HARDLY a day goes by without Alex Salmond launching yet another event to celebrate 2009, the Year of Homecoming. Indeed, so completely has the First Minister taken ownership of the issue that it is easy to forget that Homecoming was actually a Labour idea, pioneered by Jack McConnell's administration before the SNP came to power.
It was much the same with the battle to secure the 2014 Commonwealth Games for Glasgow. Mr Salmond flew to Sri Lanka to lobby Glasgow's case and celebrated when the city emerged triumphant last November.
Mr Salmond had indeed worked hard on this
issue in the run-up to the November 2007 decision, but a lot more work had been done in the months and years before that, much of it by Mr McConnell.
It was said at the time – and only half-jokingly – that if Glasgow won the bid Mr Salmond would claim the credit and if Glasgow lost, he would blame Mr McConnell.
Glasgow won, the new First Minister celebrated in Sri Lanka, while Mr McConnell was stuck back home in Scotland.
That, unfortunately, is the nature of politics. Electoral cycles move quickly and politicians make sure they gain what advantage they can, when they can, even if this means expunging the record of their predecessors as soon as possible.
But with the elevation of the SNP to the Scottish Government, this reversal of Labour's agenda has reached extraordinary lengths.
Every new administration has political priorities at odds with the government it replaces; that is accepted and, largely, understandable.
That inevitably leads to a reversal of party political policies in all the main fields, from health to transport.
However, there is usually an understanding across the chamber that the worthy, non-partisan initiatives pursued by one administration are carried on by the next, particularly if they were endorsed with cross-party support when they were introduced. This, though, does not appear to be the case any more, not if Mr Salmond's approach is any guide.
When he was Labour First Minister, Mr McConnell started a number of non- party programmes designed to improve Scotland socially and raise its profile inter- nationally.
All were worthy, non-controversial, well-meaning and widely supported, but all have been ditched by the incoming SNP administration.
They included: ProjectScotland, the youth volunteering initiative, a Scottish component at the international EXPO 2010 event in China, anti-sectarian summits and the Retired and Senior Volunteers Programme.
Each one of these has been halted, curtailed, axed or cut back, either by the withdrawal of funding or of ministerial support – which amounts to the same thing.
Every time a project of this sort has been axed, the reason given is different, from the need to avoid duplication to handing more control to local authorities. However, the effect in each case is the same – the ending of a non-partisan measure set up by the previous Scottish Executive.
There is no doubt that the Scottish Government is under much tighter financial pressure than its predecessor and ministers are looking to cut back on all non-essential funding packages.
But the combined effect of all these cuts is to make the Scottish Government look mean, simply because these are not political projects that are being cut but non-party programmes which MSPs of all parties support.
It also has the knock-on effect of burying Mr McConnell's legacy as completely as possible. That may have short-term benefits for Mr Salmond and the SNP but it is unlikely to do much either for relations between the two parties or the future of bi-partisan politics in Scotland.
China project ditchedEXPO, the worldwide global event that happens every four years, will take place in Shanghai in two years' time.
Expo 2010 is essentially a global forum, giving countries the chance to market themselves to the Chinese public, at all levels from tourism to business.
The Labour-led Scottish Executive decided to commit £500,000 for a specifically Scottish component in the British pavilion, which will be sited in one of the best locations at the event.
The Scottish Executive had made several deliberate attempts to establish strong links with China and had encouraged the teaching of Mandarin in Scottish schools to prepare young Scots to deal with the world's next economic super-power. Establishing a Scottish component in the British pavilion fitted in with that ideal.
When Alex Salmond's government came to power in 2007, however, that commitment was axed.
A spokesman for the First Minister said the new government did not believe in "duplication" and that where Scotland was already represented by the UK and where taxpayers' money from Scotland was already being spent, there was no need to do anything specifically Scottish.
Labour claimed that was an unusual argument, particularly as the Scottish Government has encouraged "duplication" in the United States, where Scotland has its own representation, alongside that of the Foreign Office, and in Brussels, where Scotland House is the Scottish Government's base in Europe.
The decision also drew a robust and dismissive response from Lord Steel, the Liberal Democrat peer and former Presiding Officer, who said he was "appalled" at the wasted opportunity.
Sectarian fight 'dropped'ALEX Salmond used his maiden speech as First Minister in the Scottish Parliament to praise Jack McConnell for his work in tackling sectarianism – and then promptly dropped key parts of the initiative.
Mr McConnell started convening summits on sectarianism, bringing together church leaders from both sides of the divide in an attempt to eradicate "Scotland's shame".
He made other progress too, getting agreement to tone down and lessen the effect of marches and parades. But when the SNP came to power, much of this was dropped.
Stewart Maxwell, the sports minister, justified the move by saying that while sectarianism was an important problem for Scotland, it was no worse than other problems such as racism or obesity so should not be singled out for special treatment.
He said: "People would be quite cynical if we just carried on having summits. While it looks nice and gets on the news, I don't think it fundamentally tackles the problem."
The Scottish Government has continued to work on sectarianism on a broader basis, linking in with other forms of discrimination. But a number of recent high-profile incidents, including an attack on Celtic coach and former player Neil Lennon in Glasgow and controversy over a Rangers song about the Irish potato famine, have put the issue back near the top of the political agenda.
Mr McConnell spoke out recently to condemn Mr Salmond as "weak and complacent" for dropping his anti-sectarian summits.
The former first minister said: "A sectarianism summit would take half a day from his (Mr Salmond's] diary in the next 12 months and he refused to commit to any action to maintain the progress of recent years and end the appearance of complacency."
Volunteer vision doomedTHE Retired and Senior Volunteers Programme (RSVP) was part of the Community Service Volunteers initiative and was funded for three years by the Labour-led Scottish Executive, before the SNP came to power last year.
The RSVP had enrolled, trained, organised and supported 1,600 volunteers, who provided 64,000 hours of their time.
The scheme supported literacy programmes for children, services to patients, energy savings work, other mentoring, befriending and many other valuable initiatives.
Jim Mather, the enterprise minister, told parliament that local councils should take on the funding of this group from the Scottish Government.
But Labour politicians now claim the whole programme is "severely endangered" and will end in March next year unless transitional funding is found.
Richard Simpson Scottish Labour's public health spokesman, said: "The SNP seem content to put this hugely successful volunteering programme at risk. It was very clear Jim Mather simply did not understand that in ending funding in March 2009 the government has effectively told these volunteers that their time and efforts are not valued.
"These volunteers are simply too good to lose and everything must be done to continue to support these individuals who in turn support our communities."
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: "Funding for RSVP was only ever due to last until March 2009 and it is right that decisions on future funding are now taken locally – this is in line with our concordat with local authorities which reduces ring-fencing and develops single outcome agreements and offers much more cohesion in the delivery of local solutions."
'Peace corps' shut downPROJECTSCOTLAND was launched in the spring of 2005, with the personal backing of Jack McConnell, as a new volunteering initiative for the 16-25 age group. When it was created, it had cross-party support in the Scottish Parliament.
Based on successful volunteering projects from other countries, ProjectScotland was designed to provide youngsters with the life-changing experiences more commonly associated with the American Peace Corps or VSO, but at home instead of abroad.
It was meant to act as a bridge, linking hundreds of public and voluntary sector bodies to young people. Those who took part were given a subsistence allowance giving them the chance to move around a wide array of placements.
More than 2,000 young people took part in ProjectScotland before the SNP came to power. Then, ministers decided it should close. They started by cutting ProjectScotland's annual budget from £6.5 million to £1.4 million, or 75 per cent, reducing the places on the scheme from 1,500 to 420 a year and then announced it would come to a "natural end" when funding finished next year.
When he was asked to defend the Scottish Government's emasculation of ProjectScotland in parliament, Jim Mather, the enterprise minister, insisted: "We are not punishing ProjectScotland and we do not have a politically vindictive streak — indeed, very much the opposite."
But he added that ProjectScotland was not the only organisation which worked with volunteers and the Scottish Government had to spread its money around as effectively as possible.
He added: "Others in the field carry out similar activity and get good results."
The full article contains 1692 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
