Dave Watson is the secretary of the Socialist Health Association Scotland. There are plenty of new faces in the Scottish Parliament, but will they make any difference to the nation’s health? Even a pandemic that has killed more than 10,000 people in Scotland and has driven 25,000 to the mental health helpline did not put […]
Iain Ferguson shows why the case for a publicly-owned and controlled care service is unanswerable. On 19 April 2021, BBC Scotland published the Covid-19 deaths by care home in Scotland, based on Crown Office figures. They made grim and tragic reading. Of the 10,000+ Covid-related deaths, around a third – at least 3,400 – occurred […]
Regina Serpa argues the SNP promise of ‘a safe, warm, affordable home’ for all is possible with a pro-independence majority. Skimming the headlines for post-election autopsies, I find only a handful of political analyses that criticise the 2021 Scottish elections as ‘boring’ or ‘zombie’-like, which might be surprising given the lack of campaigning due to […]
Jane Carolan lays out an alternative approach to that offered by the SNP Scottish Government. In the election, employments rights were on the Scottish political agenda. Several party manifestos maintained the policy of Scotland as a country of ‘Fair Work’ and made promises on how that Fair Work agenda could be maintained or even reinforced. […]
David Spaven assesses the likelihood of the future of decent, environmentally transport getting better. Transport is rarely a key factor in national elections in the UK. One has to go back to 1964 – when the Beeching programme of rail cuts was only just getting underway – to find a campaign in which transport was […]
Mike Danson eyes the prospect of cross-party cooperation for a boldly ‘building back better’. As I wrote in Scottish Left Review (Jan/Feb 2021), there is a remarkable degree of consensus across Scotland, its Scottish Government Commissions, STUC, Commonweal, Business for Scotland, the Wellbeing Alliance, think tanks and visionaries as to how we should be planning […]
Let the old and knackered who are within five years of their state retirement age retire early. Their jobs should be ‘swopped’ with an unemployed person under the age of 25. Such a scheme is likely to be cost neutral as the extra cost of paying early state pension is offset by the reduction in […]
Mick Rice considers a new way to skin this Tory tiger on work and employment. With Tory Brexiteers dreaming of turning Britain into a laissez faire paradise, the labour movement needs new strategies to defend worker rights. Already, uber Brexiteers are signaling that they wish to abolish the EU working time directive (notwithstanding that the […]
Jonathan Deans casts an eye down south to survey a climate of political unaccountability. For many months, Scottish politics was engrossed with the inquiry into the Scottish Government’s handling of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations against Salmond. The connected Hamilton inquiry also investigated whether Sturgeon had breached the Scottish Ministerial Code by knowingly misleading Parliament […]
Chris Sutherland assesses a major advance for having a balanced definition of anti-Semitism. So many column inches have been written on the 2016 ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’ (IHRA) definition on anti-Semitism with 7 of its 11 accompanying examples proscribing criticism of the state of Israel. Across the media, including the liberal media (BBC, Guardian), it’s […]