Deals with Tories on Scotland's councils will soon bite Labour

What will be the basis for council policies and how will they be decided and implemented without any agreement with both of the right wing parties chairing council committees?

As an example, the Tory government’s desire to bypass the Scottish Government is going to be a significant factor in the funding of all councils in Scotland.

Although Edinburgh is at the bottom of the priority list for direct UK Government funding projects, such as Levelling Up, Tory councillors will presumably want to maximise the amount of direct funding and claim the credit for schemes that will obviously have to be closely aligned with Tory Government policy to have any hope of success in the nationwide competition.

The prognosis is not promising, in the first tranche of awards Edinburgh received funding for refurbishing the old gas holder site in Granton as a tourist attraction over Edinburgh City Council’s higher priority projects of city-wide travel link improvements and building a community hub in Pennywell.

Support from the LibDems will also be required and they have their own distinctive policies and promises to keep on house building, policing, transport and road maintenance in the areas where they have done well in the election.

Anas Sarwar’s ban on coalitions and alliances has put Edinburgh City Council in a ridiculous position, the ruling Labour minority will have to seek support on a motion by motion by basis for the next four years; the real test will come very soon when budget priorities have to be agreed by a majority of the council.

It may not be long before the rebels in the Labour group have to seek assistance from the SNP if Edinburgh City Council is not to be controlled from the head offices of the London based political parties.

John Jamieson

South Queensferry

ANDREW Haddow thinks he might be wrong! (The National Conversation June 6 2022)

And so do I.

Firstly, I don’t know of anyone who suggests that Alex Salmond be president, especially the man himself.

Haddow is a man who believes the news when it tells him that royalty has power which it doesn’t use, and sadly, that Salmond would “burn his fingers”, and all the time the state of great Englandshire burns his fingers with its foodbanks and nationwide poverty and hunger.

But that’s OK, because that nasty Salmond is side lined, and Haddow chooses to ignore the powers the crown has, and uses, to protect its own money, lands and rights, at the expense of Scottish wains and bairns!

I suspect he would forgo Scottish independence altogether if it included the immediate creation of a republic.

Yes, Mr Haddow, you’ve got it wrong and entirely encapsulate the Scottish cringe.

Christopher Bruce

Taynuilt

TRANSPORTATION to Australia is now being resurrected by the UK Tory party, albeit utilising Rwanda, as part of “Getting Brexit Done”.

The long lines of Syrian refugees fleeing Putin’s gassing and strafing, was posterised by UKIP, shoulder to shoulder with the UK Tory Party/UKIP lie, that once footfall was made in the UK, an asylum seeker could not be deported if they were quick enough to purchase a cat. “I kid you not” was Theresa May’s attempt to push the wantonly racist lie.

What perhaps needs to be remembered, is that they probably did not believe it themselves, but understood that the UK electorate as a whole, once primed by their BBC and other media supporters, would be accepting of this lie and vote to generate a hard (impenetrable) border with the EU.

Clans Murdoch, Rothermere, and Barclay, all big Tory Party donors, in cash and in kind, have now had to read the riot act to the Tory Party, to keep their man Mr A Johnson (PM) in place, to ensure an enduring Brexit, and that EU Free Movement, forbidden to make a comeback.

“Brexit opportunities” do indeed exist in the fetid vision of the UK completely deregulating to a free unregulated market, and with other nations all following the UK lead. The price to the UK is the loss of the manufacturing base and food sector, which essentially downsize to a niche market. With such a downsizing there is no longer a requirement for “free movement of labour” from the EU.

Hence the need to keep the racist agenda in the headlines, to force out the manufacturing and food sector base, using the fear of criminal migrant hordes, swamping an already full England.

HS2, will in due course, provide the connectivity to UK airports (mid to south England), required for the envisaged enlarged financial classes, to grasp these notional but unrealisable Brexit opportunities.

Fortunately (in moral terms), the Scottish electorate is better and more broadly educated than the English electorate, and largely eschewed the embedded racism, and mythical financial services opportunism, which was the Tory/UKIP Brexit.

Scotland will no doubt be offered the tripartite indyref2 vision of a Scottish currency, an end to austerity, and EU membership, which are all interdependent, and all required to collaborate with each other, in 2023, by the SNP/Green Party government. The alternative is an even more morally corrupt UK Government, as desired by the less educated English electorate, where hard borders, transportation, homelessness and increased poverty, are still not delivering the Brexit Nirvana. The clearance of those enemies of the English state, could then be deemed to include new UK citizens, and those with dual citizenship, who are not clear about which national team to support.

Stephen Tingle

Greater Glasgow

WELL said Mark Brown – at last someone willing to call out the austerity lies (Why Yes supporters should back train drivers, June 8).

The fact is the working class only has its Labour to offer in exchange for capital.

The useless bosses and ruling capital class only have their cash to exchange for goods and services, provided by the labour of the workers.

It is the RIGHT of any worker to withdraw his or her Labour unless they are fairly paid and treated in exchange for it. The rich Tory capitalists have had it their own way for so long since Tory Tony Blair allowed the labour market to be flooded with cheap labour from eastern Europe.

This forced down wages and conditions and ultimately to Brexit.

It facilitated the gig economy – zero hours contracts, low pay, no holiday pay, no sick leave and awful working conditions.

Now the working class have a chance to rebalance the worker-corporate relationship.

The taxpayers have paid billions of pounds to the likes of Richard Branson and his mates to run our transport very badly and only in their investors’ interests.

We are paying a huge amount for energy to corporations who are making eye watering profits off our backs.

Workers need to reclaim their rights, working conditions and benefits.

The Government can’t have it all ways.

It is time to cap the profits of these corporations and for the Government that we the people vote in as OUR representatives to back the People.

Please stop this idea that any service we have which is making huge profits can’t afford to pay its workers fair wages and give them fair working conditions and benefits.

This neo-con economics is a con trick, along with austerity, and we need to build a much fairer system.

The people of Scotland and the workers all deserve the support of us all.

We have had this unfair situation forced upon us first by Thatcher, whose policies of deregulation brought us mass unemployment destroyed all our manufacturing and industry, and made us slaves to the city of London. leading to the financial crash of 2008. All manufacturing was handed to the globalists who moved it to totalitarian regimes who’s people and workers could be brutally controlled and would not dare ask for fair wages and working conditions.

Basically they would accept the treatment that they failed to impose on the west.

This happened in the USA as well.

Get behind your people Get behind your work force!

Let’s build a better country for us all.

Stop asking where the money is coming from these are all business that can afford to pay wages, if they cant then they are not viable business models.

Stop paying out huge dividends to the one per cent. They are entitled to their FAIR share of the business earnings, but not at the expense of the workers who generate the profits in the first place.

The contributors to The National comments are all against the Tories and Tory policies until the word “unions”, “strike”, “fight for rights”, are mentioned then they slip back into the Sun and Daily Record mode.

The railways need to be in public ownership and they need to be an example of how we can do things much much better.

Democratic Republic of Scotland.

David Soulsby

via thenational.scot

BORN in the USA of foreign and English descent, reared in England and schooled among the most privileged youths on the planet, it is not hard to imagine why Boris Johnson would cast all barriers aside to follow a childhood ambition to be King of the World.

There is of course no such honour, but the attitude to engender such ambition would nevertheless cast aside all barriers toward whatever tickled the fancy of such an individual whether of sexual, financial or career intent.

Going with the flow against Brexit until realisation that the EU was about to restrict tax avoidance by access to overseas tax havens, suddenly the power to be had by promoting Brexit becomes attractive to those of wealth and anyone seeking power.

To the devious mind, as the wealthy seek Brexit, there must be cash on hand to make it happen. Cast all aside and full steam ahead for Brexit. Become the most powerful in government and charge on with no holes barred amid casualties along the way.

However fearful, a global pandemic is the next challenge. Chaos can be handled to provide opportunity, opportunity to gain further wealth and power over others, opportunity to gain allegiance, opportunity to have a bedrock of support, however detested.

Riddled with fantasy and dishonesty, beyond reproach assumption prevails, do as one pleases above the law and untouchable.

Alas, written constitution or no, democracy has trip wires in place.

As the clock ticks, the day of reckoning approaches and there will be no King of the World.

Tom Gray

Braco