With Rishi Sunak set to announce the 2021 budget tomorrow, people that have been excluded from financial support during the Covid-19 pandemic will be waiting to hear whether they can finally expect anything to come their way.
Covid-19
“Tenants were already being driven into poverty by unaffordable rents before the pandemic, but the situation is now beyond repair, and we need to undo the damage that has already been done before we start to talk about stabilising things.”
Gordon Maloney: “The Scottish Government had multiple opportunities to freeze rents over the course of the pandemic, but they rejected all of them”
“Chillingly, body-bags for those lost to Britian’s world-beating excess mortality rate were being flogged to this Conservative dinner party set at 14 times the market rate.”
Analysis: Epic grift at the heart of the UK pandemic response has Hancock squirming
A new report from the University of Edinburgh has reviewed what lessons can be learnt from society’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and applied to the fight against climate change.
Scotland must act locally for a green recovery, learning from Covid-19 failures.
“In order to care about journalism, one must care about journalists. That care must be demonstrated through advocacy, organisation and a clear articulation of what will and will not be tolerated.”
Sean Bell: To save the Scottish press, listen to those who defend its journalists
“Whatever replaces the council tax should not insult either the intelligence or the sense of justice of those required to pay it. It should not be levied against those who have no means of paying it. It should not support an industry of debt collection that turns despair into the background noise of its victims’ lives.”
Sean Bell: The Scottish people cannot afford to ignore council tax, so why can our politicians?
“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
“Look again at the response taken in Australia to a single positive Covid case. If you can’t imagine Scotland doing the same when a city here records a single case outwith quarantine, then I’m afraid that we’ll be back in another national lockdown against all too soon.”
Analysis: Welcome to the Hotel Covid
“It takes more than a headline to change a country. The policies must match up too. And this is where the government all too easily slips back into old language, old rhetoric and old ideas of the old ‘normal’ of the pre-pandemic world.”
Analysis: Scottish Budget 2021-22
“Not only has the leadership of the independence movement not developed an economic prospectus, it hasn’t developed a social prospectus for people who won’t be fooled any longer. For a movement which was an anti-austerity insurgency, fuelled by anger over decades of de-industrialisation and yawning inequality, this is a heinous mutation.”