South Lanarkshire, one of Scotland’s largest council areas, and Renfrewshire followed suit with similar results.The jubilation of the coalition parties was slightly dented when the Orkney islanders voted by 53 per cent to 47 per cent against tax-varying powers. The Welsh Office minister Peter Hain said Scotland had lead the way and Wales would follow.A resounding Double Yes vote from Clackmannanshire, Scotland’s smallest mainland council, was the first declaration at 12.45am, greeted with relief by home rule campaigners. The Parliament will have control of a pounds 13bn budget and run most of the country’s domestic affairs.Relieved ministers hoped that the enthusiastic response of the Scots would fire up the people of Wales to vote for an assembly when they go to the polls next Thursday. Scotland was restoring its parliament after 300 years and it was going to be done “not with a whimper but with a bang”, Mr Salmond said. This is an historic decision and also the first step towards modernising the government of Britain.”However Mr Dewar’s assertion that the referendum result would “strengthen” the United Kingdom was at odds with an equally confident claim by Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, that it was a “firm step” in the direction of independence. “We have done the business and given an emphatic thumbs up to a Scottish Parliament with real powers. Donald Dewar, Secretary of State for Scotland, claimed victory after early results from council areas showed support for a Parliament running at almost 80 per cent and for granting it tax-varying powers at a comfortable 67 per cent.
“This is a great day for Scotland, one of the most important days in our country’s long history,” Mr Dewar said.

In an historic night for constitutional reform right across Britain, Home Rule campaigners made the breakthrough they have sought for more than 100 years. Scotland has voted resoundingly for its own parliament. “Internationally experienced chief executives are more likely to take a global perspective, thereby advancing their business in an internationally competitive market.”Internally promoted chief executives not only have strong knowledge of their company and their industry, but also present less risk in terms of adaptation to the company culture and the top management team.”nRoger Trapp. Incidentally, 14 out of the 15 chief executives who were also chairmen were internally appointed.Though she notes that these leaders combine “a solid background in terms of education and a `conservative’ approach in terms of staying within the same industry and in reaching the top via internal promotion” with a less conservative enthusiasm for international experience, she is particularly interested in the link between international experience and internal promotion.”The effect of international experience is obvious,” says Ms Marx.

Perhaps it is time for the game of musical chairs to stop, and the underlying problems to be solvedn. Chief executives of Britain’s most admired companies have a unique career profile, according to research by the executive recruitment company NB Selection. They are better educated, have more international experience, stay within their industry for longer and are more likely to be internally promoted. Elisabeth Marx, who carried out the study, says that it shows there is a clear link between chief executives’ career characteristics and the reputations of their companies, which include Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Cadbury Schweppes, Glaxo Wellcome, Siebe and BP.
The most-admired companies table, compiled by Management Today in association with Loughborough University Business School, ranked organisations by such criteria as quality of management, financial soundness, capacity to innovate, ability to attract, develop and retain top talent and community and environmental responsibility.It is perhaps surprising, therefore, to find that the chief executives are three times as likely as their counterparts at other top 100 UK companies to combine that role with the chairmanship – in contravention of the clear recommendations of the Cadbury Report on Corporate Governance.As a result, says Ms Marx, this is “certainly an area to investigate further, in how far the theoretical recommendations of the Cadbury Report can be supported by empirical data”. This will breed even worse problems if councils, as many threaten, also refuse to house sex offenders, forcing them onto the same estates. In all cases on this estate bad tenants have improved their behaviour, and we have never had to go the whole way.”Private landlords, though, seldom include the threat of eviction in tenancy agreements to deal with anti-social behaviour, making it more difficult to solve such problems.The Chartered Institute of Housing argues that privately owned sink estates of delinquent families could cause severe problems. We would discuss with the council or housing association taking action under the tenancy agreement, to advise the tenant they are in breach of their tenancy agreement, moving towards an eviction if there is no improvement in behaviour.

It also offers a quicker solution than evicting tenants, which can take months, Dundee says.Another option is to apply for an interdict, instructing bad tenants to cease specified behaviour. If they fail to respond as instructed they are guilty of criminal behaviour.Leicestershire police, which has been trying to resolve the problems between Rachel and her neighbours, says that in practice the threat of eviction works. Superintendent Pat McHugh says: “Some families are troublesome, and cause frequent complaints. In doing so it is accepting it has a responsibility for solving the problem, and recognising that there are acute difficulties for children who are forced to move around frequently. Dundee City Council helps tenants with anti-social behaviour to change – they are tackling the problem within their authority.”Dundee is working in a partnership with the Scottish Office and National Children’s Homes to rehabilitate bad tenants. The situation is not really being monitored – we should be asking where they are going. Some authorities have developed good practice, such as using mediation.

Authorities are taking steps to avoid some people from becoming tenants in the first place. Authorities can determine the classes of persons they don’t have to house, which might be tenants with a history of anti-social behaviour and sex offenders, and introduce blanket bans preventing these families ever getting [council] homes.”Anti-social tenants will go to the bottom end, where landlords are not willing to deal with this behaviour It will become an issue of growing importance. Its policy officer Louise Ayriss says: “When the issue was very topical last year, when the Housing Act, giving local authorities more powers to evict, was being passed, we did express concerns about this, and stressed that authorities can enforce tenancy conditions without evicting.”A few authorities are taking a very hard line. “If they are going from here, who is going to house them now?” she asks.The Chartered Institute of Housing agrees that playing musical chairs with anti-social neighbours is no solution. The council denies that it has evicted these families for anti-social behaviour, but admits it may have thrown the tenants out for non-payment of rent.Bradford Property Trust, landlords of the problem tenants, says that one of the troublesome neighbours is in prison, and it persuaded another to leave last week Rachel says this will just move the problem on again. But the biggest difficulty is that bad tenants who are evicted re-emerge somewhere else, usually behaving as badly as before.Rachel (not her real name) says that her neighbours terrorised another estate before they were evicted by Leicester City Council.