Jeff thought that Steven Purcell may have jumped the gun by describing the SNP’s budget proposals as “anti-Glasgow”. But if he did, Labour certainly weren’t embarrassed about it, and enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon. Already during the budget debate Margaret Curran had asked a pointed question about just what was in the budget for Glasgow.

Separate parts of Labour soon latched on to the idea. For instance, Tom Harris was very quick to tweet the following: “Gutted by the SNP’s decision to axe the Glasgow Airport rail link. Serves us right for not being Edinburgh, I suppose.” I also noticed an update from the official Scottish Labour Twitter account which said, “Glasgow is being ripped off by the SNP in Edinburgh.”

Will “the SNP in Edinburgh” became a nice little catchphrase, just as “London Labour” effortlessly rolls off the tongue of any nationalist? I predict that it won’t. “The SNP in Edinburgh” is slightly clunky-sounding, while “London Labour” has an alliterative, almost symmetrical quality.

Trying to associate the SNP with Edinburgh is also a bit strange given that the SNP occupy just one of Edinburgh’s five seats while Labour MSPs currently sit in two of them. At least in this respect it makes about as much sense as “London Labour”, which was always quite a curious turn of phrase given that Labour have their greatest concentration of support in Scotland, not London.

You can say one thing — Labour’s move into the realm of regional politics is an interesting strategy. But as far as I can see, most people seem to just be rolling their eyes at the anti-Glasgow claim. The relative merits of Garl aside for the moment (and I think it is a mistake to scrap it), there surely can’t be many cities that have had more public money poured into them in recent decades than Glasgow.

Do Labour risk painting themselves into a Glasgow-shaped corner? Is there any real point in Labour playing this card? If there is one place in Scotland where their vote is safe, it is Glasgow. I fear that by focussing so strongly on Glasgow, they could easily make themselves less electable in the rest of Scotland.

I mean, in what way is wailing for yet more pork in Glasgow supposed to appeal to the rest of Scotland? Most people were quite heartily sick of the Glasgow-centric nature of the Labour party, as Lallands Peat Worrier explains quite well. And the Glasbolisation of the Scottish media is as tiresome as any London bias.

But it will be interesting to see how the SNP cope with the anti-Glasgow accusation. They cannot really afford to give up on Glasgow. Nor can they reject Labour’s line of reasoning, because this sort of territorial whining is their bread and butter.

That is one of the things that puts me off the SNP so much. They try to exaggerate the cultural and political differences between Scotland and the rest of the UK, while playing down any differences within Scotland. Take, for instance, top SNP blogger Jeff, who on Friday scoffed not once but twice:

…as if there is any significant difference between Glasgwegians and Edinburgers.

Let’s all settle down shall we, factionalism is what tore Scotland apart in the early 1700s. Let’s not go back to those days.

It’s kind of funny to hear the SNP pleading against tearing a country apart. After all, it is normally de rigueur for the SNP to constantly make out that there is a significant difference when in reality there is just a bit of normal human diversity — just as long as the dividing line is the Scottish / English border.

The constant SNP refrain that a democratically elected Conservative government should not have the right to govern over Scotland because they have slightly less support north of the border is one of my biggest bugbears. As I have pointed out before, there will be regional differences within any democracy, no matter how you draw the borders.

So in Scotland you have Labour’s famous dominance of the West of Scotland. Meanwhile, the further north you go, the more likely you are, generally, to be in an SNP seat. There are no SNP constituency MSPs south of Kilmarnock and Loudoun, with the vast majority coming from north of the central belt. The other parties have their geographical cleavages of support too.

But for the SNP, the only important regional divide is the one that divides Scotland from the rest of the UK. They would have you believe that other regional differences don’t exist, or at least that they are not nearly as important.

This is one of the reasons why I reject nationalism. It is fundamentally disingenuous. At least Labour’s tactic has this going for it: it could show up the major contradiction of the SNP’s world view.

It’s the sort of thing that makes members of the public disdainful of politicians. I chose to listen to Radio Scotland for a short while following the budget vote. The first set of text messages to be read out, around 15 minutes after the vote had taken place, was practically an encyclopaedia of lazy Scottish political commentary. All the old chestnuts were wheeled out. One person blamed proportional representation. Another suggested getting rid of the Scottish Parliament altogether. A few more had decided never to vote for the Greens again.

But I can’t find it in me to blame the Greens for this one at all. Not remotely. Maybe I am allowing the fact that I am hugely in favour of their insulation scheme cloud my judgement. It is, after all, the only vaguely sensible thing I can remember hearing pass through a politician’s lips in years. That’s something to get passionate about.

But in seriousness, I struggle to see how the Greens can possibly be blamed for this. Their policy has been well-established. It was put on the table months ago. And it seems like a very sensible policy at that. The Greens’ proposal took up just £100 million of a £33 billion budget — just a third of a percent. It’s amazing to think that the SNP were unable to properly accommodate the Greens’ demands until literally the last minute. It’s even more incredible when you consider that the SNP are supposed to be broadly in favour of the scheme!

This all seems like sheer carelessness on the SNP’s part. Going by Patrick Harvie’s media appearances, his chief concern was not the fact that the SNP were unwilling to stump up the full £100 million. In this supposedly consensual Parliament, politicians should expect to make compromises. It may well be that the Greens would have taken what John Swinney put on the table were the Greens treated with a modicum of respect, with negotiations conducted properly. But the Green co-convener seemed quite livid at the apparently haphazard way the SNP conducted the discussions.

If half of what Patrick Harvie says about last-minute phone calls and faxes being delivered halfway through John Swinney’s speech is true, it makes the SNP look like an organisational basket case. Given that negotiations have been going on for weeks — months, even — it seems awfully careless for the SNP to sleep in like this. It’s hardly the slick operation that skilfully won the 2007 election.

It’s no surprise that the Greens should feel insulted. It looks like they were totally taken for granted — fobbed off with a half-baked scheme, and communicated to practically in grunts. The SNP must have calculated that they could get away with taking the Greens for granted. They might have got away with it when Robin Harper was in charge. Yesterday the Greens stood up for themselves, and rightly so.

It wouldn’t surprise me now if the new budget goes through unanimously, as Jeff suggests it might. I interpret the events of yesterday as a warning to SNP not to be too arrogant and that they can’t take the Parliament for granted. But politicians will surely know that they can’t take this game too far.

It won’t be popular with the public if we end up without a budget and — worse — having to trudge out to vote for this shower again. I’m sure every politician in Holyrood knows that. Nor, surely, can the parties really afford all the campaigning that would be involved. So they will be prepared to avoid that outcome. In the aftermath of yesterday’s events, all of the parties appear to be more willing to play ball.

That’s the risk the Greens now face though. Either Labour or the Lib Dems — or both — might like to make some political capital out of this by making some compromises so that they can go around the place saying they saved Scotland’s public spending. In that case, the SNP really would be able to take the Greens’ votes for granted.

In that case, the Greens will look like they have made a major strategic error here. But I still think they did the right thing yesterday. The Greens may not have been very pragmatic, but their principled stance is exactly what we need more of in politics.

The Greens seem set to use their status as potential kingmakers within the Scottish Parliament in the current budget negotiations to persuade the Scottish Government to adopt their policy of providing free insulation to all of Scotland’s homes. I raised my eyebrows when I first heard about it, thinking it was bound to be expensive. But it’s not really. The scheme would cost £100 million, which is pocket money compared to the £33 billion budget that the Scottish Government has at its disposal.

As such, I’m finding it impossible to see the downside. Everyone in the country gets their homes insulated for free. This allows us all to turn the heating down, with the dual effect of saving us money in the long run and reducing energy consumption (and climate change). Then there are the health benefits involved in having a warm home. It will also provide some jobs in construction at a time when there is slack in that sector — a good bit of Keynesian medicine at just the right time.

Best of all, the scheme is based on a successful experiment that has already taken place in Kirklees, so we know it can be done. It seems like a win–win situation all round. The scheme is relatively inexpensive and the money will soon enough be recovered in the saving in energy bills. It’s difficult to see how it could go badly wrong.

I write about this because it’s a long time since I’ve been so heavily in favour of anything any political party has said. I had rather lost my faith in political parties, and had become jaded with the whole political process. What’s surprising is that it’s the Greens who have grabbed my attention with this excellent policy. Even more surprising is that it’s a policy that involves a degree of extra government intervention. I’ve got to take my hat off to the Greens for managing to get me applauding a policy like this. It gives me a warm feeling, which is quite appropriate.

The Greens have a campaign website called Warm Scotland where the policy is explained in more detail. See also this blog post at Two Doctors. I hope the scheme gets the go-ahead.

Firstly, the universities say they are disappointed in the amount of funding they will get. The universities asked for £168 million extra and said that a minimum of £40 million extra was required for levels of funding to remain the same in real terms. What they actually got was £30 million — a real terms cut.

I have never been to any universities except for Edinburgh, so I couldn’t say how it compares to other institutions around the world. But I can’t help but wonder if the continued public funding of universities in this manner is unsustainable.

There is already a perception that Edinburgh University is increasing the number of international students it enrols. International students are the only students they can make money out of, so Scottish students will begin to be squeezed out.

It already disadvantages us in at least one high-profile way. The move to semesterisation has been seen as an attempt to attract international students who want to be back home for Christmas — but had a range of negative consequences for other students (additionally, that document doesn’t mention the fact that sometimes there can be just a few days between your last lecture and your first exam in December).

If it is true that Scottish universities are facing a real terms cut in funding, then this trend will continue. Then Scottish students will be worse off.

The other place where the SNP is feeling the heat is over their ditched plans to “dump student debt”. If you were a student, it was difficult to avoid the SNP’s ‘debt monster’ character. A number of blogs were even decorated with graphics of the creature. It was clearly a key policy in attracting student votes. So it’s hardly a surprise that a lot of students feel a bit miffed now.

I can hardly blame the SNP for not implementing this policy, which in my view (speaking as someone with £7,000 and counting to pay back to the Student Loans Company) was stark raving bonkers. They shouldn’t have promised it in the first place.

Both of these areas link into the fact that students have it far too easy. Proponents of free higher education miss the point of higher education. A degree is supposed to be a signal to employers that you are talented. For this signal to work, a degree has to be costly to attain.

After all, if it was easy to get a degree, any old fool could get one. This would lead to the ‘devaluation’ of degrees that people so often talk about. The point of making a degree costly is to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. If getting a degree pays off for someone who is not so smart, then degrees are no longer a useful indicator to employers and everyone is worse off as a result.

Of course, degrees are costly anyway. Not in a monetary sense, but in a time sense. Theoretically, examinations are (hopefully) hard enough to deter the not-so-smart from spending four years of their life studying, and the opportunity costs that entails (i.e. four years spent unable to work full time).

However, it doesn’t quite work like that. When people are growing up, nobody is told the truth about university. Parents always push you into going into university due to pride. They don’t want their several years and piles of money invested in a life to come to nothing. Schools are the same — if a lot of a school’s pupils go to university, it reflects well on a school’s reputation. Meanwhile, governments like to encourage people to go to university because it reflects well on their reputation and it helps keep a lid on unemployment figures.

For this reason, there are many students who are walking around like headless chickens, not knowing what to do next (I would include myself in this group). So many people are forced by societal pressure into going into university. A lot of people grow up knowing having been told by parents, schools and governments that they will go into university. These people simply don’t consider any other alternative. Then when they are about to graduate they are stumped.

The obsession with persuading young people to go to university has also led to the fetishisation of “student culture”. Thanks to this, those four years are not seen as a cost at all. They are seen as the best four years of your life. Four years spent getting drunk. The degree is seen as a nice bonus. Fair enough if people want to enjoy themselves — but this is at the expense of taxpayers’ money.

How do we know that degrees are not costly enough? Because some graduates — mostly male arts students (who? me?!) — end up earning less than people who do not go to university. (This is part of the reason why this issue angers me a bit. If I knew I had to pay, I would have been forced to think through my choices a bit more, and would probably have made a better decision.)

Before statists and socialists start moaning, let me point this out. If degrees are costly, this need not preclude poor people from getting one. For one thing, poor people are the very people who benefit the most from university education, so they have the biggest incentive to invest in it.

Also, I still think it would be unfair to make poor people pay upfront. I would not be averse to the introduction of university tuition fees as long as they did not involve up-front monetary costs. Instead, the money ought to be paid after graduation (or drop-out) in line with your ability to pay. This is how student loans work, so I don’t see how it couldn’t work with tuition fees.

Besides, any pretence that free higher education helps poor people would soon be shattered if you spent five minutes on a university campus. Students are overwhelmingly middle class anyway. Instead of helping the poor, public funding of university education hinders the poor. It takes working people’s tax money and ploughs it into the pockets of middle class Tarquin and his Classics degree.

This is not necessarily to say that I am completely opposed to any state involvement in higher education. I would understand if there were a clear need to provide an incentive for people to attend university (although surely the prospect of a highly-paid job ought to be enough incentive). But today, 52% of 18–30 year olds either have a higher education qualification or are currently studying for one. There is hardly a shortage of graduates, or people wanting to graduate.

He is an analogue politician in a digital age.

I bet David Cameron was listening to his iPod when that great line hit him. Robert Sharp outlines how analogue is actually, like, good.

David Cameron used to work for Carlton, and they knew all about digital.

While we’re on the budget, why is it the Leader of the Opposition and not the Shadow Chancellor who responds to the budget? Of course, it hasn’t always been the case…