SNP content for the next generation to pay the price of austerity – Dugdale

The SNP Government is content for the next generation to pay the price of austerity, Kezia Dugdale said today.

Speaking at First Minister’s Questions, the Scottish Labour Leader highlighted the £774 million cut to local government imposed by the SNP Government’s budget yesterday. Kezia Dugdale said these cuts would impact Scotland’s schools.

The organisation representing councils in Scotland, Cosla, estimate that the SNP Government’s budget will result in 15,000 council job losses.

Using the new powers coming to Holyrood, Scottish Labour would introduce a Fair Start Fund. This would allocate £1,000 for each primary school pupil from a deprived background. Decisions about how this money should be spent would be for head teachers to take. The money to pay for this would be raised by increasing the top rate of tax to 50p for those earning more than £150,000 a year.

Kezia Dugdale said:

“The budget was a chance to take a different path to the failed agenda of the Tories, but instead the SNP decided to just manage austerity.

John Swinney’s budget pulled the rug out from under the councils that build our schools and are vital to the education of our children. The reality is that Nicola Sturgeon can’t guarantee the SNP Government’s budget won’t result in job losses for our specialist teachers, class room assistants, janitors and office staff.

With the new powers heading our way and a long-term budget we can do things differently. Under Scottish Labour’s plan head teachers would get £1,000 for every pupil from a deprived background. We would hand real power to head teachers to decide how to improve the life chances of the children in their school. It’s a plan that sends funds to where they are needed most.

Nicola Sturgeon talks a good game on fairness, but refuses to take the bold action needed to make it a reality.

Under the SNP Government the number of qualified teachers in our nurseries has fallen, the gap between the richest and the rest remains as wide as ever and the number of teachers in our schools has fallen by 4,300. Yet the SNP’s response to all of that is to cut, cut and cut again. It looks like the SNP Government is content for the next generation to pay the price of austerity.”

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5 thoughts on “SNP content for the next generation to pay the price of austerity – Dugdale

  1. We’re paying the price of austerity because too many stupid gullible people voted No when they should have voted Yes.

  2. Didn’t you fuckwits ABSTAIN on the Tory cuts.

    The death of ‘Scottish’Labour though slow is seriously entertaining.

    Good riddance to you fucking clowns.

  3. Well, I would have raised taxes on consumables, and sales—alcohol, tobacco and hydrocarbons ( petrol etc.). VAT. I would have put a tax on land, especially underproductive land. Income tax is a totally useless, blunt economic lever.
    I would have asked the various bodies who represent local government, what powers of taxation they want exactly—and give it to them, lock, stock and barrel, with the proviso they meet legally binding basic standards in education, social care etc. Holyrood funding should gradually disappear( over 25 years perhaps) so as to encourage them to grow, not destroy, their local economies.
    I would give new indigenous ( Scottish) industry tax breaks for 5 to 10 years.
    Of course some of these things are kept under wraps for the sole usage of Westminster, with the agreement of Labour, Tory and Lib Dumbs. We have to break their stranglehold on these powers if we want our children a chance of prosperity.
    40years of exploiting Europe’s biggest oil field in Scottish/Norwegian waters, yet the minute the oil price drops, Westminster is boastfully declaring Scotland bankrupt—the very same people who have (mis)run our economy for 300 years.

  4. Again we see labour complain about the effect the union has on Scotland.
    These austerity measures are a direct result of imposed ideology. Ideology imposed deliberately by right wing Neo Conservative Tory politicians elected specifically by voters outwith Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland.

    And yet we see Labour in Scotland trying desperately to blame these measures on the ONLY mainstream party in the UK who directly opposes them.
    Its beyond duplicity Its beyond hypocrisy its self harming insanity.

    A real Scottish political party would highlight and attack the fact that these measures are a direct result of political power and influence coming from outside of Scotland and outwith Scotlands control or influence but because labour in Scotland is not Scottish but actually a branch of an English political party run and controlled from london they support the ideology and the institutional concept that its born outside of Scotland in direct conflict with the wishes and needs of the vast majority of Scots including themselves if their protests are to be believed!

    Staggeringly Labour supports the institutional concept that allows undemocratically imposed ideological policy within the framework of how the Scottish electorate votes while simultaneously publically opposing the ideology behind the imposed policies.

    In other we they tell us they oppose the policies but support the institution which allows them to be imposed undemocratically.

    We are heading for Independence. That is inevitable. But its down to the likes of Labour Conservative and Lib Dem members in Scotland about how painful and delayed the process of transition is going to be.
    Everytime Scotland gets a Government it doesn’t vote for we see how badly the disunion doesn’t work for us and how much Labour in Scotland couldn’t care less.

  5. It’s hard to f-ing believe, that a labour party that either voted with the tories for or abstained to provide no opposition to every tory austerity policy proposed in the last three/four years. And then has the cheek to blame the SNP scottish government for the austerity being shoved down Scotlands throat by Westminster.

    But unfortunely for labour everyone has been watching what yersels and your London masters have been doing towards Scotland and I bet they will reward you properly come May’s election.

    No doubt about it yer a ‘dead goldfish’ party led by ‘dead goldfish’ numpty’s.

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