Rose Galt
What am I to do?
I first canvassed for the Labour Party in 1945 at the age of 8 in Glasgow Springburn. In 1959 as a student I was employed as an assistant agent in the Tory marginal of Glasgow Craigton, helping elect Bruce Millan. I was active in the Labour League of Youth – fish and chips, folk songs and earnest ‘how-to-save-the world’ debates – and remained a party member until half way through Tony Blair’s first term, leaving because of a general sense of disillusionment with the trigger being the privatisation of the air traffic control system.
Yet…yet…I have never not voted Labour and would never abstain. What then will I do on 6 May?
Sunday 11 April
The Boy David and his team of fellow Old Etonians grabbed the headlines at the weekend with their shock/horror response to Alistair Darling’s proposed increase in National Insurance contributions. Let us for a moment put aside the not unimportant question of whether or not any sensible electorate would willingly deliver the economy into the hands of Eton United and consider how to respond to the Tories’ reaction. Cameron collected 100 top businessmen to condemn the proposal as ‘a tax on jobs’. I read their rationale in a froth of indignation. The increase can be so described only if these millionaires start from the premise that under no circumstances will they or their shareholders, whatever the economic state of the country, relinquish a penny of their salaries or profits. Belt-tightening is never for them. National Insurance is what pays for the NHS, for our pensions, for our sick pay: in other words for all the benefits of the welfare state of which we should be most proud. And there’s an Old Labour statement if ever there was one.
Monday 12 April
In any election party leaders will seek to be all things to all sections of society and so they assiduously, not to say obsequiously, try to assure or reassure the representatives of vocal minorities that electing them will be an okay thing to do. Despite its current internal problems, the Catholic Church has not been slow to enter the fray with Cardinal Keith O’Brien trying again to push abortion to the top of the political agenda.
Cameron has in an interview in the Catholic Herald opined that ‘if assisted dying is legalised, there is a danger that terminally ill people may feel pressurised to end their lives’. As Debbie Purdy, who is a leading force in the movement to both clarify and change the law in this area, wrote in the Observer, there is absolutely no evidence of such a development in Oregon or Holland. Does Cameron really have such a low view of his fellow citizens? Or is this yet another cynical attempt to get a few more votes? I think I’d vote for the first party leader who said ‘We live in a secular democracy totally committed to freedom of religious belief but beholden to no lobby group, however powerful’.
Just a word about the £3 a week Tory bribe to encourage marriage. It made my day that, in an attempt presumably to neutralise Chris Grayling’s gaffe vis-a-vis bigoted B&B owners, those in civil partnerships were hurriedly included. Not long-term heterosexual co-habitees, however. There will be much huffing and puffing in the Tory shires methinks.
Tuesday 13 April
The Big Blue Book is Out! Be still my beating heart. So the Tories promise small government and Big Society (I thought the Tories denied that such a concept exists) with the people involved running schools and forming workers’ co-operatives in the local job centre. One key policy is for local referenda on such matters as proposed increases in council tax. I wonder if the word ‘California-style’ is mentioned anywhere. The once richest state in the USA is in perpetual fiscal gridlock and facing bankruptcy because no-one ever votes for tax increases.
Regarding the running of schools, what kind of world do Cameron and his scary education shadow, Michael Gove, live in? What kind of parents have the time and/or inclination to set up and run schools? What would be their agenda? Already there are schools in England run by Christian fundamentalists teaching creationist science and many others controlled by big business consortia. The corollary of this philosophy of splintering is that those parents who have neither the time nor desire to become involved will be deemed to be uninterested in their and other people’s children’s welfare.
Neither main party’s vision for education is in any way inspiring. Labour too has jumped on the populist/ tabloid bandwagon by suggesting the takeover of ‘failing’ schools, without ever defining that descriptor and giving parents the right to sack heads. One bright spot was that most of the voters interviewed on last night’s TV saw dangers in handing schools over to pressure groups, making the point that local education authorities exist to ensure equality of provision and have the expertise to take education beyond Michael Gove’s back-to-rote learning of lists of the kings and queens of England approach to the subject.
Not a word in the Tory manifesto about the arts and culture, apart from a reference to the lottery – fancy that? Labour’s Andy Burnham has not been slow to capitalise on such perceived philistinism by pointing to a remarkable list of legislative intentions from a £10 national theatre ticket scheme and a biennial Festival of Britain from 2013, celebrating the UK’s cultural achievement. After the 2012 Olympics the vast sums diverted from lottery funds will be returned to the arts, heritage and sports. Goody.
Wednesday 14 April
The Lib-Dems always have appealing policies and their proposals to fine guilty bankers and raise the threshold for income tax look like vote winners if we didn’t so obviously – in UK terms – live in a two-party state. I applaud their determination not to sweep the financial meltdown and those most culpable under the carpet of the past.
In Iceland the 2,300 page report into the criminal irresponsibility of the three banks involved is being read out publicly by a troupe of actors at Reykjavic City Theatre. Isn’t that cool? I also admire their stance on civil liberties and their attack on Labour’s dismal record in this area. Clegg would scrap further plans to extend the surveillance state which would include ditching the national identity card scheme and resisting handing over the internet to News International.
Oh, and Nigel Farage launched the UKIP manifesto. Basically sod the lot of you, specially the Europeans.
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16.04.10
Issue no 237
We are now
living in a
foreign land
Kenneth Roy
on the significance for
Scots of the first of the
leaders’ debates
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Confessions of a middle man
Reactions to SR editorials
on the NHS in Scotland: the
salaries being paid, the
consultants being hired
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A police suspect
at 83
Barbara Millar
on the remarkable life
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Tedious
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The election campaign
in
100 words a day
every day
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Cheated and abandoned
Tessa Ransford
An indictment
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From Thursday’s edition:
Bob and Rose
Our Old Tory/Old Labour election diaries
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for R D Kernohan
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for Rose Galt