Thursday, June 27, 2013

John Swinney plays politics with public sector pay as Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party try and build public sector ‘vote caches’ for indy campaign, won’t work, but the end result is further cuts to services and budgets in Scotland

















Dear All

There is a campaign for Scottish independence on the go.

It maybe a botched campaign, a failed campaign, a campaign on its knees, but Alex Salmond is still trying to see if Scots will back him.

What the ‘jolly fat man’ of Scottish politics fails to realize is that the independence campaign is fact already over; the major battle of the mindset of Scots has already been fixed.

The answer is No!

It’s No yesterday, No today and still No on the 18th September 2014.

As part of the ‘bribe’ culture that the Scottish National Party is running, most noticeably with the bedroom tax, Scottish workers are to be tempted by John Swinney, who just  might not follow George Osborne's controversial move to end automatic annual pay rises for the thousands of public-sector workers.

The promise of ‘jam today’ but the reality further down the line is that the jam is going to be removed elsewhere.

The idea is quite simple, the SNP hope to try and create ‘vote caches’ by a temporary measure to protect the living standards of Scotland's 570,000 civil servants, teachers, nurses, prison officers and police officers.

The other part of the idea is to try and set a mood that there clear political water between Holyrood and Westminster in the run-up to the September 2014 independence referendum.

But what is given with one hand will certainly be taken away with the other, and that means cuts to services and cuts to budgets.

People at the bottom of society, the most disadvantaged will be worse off, their waiting times for help will increase or it could be the services they depend on will simply be phased out or scaled back drastically. The public sector would be buying into a pig in a poke, their workloads would dramatically increase.

And it would come as yet to unknown cost to the taxpayer in Scotland.

Down in Sunny England, George Osborne is heading towards what we have seen in Spain, Greece, Italy, and in a host of other countries around the globe, protests in the streets, think ‘winter of discontent’ but running all year round.

The Tories are on a collision course with millions of public-sector workers across Britain by planning to cut another 144,000 jobs in 2015/16.

If they think this will see them into another term, it is barmy thinking, the gag of national unity government with the Lib Dems taking the flak as Tories stand back and use them as a human sandbags is wearing thin.

In his Commons statement on his spending review yesterday, Mr Osborne said continuing austerity would see another £11.5 billion shaved off UK Government spending for the 2015 election year.

We are all in this together is exactly true, UKIP, the new kid on the block will possibly do well, the worse things get, the more people will be looking for someone to blame. If you are a Tory MP in Westminster, you must rightly fear for your seat at this point.

As to John Swinney, his line when asked if he would follow suit in his September was:

“We'll set out our approach to public sector pay in the budget as we always do but when you are undergoing a process of public-sector reform it's important to take your employees with you."

The question becomes how is this paid for, cut to services, cuts to budgets and people not being replaced, less staff equals more work, it isn’t going to be nirvana at the work place.

Trade unions have been quick to brand the Coalition's move to end automatic pay "nasty", "deeply unfair" and "scapegoating" public sector workers.

And they are right, banking brought the West to its knees but the people responsible not only have committed the crimes, but they have also gotten away with ‘the loot’.

As part of the spending review for 2015/16, Osborne announced these measures:

A new welfare cap to include a range of benefits but not the state pension;
Stripping expatriate pensioners in warm countries of the right to claim winter fuel payments;
New rules on benefits such as a seven-day wait before claiming and producing a CV;
Ensuring 100,000 non-English speaking claimants take up language lessons with the state picking up the £100 million annual bill.

The Chancellor claims the UK was "moving out of intensive care and from rescue to recovery", what the questions remain about the ‘quality of life’ for the many.

Spending plans for 2015/16; which see some Government Departments face another 10% cut in their budget;, this cannot continue to go on.

Some areas have been spared such as schools and the NHS in England, overseas aid and the intelligence services.

Ed Balls, Labour Shadow Chancellor, said the new round of cuts represented a "comprehensive failure" of the Coalition's economic strategy, saying:

"This out-of-touch Chancellor has failed on living standards, growth and the deficit, and families and businesses are paying the price for his failure."

How many people must be sick of ping pong politics, it is time that people took their vote and moved it elsewhere so that they actually get elected representatives that do represent them.

How many times do we have to go through the cycle of boom and bust followed by attacks on the public sector?

One thing is certain, although George Osborne clearly enjoys fucking it into the poor under the cover of austerity, he might be laughing on the other side of his face, if people say vote UKIP. 

And UKIP is able to tap into their voter base.

As to any proposed ‘standing up for Scottish workers’ crap, there is an independence campaign still on which is running on fumes, post 214, watch out for a remarkable change of  “it's important to take your employees with you” by the SNP....... just fade away!

Austerity is set to continue!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

1 comment:

  1. Another day, more assertions, more manure.

    ReplyDelete