Out of conflict comes clarity

Not satisfied with bringing in 'scab' labour to try and break the binmens' industrial action SNP leader Steve Cardownie is quoted in the Evening News warning that the entire refuse service may be privatised.
It says a great deal about the SNP and the kind of alternative to New Labour they offer.
The bin men are poised to go on strike because this SNP/Lib Dem Council intends to take £6,000 off their already low wages. The bin men deserve our full support as they rightly rejected the Councils outrageous interpretation of the Equal Pay Act which involves savaging the pay of low paid male workers rather than increasing the wages of their even lower paid female colleagues.

Johnny Walker Protest

Around 10,000 people marched through the centre of Kilmarnock today in protest at the decision by Diageo, the world's biggest drinks company, to close their Johnnie Walker whisky factory in the town with the loss of 700jobs. Johnnie Walker, the world's most popular whisky brand, has been produced in Kilmarnock since 1820. Diageo made £2bn profits last year, including those at its Kilmarnock factory but recently proposed to close the plant and move the bottling plant to Leven in Fife with the loss of 900 jobs in order to make even more profits. If this decision goes ahead it will be a hammer blow to the town of Kilmarnock with unemployment rates expected to double overnight. The Scottish Socialist Party joined the protest and pledged our full support to the communities fight to keep these jobs in Kilmarnock.

Edinburgh binmen refuse to lift £70/week less as Council demands cuts

The Scottish Socialist Party received a call from David Cameron last week.
But this wasn't the David Cameron born with a silver spoon in his mouth who went to Eton or votes Tory. He is a bin man with Edinburgh City Council and has been for 21 years. David contacted us to ask for help after the Council's SNP/Liberal administration informed him and 600 of his colleagues their pay was to be 'modernised', by chopping £3,000 a year from it. Bin men like David earn £16,000 including bonuses. Management aims to take £70 per week off them.
Council leaders insist the cuts are necessary if they are to implement the 'single status' agreement in the Equal Pay Act. This Act, passed into law three decades ago but not fully implemented, affords women workers the same rights as men by insisting that work of equal value be equally rewarded regardless of gender. The Scottish Socialist Party supports this principle wholeheartedly, however we, and the rest of the labour movement for that matter, are determined that wages are 'equalised up' not down. In other words it must mean a substantial pay rise for women not a cut for men.
In a ballot result announced last week David Cameron reported that the 600 bin men in Edinburgh had voted '599 to one' to strike against the proposed wage cuts. He further explained that the workforce had begun a 'work to rule' refusing overtime or taking up shifts on their days off.
The union believes the ballot result puts the ball firmly in the Council's court. The prospect of rubbish piling up in the city's streets with temperatures, as we have seen this week, into the 80's and with 200,000 visitors heading here for the Festival will put the SNP/Liberal coalition under huge pressure to back down.
Meanwhile I have written to Stephen McGregor, TGWU Unite shop steward pledging the Scottish Socialist Party's full support for the union. I added that as far as I was concerned bin men earning only 2/3rd of the average wage was an inadequate level of pay for the important and yet dirty job they do in serving our communities across this city.

Edinburgh People's Festival Art Competition

People’s Festival launches £1,000 visual arts competition with Richard Demarco to judge entries.
Visual Artists (including photographers) across Scotland are invited to submit wall mounted work on the theme ‘Let The People Speak’.
Entries will be exhibited at the North Edinburgh Arts Centre in August as part of the 2009 Edinburgh People’s Festival.

MPs and MSPs forget the poor as they feather their own nests

Figures released by the Scottish Government this month show that the oft repeated promises of politicians at Westminster and Holyrood to reduce poverty and inequality in Scotland have simply not been kept.
The Scottish Government report 'Poverty and income inequality in Scotland: 2007/08' reveal that no progress whatsoever has been made in lifting children, low paid workers and pensioners in Scotland out of poverty in recent years, indeed many observers believe the situation may well have worsened sharply.
The Department of Work and Pensions who carried out the study found that between 2006/07 and 2007/08 17% of the population in Scotland were living in poverty and their total income, compared to the rest of society, fell once again.
These figures are doubly disappointing considering they refer to a period of economic boom. It is widely accepted that periods of economic recession like the one we are in at the moment with unemployment rising at record levels, cuts being made to public services and taxes due to increase, hit those on low incomes hardest.
To think that the same MPs who have been 'rifling' through the public purse to maintain their own highly inflated life of luxury in recent years ignored those in much greater need tells us a great deal about the appalling priorities of those parties currently sitting in Westminster and Holyrood.
The poor clearly need someone else to stand up for them if they are ever to obtain their fair share of the enormous wealth all around us.That's why the Scottish Socialist Party is so important.

Thank You!

I want to thank all my comrades and friends in the SSP for this wonderful birthday gift, a cartoon of me drawn by the brilliant Edinburgh Evening News cartoonist Frank Boyle. Give that man a rise! Of course he's got the age wrong, I'm only 25! I shall treasure it.

Sorted - Labours Royal Mail privatisation plan

Since Lord Mandelson's Bill to privatize the Royal Mail has been 'returned to sender' and is now to all extent and purposes dead and buried [it failed even to appear for its scheduled First Reading in the Commons last week] I want to take this opportunity to thank the tens of thousands of people across Scotland who signed the Scottish Socialist Party's petition to keep our postal service in public hands.
Our collective opposition, with 90% of the British population against it has defeated Labours sell off plans.
There are those who fear Lord Mandelson will return with this Bill but I am not one of them because this issue would bring down his teetering Labour Government. Mandelson and Brown need the support of the Tories to get the Bill through Parliament and Cameron has so many incentives not to back it that the Bill would fall and so would the Government!
Labours plan to sell off this vital public service to the Dutch postal company TNT failed because the public much preferred to keep Royal Mail in public hands; owned by the public, run for the benefit of the public, with the price of a stamp the same for every member of the public regardless of whether they lived in say Shetland or South London and where the profits [£344m last year] went into the public purse to build hospitals and schools rather than into the hands of private shareholders in private postal companies.
Peter Mandelson's Bill has again exposed Labour as the party of privatisation. Yet it is not privatisation Royal Mail needs, it is investment. The public has witnessed a stark deterioration in the service in recent years as private companies 'cherry picked' the lucrative business to business post. This has meant residential customers have suffered fewer deliveries and collections.
With the Tories likely to win the forthcoming Westminster General Election however it is important our collective opposition to privatisation is not demobilized. It is a battle we will need to fight again. Let the Tories take note however, the campaign to keep the Royal Mail in public hands is emboldened and our case is stronger than ever.