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 […]
This issue is our traditional STUC congress themed issue. In it, and in addition to hearing from the STUC itself, we ask the union affiliates of our sister organisation, the Jimmy Reid Foundation, to consider five questions a year after the pandemic began and as we head into the 6 May Scottish Parliament elections. The […]
Larry Flanagan does not pull his punches in laying out what the EIS demands of the Scottish Government. Scottish education, whether it be schools, colleges, or universities, has rarely been far from the headlines throughout the pandemic, which perhaps underlines how critical education is to our communities and, indeed, to society as a whole. The […]
‘Visionaries’ by David McKinstry, Glasgow As winter turned to spring And Churchill’s bombast stilled, The nation turned to quiet Clem Voting for a rebuild. Up went the homes Finally for heroes to fit, Down went the miners Into nationalised pit. Nye valued good health Stuffed doctors’ mouths with gold, As a price worth paying For […]
As we begin 2021, 2020 should be remembered as the year in which politics trumped economics twice – on Brexit and Covid-19. The former was heavily opposed – especially in its harder forms – by the majority of businesses in Britain. The latter saw massive state intervention of the scale that could only have been […]
Nick Kempe outlines the key principles and values that must underpin the reform of care in Scotland. The Scottish Government’s ‘Independent Review of Adult Social Care’, conducted by Derek Feeley, is due to report at the end of January and will ‘include consideration of a National Care Service’ (NCS). The principles upon which such a […]
Living la vida loca lockdown Boris Johnson, for his Tory government, proclaims how ‘incredibly generous’ it is being to those affected by the impact of the lockdown restrictions. Not only is this a barefaced lie – with the added pizzazz that you’d think it was his own (and not taxpayers’) money being ‘given’ out – […]
So, Boris’s near death experience this spring did not bring about any noticeable change of heart in his politics. Those that cared for him, like the hundreds of thousands of other public service workers, were clapped every Thursday for many weeks. Then Johnson’s government decided to slap them with a pay rise that did not […]
Is the left now coming up for air? The left is in one of its classic dilemmas. On the one hand, while the Tories are in office with a substantial majority, the sheen is certainly coming off them – even if Labour has done little to bring this about. And yet, on the other hand, […]
With so much still unknown, Bill Ramsay says the rush to return to school is ill-advised and dangerous When considering Scottish education at this time, it must be borne in mind that the tension between health and economic factors, what I will call the ‘Covid calculus’, is constantly changing. As the ‘Covid calculus’ changes so […]