There is an alternative that doesn't involve cuts
by Colin Fox, SSP national co-spokesperson - 12-04-2011
The BBC published a poll highlighting the issues voters considered most important in the Holyrood election.
Top of the ‘pops’ was a commitment to reduce waiting times for cancer treatment, second extra ‘bobbies on the beat’ and third retaining tuition free university education.
What’s noticeable about all 25 preferences listed is that there is no tolerance of public spending cuts.
Each favoured policy involved maintaining current levels of service or expanding them. The only cut that was popular was to the salaries of public sector CEO’s. These findings coincide with the Scottish Socialist Party’s view that the cuts proposed by all 4 neo-liberal parties in Scotland are morally unjust and economically unnecessary.
At hustings across the country Lib Dem and Tory candidates are briefed to mention Britain is paying back interest on debt at a rate of £120m per day. This is supposed to reveal just how ‘bankrupt’ Britain is and frighten us into supporting their unprecedented attack on vital public services. But two questions arise; how did the debt occur? And what proportion of UK Gross Domestic Product does £120m represent?
‘The UK national debt is out of control’ claim Annabel Goldie and Tavish Scott.
But it isn’t.
There have been many occasions when the GDP to debt ratio was far higher and we didn’t all run around saying ‘We’re doomed Captain Mainwaring ’! In the period after World War 2 for example the national debt was much higher and it didn’t deter the Government from establishing the NHS, building houses, schools and hospitals and nationalizing industry.
The debt reached its current level after Gordon Brown dumped his so called economic ‘Prudence’ in favour of her wayward sister ‘PFI’.
The Private Finance Initiative, invented by the Tories and loved by New Labour, was a disaster. It meant for example that a £300m hospital like the new Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh will cost the taxpayer £900m after profits to banks, builders and service companies have been factored in. Labour likes to boast about the hospitals, schools and prisons they built but don’t confess they paid way over the odds for every single one of them.
And of course the national ‘credit card’ famously took another hit when Alistair Darling bailed out Britain’s greedy and reckless private banking industry. Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley and the Reckless Bank of Scotland [RBS] were all bailed out using astonishing amounts of public money.
In any just society those who caused the financial problem would be made to pay for it. But not in this country.
The banks and financial corporations have our corrupt and craven politicians in their pockets. So the 4 neo-liberal parties in Scotland intend to pass on the cost of the crisis to the poor.
Workers at Blind Craft in Edinburgh for example were paid off by Lib Dem/SNP Councillors determined to axe the jobs of disabled and vulnerable staff.
The £120m per day being paid to service the national debt equates to less than £2 per person /day. Most of us pay more than that to MasterCard, not to mention the building society and the other rocketing costs of living.
Yet its true that this election is the most important the Scottish Parliament has faced. It is the first to be fought with a reduced budget. The choice then is between the ‘knifeman’ and the nurse who provides that important specialist cancer care, between ‘cuts Cameron’ and the constable, and between Clegg and his plans to nick university education from working class kids.
As usual New Labour offers no principled opposition to the Tories. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls shamefully supports 80% of the Con-Dem cuts but argues limply they should be administered more slowly!
The SNP offers no alternative either. They simply pass on the cuts and make the needy endure even greater hardship. In Council’s across Scotland they are closing schools and sacking staff with the worst of them.
The SSP’s message by contrast is unequivocal - ‘No cuts, not now, not ever’.
Our proposal to replace the hated Council tax with a graduated income tax would bring in an extra £1.5bn to the Holyrood treasury. There would therefore be no need for any cuts in services in Scotland. Just think of it no Council Tax in Scotland either?
We don’t’ have tuition fees, prescription charges, bridge tolls, charges for elderly care. We do things differently here. And we need to go further, much further.
The SSP offers a radical vision to voters as opposed to the myopia of our opponents. We see Scotland as independent, a republic where we are not bombing Libya, not occupying Afghanistan, not threatening the world with nuclear annihilation, not privatising vital public services, not cow towing to un-elected heads of state, not answerable to anyone but ourselves.
There is an alternative that doesn’t involve cuts, warmongering, privatisation, grotesque inequalities or monarchs.
Vote SSP on May 5th.