Tough Time Ahead for Scottish Councils

Dundee Courier Friday 26 October 2007

From the Courier article we can assume the government’s 2008 spending settlement for Scotland’s local councils means budget cuts and may mean job losses.
Fife Council face a £26 million shortfall and Dundee are grappling with a single status pay structure which may mean wage cuts for some staff.
Gordon Brown, the author of the settlement has of course told the Scottish government and the councils they have got the best possible deal.
If these are indeed cash-strapped times its extraordinary how much cash seems to be available for Trident, the nuclear missile system whose renewal Gordon Brown wants to push ahead with.

James Callaghan, a former Labour leader, who couldn’t find the money to pay the binmen spent £1 billion on a previous nuclear renewal.
Callaghan’s preference for arms not jobs led to the 1978 Winter of Discontent and his defeat at the polls.
This should be a salutary lesson for the current Labour leader who can’t find the money to pay the postal workers pensions but is desperate to waste £25 billion on yet another nuclear renewal.
Nuclear funding like the number of times it has to renewed seems limitless which is more than can be said of the health of the British economy and the coffers of the Bank of England. Gordon Brown must know another Northern Rock type debacle and the longest queues won’t be outside the banks but at the polling stations voting him out and back to Fife where because of council cuts he may have to empty his own bins. Perish the thought but as same issue Courier editorial advises “Savings of 3% across services in Fife are being advised, That might be painful but is there any choice except to get on with it?” Good question.
Well….. how about instead of the hospices, old folks homes and schools having to augment their funds through endless rounds of fund raising and charity how about if Gordon Brown gave them Trident’s £25 billion and sent the generals and brass hats out with their collecting cans on a Support Trident flag day.
Someone should tell him it’s the old story Swords or Ploughshares, Bombs or Jobs.

No Dundee Money For The Gunrunners

Once upon a time Dundee Council was a leading light in the Local Authority Nuclear Free Zone movement, today it’s employee’s pension contributions prop up the international arms industry.
The pension fund has over £2million invested in companies manufacturing arms of mass destruction. Of course, £2 million’s not much of a stake, 0.3% of pension investment, but it’s the message it sends that’s important. For just as the Nuclear Free Zones sent a message that Scotland did not want to be turned into a radioactive cinder heap should somebody have been mad enough to fire off a missile from a Clyde-based Trident submarine, Dundee pulling its funding of the arms companies sends a message not just to the companies but to other councils like Aberdeen whose pension funds have a much larger stake in arms profits.
As far as local councils are concerned the elected councillors carry the can. However, the investment of the council workers pension contributions will not be known to them it will be done by a faceless investment manager. But your councillor can do something about it.
If enough people raise the matter with their elected representative then you never know the policy may just change.