Unite the Clubs

The issue of facilities for young footballers across Edinburgh, and the Lothians, has recently been highlighted.

Parents and coaches in Edinburgh have formed "Unite the Clubs" to campaign for improved facilities at public pitches across the city. I've already asked questions in the Scottish Parliament about this issue and will be supporting their march in Edinburgh on 14th February.

I'd also encourage as many people as possible to visit their website http://www.unitetheclubs.co.uk/

And to sign their online petitions to the Scottish Parliament http://www.gopetition.com/online/10970.html

and Edinburgh Council

http://www.gopetition.com/online/10971.html

Celebrating Robert Burns the radical

I'll be leading a tribute to ‘Robert Burns the radical’ at the SSP's annual ‘Alternative Burns Supper’ on Friday 26th in the Canons Gait on the High Street.

We recognize in Robert Burns someone who was passionate about independence, a true radical who spoke out in favour of the French revolution and the American revolution and was a member of the Scots reform movement. Here was a man advocating workers representatives in Parliament a hundred and fifty years before Keir Hardie, demanding universal suffrage way before the suffragists, and fighting for the abolition of slavery and celebrating Scots hero’s like Wallace and Thomas Muir the leader of the United Scotsmen.

Burns is for me a hugely inspiring figure. He championed our own Scots culture when the ruling classes here considered it couthy, backward and rude. He was a figure the establishment truly feared and he has through his work retained his potency today. He was a close friend and collaborator of Scotland's great blacklisted painter Alexander Naysmith.

Robert Burns is rightly celebrated the world over and his attraction is that he was truly a poet of the common man and a genius to boot.
The SSP has proudly marked the anniversary of his birth for a decade now by debunking the myths and explaining who Robert Burns really was, what he really stood for and what he left us. I believe we owe him that much.
In the Canons Gait tomorrow night we will sing and dance and eat and drink to one true working class hero. He’s one of us.

Tickets £7 and £4unwaged – haggis neeps and tatties included.

New council houses - what a good idea!

I had a letter published in the Evening News today, you can read it by following this link

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=124192007

PPP/PFI shame

S2O-11504 - Colin Fox (Lothians) (SSP) : To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will review its policy on PFI projects, in light of the findings by Edinburgh University¿s Centre for International Public Health that payments from NHS boards across Scotland to private financiers will increase from the current £107 million to £510 million per year by 2011.

Answered by Mr Tom McCabe (21 December 2006): Public Private Partnerships are an important part of the Executive’s mixed economy approach to the modernisation and investment agenda to grow the Scottish economy and provide better public services.
Payments by public bodies to private sector PPP consortia are for services provided over the length of the contract - these include capital construction, lifecycle maintenance and facilities management, and not just the upfront construction cost of the asset. I do not recognise the £510 million figure to which you refer.

Free school meals hypocrisy

I have to congratulate Jim Devine MP and Michael Connarty MP for the stand they have taken in support of the principle of free nutritious school meals. I couldn’t agree more with the motion they signed in the House of Commons condemning the Liberal Democrats for cancelling the successful scheme they’ve ran in Hull for the past 3 years.

If only Mary Mulligan and Bristow Muldoon had shown the same social conscience then perhaps our bill to introduce free school meals across Scotland wouldn’t have been derailed by the labour led Executive.

It seems that the opinion of the Labour party is that it is ok for children in England to receive free school meals but for some reason it isn’t ok in Scotland – the word hypocrisy springs to mind.

Perhaps, for the Labour Party, the three words attached to the free school meals bill, Scottish socialist party, were the problem. Only the SSP is committed to delivering Free Nutritious School Meals for all our children.


The motion signed by Jim Devine MP & Michael Connarty MP read:
"That this House… believes that a more nutritious diet for schoolchildren has a central role in combating this public health problem; applauds Hull City Council's three-year pilot scheme, combining increased investment in healthier school food ingredients with the abolition of charges for primary school meals…"

RMT Signal workers dispute motion in the Scottish Parliament

S2M-5430 Colin Fox (Lothians) (SSP) : RMT Union Signal Workers' Dispute— That the Parliament notes the decision of RMT signal workers in Scotland who are employed by Network Rail to ballot for strike action over the company’s failure to implement a 35-hour working week agreement; believes that, although the agreement is being implemented across the rest of Britain, management in Scotland has reneged on its side of the deal and is attempting to enforce longer working hours and take rest day entitlements away from employees who often work in arduous conditions; extends its full support to RMT union members, and hopes that the strike can be averted by management’s return to the negotiating table and that a satisfactory outcome can therefore be reached on the issue.

Supported by: Chris Ballance, Ms Rosemary Byrne, Frances Curran, Rosie Kane, Carolyn Leckie, Campbell Martin, Tommy Sheridan, John Swinburne, Dr Jean Turner

Lodged on 18 January 2007

BA cabin crew strike

S2M-5443 Colin Fox (Lothians) (SSP) : British Airways Cabin Crew Strike Vote— That the Parliament notes with concern the threatened strike action by British Airways (BA) cabin crew over new company demands on sickness leave that they believe force them to work despite being ill; believes that the strength of feeling in the workforce was amply demonstrated by a union ballot last week which saw 96% vote in favour of strike action on the issue; regrets that the latest talks between the Transport and General Workers’ Union and the company have broken down, but calls on BA to take up the union’s offer of further talks aimed at avoiding a damaging dispute and reaching an agreement on changes to the current sickness leave arrangements.

Lodged on 22 January 2007