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A repository for reports, opinions and bits of writing on labour, trade union and other issues by a union activist and retired social worker.

Saturday 17 September 2016

People's Assembly Scotland: Unite to defend local services

Speech seconding Tom Morrison's motion at the People's Assembly Scotland conference 17 September 2016. Motion below...

With the last of the Edinburgh Labour councillors who won power in 1984 about to stand down, I’m reminded of their slogan at the time proudly painted on the side of council vehicles: “Improving Services, Creating Jobs”. That seems like a hundred years ago now.

Tens of thousands of jobs have been cut in Scottish local government. We have not lost a vast army of bureaucrats, we have lost people.

Tuesday 30 August 2016

More power for the people of Scotland? Don’t hold your breath

With a £15 billion deficit revealed in the Scottish government’s own figures last week, it may seem a bit odd to argue that the problems public services face are not just about money.

Funding is of course critical but so is accountability.

Does anyone remember subsidiarity? Those of us campaigning for a Scottish Parliament in the 1990s certainly do.

We campaigned for a subsidiarity that would see services organised and governed as close to the people as possible because we feared a sucking up of locally controlled services — no matter which party won power in the first parliament — into a central monolith.

We wanted a real parliament, not a pan-Scotland local authority taking over local functions. We clearly didn’t succeed.

Tuesday 15 March 2016

Social work on the brink

This first appeared in the Morning Star on 15/3/16: My name is John and I’m a social worker. There I’ve said it. After all it is World Social Work Day (15 March).

It used to be that when you were asked about your job, you would say ‘I work for the council’. It’s perhaps a reaction to the false media portrayal of council staff as a pile of lazy pen-pushers that more colleagues are now proudly confessing their social work identity.

That’s the problem when you are trying to defend local services. People don’t always know the range of essential services councils provide. When they actually need one of those services, they find resources are cut to the bone.

Wednesday 6 January 2016

Unionist and Nationalist labels stifling Left or Right debate in Scotland

I am bravely going to carry on eating the occasional Tunnocks tea cake. I know. I have no moral fibre. On the other hand I have tried to avoid using Stagecoach buses because of their predatory practices and their homophobic founder (and SNP bankroller), and I have had some success.

But I have failed miserably in refusing to watch the fitba on Sky despite Alex Salmond’s cosiness with Rupert Murdoch (oh, and Murdoch’s dislike for unions, democracy and all that namby-pamby liberal nonsense). I still recklessly watch Bond movies despite the fact that Shir Sean was born just along the road from me and backs independence for a country he doesn’t want to live in. I even speak to (and occasionally accept drinks from) my mates who unfathomably voted Yes in the referendum.