IN his column in The National on Monday the Wee Ginger Dug exposed the UK Government’s Levelling Up Fund for what it is – a means of bypassing the devolved governments, further weakening devolution while selectivity creating misleading public impressions of local authorities priorities.

Douglas Ross failed to mention that councils are prioritised by the UK Government’s assessment of their need for Levelling Up.

Take City of Edinburgh Council as an example. As it is in the lowest priority group it must present an outstanding case for any of its projects even to be considered for an award.

In addition, projects are graded by categories the highest is transport followed by town centre regeneration then culture, such as arts centres, museums and tourist attractions.

However Edinburgh City Council put a considerable amount of work into its case studies and submitted three projects for consideration in Phase 1, applying for funding of:

£38 million towards developing a city wide transport network of safe, attractive and coherent walking, cycling and wheeling routes.

£4 million towards building a new community hub in Pennywell that includes affordable housing, an early years centre, a learning and skills hub, a library and a café.

£16 million towards turning the derelict Granton Gas Holder and surrounding area into a park and tourist attraction.

Would anyone like to guess which project won highly publicised funding from the UK Government’s Levelling Up Fund?

No doubt Douglas Ross could explain, on behalf of the local Tories, why the Granton Gas Holder won out over the other two but there is little doubt that it will be exploited as Edinburgh Council wasting scare funds that would have been spent on council housing by Labour or potholes by the Lib Dems on an SNP vanity project.

John Jamieson

South Queensferry

 

WE all know of the saying “they have blood on their hands”. Well, I’ve got a new one for you all. As far as I’m concerned since May 2010, when David Cameron became prime minister, all Tory MPs, MSPs, councillors, donors to the party, members of the party and well basically everyone that has voted for that lot since then has… “poverty on their hands”!

Just hope you lot are proud o’ yerselves! I was going to say how can you lot sleep at night but then again something tells me loads of you will sleep just like a baby, no probs!

Not all of them are right wing fanatics like basically the whole of the UK Government and most Tory MSPs. Many would indeed be described as upstanding, respectable, decent pillars of the community and just pretty well nice people all round. Call them what the hell you like, they all have one thing in common. I re-iterate, they have all got “poverty on their hands”. Shame on the lot of them!

It’s up to the current Scottish Government and any future independent one to ensure that they are the polar opposite of this shame but in a massive, not an eency weency way. Be bold. P**s off the high heid yins of oor country! Me and others of my ilk are watching you!”

Ivor Telfer

Dalgety Bay

Ignorantia juris non excusat is a Latin phrase which translates as “ignorance of the law is no excuse”. It means that no one can claim their ignorance of the law as a defence from having broken it.

The principle is based on the fact that if ignorance was accepted as a valid defence, there would nothing stopping anyone from falsely claiming to be ignorant of the law merely in order to escape liability.

Which is a rather long winded way of opening up a rant.

How can the UK still have Johnson as Prime Minister and Sunak as Chancellor even though both have received fixed penalty fines for partying hard whilst the country was in lockdown?

Fixed penalty fines for getting together for a bevy when thousands could not attend the funerals of their loved ones?

Fixed penalty fines after Johnson stated in the Commons chamber that no party had happened? Fixed penalty fines.

We have here in Scotland a glorious chance to send a message out to the corrupt and morally repugnant Conservative and Unionist Party and that message is you are no longer trusted nor wanted north of the Rio Tweed.

I know that the political commentators will attempt to fog the issue by saying these are local elections and as such have nothing to do with anything other than local issues! Really, and those self styled commentators would not mention any drop off to the SNP vote should that occur on May 5?

I think that we in the Yes movement are now all sufficiently wise enough to know that they would most definitely

use it to attempt another lie about

there not being any desire for independence.

So let us hit them hard at the ballot box, let us be rid of all those that have their allegiance to a foreign capital, and let us oust them one and all.

Maximise the vote, get your neighbours out and your friends plus their friends, because Westminster survives on the apathy of the voter and we need to cut that beast off from its food source.

Cliff Purvis

Veterans for Scottish Independence 2.0

In Wednesday’s National letters, Ian Macbeth stated that, “Left-wing independence supporters need not despair, because there is still a home for them in Scotland’s radical, pro-independence party of the left, the Scottish Socialist Party”.

Well, I am politically left-leaning and an independence campaigner, but after reading Mr Macbeth’s poisonous letter where he insultingly attacks every

other Scottish political party, there is no way that I could possibly vote for his party.

There is room for differing approaches to independence and it is sensible to work together and not to wage internecine war on others who have the same aims. Such negativity only brings succour to the Unionist cause.

Tony Perridge

Inverness

So, the Scottish Green Party want to introduce workplace parking fees (Council election manifesto launch, 13 April). In fact, they initiated the powers for local authorities to do so in the Scottish parliament a few years ago, as a cunning plan they insisted upon as the price of supporting an SNP budget which imposed cuts to local councils... again, as part of £4billion funding cuts since 2011.

What is “green” or progressive about this proposal, which the undeclared alliance between the SNP and Green councillors in Glasgow are already actively considering?

The one place in the UK where workplace parking fees have been implemented is Nottingham. The latest figures I have to hand are annual charges for each parking space of £450, and in over 90% of cases this is paid by the workers, not by their employer. A regressive tax on workers; not in the least progressive.

Let me illustrate the folly of this as an allegedly “environmental” policy with my own experience.

For over 12 years I drove to work in the middle of the night, for a 4am shift, for the simple reason I had no choice; there was no such thing as a bus service, let alone a reliable one.

Under this scheme, I would have had £450 docked from my wages, annually, but my old, cheap car would still have spewed out the same amount of pollution. It does nothing to cut emissions, but a lot to cut workers’ wages!

Instead of this half-baked, regressive measure, the Scottish Socialist Party – including all our council candidates – will continue to advocate the policy we pioneered and have persistently campaigned for over the past 20 years – free public transport.

A policy the Scottish Greens initially opposed, at two successive party conferences, and now seem to have put on the back burner while advocating a measure that would punish working class people for the environmental crisis caused by big business, with the 100 biggest multinationals causing 71% of all global emissions in the past 40 years.

Free, expanded, reliable public transport – buses, trains, subways, light railways, foot-passenger ferries – expanded to cater for all shift patterns, would slash car usage and combat poverty as well as pollution and social isolation.

And as I demonstrated in my recent book, Socialist Change not Climate Change, this radical alternative would create at least 73,000 new, skilled, green jobs in Scotland over 10 years, and 34,000 in the first two years.

It would tackle climate crisis by improving the livelihoods of workers and their families, instead of exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis, as workplace parking levies would do.

Richie Venton

SSP national workplace organiser

There has been some vibrant discussion already, in respect of the STV preference vote system for the 5 May 2022 local elections. The best guidance I have found, free of assertions can be found online at “e counting 2022”.

So:

Assume 3000 votes for a three-councillor Ward, and therefore a ward quota of 751.

Assume 1400 votes for SNP (46%)

500 votes for Con (17%)

400 votes for Slab (13%)

300 votes for Green (10%)

200 votes for Dem (7%)

Combined “Not SNP” vote 37%. Its worthy of note that in this scenario, SNP1 and 2 only, with two SNP candidates, becomes quite risky.

Then if SNP voted SNP1 and Green2, only, then SNP are elected, and Dem

out.

Then the chances are, after transferred preferences from the SNP, that Slab go out, leaving SNP, Green, Con elected.

So, getting the SNP vote out is essential, as is Green2, as is “and no others”, for a three-councillor ward, to get SNP and Green councillors as comfortably two out of three.

For a four-councillor ward, SNP1 and SNP2 only, the quota becomes (for a 3000 vote ballot) 601. SNP turnout is again crucial, as are all 2nd preferences to SNP only. And indeed who is the lead candidate, if any, and are SNP voters to be asked to vote by the voter’s sex for the alternate SNP candidates?

For this scenario, the number of transferable preferences from SNP to Green would become really quite small in % terms and potentially not sufficient to assist the Greens keeping ahead of those going out, until safe in post.

The caveat of course, is that every Ward is different.

Stephen Tingle

Greater Glasgow