ROCKY ROAD TO RUIN

Here we go again. No films getting made - what's new? More jobs on offer at Scottish Screen - what's new?

Anybody reading the comments on my last blog – see below - would have spotted the anonymous posting about how SS is recruiting even more staff. If you take the comment at face value, presumably these new jobs are to make up for the seven staff Ken Hay saw fit to get rid of during what my disgruntled correspondent calls ‘the night of the long knives’ shortly after Hay’s appointment as CEO of the agency last April.

I can’t thank this person enough, because it’s the first I’d heard of the mass job cuts at West George Street. More intriguing is why - why is SS now advertising a post of Education Development Manager at a salary that’s £7000 a year below what their last Education Development Manager, Alison Butchart, earned before her job was axed? In other words, it's a total scandal and quite possibly illegal under current employment legislation.

Not to say that Education or Marketing or Audience Development's not important, but how can SS justify adding to their 53 staff, not including various committees and the board? When I checked their 'Our Team' list a few months back, there were around 35 staff. Now Ken Hay sees fit to include all the Archive staff he banished to a shed in Hillington, a department apparently now under the control of Scottish Museums and Galleries and not SS.

The plot thickens. Or does it?

It doesn’t take Strathclyde Police to work out what’s going on here. Not if Creative Scotland goes ahead – and whatever the rags are told to tell the Scottish public – CS is by no means a done deal. This is in spite of the fact a board's been appointed - before the non-event of the much-derided draft Culture Bill finagles its way through consultation.

No, what’s going on here is smoke and mirrors to make SS look like a bigger deal than it actually is. By claiming lots of staff and looking busy when he's not, Ken Hay's trying to look like a bigger banana than he really is, when the truth is he looks more like Ian Beale than a contender for the CEO gig at the proposed CS. That’s assuming they get to make their unholy alliance with the Scottish Arts Council at all. Because you can be sure when they get into the ring, it’ll be Rocky Balboa all over again, and the SAC have all the moves and heel-dragging experience needed to beat any hopeful upstart, especially with an £80 million annual pot at stake.

I reckon there’s probably ten worthwhile employees at Scottish Screen. That means they could lose about 40 and nobody would notice. If you read their website – especially the recent Best Actor Oscar nomination of Forest Whitaker for LKOS – it’s kind of pathetic of them to claim any credit. Strange the way only ‘good’ news makes it to their site. Like, for instance, where’s the Q&A from last October’s Open Events? Could it be that embarrassing? And why does the 2005-06 Annual Report fail to list development and production awards like it used to? Is it because most of the money’s disappearing to TV and London-based companies? Scottish taxpayers and Lottery players have a right to know.

As my anonymous poster says, Alison Butchart and six other talented staff were described by Ken Hay as having ‘chosen a new career path’. For all you SS employees who read my blog - and my stats tell me some of you do - I feel for you, I really do - it must be pretty insecure not knowing if you're about to get the boot only to see your old job advertised - at a lower rate. And even more insecure when you don't know if you'll be in a job next year anyway. Then again, that prospect can't be any worse than all the filmmakers I know - the ones pulling pints, driving taxis and selling SKY TV packages. On minimum wage. And it doesn't get much lower than that...