MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.
Recipe for cutbacks
WAS a bit surprised to discover late last year that the Scottish Labour Party had a previously well-hidden strategy to deliver socialism in one wee country.
Yes, that's right, even before Wendy Alexander said the magic S-word at the Labour conference in Aviemore last month.
It was called "ring-fencing." This was a secret scheme to transfer wealth and power from the rich to the poor without anyone noticing at all and it was working ever so well, so it was, until the big bad SNP won the election and decided to replace it with a "concordat."
Ok, enough fairy stories. Ring-fencing of centrally determined progressive policies so that some reactionary local councils don't renege on them is fair enough. Its removal will cause problems, especially for voluntary services working in poor areas.
But it never was and never could be a means to create an equal society. That depends on a fair redistribution of wealth and power, not just some sticking plaster which might lessen the worst effects of Labour's private finance initiative schemes and privatisations.
The concordat isn't much better. Labour is split on the agreement signed late last year between the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) and the SNP government.
The SNP government argues that its budget for the council settlement is tight because Labour in London has squeezed the Scottish settlement. It went for a council tax freeze, mimicking Labour's policy, and is seeking 2 per cent efficiency savings at council level.
Professor Arthur Midwinter, council finance expert and adviser to Labour leader Alexander, thinks that the scheme doesn't add up and will unravel. "The real difficulty I think is that individual councils will find they are unable to meet the deal and will act accordingly."
CoSLA president and staunch Labour council veteran Pat Watters thinks that the settlement is financially tough but acceptable and even has benefits.
"The flexibility, with ring-fencing removed, reducing the bureaucracy ... and therefore increasing efficiency savings to bolster front-line services."
"Unable to meet the deal" or "increasing efficiency savings," any way that you look at it, even if you don't live in Aberdeen, where a £27 million cuts programme is being implemented by the SNP-Lib Dem council, the local government concordat implies a squeeze on jobs and services, wages and conditions.
Glasgow services under threat
GLASGOW City Council has told 10,000 workers in two large departments that their jobs may have to go out to commercial tender if costs are not cut.
Despite compulsory competitive tendering having been repealed, a "best value" requirement for "significant trading operations" to meet competition criteria was retained.
The city's direct and care services, with 8,000 workers, and land and environmental services, with 2,500, are deemed to be failing to meet financial targets. Ironically enough, this is largely because they have had to catch up with equal pay legislation.
Plus ca change. The system is set up to take away with the right hand what it wasn't at all keen to give with the left in the first place.
It is reassuring to hear Mike Kirby of UNISON say of the council's announcement: "If this does have a direct impact on jobs or wages, we would not rule out industrial action."
As these stirrings of resistance by local authority unions indicate and as the shop stewards' conference on Saturday proved, organised workers in Scotland will not be taking it lying down.
Now that's the right kind of ring-fencing
THE Morning Star reported last Wednesday that UNISON, GMB and Unite (T&G) negotiators had told the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities what to do with its "miserly 2.5 per cent pay offer" to 220,000 council workers in Scotland.
The unions are now consulting members with a recommendation to reject the derisory offer.
As trade union side secretary Dougie Black of UNISON Scotland said, "There is a great deal of anger at the employers' insistence on a three-year deal and their continuing refusal to agree a reopener clause linked to inflation.
"The offer is already less than inflation and, without a reopener clause, our members are being asked to buy a pig in a poke."
The unions have tabled a claim for a one-year deal of either a £1,000 or 5 per cent rise, whichever is greater. Not only would this keep pay ahead of inflation, it would help the poorest paid workers most. That's the most effective kind of ring-fencing, don't you think?
Leigh's latest a subtle take on teaching
YOU don't often see public-sector workers portrayed in a realistic, intelligent and sympathetic light in the media - usually it's some false propaganda about striking jobsworths. You see positive representations of them even less often on the movie screen.
So, it was a real pleasure to go along to the Glasgow Film Theatre last week to watch Mike Leigh's latest film Happy Go Lucky and hear the director himself discuss the movie afterwards.
The film is about teaching and how it can be done well or badly.
The main character is a clever, well adjusted, witty, open, friendly and altogether attractive young woman who is also clearly an effective, motivated teacher in a "bog standard" state primary school.
She is contrasted with a neurotic, almost psychotic, angry, repressed and bitter driving instructor who, to paraphrase Leigh himself in discussion, largely represents the national curriculum in England and Wales.
There is much more to this smart and thoughtful film that that, of course. But it is both enjoyable and political and well worth seeing.
I am glad that Ken Loach's film polemics exist and they may be preferred by some lefties, but this one likes the subtle, observant Mike Leigh.
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