continue to be impressed with the dignity of the responses to the appalling events at Utoya. I wish I could say the same about our Government’s response to the Tottenham riots.

Norway

I have found the immense dignity displayed by the Norwegian Prime Minister, their Parliament – in fact, all of Norway –  in the face of the appalling events at Utoya quite extraordinarily impressive at every level. Measured, thoughtful, considerate. The Prime Minister’s response is typical of a nation that has an enhanced sense of justice and social responsibility that is way ahead of much of the rest of the world.

For 12 years in the Parliament, my responses on the theme of justice in Scotland have been centred around the principle that deprivation of freedom is the ultimate punishment and that once we have locked people up, we should be making every effort to return them to society, better able to socialise and function without returning to their previous behaviours.

I don’t always agree with Michael Kelly but I was impressed by the argument that he put forward in an article he wrote, published on my birthday, yesterday. It’s not simply, of course, that short prison sentences don’t work and that we put probably three times as many people in jail as we need to – it’s that our prison system is not geared up to provide the kind of education, help and assistance that most of the people we jail require.

The public’s view of the prisoner is probably that of a large, cunning, strong and violent man – and some prisoners would fit this description. The majority of the people in our prisons are men who are malnourished, with learning difficulties, mental health problems, drug and alcohol problems and a disproportionate percentage have spent their early lives in care.

They need help.

Norway jails about a third of the number of people that we lock up and the help available to prisoners and those on community sentences means that their reoffending rate is about 20 per cent of the reoffending rate in Scotland. Prison officers are professionals who go through a two-year training programme. Our prison officers get six weeks. I don’t think we could ever claim, on the basis of that training, that we have a professional prison service.

Extending our principles of social justice to our prison system on the Norwegian model would create a much safer and more socially just society. I do wonder when the message will sink in to our politicians.

Age

Well, I’m in the afternoon of my first full day of being 71. In football terms, this is the first half of extra time. The only difference is that in a football match the pressure is even greater, whereas at last I can roughly plan my days with an expectation of fulfilling my targets. And it’s going pretty well. 5-10 minutes of warm-up exercises every morning is still, well, every other morning. Half an hour’s piano practice a day, I’ve managed to keep up, with a few exceptions. I still have 11 crates of papers that must absolutely be reduced to one, but I got rid of 3 boxes out of 11 box files of papers from 2007, and was left with one containing a few of my speeches and papers on outdoor education and marine environment – two of the five issues I want to continue to pursue,probably until I turn my toes up.

I had a lovely, quiet birthday. I woke at 4.30, just half an hour after the time I was born in 1940, and mused that I would probably have been washed and already started to make a nuisance of myself. So I went and had a shower.

The day was spent with Jenny – out for lunch and home for supper and in bed before 10.

Book Festival

Still time to buy tickets for my Edinburgh Book Festival appearance with Ruth Wishart! See http://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/robin-harper

This week was the first anniversary of last year’s disastrous floods in Pakistan. The damage done by those floods has still not been repaired. Hundreds of thousands are still destitute and this year’s monsoon season approaches with dreadful certainty.

Last year’s was occasioned by an unusually heavy and concentrated rainfall, but this wasn’t the only cause. There were two others. One was the poor state of preparedness of their water control systems, but another – and possibly more potent effect – was the stripping of Pakistan’s forests. Widespread corruption at the highest level in government and in the police have occasioned the almost total destruction of Pakistan’s tree cover.

Pakistan has one of the lowest levels of forest cover in the world – less than 3 per cent. This means that between the mountains in the north and the fertile lower plains, there is nothing to retain or slow the flow of water. If people don’t believe how important tree cover is for the health and ecology of any landscape, a comparison drawn by Jared Diamond in his book, Collapse, is a vivid reminder.

On the island of Domenica, now divided into Haiti and the Domenican republic, to the right of the line dividing the two states is a lush tree-covered landscape, carefully conserved in the 1930s against the depradations of loggers with the help of the police and the army. To the left of the almost straight line is a greyish moonscape, host to one of the poorest economies of the world and one of the most corrupt states. Pakistan has more in common with the politics and the landscape of Haiti than the Domenican republic. I contribute to the flood relief funds in Pakistan in the full knowledge that I’m simply buying bandages to keep alive a patient who needs major surgery.

The enormity of the appalling massacre on Utuoya Island is almost beyond comprehension. It’s the scale, rather than the fact, but we know all too well from our own experience in Dunblane that this will scar Norway’s collective memory in the same way. It’s almost impossible to legislate responses to  such events, but it has to be a matter of regret that we live in an age where it’s sensibly deemed wise to have the levels of security we now have in schools.

Thought for the week re America: Ulrich Loening, my guru and inspiration on environmental enlightenment in my early years as a Green, had a useful way of highlighting the lunacy of a world economic system that places such heavy reliance on eternal economic expansion. If Judas had been given a savings account based on three per cent annual growth and told his heirs could inherit in 2000 years’ time, the silver required to pay the interest would have weighed more than the world itself – a clear indication of the utter lunacy of our present system.

I was delighted to read a review of my book Dear Mr Harper on Lothian Life’s website. You can see it here. http://www.lothianlife.co.uk/2011/07/dear-mr-harper/

We have two governments who both say they want to put children’s services at the head of their concerns. We have Article 12 of the United Nations Children’s Charter, saying that children must be heard – it actually means ‘listened to’. And yet the UK national charity for children is closing the Edinburgh branch of Childline.

I’ve been closely associated with Childline Scotland from my early days in the Parliament and have been enormously impressed with the work that they do and the quality of the service they provide.

In order to provide continuity throughout the day, Childline counsellors on the phone are expected to answer calls from any part of the UK, but there are good reasons why the Scottish arm of Childline should not have its ability to respond reduced. We have a completely different child law system to England and Wales. Previous Scottish Governments have also changed the way services are provided for children through the ‘getting it right for every child’ strategy.

I don’t think the Scottish Government can be relieved of its responsibility to provide further ongoing support for the Scottish arm of this national charity. The thought of the many thousands of children in the next couple of months who will have their calls unanswered because we still don’t have enough telephone counsellors is bad enough. The idea that in a year’s time there will be even less chance that they will be counselled by someone close to home – if at all – fills me with despair. I really hope that the Scottish Government and the NSPCC are not playing politics with this. We cannot leave our children, in our society, crying silently in the night, with no-one to talk to when they are being abused, bullied, or living in dangerous, violent, dysfunctional relationships that are a daily physical and mental threat.

I hope to compere Childline’s fundraising concert in the Usher Hall next year for the third time and I hope that this problem will have been solved by then. We need at least a guarantee that every effort is being made to ensure that the best possible service is being provided in present circumstances.

PS It takes longer to get to Aberdeen by train from Edinburgh as it does to get from London to York. I wonder how many of Childline’s counsellors living in London would be prepared to commute to York and back again every time they are on duty?

Robin's oak nursery

Harper makes new connections, finds himself as busy as ever, buys some new clothes, ignores instructions to get his hair cut, and takes a complete break from politics. …

The large room I laughingly call my office looks more like an abandoned second-hand bookshop, with papers and books in piles everywhere, and ship models and musical instruments perched precariously here and there. It’s due for a clear-out. Sixteen box files last seen in 2007 will be the first to go, then the fifteen boxes of papers I couldn’t bear to throw out last August, or after another look in December, or again in March this year. They all retained that aura of possibly being useful, some day in the future. If I could find them.

I have decided to take a view that the future has arrived. I suppose one of the good things about stopping being an MSP is that the job does just stop. If you take it on board that there’s nothing so ex as an ex politician, it makes it so much easier to get a life and realise that there are so many other positive things you can do for the society you live in that don’t require being elected to a Parliament.

In fact, I can now get a real focus in what I do. I put everything I had into my job as an MSP, but the downside was indeed that 90 per cent of my duties were entirely reactive ands, especially for a party not in government, it was a real struggle to make an impact. But we most certainly did make an impact and I’m really proud of that.

Without actually deciding to do so, I’ve actually kept completely clear of Parliament and politics since the beginning of May (although I have a pile of emails that arrived in Parliament that have been forwarded to me, which I haven’t yet addressed). No opinions, no photocalls, my mobile is uncannily quiet, I don’t keep it on 24 hours a day. Peace. Or not?

Since I was elected to the Board of the National Trust for Scotland (a huge honour), I’ve attended all monthly Board meetings bar one, when I was on vacation with Jenny, as well as various meetings of several sub groups. The senior management team and all the new Board have a bog job to do. I have been invited to take a place on the Board of the Scottish Wildlife Trust in September, and I intend to continue to be active as:

• Patron of the Scottish Environmental Design Association
• Patron of Scottish Orchards
• Patron of Play Scotland
• Patron of Forth Children’s Theatre and Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group and
• Trustee of the English Speaking Union

The joys of freedom despite all these commitments are considerable. After the election, I worked in our garden from dawn till dusk every day, trimming bushes, digging in border plants and nursing my oak seedlings and saplings in my mini oak nursery – 160 seedlings and saplings crowded into about three square metres. This year I’ve given 60 to Scottish Water. They are planted out at Glencorse. Another 30 have gone to Edinburgh Council Parks and Gardens. Next weekend I’ll be taking some down to the Borders and later some will go to the House of the Binns at the request of Tam and Kathleen Dalyell.

Jenny and I have had an almost continuous series of mini breaks to make the point to ourselves that we have a new and busy life and that as self motivated, active people with books to write and stories to tell, we can plan our own timetable at last.