Dear All
“U-turn if you want to, the lady’s not for
turning”.
Margaret Thatcher.
Fast forward and now we have Tory leader
Ruth Davidson.
Apparently she is for turning; however the
wisdom can be questioned.
The Scottish Conservative and Unionist
Party has for the last 20 years going down the pan.
They can’t get many people elected, their
membership is mostly elderly, their direction is wrong; their policies don’t help
people at the bottom of society.
And they continually wonder why they can’t
get elected, they are stuck in a time warp, Scotland hates Tories.
That is the problem, and that is the
situation that must be addressed, how to win back people.
20 years of dying at the ballot box.
On election night 2011, one of the loudest
cheers in the SECC was when Ruth Davidson won a seat on the Glasgow list, that
isn’t an achievement.
No Tory Candidate came even close to win a
first past the post seat in Glasgow.
Ruth Davidson has turned, she will today
argue for increased powers for Holyrood beyond the current Calman proposals.
And she wants to campaign to lower taxes
and cut public spending.
She won’t do well at the ballot box,
although people like paying less tax and cutting public spending, there is a realisation
that services must be provided for all, and that costs money.
Ms Davidson is now standing on ground; that
Murdo Fraser previously trod on, which prompted Murdo to send mocking messages to
her.
Murdo Fraser wanted to radically change the
Tories by scrapping the party and setting up a new party, the Tory brand in
Scotland he saw as toxic.
But the Tories need more than a name change,
because to get anywhere they need the working class of Scotland, and so far despite
a lot of talk, they still remain and are seen as an anti working class party
who care more for the rich than the poor.
Bedroom tax!
Seen as a ‘great idea’ by the Tory
faithful, when it makes them completely publicly unelectable in the mainly ‘urban
islands’, that’s cities and towns to you and me.
Her Edinburgh speech said:
"New powers over tax should mean one
thing: tax rates being reduced and the burden of tax being lifted for every
Scottish family. We've already set out our proposal for a 1p cut in income tax
for Scottish families, and new powers over tax in Scotland could let us go
further."
Window dressing, did the SNP’s penny for
Scotland work?
No!
Why would she think this would work now is
beyond me, for a politician, you think they would be more smart.
Here is some more of her stuff:
"My experience of the Scottish
Parliament is there are too many members whose sole concern is how money should
be spent. There are politicians who have little or no concern for those who
generate the money in the first place – the over-burdened and under-appreciated
Scottish taxpayer. Politicians who regard taxpayers' money as theirs by right,
not hard-earned cash they take on trust to spend on the people of Scotland's
behalf. Politicians who take no responsibility for difficult decisions and palm
blame off on those who do."
She added:
"We will examine the mix of taxes best
suited to achieving that goal, but the principle is clear. If you spend the
public's money, then you must be accountable to the public both for how it is
spent and how it is raised.
"The devolution of new powers over
taxation to the Scottish Parliament means it would be the responsibility of the
parliament to use those powers in the best interests of the Scottish
people."
Ruth Davidson makes a lot of speeches, and
her ideas don’t connect with ordinary people, what she fails to realise is that
in the main, people don’t give a shit what she does in parliament, they are
looking at the end product.
If the Scottish Tories think this will
return them to fortune, they are sadly mistaken; it is almost like looking at
people who don’t want to get elected.
In a nutshell, the Scottish Tories are seen
as people who kick the working class in face, and then can’t understand why the
same people don’t vote for them.
I have just taken off my ‘kicking you in
the face hat’ and now I am wearing my ‘standing for election hat!’
Scottish voters tend to wear their 'long memory hat'.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
No comments:
Post a Comment