INCREASE SCOTTISH CHILD PAYMENT TO £40 PER WEEK SAYS ALBA.
Reacting to the Programme for Government announced today by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon MSP ALBA Westminster Leader Neale Hanvey MP said:
“While the rent freeze for tenants and the halt to evictions are both to be welcomed, the announcement of £20 million for the Fuel Insecurity Fund and the increase in discretionary housing payment funds to Councils by £5 million, is wholly inadequate to deal with the scale of the humanitarian crisis facing Scots families.
“The Scottish Government could have raised the Scottish Child Payment to £40 per week for 400,000 children in 250,000 households but failed to do so. That is the real help that families are crying out for and should have been delivered today.
“The Scottish government must stop tinkering around the edges and must stop going cap in hand to Westminster.
“The scandal of one in three Scots households living in fuel poverty in energy rich Scotland will not be addressed without a significant strategic move away from the dominance of the energy giants and their massive excess profits. We need Independence to pursue public ownership, a wellhead tax, carbon levies and micro grids storage so as to deliver sustainable energy security and affordability for our people.”
One in three households in fuel poverty. Scotland a twenty first century Biafra or is it Rwanda. Or is it an 1860s Irish Famine.
Scotland’s propensity to be treated like animals, and make no mistake, homes without power are pens, animal pens. And all in a country endowed with a surfeit of gas, oil, wind and hydro.
It never does any good to criticise a hapless broken people. But make no mistake fuel poverty for millions in a country of many is the absolute hallmark of a people on their knees.
And yet, all we have to do is take control. It is our right to choose. Our right to end the union. Our right to say no to the pillaging energy corporates stripping our resources. And that control is in the hands of the people. Not in the hands of the corporate elites.
We have choice. We must exercise it. Else we accept and the poverty of our children, our old folk, and in fact one in three households
And talking about accepting our lot I was absolutely astounded at a Labour politician this week calling for halls, churches and other such places to be set up as heating centres for those unable to heat their homes.
Of itself the proposal is not a badly intentioned one, nor in reality a misplaced one. But I couldn’t quite not be astounded as to how much this stop gap misses the absolute issue.
Scotland is exporting huge amounts of oil and gas. And as the price soars the energy company profits soar. They are making hundreds of billions whilst Scotland freezes. Not dissimilarly Scotland has hydro and wind. The hydro has paid for itself over and over and over. Wind will do so too. And as another benefit Scotland has the topography in its mountains, lochs and glens to store surplus power. Indeed, the scheme to double the entire UK’s storage capacity with the Great Glen Coire Glas scheme is testimony to that. And there are another five hydro schemes on the drawing board – Cruachan 2 being an example.
Power from the glens for the glens was the 50s and 60s ethos. But not now as one in three of our households live in fuel poverty. Like animals in pens whilst the wealth gets stripped out of the country.
I could go on but unless and until we decide to take control, take our energy assets into public ownership, take political control, this like Orwell’s Animal Farm is our lot.
So let’s end this so called treaty of union. Time we called time.
Am I missing something? Can someone please explain to me how a rent freeze until Spring can possibly be of any help to those in social housing whose rent is usually set in April each year and which will not rise again until next Aprti (Spring) anyway or how it helps those already on Housing Benefit who get their rent paid already? Are the Scottish Govt really as unattached from reality as their English Tory counterparts or are the majority of voters also that unattached, don’t know or don’t care enough to see that this does nothing to help the poorest in society.
As for any single, childless older people – well we might as well amass as many pills as possible and end it all now because they obviously don’t give a shit about anyone without kids – we haven’t done our civic duty in providing the cannon fodder and worker drones of the future and we can all, obviously, fend for ourselves.
I used to think the two party system in the UK parliament was only there to give the illusion of choice and democracy to voters – I now beieve that also applies to the Vichy Scot pariament, including the SNP in Sctland. My. how we have all been duped.