Fear and Panic in Scotland, SNP failed to invest in educating the country now there is a chronic skills shortage, their solution for a decade of failure blame Brexit and demand separate immigration system citing need for ‘skilled’ doctors and other white collar professionals, SNP have dumbed-down Scotland for political reasons to further their own ends, Scots need to start realise the Nationalists are holding everyone back

Dear All

One of the lies of remain campaign that you were continuously fed is that immigration is a good thing, it is in part right. We all recognise the need to have skilled workers such as medics and IT professionals into today’s digital age; the question to be asked is why aren’t we producing these people to cover our needs?

Who is responsible for not covering our needs?

What reason do they have for not planning for Scotland’s future?

The Scottish National Party has failed at education for over 10 years, they have failed to produce the right calibre of person in universities and colleges because of cuts, cuts and more cuts. They have failed at primary and secondary school level leaving Scotland with a dumbed- down population so that they could make the case for immigration.

The SNP have effectively curtailed aspiration for working class kids from housing schemes, every now and then in the press, you read about a ‘schemie’ who wants to be a doctor of medicine but some cruel Scottish University Medical School wouldn’t accept her. The reason they publish these types of stories is happy ever after, after getting a knockback from somewhere like Glasgow University, a uni down south accepts the person.

The fact that this story makes the press should interest you, not the happy ever after bit, the back story, this is the more important bit, questions like why the person was discriminated against, why no one is ever outed and why those who discriminate never lose their jobs.

In the current political climate, you are effectively asked to believe that things just happened now!

No one knew that these events were about to unfold, despite so called intelligent people being placed high up in academia. Brexit never caused the chronic skills shortage in Scotland, decades of education failure did, yes, I said decades plural because the same policies of intransigence were enacted by previous administrations of the Scottish government.

Everyone knows that discrimination is practiced in universities, but the cosy relationship between Universities and Government ensures that the disadvantaged remain disadvantaged while mouthing off about their concerns about increasing the numbers of people from the poorest backgrounds.

So, we have lots of working class kids who have no skills in the job market, so the employers struggle to recruit skilled professionals that are needed in key sectors such as medicine and IT. And business being what it is will look elsewhere, but what employers don’t like is uncertainty, using the immigration route is therefore a quick fix to solve an immediate problem, not a long term solution for Scotland. Scotland needs and must produce home grown talent, yes, we also need to draw in skilled professionals because in White-collar professions to remain cutting edge, the sectors must be dynamic especially in areas like medicine in which the ‘world of knowledge’ is very much global based. While at uni I lost count of the number of times the medic crowd I used to know would tell me of trotting off to conferences, short courses and seminars as part of their rolling education programmes.

A lot of nonsense has been said about Brexit, opposition parties have used fear to plant in the minds of Europeans working in our health sector that they are endanger of losing their jobs, careers and homes.

Brexit wasn’t about kicking out foreigners, it was about sovereignty; immigration was a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. No one from Europe or the wider community beyond working in our NHS should or indeed has anything to fear especially not for their jobs. Whether you voted Leave or Remain, these people are more than welcome in the UK; in fact they are valued for their dedication, because that is one of the great things the NHS has produced, a great service and great staff.

The Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) says that more than 80 per cent of businesses face a digital skills shortage. Whose fault is that, is it the ordinary Scot, is it the fault of business; is it the Scottish Government’s fault? There is well developed networking between business and government, but what is the networking between business and ordinary people?

Job ads?

It isn’t just medicine and IT which has a problem, there is also one in construction, one of my family is in construction, he tells me that after a lifetime doing his trade, the number of ‘dumb bastards’ he meets who are effectively ‘chancers’ passing themselves off as tradesmen is incredible, and the incentive of £15 to £18 hr is very tempting. Not for me, I couldn’t hammer a nail into a piece of wood, I am hands up pretty hopeless, I couldn’t even pass myself off as a chancer, although I would be in pig heaven if I was getting £18 an hour. Plus my brother doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and I couldn’t deal with the stress of being called a useless c*nt all day.

If God had wanted me in construction, he would have given me a tape measure and the ability to lay out sizes.

The most important thing that any country can do is heavily invest in education for its population, if there is a disconnect you end up with a situation where deep social divides emerge which in turn create other problems. The issues of the decline of heavy industry in Scotland in the 1980’s produced huge social problems which are still felt by the ripples of time, whole families thrown on the scrapheap for generations. For some Scots, the path to personal recession has last decades, the fact that others make share their misery is not much comfort to these people.

The quick fix suggested to ‘fix’ the skills shortage is that Scotland should have a different immigration system from the rest of the UK, this is SNP policy which the Scottish Chambers of Commerce is now running with as proposal. That said, however, there is already a mechanism to get essential skilled workers in place by Westminster which begs the question, as a remedy already exists, why a different immigration system?

The answer has to be ….. cheap labour, a scheme to further undercut the legs of the working class and further close down social mobility, as I once blogged, when people have no future, there is no tomorrow.

To clarify that Brexit really isn’t the cause of all ills, Kevin Green, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said:

“Many are reporting an increasing number of white-collar jobs as hard to fill, including in the IT and financial sectors. “Shortages of appropriately skilled, willing and able candidates was a problem before the [Brexit] referendum.”

The key bit to home in on was a problem before the [Brexit] referendum, then he goes on to say:

“Our concern is Brexit will make the problem worse, particularly if onerous restrictions are imposed on people coming from the EU to work.”

What facts can he used to make his assumption that onerous restrictions are to be imposed on people coming from the EU to work?

At present, zero, it’s all a guess, and as the old saying goes, there is nothing to worry about until there is something to worry about, and in the mean time, the business community can lobby since they are funding the mainstream political parties.

Now that Scotland is the highest taxed part of the UK, this represents the biggest threat to private business, other than Brexit, and once the SNP get hooked into fleecing people on a regular basis real problems will focus minds not make believe of ‘could’, ‘might’ or ‘maybe’ and certainly no tawdry scheme to get a separate immigration system will be tolerated.

That idea has already been trash compacted at Westminster.

Jeremy Peat, visiting professor at Strathclyde University’s International Public Policy Institute, said:

“I have heard anecdotally from universities and other organisations they are now finding it much more difficult to recruit from overseas because of the uncertainties over how long people would be able to stay”.

Could it be that in other countries they too are taking the same dumbed-down approached to education and therefore the academic pool is getting smaller?

When the pool gets smaller, people are then forced to start paying top dollar to get people, although in medicine, people are willing to take a hit to get the experience in the short term.

Peat added:

“Already, London has a dramatically higher percentage of immigrants in the workforce and Scotland has had a relatively small percentage, so there can be permits that can be introduced for specific jobs.”

The use of the ‘skilled worker’ to make is a case is well known, it is as they say the thin end of the wedge and beyond that is an attempt to open the floodgates.

The SNP take on this comes from the laughing unimaginative Employability Minister Jamie Hepburn he said that Scotland’s labour market “remains resilient despite the uncertainty created by the UK’s vote to leave the EU.”

Meaningless drivel and not a word about the SNP failure to educate!

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University