SOMETIMES I think it’s too easy to blame the Tories all the time, though admittedly, they often leave us with no alternative. And the current administration, even by this party’s own reactionary standards, is among the worst of their kind. It’s not just the cuts to benefits and essential public services that makes this UK Government’s social policy an iniquitous one; it’s the cruelty of their strategy in delivering it – an approach which seems to delight in stripping vulnerable people of their dignity by making them jump through hoops before getting benefits to which they are entitled.

And it’s the big lie that Tories like to propound; the one that says We’re All In This Together. In many parts of London and in the south-east the recession hasn’t even touched the sides. By cutting the taxes of the super-rich, among whom are their biggest financial donors, and by permitting the largest corporations to avoid paying tax, the Tories ensure that actually, no, we’re not all in this together. Yet, I often feel that by blaming them for all of society’s social ills, we conveniently absolve ourselves from any blame for the deep inequalities that exist in this very affluent country.

The splash story in yesterday’s Sunday Herald brought out the best in that paper’s design team and made me ashamed of my quiet and comfortable existence in Glasgow. The story illustrated on the paper’s front page revealed that wealthy women in Glasgow are living 10 years longer than those in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods.

The figures are revealed in a report on health by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health. The report also states that the mortality gap between men living in Glasgow’s most affluent areas and those from its most disadvantaged ones is 13 years. The only reason why this wider gap wasn’t the headline figure is because the numbers for male mortality haven’t changed in the last 15 years.

The research also pointed out what everyone in my city already knew anyway; that women in Glasgow die sooner than those in other Scottish cities. Yet still, among all the reactions to this bleak picture of inequality in 21st century Scotland, there was the obligatory one that blamed the Tories: “The increase in the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor women in Glasgow is upsetting to see, although not surprising. This is another example of the devastating effect Government policies are having in the poorest people in the city.” Indeed, if you repeated that last sentence often enough, you would think that none of this has anything to do with the rest of us.

Glasgow’s social and health inequalities swamp those encountered in the rest of the country. This city also drives the Scottish economy. Glasgow could flourish without the rest of Scotland but the rest of Scotland would struggle without Glasgow’s tax and National Insurance contributions. Yet, for each of the last eight years the city’s block grant from Holyrood has been slashed.

Yet it’s not just political administrations that must shoulder all the responsibility for the obscenity of this poverty gap in our so-called affluent and enlightened country. Wage inequality is widespread throughout Scotland. Too many people still do not get paid properly for the work that they do. John Dickie, the director of the Child Poverty Action Group said in yesterday’s report: “There is a huge body of evidence that a decent income is vital for good health, yet the incomes of the poorest, and women in particular, are being squeezed even further as low wages and benefit cuts bite into family finance.”

What he really means is that there are thousands of chief executives in Glasgow whose firms are making large profits and who are each on massive take-home salaries who yet insist on paying the vast majority of their employees a wage that barely allows them to subsist. Nor are these all in the private sector. The salaries that Glasgow City Council pays far too many of its departmental executives are inappropriately high while some of the pay-offs made to departing managers would choke a horse: they are excessive to an immoral degree.

The city council undermines its own case for more money from Holyrood while some of these salaries are continuing to be paid. I’ve even heard some Labour councillors parrot the Boris Johnson line in respect of light-touch regulation of bankers and their activities; that if they don’t pay “competitive” salaries then they won’t get the right people. Such an argument though, is facile mince.

Of course it doesn’t help that the country’s richest and biggest sporting organisation, Celtic Football Club, still refuses to join the Living Wage Foundation. Working for Celtic on a part-time basis are many women, some of them single mothers from the east end of Glasgow – home to several of the city’s most disadvantaged districts. Many are juggling several jobs because none of them pays a proper wage on their own. When an organisation that was established to help the poor and the needy now behaves in such a manner it’s easy to see why still only relatively few other firms pay above the Living Wage.

Hardly a year passes when another set of bleak statistics isn’t added to Glasgow’s bleak picture of health and social inequality. These are now engraved into the DNA of my city. And each time, like many others on the privileged left, I wring my hands, complain bitterly to friends over another cappuccino and, yes, blame the bleedin’ Tories: anything except take affirmative action.

And then I hear about Andy Wightman campaigning tirelessly throughout Scotland against our wicked pattern of inequality in land ownership. And I see Lesley Riddoch speaking tirelessly about empowering communities or Cat Boyd of Rise simply shouting that she’s not going to take it anymore. They exemplify the difference that a mere handful of committed and intelligent people can make.

In Glasgow, we’ve marched against war and against Margaret Thatcher and nuclear weapons. But I wonder how many of us would be too busy to participate in a march against poverty and if it would make a difference if no politicians were allowed to attend. Or are we just happy to sit back and let Andy Wightman, Lesley Riddoch and Cat Boyd shake their fists at governments on our behalf?