Scotland cannot magic up more money to pay striking workers

As a pensioner, living on state pension, I am recognised as living below the poverty level, but my annual pension increase last April was 3.1%. That pushed me even further into poverty and is nowhere near the percentage figures they have been offered. I further understand that the rise they will receive is going to be above £2000.00, That works out at £40.00 per week and that’s something like 31% of my total pension. My pension rise amounted to £3.09 per week. That’s a whole £160.68 for the year. Not even one tenth of what they’ve been offered.

These people must understand that there is a worldwide financial crisis at the moment, and the Scottish Government can’t just magic money up out of fresh air. We have to get by on whatever of our own taxes the Scrooges at Westminster decide to give us back. Make no mistake. It’s our money that they receive in Scottish taxes and they decide how much of our own money we are allowed to have. We are all having to pull the belt in a bit at the moment because of the austerity emanating from London. It was first introduced by Maggie Thatcher and has been getting worse since then.

Since two NHS workers’ unions have already realised this and accepted the rises given by the Scottish Government – which are considerably higher than those offered in England – GMB members should do the same. Quite frankly, if they now decide to come out on strike, I for one will not be supporting them.

If I were Nicola Sturgeon, I would tell them straight that there is no other money available, and if they don’t like it, they can lump it! I would further tell them that strikes will not get them any more money. It will just cost them money from loss of wages. Then I would let them get on with it and use whatever means available to lessen the effect of their actions and thereby protect the other workers who have accepted the current offer.

Greed should not be rewarded.

Charlie Kerr
Glenrothes

SOME of our elected politicians seem to think that they have been given the authority, by their access to public media, to say that our mail, rail and nursing staff are somehow in the wrong to exercise their right to withdraw their own labour in pursuit of a wage that gets close to the current (10+%) inflation that is slashing their incomes.

Privileged politicians seem to forget that these workers are members of the public whose own families are also inconvenienced while they have no alternative but to strike and lose wages.

Norman Lockhart
Innerleithen

LAMENTING the proposed end of what he calls “historic and enduring links between the Crown, Church, and Parliament”, the bishop of St Albans, Alan Smith, has shrilly condemned the Labour Party’s call for the House of Lords, complete with its unelected bishop’s bench, to be replaced with an elected second chamber.

In his vainglorious description, he forgets that the Church of England represents one sect of one minority religion in one country of the UK which is now attended by fewer than 2% of English people.

The nearest country to the UK to have unelected clerics sitting in government is Iran and The C of E knows its jacket is on a shooglie peg.

What a seasonal time of year to coin the old adage, “Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas”.

Neil Barber
Edinburgh Secular Society

IN the words of the great English Nationalist folk hero, with a Welsh name, Enoch Powell famously said, “Power devolved is power retained”. And we have never been allowed to forget it. We are reminded every day at the despatch box in the “Smother of Parliaments” of the contempt they have for our elected representatives in that place.

The devolved parliament was first set up by Donald Dour in an old brewery site, down in a gully, to kill independence stone dead. The triple millionaire with three big hooses designed the De Haunted voting system to keep the SNP out of parliament. If he wis alive today, he would turn over in his grave. His Unionist disciple, Lord McConnell, handed the surplus of Holyrood’s pocket money back to his Lord and Masters in London. Forget about how that money was needed here, or what it could have been used for.

As first minister, Jack McConnell was rewarded with a pat oan the heid and an ermine coat wi’ nae knickers. Unlike the original Can Can, who danced knickerless for the Revolution, to the tune of Orpheus and the Underworld, his coalition Lib-Lab Unionist government danced to a royalist tune in a far-flung foreign field in England’s Queen and Peasant Land. There is an old Celtic belief that when a man dies in a foreign land his soul returns by the Low Road. Hence the Jacobite Lady Nairn’s song of a Jacobite sojer, about to be hung in Carlyle Castle, whose escaped brother took the High Road. Just when you thought that Labour could not get any lower on the gravy train to London, the rebellious Scots uncrushed took all their London seats bar one on the Road to Independence.

It took an English court to squash any notions of being equal partners in a loveless marriage. Never mind English Brexiteers needing permission to leave a real Union. Never mind the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 “defending” the right of all nations to self-determination. Engerland has come home to change the rules again.

John Maclean, who founded the Scottish Workers’ Republican Party before the SNP were born, supported the STUC who reminded Woodrow Wilson that Scotland was definitely a nation. MacLean left the Social Democratic Party after its aristocratic leader, Hyndman, supported the First World War and a stronger Royal Navy. Maclean was appointed Soviet Consul in Scotland by Lenin and the Bolsheviks and had a street named after him.

Will we honour him on the 100th anniversary of his death on St Andrew’s Day, November 30, 2023? I have written to the Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government for help on this. Maybe a statue, plaque, in Shawbridge Square, where we built a cairn to him in 1973, can be renamed after him – John Maclean Square? Celtic Connections will do its best with a concert with Jim McLean’s revived Scottish Republican songs about him.

At this stage, the current “S”TUC has very, very few Scottish unions left, apart from the teaching unions – mainly the EIS – because of the separate education system. The STUC’s team have left the building and moved from the old school building in Woodlands Rd, Glasgow, to a wee office up a close in the Toon Centre, where less people can bother them. The only union that worried the three English Nationalist Tory parties was the Union of 1707.

Are we about to rebel or please our masters with more and more splits?

Donald Anderson

Glasgow

IN presenting his Budget, Deputy First Minister John Swinney MSP stamped out any past reference of the SNP being “Tartan Tories”. Mr Swinney presented a Budget reflecting the season of goodwill, and retaining Scotland’s reputation of having the most progressive tax regime in the UK.

Mr Swinney not only reached out to hard-working families on low incomes with the tax changes, he also reached out to businesses by freezing business rates.

Opposition parties in the Holyrood chamber were full of criticism – that’s easy when you are not having to make the decisions.

The Conservatives took great pleasure in hammering the point that Scotland has the highest tax rates in the UK, but failed to point out that the lowest earners in Scotland pay less tax than their counterparts in the rest of the UK – it is called progressive taxation.

For those considering a move south in light of Scotland’s tax rates, they may want to consider some expenses they may incur for essential services: prescription charges (£9.25/item), tuition charges (£9250/term), no free bus travel for under-22s in England, no Child Payment of £25/week for eligible under-16s in England, no free personal care for all who require it regardless of age. Clear examples of a socially just and progressive government.

All delivered while Scotland has no borrowing powers and has taken a £1.7 billion hit to her budget as a result of current inflation – inflation aggravated by the policies of a Westminster government who crashed the economy.

Catriona C Clark

Banknock

The SNP, either by skilful design, or accident, or a bit of both, have now clearly demonstrated through the English Supreme Court and the English Parliament that Scotland’s legal and political road to independence through Westminster is not available. Either the English love us too much to let us go, or they are desperate to hold on to our resources.

Like myself, I don’t think many Scots will be surprised by that. However, it does mean that we have to change our political strategy if we want to secure our independence and demonstrate this to the world.

If we accept that the Scottish people are sovereign in Scotland, and have been for centuries, then we do not need to ask others to accept this – we just have to accept it ourselves. If this is true, then the English Supreme Court’s pronouncement that the Scottish Parliament is a creation of the Westminster Parliament and all its authority and powers come from the Westminster parliament, is wrong.

The Scottish Parliament’s existence and its powers were created by the votes of the Scottish people, and it is the sovereign Scottish people who give authority to the Scottish Parliament, not the Westminster parliament.

The Supreme Court avoided addressing the Scottish people’s involvement in the process by using the English definition of sovereignty and completely ignoring the Scottish people, which by this definition are merely subjects of the crown with no say in the matter.

Now, the Scottish people and the Scottish Government can’t accept this “feudal” vision of sovereignty being imposed on us in the 21st century.

If we are going to take back our sovereign power effectively, we must first challenge this directly.

We must assert that sovereignty in Scotland rests with the people and that the decision by the Scottish people to establish a parliament and to give that parliament tax-raising power is the sovereign base of the Scottish Parliament’s authority.

If we feel the need to have this confirmed by the people, the Scottish Government should force a Scottish election and ask the people if the Scottish Parliament is to represent the Scottish people, or if the Westminster Parliament should represent them.

If the people vote for candidates standing on that basis, then the issue is settled – the Scottish Government can then proceed with re-negotiation of the Treaty of Union with our separate but “friendly” neighbours in the rest of the UK.

Andy Anderson

Ardrossan