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  • Johnston backs praises response of Lib Dem MEP Watson August 31, 2010
    Paul Johnston, a leading Aberdeenshire Councillor has welcomed the link between the Pakistan floods to climate change and the need for the UK to tackle it in a more co-ordinated manner. “In much of the coverage of the tragedy that is Pakistan at the moment it is hard to make the connection to the UK.  Its […]

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Call for regional management of fisheries

www.fishnewseu.com   22/12/09

SCOTTISH Liberal Democrat MSP, Liam McArthur has criticised the SNP Government for pointless grandstanding on CFP, saying that this will not help Scotland’s fleet. Commenting as the SNP Government have once again called for the CFP to be scrapped, Liberal Democrat Fisheries spokesperson Liam McArthur MSP said: “This is just more pointless grandstanding from the SNP.

“The SNP went into the last election promising to withdraw from the CFP.  Having realised that this is impractical and undeliverable, the Fisheries Secretary has dumped the policy of withdrawal and now advocates scrapping the CFP. “There can be little dispute that the CFP is ineffective in helping sustain fish stocks or maintaining a viable fleet.  Even the European Commission concedes that micro-management from Brussels in not working.

“That is why Liberal Democrats have long argued for further regional management of our key fisheries, a policy that is gaining support amongst Europe’s main fishing nations. The SNP need to recognise that managing our common resource will require us to work with others. Simply playing to the gallery by Ministers will not help Scotland’s hard-pressed fishing fleet.”

December 23rd, 2009 | Category: Press

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Paul's Blog

  • Exams and Scottish Higher Education
    August 5, 2010 | 7:21 pm

    On the day that Scottish Exam results drop through the letterboxes of expecting students, there remains the unresolved debate about the future of higher education that underlies all the comments that will flow forth from the great and good.

    My concerns that commentators will rubbish the results again, as they do when any increase in pass rates are announced.  The requirements of any qualification change with time.  It does not mean it gets easier – it can, but there is no evidence that it actually has.  But there is evidence it has changed in another way.

    Change in the the topics covered by exams have always happened.  How many doing Maths now would be able to handle a slide rule?  In my day, it was part of the exam.  Now students would no know what a slide rule was.

    For all those who are tempted to suggest the utter nonsense of advising students not to go to further Education but study things that industry bosses want now, could I enter the thought that we are really teaching people for occupations in technologies and systems that have not even been invented yet.  Such is the challenge of the future.

    Congratulations to all students in your results.  I just hope that the generation currently making decisions about your futures, your higher education places and the very sustainability of the Country, will not indulge in the short term thinking of ‘government spending’.  I hope they will have the courage for the investment in peoples’ futures and not our selfish present.

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