Our Lady's High School, Motherwell

Back to School on February 24th
From time to time I receive invitations to visit schools and speak to pupils about politics and I try to accept as many as I can as I thoroughly enjoy the occasions. The students questions are usually wide ranging and taxing. When I was an MSP [2003-2007] I was frequently asked to meet school students from across the Lothians visiting the Parliament and to answer their questions.
But this week I must confess to being particularly pleased to receive an invitation to visit Our Lady's High in Motherwell and meet students there because its my old school.
The Social Studies Department Deputy Head Mrs McManus has asked me to come over on Tuesday February 24th and talk to students sitting their Politics and Modern Studies Highers this year about the politics of the SSP.

Oil price plunges but not our energy bills

Wednesday's Herald points out that oil is now trading at $40/barrel [ 'Oil falls on more economic bad news'].
Like millions of other Scots families we've just received our gas and electricity bill for November/December which unlike the oil price is still sky high.
I well recall Scottish Power and the other energy companies citing oil at $145 per barrel as the reason for their unprecedented price increases last autumn.
As a result of their exorbitant bills Energywatch estimates 5.5million households now find themselves living in fuel poverty. And Scotland suffers disproportionate pain in this regard as the Scottish Government well knows. It announced in October that 36% of households were in fuel poverty. To fall into this unwelcome category a household must pay 10% of its income in fuel bills. In Scotland in 2008 an astonishing 10% of households paid 20% of their income to power companies. And to add even more insult to injury those on prepayment meters, usually the poorest, are paying the highest tariffs of all. How on earth did things come to this? And how can these multinational energy corporations justify sky high bills when their basic raw material now costs almost one quarter of what it did 6 months ago?
It is not difficult to see why there is considerable contempt for the energy companies and indeed with an ineffectual government as people struggle with the severest winter in years and with the highest gas and electricity prices ever.
There is a widespread view that this industry is out of control and ought to be back in public hands. Then the poorest would be on the cheapest tariffs and not the most expensive. Then responsibility for providing heat and light to everyone, particularly in the dead of winter would not to be left to faceless multinational corporations who repeatedly put their profits before the needs of the population.

Expelling peers

Letter printed in Feb 5th Scotsman
Since the four Labour Lords caught red handed this week taking 'back handers' were not exposed by Parliamentary authorities it would appear the corruption at the heart of Westminster is so rotten that we must rely on 'outside agencies' like a Sunday Newspaper to expose it?
There is surely no one in Britain today who believes these four lawmakers in the Palace of Westminster are the only ones 'on the make' or believes Westminster is prepared to clean up its own house so to speak. These Labour Lords are, after all, merely the latest in a long line of financial 'offenders'. And what penalty will they get?
Jack Straw, the Leader of the House of Commons, is apparently to recommend that Peers found guilty of taking cash in future be expelled from the House of Lords altogether. This 'closing the stable door after the horse has bolted' approach means these new sanctions will not be applied to the aforementioned Lords. But surely the Party itself is free to take action nonetheless?
So, perhaps Jack Straw can tell us for example whether Labour will expel these 4 disgraced Peers from the Party? And if not, why not? Is it because as the Sunday newspaper has inferred these four are merely the tip of an odious iceberg of corruption, one which the parties at Westminster have been mired in for some time.
Its therefore not time to clean up politics in Britain and rid us of these money grabbers and bribes, its way past time.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/Register.aspx?ReturnURL=http%3A%2F%2Fthescotsman.scotsman.com%2Fopinion%2FLords-sleaze-row-shows-something.4948397.jp

Economic Recession, Political Change and the SSP

Karl Marx famously wrote that in the last analysis politics was merely ‘concentrated economics’. By this he meant that capitalism was fundamentally an economic system motivated above all by material interests. Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling are, it goes without saying, not Marxists. Unlike his conclusions theirs have not carried weight throughout the centuries. It was Gordon Brown, for example, who ludicrously claimed to have ended the fundamental ‘boom and bust’ nature of capitalism. He will carry this ‘wisdom’ with him to the grave. His other predictions fared little better. ‘Britain will avoid recession’ he told us in 2007. ‘Britain’s economy will weather the storm better than any of our competitors’ he promised last year.

The International Monetary Fund this month predicted that Britain will suffer a 2.8% fall in economic output in 2009 the worst of any industrialised economy. Government figures show that the Scottish economy is already faring worse than the rest of the UK.

So, what impact will all this have on Scottish politics?

At the time of the Glenrothes by-election New Labour was able to persuade people only they could get the country out of recession. Now it is being roundly blamed for it. All the recent opinion polls give a double digit lead for Cameron and the Tories.

Gordon Brown was reported [Guardian 30/1/2009] to have been close to tears at the Parliamentary Labour Party meeting in January as MP’s blamed him for the recessionary gloom played out nightly on TV. He pleaded with rebels not to bring down the Government over the third runway at Heathrow. All this represents a catastrophic failure in Labours propaganda which argued that the recession was not their fault but a consequence of ‘worldwide events’ beyond their control.

So where did the recession come from? Well it came not just from an unprecedented collapse in the financial markets but because the credit funded growth underlying that had inevitably reached its limits. Like an elastic band Britain’s economy could not be stretched for ever and ultimately it reached its limits and snapped. We are now dealing with the consequences of that ‘snap’.

There are times when economic changes occur which are so profound that they transform existing political relations. This recession is one of them. The banks have gone bust and have been nationalised by a notorious neo-liberal government. High street chains are falling like dominoes because of poor sales and unemployment is rising faster than at any time since the 1980’s. This recession has been a long time coming. We predicted an end to the boom a long time ago, but even we did not imagine a crash so spectacular as this.

The economic crisis has brought huge social protests in Greece and France and it is likely they will become even more widespread. We expect capitalism to attack the working class and the poor in an attempt to make us pay for this crisis. This would involve mass unemployment, cuts to social services and attacks on pay and conditions. The SSP must get actively involved in all struggles to resist these attacks.

The years ahead will be easier for socialists in one important regard, the belief that there is a crisis of world capitalism just returned to a mass audience with a bang. It is up to us to explain where this recession came from and more importantly to offer a lead in defending working people and the poor from the equally inevitable capitalist onslaught.

The Scottish Socialist Party just regained its purpose in the eyes of millions of Scots.

Stop Double Taxing the Sick

Letter published in today's Herald newspaper
As the MSP who introduced the Bill to abolish NHS prescription charges to the Scottish Parliament in 2005 I am not in the least surprised by the 26% increase in the use of pre-payment certificates reported in yesterday's Herald.[Cut price prescription drugs policy 'a success' - 28th January]. Cutting the cost of certificates by 50% was always likely to highlight the extent to which the price was an inhibitor to treatment. However the figures also make clear that there are many tens of thousands of patients in Scotland who are still going without the medicines their doctors have repeatedly prescribed for them because they cannot afford to pay. And this is set to continue for the next 2 years.I certainly hope the SNP administration keeps its promise to abolish the charges completely by 2011 but I would remind readers that patients in Wales no longer suffer this 'tax on the sick' as it was abolished there in 2006. Furthermore the Northen Ireland Assembly has also voted to get rid of the charges and will do so before the Scottish Government does. Finally, I must take issue with the Herald editorial on the matter [No easy prescription] which rather misses the point when it says 'if people who can afford to pay do so then ...many millions of pounds can be re-invested in the NHS'. Surely the point is that it is patients who cannot afford to pay who are being penalised here whereas our utterly illogical and irredeemable exemptions system actually protects those who perhaps could pay more.Notwithstanding that I remain firmly opposed to the charges and have always felt that only abolition safeguards that 'cherished principle' referred to in the editorial, namely, treatment free to everyone at the point of need. That puts me firmly in the camp which believes that our NHS should be paid for out of general taxes and not by doubly taxing the sick.
Yours sincerely Colin Fox National Spokesman Scottish Socialist Party

Socialists Meet Trades Union Leaders Amid Worsening Economic Crisis

Scottish Socialist Party national spokesman Colin Fox will travel to London today [Sat 10th] to discuss the worsening economic and political crisis with trades union leaders.

The Former Lothian's MSP will join the Rail, Maritime and Transport union RMT, the Fire Brigades Union, the Civil Service union PCS and public sector unions at a special conference called to respond to what they see as failed government policy.

Colin Fox believes the worsening economic conditions are putting millions of workers living standards at risk.
‘‘Jobs are being lost by the thousand every day. Millions of working families are facing 2009 fearful of what it may bring. Labour’s recession sees the country facing the worst economic crisis in living memory.
We and the trade union movement need to ensure that working people are not made to pay for an economic and political crisis they played no part in creating. Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling are responsible for this crisis. They have made it clear that they are prepared to bail out the banks, to the tune of £500bn, but they will not act to save jobs in finance, retail, construction or the public sector.
It is equally clear that a major conflict between the Labour government and the unions is in the offing. I very much welcome the opportunity to meet with those trades union leaders determined to defend the living standards of working people against the developing economic and political disaster.’

SSP leader in energy appeal

It's under this title that the Edinburgh Evening News published a short article advertising an SSP public meeting taking place tomorrow at 7.30pm, Nelson Hall. I will be speaking alongside George Henderson, Secretary General of the Scottish Old Age Pensioners Association on fuel poverty and energy bill rip off.

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/topstories/SSP-leader-in-energy-appeal.4544936.jp