AAA vs the BedroomTax

As night follows day, it was no surprise when Danny Alexander MP was all over the media yesterday responding to the loss of the UK’s AAA credit rating.  George Osborne doesn’t do bad news; that’s Danny’s job. 

The message seemed to be that (a) despite Osborne’s totemic addiction to the ratings this didn’t really matter and (b) we just need to keep cutting.

What sort of world are these Coalition leading lights living in?

Borrowing is going up, growth is stagnant.  So why do Alexander and Osborne think the medicine is working?  Maybe it makes sense in the circles Osborne, Clegg and Cameron move in.

Back in the real world, the Inverness Courier highlights who is really paying the price of the Coalition's mission to save our AAA rating in its shocking report on the levels of child poverty in the City. Working families on low incomes.

Part-time jobs with “flexible” hours and minimum wage rates are already the reality for many.  Over the next few months the reality of benefit cuts will start to hit home with caps and restrictions on working tax credits and housing benefits.  Monthly rather than weekly payments will drive poor families into the hands of the pay day loan sharks.  And the Bedroom Tax will reduce household incomes still further; for most families moving to a house with the “right” number of bedrooms will not be an option as they are not being built!

That’s what Danny Alexander should be on the TV and Radio explaining.

Or better still letting his two bosses take the flack themselves.

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Letter to the Courier...

Published in Inverness Courier, 3rd April 2012

Dear Sir

Coalition plans to break up national pay bargaining arrangements must surely mean that there will soon be pressure to cut public sector workers wages in the highland as in other areas deemed “lower cost than London”, however spuriously.

In his leaflets and speeches during the Westminster election campaign Danny Alexander promised to put the Highlands first. As the Labour candidate, I was accused of representing a party that had let the Highlands down with plans to put up VAT, raise student tuition fees and had “taken money from hard working families, pensioners and carers in the Highlands and given it to millionaires”.

In government, what is Mr Alexander’s actual record on standing up for the Highlands? Local military bases are under threat or closing, VAT is up and working tax credits down (both hitting low earners hardest) whilst mainland fuel costs continue to rise for most, despite all the promises about a rural fuel discount.

But this latest coalition plan to cut public sector wages - at the same time as cutting the 50p tax rate for the well off - goes too far. Does Mr Alexander have any principles left? Or is power at the heart of the government a price worth paying to inflict his coalition cuts on the Highlands?

And where are our local LibDem councillors on this? Will they speak out before the Highland Council elections in May to condemn what their MPs are doing in their name or will they just bow their heads and go along with them?

Yours sincerely

etc

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EMA Cuts Tell Us All We Need to Know

EMA (Education Maintenance Allowances) don't apply in Scotland.

In England, it gives up to £30 a week to 16-18 year olds from low income families attending further education courses.  A Labour Policy, its about paying for kids books, travel and subsistence.  To make getting a higher qualification just a bit easier.

Today, the Coalition cut it.

The same week as they are saying its OK for students to build up £36,000 of debt for a four year degree, they pull away the step ladder for the rest.  £30 a week really matters, when your folks' can't pay.

Tells us all we need to know about the real agenda.

Cameron and Clegg both come from a highly privileged background.  Its showing...

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Coalition must not be allowed to re-write economic history!

The constant repitition by LibDem and Tory ministers of their mantra that the coming savage cuts are all the result of "Labour's financial mess" risks becoming accepted wisdom if we don't start to counter it soon.  Remember how the Winter of Discontentt came to represent all the reasons Thatcher got support for so long?

Excessive public spending didn't cause the credit crisis; what caused it was a massive over indulgence in credit by the private sector, led by bankers and financiers far more interested in personal wealth and power than stable banking.  Labour - like every other government in the western world - had to pump £billions of public money into the banking system to stop it collapsing.  Now ordinary people will pay a huge price in service cuts, lost jobs and a VAT hike that always hits the poorest, whilst the City gets back to "normal".

Coalition ministers tell us there is no choice but to make savage cuts in public spending, to appease the same financial markets which got us into this mess in the first place!   But there is a choice if you want to make it.

What Cameron and Clegg are proposing is about idealogy.  They want a smaller public sector and this is their great opportunity to do it.

Labour needs to get back on the front foot and stop the re-writing of economic history that is going on.

Which of our party leadership candidates will take up the challenge?

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When Fairness Equals Savage Cuts

Every LibDem candidate across the country campaigned on “fairness” during the Election.

Every letter and leaflet promised that the LibDems were the only party who would restore economic and social fairness. Locally, Danny Alexander promised fair taxes, a fairer economy – with investment in the Highlands in green energy , broadband and affordable house building - and a fair fuel deal for rural motorists.

Labour’s warning about LibDem plans for savage cuts in public spending were dismissed as scare mongering.

Two months on and the LibDems need to answer some questions.

How is it fair to raise the income tax threshold, then take it all away again for low income families by raising VAT and slashing tax credits?

Why is it now fair for public sector workers to take the pain, instead of the bankers and financiers you lambasted in all your election literature?

What’s happened to all the promises of reducing rural fuel costs? The VAT increase next January will put rural fuel prices up not down and a pilot scheme to reduce rural fuel prices seems to have been kicked into the coalition long grass. See Peter Peacock’s latest comments here.

Why is Danny Alexander leading the charge to cut not just 25% but as much as 40% from government budgets? The Barnet Formulae will bring that home to Scotland next year. If times are already tough for Highland Council he is about to make it a whole load worse.

Labour would have had to make some tough decisions about public spending, but our approach was to get the balance right between reducing spending and raising income from economic growth as we came steadily out of recession. We would have reduced the deficit by 50% by 2014 without any of the ideologically driven pain now driven by the Tories and signed up to by the LibDems.

How is all this “Standing up for the Highlands”, Danny?

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The Real Tory Agenda

When Conservative candidate Jim Ferguson stood up at the Kingussie Hustings and told the audience that the public sector “generated no value” he was regarded as a maverick speaking only for himself.

Now we know that his thinking was straight out of Conservative Central office.

Listening to David Cameron yesterday, speaking with scarcely concealed enthusiasm about the huge programme of cuts he is planning in public spending was chilling. Not because of the scale of the deficit – the numbers he quoted were all in Alastair Darling’s last budget report– but because of what it says about how the Tories view the public sector.

To listen to Cameron speak, you would think it was public sector workers who had caused the recession, soaking up wasteful government spending in well protected jobs, whilst the private sector withered away. The reality is that its only by keeping investment going into the public sector over the last two years that we have stopped a much worse recession; indeed the slow recovery we are now seeing – lower borrowing than predicted and lower unemployment – is probably a direct result of there still being public sector workers with jobs and therefore money to spend on their homes, consumer goods, holidays, services and all the other small economic activities that are the bedrock of our small business driven economy.

How many families have got through the past two years because at least one family member had a job in the NHS, their local council, school or a care provider? Investment in new schools and hospitals doesn’t just build smart new buildings, it employs people, experienced workers as well as apprentices.

Cut a 100,00 jobs out of the public sector – with the spending power that comes with that - and you risk plunging the private sector straight back into another recession.

Labour’s approach to rebuilding the public finances was about getting the balance right between growth and spending; stimulate the economy slowly and steadily and you eventually get higher revenues from income taxes and VAT, so you need to cut spending by much less.

What Cameron’s speech yesterday told us is that the real Tory agenda is still driven by their instinctive aversion to public services. They want a smaller public sector – full stop – and this is their magnificent opportunity to deliver it on the back of financial scaremongering, blaming it all on Labour (“a big boy did it and ran away”) and a corner shopkeepers’ approach to economic planning.

All helped of course, by LibDem willingness to wield the knife as the price for power.  Danny Alexander seems to have gone very quiet all of a sudden........

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After the Election

First and foremost, I’d like to thank the 10,407 voters in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey who trusted me – a first time candidate in the area - and the Labour Party with their vote. Its clear there is a very strong base of support in this constituency for Labour’s values and ambitions on which we can build for the future.

At least Labour voters knew what they were voting for.

I wonder how many LibDem voters are now questioning how their support for Danny Alexander has led directly to the return of a Tory Government and a coming programme of savage cuts which will devastate jobs and services in the Highlands. The Tories were a distant 4th in this constituency as they were across Scotland, but they are now about to dominate our lives, with the help of Mr Alexander and his LibDem colleagues.

Mr Alexander is now a leading light in a government whose coalition agreement spells out immediate and accelerated cuts to public spending, cuts to the Child Trust Fund and Child Tax Credits.

Mr Alexander also made much during his campaign of his party’s opposition to new nuclear power stations and the renewal of Trident. He attacked me on the hustings for my party’s position on these issues. Now he sits at the cabinet table with a party fiercely committed to both.

And in the Coalition Agreement published today there is no mention whatsoever of the Rural Fuel Duty Reduction which was such a key plank of Mr Alexander’s campaign.

In his last leaflet before Polling Day Mr Alexander claimed he “puts the Highlands first”.

We shall see how that claim stands up as he leads the Tory programme of savage cuts in Scotland.

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Nairn Swimming Pool

Since the start of the week, the local news has been dominated by Highland Council’s proposed programme of cuts to local services, including the Nairn Swimming Pool. There is a Facebook campaign to save the pool here.

As I have no direct connection with Nairn, I’ll avoid the easy option of signing up for the campaign as if the Nairn pool is a facility I have used and loved. I do however, fully support what local community campaigners are trying to achieve.

The Labour party is making the case at this election for protecting front-line services whilst we secure the recovery. That’s not easy, but local services, and the jobs that depend on them, should not be paying the price for the excesses of the banking system. And if a much-used local swimming pool is not a front line service, I don’t know what is!

I am hugely concerned about the consultation process currently being undertaken by Highland Council. We face difficult financial times, but asking communities to compete with each other about what services should be cut and which should be saved is not how I think things should be done.

Earlier this week I visited Hilton Community Centre, in Inverness, who are also on the list of potential closures. Should they have to argue why they should be saved rather than Nairn’s pool? Setting community against community is no way to do things. It’s an invidious process.

Elected politicians are there to make the difficult decisions, not absolve themselves through a flawed process of consultation.

Highland Council - like all Scottish council - is facing a truly difficult financial situation as a result of the tight budgets set by the Scottish Government.

The elephant in the room, however, is the unwillingness to consider raising more income by breaking out of the straight-jacket imposed by the Council Tax freeze. The combination of additional income with the savings that could be made in administrative areas, could provide a life-line for the Nairn Pool as well as Community Centres.

I will do all that I can to save Nairn Swimming Pool and Hilton Community Centre – as well as the many other vital community facilities across the constituency - as part of my campaign priority of protecting vital front line services whilst we secure the recovery.

Despite saying at the start that I had no direct connection with the town, I learned at the weekend that my wife’s great uncle, Donald Finlayson (her family are from the Ardersier/Inverness area) drowned in the River Nairn in 1896. I am trying to find out under what circumstances.

I hope it wasn’t because he was a non-swimmer!

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After the Conferences, a Question

After all the high political rhetoric of the party conference season, its back to the real work of local politics. Yesterday we delivered a new leaflet into Dalneigh and today we will be doing the same in Kingussie.

After all the conference speeches, I have just one question for Danny Alexander and Jim Ferguson. Both of your party leaders have promised to make big cuts in public spending if they get into power ("savage cuts" in the case of Nick Clegg and the LibDems). But, if its the bankers, financiers and some of the other top earners in this country who created this crisis, why is it now public sector workers who are being asked to pay for it?

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INBS Labour Party determined to Win

Much media talk over the weekend about the lack of determination to win in the Labour Party. Well anyone who doubts that we are ready and willing for the "fight of our lives" at next year's election should have been on Inverness High Street on Saturday afternoon when a team of enthusisatic Labour activists handed out hundreds of leaflets highlighting Danny Alexander and the LibDem's plans for "savage cuts".

Its been a Labour government that intervened to help people through the recession. Not just because it was the right thing to do but because it is in our instincts to do so. The Conservatives took the decision to do nothing - to let the recession take its course. And today they would use the financial crisis as an excuse to cut support for jobs and families, because that is in their instinct too. Seems it is a LibDem instinct as well!

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LibDems plan Savage Cuts in Public Expenditure

We are used to finding it hard to pin down LibDem policy on most issues. Now, on public expenditure, we finally know exactly where they stand. In Nick Clegg’s own words “"I have said there will need to be cuts, cuts that are savage and bold.” Even the Tories have not gone this far (yet).

The Highland economy is already facing a tough public expenditure regime - the Council is looking to trim its budget by £60m over the next 3 years - as we start to pay the price of the SNP's political programme. The impact of further "savage" cuts will be severe.

Danny Alexander is right at the heart of such plans. As Nick Clegg’s Chief of Staff, he has responsibility for drafting the LibDem manifesto for the election. In Danny's own words (Inverness Courier, 30th June) "spending cuts will hit the poor hardest". For years, the LibDems have been lining up to demand new services and programmes and criticising Labour when we have had to make difficult decision on spending priorities. Now we know exactly what they are planning to do if they get into power - or into coalition with the Tories - "savage" cuts!

Danny Alexander is carrying Cleggs’ knife in the Highlands. We must get organised to stop him.

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Tories Looking Forward to Cuts

Reading the Guardian piece about Shadow Treasury Chief Secretary Phillip Hammond yesterday left me cold and angry. Hammond seemed to be almost enjoying the prospect of the savage cuts in public spending he is planning should the Tories gain power in next year's election. Lots of macho talk about taking "early action" and "establishing credibility" with the City and global markets. All about needing to keep the financiers happy - the same ones who got us into this current mess - rather than understanding the impact of such cuts on jobs and services for the vast majority of people in this country.

I was in Grantown on Saturday, meeting folk at the Figgat Fair. The three small care homes there are prime examples of what may be under threat if Hammond and his ilk get their way.

Hammond may fully expect to be the nation's hate figure, but he will clearly have a big smile on his face as he wields the spending axe with undisguised enjoyment.

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Cuts in the City

Working in London today. In the City. Allister Heath - who I don't know from Adam - is the editor of City AM, a widely read morning free-sheet. In a strident editorial, he wrote about what he regards as the coming political "revolution".

On Labour's prospects "... there is now almost no chance ... of anything other than a Tory Government in a year's time". And on what that will mean "Until a few week's ago, it seemed as if the Tories would turn out to be a soft touch on tax and spend. No longer...... All large projects will be scrutinised, almost all public spending commitments renegotiated........ Its time to prepare for the new order."

There are many good people and businesses in the City - I work for some of them - who are still investing in companies that are creating wealth and jobs. But the devastating spending and service cuts that Heath predicts is what many of those who should be taking responsibility for the economic mess we are in are now looking forward to. Cuts for the rest of us whilst they enjoy the benefits of the "new order".

Even in this most difficult of times, this is why we need to fight and fight for every Labour vote to protect jobs and services for all of the people in this country.

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Climbing and Politics in Torridon

Staying in Kinlochewe with a bunch of old friends for a few days climbing in the Torridon Hills. Great to be away from the news bulletins for a bit - our lodgings don't have a TV. But the changes - for the good - in this area are plain to see all round. Road upgrades have opened the area up for safe journeys for both visitors and locals. Schools seem to be thriving - some of my pals are just back from a day at Gairloch and commented on the new high school there - and mobile broadband in the village means a few of our party can do some essential business whilst we are here. Best of all, I passed a small development of new affordable houses today - being built by Albyn -which no doubt will provide some decent homes at a fair rent for the local community. All good investments, which are making a difference. Investment that needs to be continued, not cut.

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