Time to take back Labour’s clothes and rebuild from our core socialist values

You know, however difficult I find the euphoria of my friends who support the SNP, at a time when all I can think of is that as a country – and we are still part of the UK – we have voted in a majority Tory government for the next five years, I can’t and don’t criticise them.

I found it hard to take the day after the election, when all I could see, and what still consumes me, is the impact on the poor, the vulnerable, immigrants and working people of another five years of rule by a party that cares little for those groups other that as a source of cheap labour, and has presided over the mass transfer of wealth from the rest of us to the very rich.

I really don’t know how it happened that the Tories got in with a majority, but I am unwilling to set the blame at the door of the SNP and find it hard to take from many SNP supporters  – without much evidence – that it can be laid entirely at Labour’s door.

Don’t believe Tory lies – Let’s kick them out and rediscover our country's compassion and humanity

Lies, damn lies and statistics!  That phrase always pops into my mind whenever I hear a Tory/Lib Dem politician justify their policies over the past five years in government.

I know that I am biased because I want to live in a country where there is social justice and greater equality, where everyone is treated with respect, and where the rich don’t become obscenely wealthy on the backs of the rest of us and particularly the poorest.

A country where families and the most vulnerable don’t have to rely on the charity of others to survive and where food banks are not the fastest growing industry.

A country where health care is still available to everyone free at the point of need, and is well enough staffed with compassionate, well paid and well treated professionals so that the quality of service matches or surpasses the service that those rich enough to afford private health care get.

A country which values the public services that we all use and that some of us provide, and recognises their significant importance for all of us who use them but also for the economy as a whole. After all, public servants pay their taxes, shop and buy in their local communities, and use their local trades people, keeping their businesses in work.

But biased or not, I am sick of hearing the lies that pop out of the mouths of certain politicians as easily as breathing. Ruth Davidson, Leader of the Scottish Tories,  has particularly irritated me over recent days. So, there are fewer children growing up in workless households are there Ruth? And she says it as if it is a great thing that her government has achieved. Well, maybe it is from her perspective. But, how does it fit with the increasing numbers of children growing up in poverty WHO LIVE IN WORKING HOUSEHOLDS? With parents for whom work DOESN’T pay –  low waged and dependent on government top ups and the charity of food banks.

Social justice – rhetoric or reality?

I like Nicola Sturgeon. I really do. I like her clear focus on social justice and her willingness to make that part of the political vocabulary again. During the UNISON referendum hustings I asked her a question about child poverty and she told me that she was passionate about ending poverty – that it was her passion for social justice that had brought her into politics. Good to hear!

What puzzles me though, is why the SNP Government over the past few years – years in which Nicola has been deputy first minister - has persisted in policies which run counter to a social justice agenda. Why they have continued with a Council Tax freeze which, although electorally popular, has been shown to benefit the richest rather than the most vulnerable, who are most dependent on public services; why they have cut college places, a route out of poverty for many children from working class and poorer backgrounds; why they have voted again and again against including the living wage in procurement?

Maybe there’s a limit to what you can do as a deputy. From the trade union responses to Nicola’s statement it is clear that they are prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt – to take her at her word. It would be churlish not to do the same.

Ordinary people standing in solidarity with Gaza - Stories from the Aberdeen protests

As we gathered for the third Saturday in a row to stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza, to mourn the deaths and injuries of so many Palestinian people, so many children, a woman came up to me, with tears in her eyes. “I need to do something about this,” she said. “Tell me what I can do.”

She had been out shopping and had stopped to listen to the speakers at the protest. Speakers like Ibrahim, who grew up in Gaza with family still there, like June, of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, who read out a poem written earlier that week by a young mother living in Gaza, who got a phone call from “someone who knew my name” warning her family that their home would be bombed and to leave; speakers like seasoned trade unionist, Brian, who wept when he heard of the killing earlier that week of the four little boys playing football on the beach.

“I didn’t know,” she said, “Tell me what I can do.”