Yesterday's Independence Rally...

Photographer, Neil Scott, writes about the Independence Rally on his blog - "A Crowd of Hearts."

Swinson's swan song...

It comes as no surprise that Jo Swinson is going to lose her East Dunbartonsire constituency seat.

According to her, she has worked hard as a constituency MP. And, yes, she does whizz from photo op to photo op around East Dunbartonshire. She also claims local campaign after campaign "hers" and if won, "her victory," from the locally hard fought campaign for a youth cafe in Milngavie BEFORE she was an MP to the recent climb down by Tescos over a new superstore in the village. 

Even local Liberal Democrats are saying she is over stepping her own ego. 

After she sent out leaflets  congratulating herself over the Youth Cafe, a local youth worker I know who had worked on the project with local people for years, vowed never to vote Lib Dem again.

At the recent "victory rally" of the local anti Tescos group, she managed to alienate more local people- including a number of lifelong members of her own local party committee who left the celebrations in disgust- and obvious distress- after her now typical "praise me" speech to a disbelieving audience.

Add to this the various clubs hitherto having had no interest from her into which she parachutes for a photo, and hops in the car to meet the next deadline of a local paper's photographer and you have a huge population of people in East Dunbartonshire who know what her "hard work" adds up to- publicity and self congratulation.

Swinson is a "big hitter" in the cabinet not because she is a big ideas person, or even someone who has built anything of notable value in her constituency, but as someone who has entered the right wing world of Nick Clegg without question for careerist opportunity.  The people of her constituency did not vote for any of the Tory policies she has supported,like University fees, a privatised NHS and Royal Mail (in fact her election materials made big of the "fact" she would protect RM- we knew better when she publically condemned posties striking to save their jobs and conditions of work a few years ago), the dreadful welfare bill that impoverishes the vulnerable further (including the vicious bedroom tax) and her recent support for war and nuclear weapons. 

As well as "banking" lots of political dissatisfaction through her obvious self publicity, she has lost the support of the mainstay centre left East Dunbartonshire voter.

She is "a big hitter" in the dreadful double talk of the LibDem- "Everyone knows the Conservatives can't win in East Dunbartonshire," she says. Well yes, we do know that. ED has never come near to voting Tory- but she knows she has lost the Labour voters who had turned to her as a protest against their support for Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and dissatisfaction with what had happened to the economy post 2008 - so its time for her to court the nasty right wing tory anti-working class /anti-public sector worker/anti NHS poor baiting Westminster Etonian old boy network supporters and cap doffers.

Thank the stars East Dunbartonshire has few of those.

Regarding her support for war in Syria, we have sent her this FOI Request.

"In her blogpiece on the liberal democrat website, titled Syria Debate, Posted on August 30, 2013 Jo Swinson states "Parliament was recalled todebate and vote on the UK’s response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, a serious and sombre issue that I know from my email inbox many of my constituents have been taking a keen interest in.  Here I set outhow I approached the issue and why I decided to support the motion." 

I would like the Minister and her office to send to me the total number of emails from constituents she had recieved prior to the debate on 29 August in Westminster on the topic of the Syria conflict. 

I would like this figure broken down into the total number of constituents emails that expressed the view that they were againstmilitary action in Syria / or asked her to vote against motion and the total number of constituent emails that expressed the view that theywere for military action in Syria/or asked her to vote for the motion."

Free School Meals: Universality when it suits them

by Campsie SSP member Neil Scott

Nice to see the Tories taking on a SSP policy we faught for for years. Free School meals, albeit only for infant children, is a decent start in making life better for our kids.  Its  pity they want to take other universal benefits away. Universality, as they seem to be admitting here, is the fairest, most effective way to deliver equality.

On the announcement, opportunist Nick Clegg was ironically shown on TV eating fruit with Glaswegian children.  What the news isn't saying is that coalition cuts led to free school meals & free fruit ending in Glasgow two years ago.  A few years ago, the LibDems  after taking control of free school meal pioneering Hull City Council, took away this benefit from families during "boom times". 

So why the change of heart?

Easy- the Tories and yellow Tories want to ensure their privatisation of the NHS and further destruction of workers rights and working class community, education and solidarity continues.

The Labour Party are reneging on a committment to universality- and it seems in doing so they have fallen in to a trap. A Labour Party casting off principle for power is empty, meaningless, useless. The coalition partners know this.

The Labour Party by accepting neo-liberalist/Thatcherite vicious economics have been wrong footed. This policy was off their national radar (even though some Labour councils have already enacted it). Their fear of the tory propaganda machine calling them looney lefties at any hint of support for universalism has paralized them. The right wing of the one time party of the working class have dragged them down a blind alley. 
The Labour Party should be replaced by the class they have let down.  The Scottish working class can do that with a Yes in next years independence referendum and then by voting for the SSP in 2016.

The Libdems and Tories, it is obvious, have a pact to help each other gain another term as a coalition. The Libdem media briefing paper to MPs during their conference blatently said 'talk down Labour, talk up the positivity of a Tory party that has been tamed by us...'  Tories and Libdems can cast aside 'principles' if those principles are sacrificeable for their selfish class interests. A wee concession to make people feel they have gained something, even though we have been robbed blind since 2010. Universality in this can be justified by Tories in order to hide their most vicious attacks on working class people. The cuddly LibDems can announce policies such as this to hide their support for selling off the NHS; charging students £9000 per year for an education Danny Alexander and Jo Swinson had free of charge and the impoverishing Welfare Bill, including the Bedroom Tax.

These free school meals are to be welcomed, but the robbery of the working poor and those without work to give tax breaks and bonuses to the well off, that drives them to despair, food banks, hunger and suicide need to be resisted. The disgusting bedroom tax and attacks on disability allowances, for example, will add worry beyond the benefit of a meal for their child.

Take up of free school meals in primary schools I have worked in has been as much as 100% when tried out in Glasgow schools. The benefits to learning were immediately tangible and the negative effects felt almost immediately when they were taken away again. Free School meals, free fruit and water fountains were casualties of the LibDem and Tory Westminster Government and  Glasgow Labour Council whose Scottish leaders are saying universality must be "rethought."

Free meals needs to be rolled out across all schools and ages.

Free school meals for all children is and always has been, the aim of the SSP- but as part of a raft of policies supporting universal health care, pensions, child benefts and other policies that will ensure no-one is driven from their homes or to starvation, Wonga or exploitative zero hour contracts.

9/11 1973

Salvador Allende made his last presidential speech, broadcast by Radio Magallanes at 9:10 on the morning of September 11, 1973, as the Chilean presidential palace was attacked.

My friends,

Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you.

The Air Force has bombed the towers of Radio Portales and Radio Corporación.

My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [national police].

Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign!

Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.

They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector which will today be in their homes hoping, with foreign assistance, to retake power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.

I address, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the worker who labored more, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals, those who days ago continued working against the sedition sponsored by professional associations, class-based associations that also defended the advantages which a capitalist society grants to a few.

I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours — in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to protect them. They were committed. History will judge them.

Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to [inaudible] the workers.

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again where free men will walk to build a better society.

Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.