If you are being asked to ditch Labour for Tories and Lib-Dems, you should surely be asking questions of the people asking.

It is an indictment of the depths today’s politics have sunk to that people can bizarrely display banners and t-shirts claiming Jeremy Corbyn is a racist despite 40 years of hard evidence - publicly available - that he is not.

It is even more bizarre that the same people appear to be telling us that the positive alternative is Johnson - someone who has amassed a host of publicly available evidence over the years of racially charged sound-bites drooling off his tongue at will.

What to think about the ‘named person’ scheme?

(First published in the Morning Star on 3 Sept 2019)
In a 40 year social work career, I don’t think I’ve come across legislation more controversial than the Named Person scheme in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act. 

 You know it’s controversial when it is attacked jointly by a Christian group that’s anti-abortion, the Manifesto Club, and a left wing social work writer, all under same NO2NP banner.

To be fair, part of the controversy is the complexity of sharing information about a child, a key criticism in most inquiries into the deaths of children.

Inequality is the most pressing issue of our time

First published in the Morning Star on 21 May 2019. I am of an age when younger comrades (and indeed offspring) feel free to berate me about the mess my generation is leaving them in. While it makes for lively conversation, I have to quietly, and often silently, admit they might be right.

They have a case when it comes to “levels of inequality that disfigure our society” cited by the Institute of Employment Rights at the launch of a consultation on a Charter of Workers’ Rights for Scotland at the Scottish Trades Union Congress in April.

On the occasion of retiring from social work

Beautifully written by my daughter Seonaid Stevenson on her train journey through to my social work leaving party on 15 March 2019 - and much appreciated.

When I was wee
My Dad asked me what I wanted to be
When I grew up.

I said I wanted to work in a cafe,
And if I couldn’t do that… then I’d just be a Social Worker.

Like Dad.

Retirement speech UNISON Edinburgh AGM 2019

Can I just say thank you to a few people who have been important to me since I first became a branch officer in NALGO in 1982.

I need to mention figures like John Wilson, NUPE branch secretary that went on to be Depute Lord Provost.

And Rab Amos who became active in UNISON but who I first met working to support him and his comrades in the NUM during the miners' strike of 1984/85.

From huge figures like Michael McGahey who I never managed to persuade I wasn't called Tom.

Leave or remain, our goal must be a socialist government

(First appeared in the Morning Star 22 Jan 2019) In the topsy-turvy world that is Scottish politics we have a left that wants to leave the EU and stay in the UK, one that wants to leave the UK and stay in the EU, one that wants Brexit and independence, and another that wants to stay in both Europe and the UK.

Strangely, elements of the right have many of these positions too, albeit for different reasons.