Symbolically, by comparison to Westminster’s slap in the face, this pay offer appears as a victory for decency. But we’ve got to start holding our government to higher standards than “one notch better than Westminster”.
austerity
“We now know what the UK is going to look like in the final years before we reach those irreversible climate tipping points and the planet stops caring how fast our economy is growing. With Scottish elections and possibly another independence referendum now looming, it’s time for the various parties to show their support for an alternative future”
Analysis: UK Budget 2021
Philip Hammond believes that what is good for the City of London is good for Britain. He represents the Conservative Party as sociological determinism says it should be, a Europhile and the voice of unfettered financial capitalism
Source Direct: Eeyore Returns to Rue Another Day
“People in Scotland deserve far better, but we will not get that so long as those responsible for the current system are responsible for redesigning it.”
Nick Kempe: The Feeley review on Adult Social Care offers only more of the same
“Whereas austerity slashed the bonds of reciprocity between the state and the citizen, the extension of debt obligations into private households with collapsing incomes creates new relations of domination.”
Analysis: The rise of the rentier oligarchy and alt-austerity
“The Government know that austerity helped to inspire the student movement, the London riots, Scottish independence, Corbynism and Brexit.”
Analysis: David Cameron is wrong – austerity set Britain up for its pandemic woes
There are two stories about austerity in the news this morning. First, NSPCC Scotland and Barnardo’s have published new research on the impact of austerity on families, looking at what’s changed since it last studied this issue in 2013. The report finds that poverty remains the core issue, but that there has been a marked increase in […]
Big in Japan: Why high public debt is not so scary
“At the Conservative party conference, the new economic model is being consolidated: cycles of boom for a corporate elite without investment or growth in living standards, followed by catastrophic bust with the working population paying for the fallout.”
Analysis: 2008 Forever – Sunak confirms our new economic model
Merry GERS-mas! No, Lionel Messi is not signing for Rangers. GERS day is the geek term for the ultimate geeky day in Scottish politics, where a statistical publication is wielded like a constitutional axe, weaponised as the definitive financial statement of whether an independent Scotland is perfectly viable or a disaster waiting to happen, depending […]
On GERS day 2020, we should remember that economics is about choices
“To give up on libraries in Govanhill, Langside, Pollokshields or anywhere else would sacrifice not just access to books and services, but the idea that their communities deserve them at all.”