Budget cuts - should we protect bonuses, or the vulnerable?

Just last week a 90 year old lady fell in her kitchen in the morning - gashing her head in the process. She was found by her home carer behind her kitchen door. The home carer immediately phoned for an ambulance and then phoned the lady's daughter, who leapt into her car and drove to reach her mother (approx 20 minutes).

Before the home carer arrived, the lady had come to, and pressed the community alarm buzzer she carried round her neck. They had called back, and, receiving no answer,  immediately contacted the nearest contact for that client. She also leapt in to a car and drove to the house. By the time she arrived, the paramedics were in place, applying emergency treatment and preparing her to be transported to the nearest A&E. She also contacted the lady's daughter - who was on her way.

She was safely taken down stairs (her house was on the first floor), into an ambulance and to hospital. Admitted to A&E within an hour or so of her first discovery, she had stitches inserted in the head wound, and a series of tests were started to ascertain if there were other medical reasons behind the fall. She was admitted to hospital later that day. Within a period of (say) 3 hours that elderly lady had received 4 interventions from  public services - from the Home Carer, and the Community Alarm service to the Paramedics and the Doctors, Nurses and other professionals in the hospital.

Anyone care to estimate how much that kind of intervention would have cost, if it had to be paid for by the individual? Want to suggest that we should hand these over to the private sector, Mr Cameron? One thing's for sure, that lady would not have had the resource to pay for it. Or maybe, someone will suggest that we can't afford this level of care? You, Mr Clegg? Which service would you cut? 

But of course, the commentators might say, we shouldn't cut these essential frontline services - it is the backroom paper-shufflers who we can't afford to sustain. Really? Perhaps the person who trained the home carer, so she knew what to do in an emergency? Or maybe the office staff who keep the contact details up to date in the Community Alarms? The telephonists at the 999 centre who know what questions to ask and where to send the ambulance? Or the medical secretaries, technicians, assistants, porters and cleaners who ensure that tests are carried out, results are delivered to the professionals, and that hospital patients are treated comfortably, with respect, and protected from disease when vulnerable?

It is clear to me, that the kind of policies being proposed by Gideon Osborne and his cronies would lead directly to that lady being put at risk. And I, for one, am not prepared to see that happen without a fight. And more than that, I am proud of a civilisation that  decides that elderly ladies (and the rest of us) deserve that level of service. Those that would denigrate that service, and those who provide it,  are not worthy to be called civilised.

This is especially so, as we can quite clearly afford it. Those who have most continue to increase their earnings and widen the gap between them and the low paid. It is way beyond time that they plough some of that back into providing a civilised level of public service. Other sources of money might include the banks - who let us not forget - had their own 'emergency service' from the rest of us not so long ago. Time to start paying that back, I think. The STUC's 'There is a Better Way' campaign gives more detail about the real economics of this country. http://www.thereisabetterway.org/ 

This may seem a trifle personal, and it is. The lady in question is the mother of my partner of 35 years. We are both deeply grateful for the service that has so far been available, and deeply fearful for what is likely to be left after Cameron, Clegg and the other Tories have had their way. We have a chance in next year's Scottish Parliament Elections to send a message to these politicians. Let’s take it.

Public services - now is the time we need access to information

As we all begin to weigh up the catastrophic consequences of Gideon Osborne's cuts on our public services, it is likely, whether we are public service workers, trade unionists, community activists, campaigners or service users, that we will be seeking information on those services. All the expert opinion appears to be saying that requests under FOI are likely to increase in these circumstances.


It is therefore an appropriate time for the Scottish Government to seek to close some of the loopholes that allow bodies to slip through the net and refuse to disclose information. In particular when public services are provided by private contractors, housing associations, local council trusts, or other non-public bodies.


While technically such bodies could have always been covered by the simple decision of Ministers to designate them under Section 5 of the Act, this is in fact, the first time it has been attempted since the Act's passing in 2002.


Obviously, these 'outside bodies' make great public play about how much better they are in providing services than the old public sector, so you would think they might welcome the opportunity to promote that. After all, a commercial company that is sensitive to the needs of the public sector to be accountable for our money might have a better chance of winning contracts? 


Call me an old cynic, but my previous experience with UNISON, was that commercial companies did their damndest to hide away from the light of information provision. Private contractors tried to prevent Lothian Health Board revealing details of the PFI contract for the ERI; North Ayrshire Leisure refused to respond to a request for information as they were not a public body; and Scottish Water's PFI contracts seem to be in some twilight zone!!


That is why if you feel it is important that outside bodies doing business with the public sector must be accountable for the way they spend our money - and according the Kevin Dunion, the Scottish Information Commissioner - 'at least two thirds of the Scottish population favour extending Scotland's FOI laws to cover bodies such as housing associations, leisure trusts, PPP/PFI projects and private prisons.'  - then I suggest you might want to make your views known to the government by responding to their consultation. It is available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/07/20123725/0 - and responses are due by November 2.


The proposals aren't perfect - PFI contractors in the Water service aren't covered, nor are housing associations except for the GHA - but the principle that such bodies should be covered is worth getting behind. And no time is more appropriate than just now!

Homage to Edinburgh, Homage to Tati.

It is unusual for me to enthuse about a film, but last night in a packed GFT, I sawThe Illusionist, the film which opened this year's Edinburgh Film Festival. It was a beautifully written, drawn and filmed piece of animé. A true homage by its creator - Sylvain Chomet - to his temporary home city of Edinburgh, and to the film's screenplay writer - Jacques Tati.


The screenplay was written for Tati's daughter and never filmed during his life. She presented it to Chomet, and he switched the action from Prague to Edinburgh and spent 5 years in the city producing it. It has been worth it. As an adopted weegie, I have never seen Edinburgh look so beautiful, or so realistic. Although set in the late 50's/early 60's, you can truly identify parts of the city - Salisbury Crags; Victoria Street and, of course, the Cameo cinema all feature, as does the West Coast of Scotland - with driving rain!


The film is also an homage to Tati himself, with the illusionist of the title being based on Tati's creation - M. Hulot. And what a superb piece of work he is! Not simply the Hulot of Vacances, or even the one of Playtime - confused by modern life - here Tatischeff (Tati's birth name) is a much more care worn prestidigitateur, but still keen not to disillusion his young ward.


As his fortunes decline - it is the early days of rock and roll, and no-one is watching old-style variety any more - hers increase, until the inevitable heart-tugging parting. But the film can be watched for a whole variety of reasons as well as the gorgeous production. The storyline is both funny and sad - watch the scene with the stew that she has prepared, and that he thinks contains his white rabbit. The rabbit, by the way, is probably one of the main supporting stars of the picture!


While the main characters are painfully realistic, many of the supporting cast are superbly surreal. Chomet enjoys himself with the inhabitants of the theatrical hotel, american tourists, and not least with the drunken highland laird, who first books Tatischeff for Scotland.


See this if you like Edinburgh; see this if you like Tati; see this if you like the 50's, but above all - see it!!

THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES - the public sector and the arts

The following piece is an extract taken from a contribution I gave to a recent Morning Star Education Seminar on Government funding and working class culture. This was part of a series on cultural topics that continue into January. Future events on Burns; Tressell & the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and Orwell. The details can be found here - http://www.scottishcommunists.org.uk/campaigning/ 

The first seminar brought together, myself, Dave MacLennan (ex -Wildcat, and producer of A play, a pie and a pint at  Oran Mor in Glasgow.) and Susan Galloway, a researcher from Glasgow University’s Centre for Cultural Policy Research. All of us focussed on the importance of public funding to the cultural sector and expressed their concern about the cuts planned by the ConDem government.

But we also debated alternative sources of funding, and the opportunities and drawbacks of each. I listed big business, trade unions and charitable trusts as options - all of which had major limitations. The volume of public funding means that it is no surprise that at both local and Scottish level this provides the lions share of cultural funding. The Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland) had nearly £60m to distribute in grants to the arts in 2010 (although about £12m came from the National Lottery) - plus the Scottish Government funds some national companies direct. But Scottish local government - in the latest figure I can discover - spent £274m on the provision of culture in 2003-4 (figs from Cultural Commission report of 2005). Clearly this funding is crucial to the current ‘healthy’ arts scene in Scotland. 

Elsewhere in my contribution I listed some of the problems that relying on one single source of funding can bring. From political censorship, to self-censorship; from over-dependence to being at the whim of fashion.

Having said all this - why is it important that the public sector continues to fund cultural and artistic work? Haven’t I outlined more than enough difficulties in doing so?

That may be so - but withdrawal of the funding that currently comes from the ‘state’ - however inadequate and restricted it is (and that £274m from local authorities is only 2.5% of their total expenditure ) would mean both a damage to culture in general - and working class/progressive culture in particular.

Leaving the field to big business, and/or individual ‘rich’ supporters will mean the high-profile, city centre, Scotland-wide projects and product may well continue to be backed, but radical, challenging, and above-all locally based community work, will suffer.

And it is clear that public sector funding is already being cut, and faces further extensive surgery.

For Culture Minister, Fiona Hyslop to point to the maintenance (this year) of funding for Creative Scotland compared to the cuts planned at the Arts Council in England is fair comment. But it ignores the real damage that is starting and will get dramatically worse as cuts come the way of local councils and other public services. Figures of 10, 12,even 20% cuts have been bandied about. How far will non-statutory grants to local groups - or anyone producing for those local groups survive in that climate? yet again it will be local community-based art that will suffer. 

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALLIANCES

Finally - are there any positives? I think ironically, there ARE opportunities, if arts organisations can be flexible and imaginative enough to grasp them. Ironically they arise out of the very cuts we worry about.  There are already campaigns beginning in the fightback against these cuts. These campaigns will need to a) capture the support of local people and communities, and b) articulate the concerns of workers and service users. And there is strong evidence that TUs are aware of and wanting to make such alliances. Locally-based radical arts groups might be an ideal way of doing this. 

If I was one working in West Dumbarton for example - I’d be approaching the joint union/community campaign already working there, to see what work could be done together - and might also want to talk to people in the STUC, UNISON, the EIS, the PCS about opportunities.

So there are faint glimmers in the darkness, but there are many more threats. This is why cultural groups, trade unions, community groups etc should be working together - to use all the working classes talents in fighting the cuts to come. Let’s use cultural work to build campaigns like the ~STUC’s There is a better way, and in the process reinvigorate working class culture and local arts work.

Are trade unions ready to lead the fightback?

Before I went on  holiday two weeks ago, I noticed a couple of developments in the fightback against the ConDem economic madness that seemed potential steps forward. They were the There is an alternative conference called by UNISONScotland on 4 September - and the launch of the STUC’s There is a better way campaign on the 10. Both these developments seem to me to be important because they are, firstly, part of a plan to coordinate the fightback, and secondly, show unions attempting to reach out to include service users and local communities in this campaign.

It is crucial that unions are the main centres around which this struggle will coalesce, as they (for all their weaknesses) probably are the only credible forces left in this country who can resource it. Political parties are seen to be either, too small or extreme and hence ineffective, or part of the establishment - and of course most mainstream ones are tainted with the fallout of the expenses scandal. 

Community-based campaigns - while key to ensuring the campaign is as broad as it must be - are however for the most part single-issue (or at least sectional) in their interests, and - while they can include some big organisations - many are too small to resource major campaigns. Wider ‘Civic Society’  - local councils, and other public bodies, likely to be the main targets of the Cleggameron - are likely to be too focussed on their immediate financial problems to provide wider leadership, although attempts should be made to bring them into campaigns when possible.

Interestingly on either side of my break, two other sources also noticed this potential role of the TUs. The Sunday Post (known for its sympathy towards unions) ran a front page lead on how taxpayers are paying for trade unionists to have time off to do their work. This was based on FOI requests to public authorities - probably by the Tax Dodgers Alliance, which has been venting its fury on TUs for pointing out the biased and inaccurate nature of their claims about public spending. While the stats were in fact, nowhere near as sensational as the paper would have liked (I reckon two full time secondments to look after over 4,000 ambulance staff working 24/7, 365 days a year is not something anyone can seriously object to), this should be seen as the start of the kind of attacks on Trade Unions that we will increasingly see, coming from right wing commentators and campaigners. The Right has identified where the main arguments against the neo-liberal cuts agenda will be coming from.

Also, in last Sunday’s Herald, Iain MacWhirter also focussed on the ability of TUs to lead an opposition and build the kind of broad-based campaign, that has been their role in the past (Scotland United; Anti-Poll Tax etc). Although the piece was not very positive and lacked up-to-date details of the kind of TU campaigns highlighted above, it did at least point to the vital role that they can and should play in this vital campaign.

The signs are that this is beginning to happen. The STUC ‘Better Way’ website http://www.thereisabetterway.org/ has some very interesting information - check out their ‘Distinguished Deficit Deniers’ for example - and shows important successes in reaching out beyond the unions themselves. This has to happen to ensure that the campaign is not seen as ‘vested interest’. The Tax Dodgers and others will try and paint it this way. The next main event is the Demo in Edinburgh on the 23 October. Get all your organisations to build for this as the next step.

Reports of the Death of the Left have been greatly exaggerated

The death of Jimmy Reid recently has prompted a number of press commentators  - eg from Iain MacWhirter, Gerry Hassan and BBCScotland’s Ask Kay programme - that the death of Reid in some way signified the ‘death of the left’ in Scotland. 

These comments largely indicate the wishful thinking of the commentators, rather than any serious suggestion that the left in Scotland has in some way ceased to command Scottish politics, and they are flawed in a variety of ways.

Firstly they make the common mistake of people in the media of individualising a collective. The left - as Reid would have agreed - is far more than one individual or even one political party. An argument could indeed be made that it isn’t even a coherent whole. Whatever influence it has on the body politic, comes as a result of support or not in a range of campaigns and political activities - including but not restricted to votes in elections.

Secondly, they make the mistake (as indeed do many on the left) of somehow magnifying an image of a ‘Red Scotland’ (or at least a ‘Red Clydeside’) that contains some exaggeration. While it is true that Scotland has a larger proportion of trade union members, and higher levels of support for public services than apply across the UK as a whole, the overall political view of our families and friends is not that hugely different  - on a right/left split - than in many other parts of the UK, eg Wales, Liverpool, the North of England et al. Reid himself is an example of that, in 1974 - at the hight of his activity and powers - he failed to overcome sectarian smears in his own constituency and came third in the February Election that year.

It is probably truer to describe the activity of the left as coalescing around specific campaigns - and when this happens successfully, it draws in many people who do not think of themselves as on the left. The UCS work in, for example was supported by many Tory Party branches in Scotland.

However, there is a kind of truth in the doom-sayers and self-fulfilling prophesisers pronouncements. Ignoring the problems of galvanising that kind of ‘mass movement’, and the difficulty in building support for progressive causes won’t make the problems go away.

That is why it is heartening that - as we face the worst attacks on our services and our living standards ever - unions and campaigning groups are seeking to re-address the lack of political understanding amongst their activists and members. It is true that it could have done with an earlier start, but the UNISON pilot Unions and politics course, the success of unions and branches in connecting with community-based campaigns and a regular although not well publicised series of actions in the private sector - like the defence of decent pensions in the INEOS dispute - suggest that the death of the left has been greatly exaggerated.

And finally, the record of the STUC in leading from the front in many key political campaigns (Constitutional Convention anyone?) means their plans to build co-ordinated resistance to the ConDem attacks should be followed with some hope.

Feet of Clegg

Lord Wallace of Tankerness, Jim Wallace to you and me (and I suspect, to him), last week, sounded a loud call to the Scottish Liberal Democrat troops - if that is not too collective a name for Liberal Democrats - to keep united and campaign strongly for the Scottish Elections coming up in nine months time. There was more than a hint of desperation about his call, and that isn’t surprising given the party’s reported opinion poll slump since Nick Clegg hitched their wagon to the Tory Cuts machine.

It is instructive to remember that a mere 3.5 months ago, those same opinion polls were showing Liberal Democrats in second (and even first) place, following Mr Clegg’s reported ‘surge’ after the TV debates. As some of us suspected, the 34 per cents etc. were always going to be somewhat wide of the mark, (but don’t be surprised if the media still report this ‘surge’ as if it did in fact happen), but the 14% average that we now see is poor even if you accept the top figure was inflated.

However a more pressing worry for the LibDems in Scotland is that the support of many of their party leaders for ‘market forces’ and cutting the public sector is now becoming apparent. The ‘economic Liberals’ were always there, but managed to shelter behind the more cuddly ‘social Liberal’ image. Now they are in charge, they are flinging themselves enthusiastically behind Messrs Cameron and Osborne in the ‘New Tory’ attempt to destroy our services. This will not play well in Scotland.

Another concern is that MSP candidates cannot rely on the General Election mantra ‘vote for us, or you’ll get the Tories’. Quite apart from the fact that everyone who fell for that now knows that their vote DID get them the Tories, the Scottish Parliament seats held by the SLD are mostly not threatened by Tories. Out of 11 FPTP seats, (another irony is that the SLD have done rather well from FPTP in Scotland) in only one, Fife NE, are the Tories second. 

A third worry for Jim Wallace, Tavish Scott and other prominent (but very quiet) SLD leaders is their UK leader’s admission (in Nick Robinson’s BBC programme on the coalition negotiations) that he knew that huge, immediate cuts to services would be needed during the election campaign. The trouble is not that he changed his mind, but that he kept quiet about it and continued to campaign AGAINST Tory ‘immediate cuts’ economic policies, only to embrace them enthusiastically once a whiff of power beckoned. Isn’t that the sort of tactic of the old cynical party politician? his supporters will be inclined to ask. We thought we were voting for a new way in politics!

So, as Labour and the SNP battle it out to defend Scotland against the Tory cuts, where does this leave the Scottish Liberal Democrats? Attacking the cuts in Scotland while supporting them in Westminster will be a very difficult double bluff to pull off - even for such past masters of the tactic. It may well be that after 5 May 2011, Scottish Liberal Democrats (even the economic Liberals) may find out that their golden leader who has delivered them a hand on the wheel of power, has feet of Clegg.