Iraq success???????

I sent a letter off to the Evening News last week following a report that British military chiefs were so happy with the ‘success’ of their mission in Iraq that they plan to bring home half the troops by May – I kid you not!
This ‘success’ will come as a surprise to anyone who recalls that more than 120 soldiers have been killed there. It will also come as somewhat of a surprise to hear the illegal occupation of a foreign land described this way so soon after Sir Richard Dannatt the General in charge of the British troops decry the tactics and strategy and presence in Iraq just last week. Dannatt demanded a recognition that the British were hated, losing the battle for hearts and minds and desperately lacked an exit strategy. Well now they have one, namely dress up the campaign so far as a success and get the hell out as quickly as possible.

Letter published in Edinburgh Evening News

Bring the troops in Iraq back home
THE report in Evening News quoting military chiefs claiming British troop operations had been such a success that half the soldiers stationed there could be home early next year almost made me laugh. I say almost because this is Iraq and there is nothing funny about the deadly failure of British military and political policy there.
If there is talk in the Ministry of Defence about withdrawing the troops - and I expect they are discussing little else - then let us not insult the intelligence of the Scottish public by falling for government propaganda. The situation in Iraq is, as the head of the army General Sir Richard Dannatt admitted, a complete disaster.
Anyone who heard John Humphries reports from Basra this week on Radio Four will surely understand how hated and despised the US and UK troops now are in the eyes of the Iraqi people. Basra was supposed to be in the "safe south" of Iraq, well away from Baghdad and the treacherous "Sunni triangle". But now Humphries - himself hardly an arch-critic of government policy these last four years - reveals that British troops cannot be moved in and out of the city other than in the dead of night, that soldiers travel in daylight only in convoys of heavily armoured bullet proof personnel carriers and perhaps most tellingly of all he uncovers the fact that the military top brass have not ventured out of their Basra Palace HQ in many months.
All that doesn't sound like much of a success to me. More like an utterly disastrous and internationally isolated plan which has not only failed to make the world a safer place but has tarnished Britain's reputation worldwide.
The answer needed here is to bring all the troops home now and recognise that the military occupation of a sovereign country, one we knew far too little about, was a grievous error which only a fool could describe as a "success".

Colin Fox MSP, Scottish Socialist Party National Convener, Scottish Parliament

Colin on picket line with Mackinnon Mills workers

S2M-5074 Colin Fox (Lothians) (SSP): Closure of Solectron, Dunfermline

That the Parliament condemns the decision by Solectron to close its Dunfermline facility with the loss of 480 jobs; considers Solectron to be a company which, on the one hand commends the workforce for its excellent performance, efficiency and profitability but then on the other hand effectively delivers a slap in the face to that workforce just before Christmas; believes that this is another blow to Fife’s manufacturing base, and further believes that, rather than finding them alternative employment and retraining, the Scottish Executive should support the staff of Solectron by keeping this profitable factory open and retain this asset to the Scottish economy.

QUESTION PUT TO PARLIAMENT

S2W-29672 - Colin Fox (Lothians) (SSP) (Date Lodged 7 November 2006) : To ask the Scottish Executive when it first learned of Solectron’s plans to close its factory in Dunfermline.

Free school meals campaign goes from strength to strength

Last Saturday SSP campaigners were out on Princes Street gathering support for our bill to introduce healthy nutritious free school meals for all Scotland's children.
- One in three youngsters in Scotland are growing up in poverty [these are the governments own figures] and as bad as that is in a wealthy little country like ours the fact is that less than half of them qualify for free school meals. And to make matters worse many of those who do qualify refuse to eat them because of the stigma of them being ‘only for poor kids’ as they see it. All of this means that many many children in Scotland go without the healthy start that they need and eat a much poorer diet.
- 16% of children admitted to Edinburgh’s Sick Kids hospital last year showed signs of malnutrition. Can you believe that in a city as rich as this one that our children do not get enough to eat or are eating all the wrong things.
- Consequential to eating all the wrong , cheaper things is that childhood obesity rates are spiralling out of control.
These are just some of the problems our Bill seeks to solve. The Free School Meals Bill would guarantee every child a hot nutritious free school meal every day. If it is available to everyone then no child will be left behind – that’s the great benefit of universal provision, long an important socialist principle.
As part of the SSP’s campaign a series of public meetings have been arranged throughout Scotland in the coming 3 months.
The Bill is now in front of the scrutinising committees in the Scottish Parliament and will be debated in full in early January. The important thing now is to rachet up the pressure on MSP’s from all parties to support the Bill.

Executive prescription charges report due out

In February of this year, on the very day the Scottish Parliament was due to debate my Bill to abolish NHS Prescription charges to be exact, the Executive announced a package of reforms in order to offset the chances of a backbench rebellion.
They promised to review the impact the charges had on the chronically sick and on students in full time education and training.

That review is now complete. It is in the hands of the Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald and interest in its findings is intense. That he is reportedly reluctant to publish can perhaps be understood from his point of view because most health experts and commentators are keen to see how the Executive have solved a conundrum which has evaded them for nearly half a century.

The list of chronic conditions which are exempt has not been changed since 1964. In 40 years health professionals and politicians alike have not been able to find an appropriate and logical reason to exempt one chronic condition which allows for one group of patients to get their medicines free whilst not including another group.
Nonetheless this Executive has promised an answer and must now come forward with an answer, to explain why say a Parkinsons Disease sufferer will be is exempt when an asthmatic is not, why a patients with say a chronic skin complaint will be exempt but cancer patients must continue to pay. It is not something the Executive was able to do in the six months that my Bill went through the intensive Parliamentary scrutiny of 2005.

The promised concessions in February will also look rather foolish unless they can also justify why students in full time education and training should be exempt but part time ones are not. Or since the student exemption is at least based on an acceptance that there are those who simply cannot afford the £6.60 charge per item of prescription, why only students? Why not the low paid who run the risk of going without their medicines? Or those on Incapacity benefit or Disability Living Allowance ? Why must these groups of poor people continue to have to pay?

The prescription charges system is a complete and utter dogs dinner which sees 30 MSP’s over 65 get medicines free but 300,000 on IC and DLA forced to pay?

Whatever the Scottish Executive’s review concludes the unfortunate truth is that tens of thousands of Scots will still be forced to go without the medicines they need because the simply cannot afford the £6.60 per item demanded of them. That undermines the core commitment the NHS promised us all – universal free healthcare.

Perhaps the Executive should just come clean and admit their policy amounts to ‘Keeping Medicines Out of Reach ….of the poor.’

Climate change concerns us all

Edinburgh University students in the People and Planet society invited me to speak at their meeting on the dangers of climate change Friday 27th in the David Hume tower. Here is the speech I delivered
I am grateful to the People and Planet group at Edinburgh University for the kind invitation to come along tonight and speak with you.
I have heard a great deal about the influential position your group has amongst student opinion here and I believe that was amply demonstrated by your success in stopping Boris Johnston becoming University Rector this year and in the victory of Mark Ballard.
I am glad to be here.

I picked up this leaflet recently advertising the National Climate Change march in London next Saturday, which I expect many of you will be attending.
On it much of the blame for the CO2 emissions is levelled rightly at what it describes as "George Bush's fossil-fuelled industry dominated administration!"
And you can't but agree that his government is dominated by and run for the benefit of big oil.
He went to war for oil. The biggest corporations in the world benefited from that war and they are oil companies. They have subsequently declared record profits and they wield fearsome political power over the world today.
So much so that when the world lines up the Kyoto protocol to reduce harmful emissions Bush effectively tells us all to blow it out your, well, nose!

It is therefore a measure of who we are up against here in this debate.

The second thing which grabbed my attention on the leaflet was the phrase
"Only a fair and effective international treaty can prevent tragic injustice."
I have to say fairness is in short supply in the global world today. And I am sceptical that these world leader will change their spots.
Remember the G8 in Scotland last year and how making world poverty history and climate change were to be the two big themes, well aren't you struck by how little changed? I was.
I remember as I took part in all the events of July 2005, the Make Poverty History march which was terrific and so established that we were speaking on behalf of all common humanity. The G8Alternatives summit, Faslane protest, Dungavel protest and of course Gleneagles protest itself which we did so much to ensure happened at all.
I remember at the time being fearful that no one in Washington, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Ottowa, Rome or Moscow was marching and was this all just British domestic matter. Nothing changed. There are more people living in poverty in the world today that there was then. The climate is in worse shape.

This is a hugely unequal world. It is more unequal now than it has ever been before; poverty and degradation for the mass of workers and peasants but the no of billionaires rises and rises and rises.
Lets not be blind to the class nature of the world today, the world belongs to us all equally.

Invited to speak at the Inch Community AGM

I joined other public representatives on the platform at the Inch Community Association in St John Vianney School last Thursday (26th October).
The meeting attracted 50 or so local people the dreadful weather hampered the numbers - and the main issues raised were anti social behaviour and plans for developing local sports pavilions.