Well summer is over and the schools are back. Not many of us would have managed to get away and staycations were the order of the day. Or maybe days away on the bus or train. Like the old days eh? Well yes, in more ways than one.
One of my most vivid childhood memories is going on bus trips with my siblings in the summer holidays. Lining up to get an awkward hug from my mum before we trundled out the door and walked with heads down, and hunched shoulders to the bus. We weren’t going on a summer trip, though. The bus was put on by the SSPCC or the cruelty bus as we coined it, to take otherwise hungry bairns across the city to get a meal. It was an unusually quiet bus for being full of children. Most of the kids kept their eyes down. I was only 8 or 9 but I already understood that to be hungry was a shameful thing. An embarrassing thing.The memory of that feeling has never left me. The strong resentment I felt but didn’t understand overcame even the anticipation of a hot meal and glory of glories, a pudding!
Sounds Dickensian right? A tale of the past? Well, it was the Seventies but the grim reality of child poverty and food insecurity is still a regular occurrence for too many children in Scotland. Analysis from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that today, 24% of Scotland’s children live in poverty.
For the 1 million Scots and almost a quarter of a million children who are caught in poverty it can feel inescapable. Targets to reduce child poverty are set but consistently fail to be met.
A range of immediate interventions are needed. Policies that create long term, decently paid work, good quality social housing and flexible, affordable childcare can and must be delivered. Urgent action is needed on food and fuel poverty. All of these must be tackled as part of any recovery from covid. We must commit to eradicating child poverty in Scotland as an immediate necessity, not a desirable outcome. Without them, any attempts to get back to even pre-pandemic “normal” fall far short. Even with them, a Devolved Government can only mitigate against the worst, most punitive, austerity driven Tory policies from Westminster. They are, and can only ever be, a last defence against crisis and insecurity. It’s not nearly enough.
Scotland needs Independence
Scotland needs bold policies like Albas 5 point plan that immediately start to tackle the root causes of poverty.
1. Introduce an Annual £500 payment to assist half a million, low earning households in Scotland.
2. Increase the Scottish Child Payment to £40 per week for 400,000 children in quarter of a million households.
3. Extend free school meals to all primary and secondary pupils in Scotland.
4. Double the Education Maintenance Allowance from £30 to £60 for 16 19 in schools and college.
5. Introduce universal access to sports facilities for all young people under 18.
Scotland needs all the levers of control over the distribution of her resources to invest in the future. And what is more important to the future than Scotland’s children and young people?
Poverty is not inevitable. It’s not preordained. It’s not a natural selection of those that are worthy of basic dignity and those who are not. It shouldn’t be a postcode lottery that locks children into a cycle of poverty. A cycle that will likely see them struggle all of their lives to overcome the many barriers to good employment, better education and good health. We CAN choose differently. We NEED a Scottish parliament that can create a new, better normal. A Scotland where any child that is not getting enough to eat is abnormal and unacceptable to all of us.
Alba Inaugural Conference.
Our inaugural Conference is almost upon us, and I am looking forward to it more than any other in recent memory for many reasons. Having the opportunity to come together face to face with old friends and new. Debating our excellent motions, sharing our hopes and visions for Scotland’s future, and I’m sure, lots of laughs and even a drink or two. National office bearers will be elected, and we will endorse Alex Salmond as the leader of our party. And a fine leader he is! I and so many people in Scotland, recognise that Alex’s desire and sheer will to push for Scottish independence was at the forefront of our fight for Independence in 2014. Without his utter determination, political brilliance and refusal to stand down in the face of overwhelming odds, we would never have had a referendum in 2014 at all. He has continued to demonstrate those character traits since then in the dignified way befitting a statesman and former first minister. Without that same laser focus and serious planning for Independence that is sadly lacking in the current SNP government, we will never achieve it. So. I’m looking forward to meeting many members there. If you see me, come and say hello.
Michelle
24% Child Poverty, in this day and age..??!! We should wipe this out immediately, as a matter of the utmost urgency. It is a shame on us as a nation of sovereign Scots that we elect a government more interested in gender recognition and hate crime bills when children are starving. FFS, end this NOW!
Great Post.
Brexit, and the inflation it will undoubtedly bring, will worsen the plight of the poorest. We cannot afford not to do the right thing.
I am again forced to say I am ashamed of the present SNP administration and all their cowardly MPs and MSPs.
Saor Alba – is exactly what we need. Looking forward to conference.
I agree with all the facts and sentiments.
When there is so much that can be done just now.
Including ending this union, having a spine and being ahead of the Westminster game.
Yet! All the SNP excuses aBout this pandemic.
Yet they’ve tried to prosecute AS, they’ve prosecuted CM on trumped up charges.
Introducing hate crime act and laws about folks who are not happy in their own skins.
Beggars belief.
🐼🐼
I think what’s hugely frustrating is that when we’re talking about the most marginalised people in society, somehow, we continue to ignore the most marginalised in society. Child poverty is on the rise. Pensioner poverty is on the rise. In work poverty is on the rise. At what point does a minority become most of us? We all have a collective responsibility and vested interest in the young people of Scotland. Scotlands biggest resourse is her children. It can’t be right that so many are left behind in a supposedly progressive nation.
It is amazing that, in Ireland, credit unions have expanded in a remarkably short period of time, to now offering full banking facilities.
Meanwhile the Spanish government provides for heavily subsidised all inclusive holidays to all pensioners(yes even the British ex-pats) during the off season.
While I fully realise that two weeks all inclusive in Blackpool or Ayr during the dark months of
January and February won’t have the same appeal as two weeks in Benidorm or Costa Del Sol, to those having to decide whether to eat or heat, a two week all inclusive holiday would make a massive difference.
Add to the mix that hotels will benefit from enhanced occupancy at a time when they’d normally be empty. Win/win situation.
SNP have just given £30,000 pay rises to the two green ministers who now sit in cabinet. One of the two who could only achieve 36votes, yet is now a “cabinet” minister, it also seems that if someone studies law and graduates, they are being offered positions within the corrupt Crown Prosecution with a starting salary of £41,000 yet go to work for a private law firm and that same student receives half of that. Money is paid to a UNIONIST rag newspapers to the value of £3million, the Scottish Government PAY Stonewall. Yet a photo in a newspaper who’s school kids in line at a soup kitchen waiting to be fed.. Covid infection rates going through the roof AGAIN, deaths in the rise AGAIN..
Most of the SNP msps have all had a rise in salaries, as have office staff.. Yet POVERY in SCOTLAND is going through the roof. Alex Salmond scrapped the charges for prescriptions which yes, benefited all of Scotland but it was mainly to benefit the poorest families, he started the free breakfasts so that no child was going to school on an empty stomach, he scrapped the costly car parking charges at hospitals which again served us all, but without a doubt was a huge relief for the poor visiting sick or dying family members.
He scrapped the bridge tools making it cheaper for people travelling to and from work were not penalised where bridges had to be crossed.
He froze the council tax that under Labour went up year on year, because Labour bankrupted every council through their high interest PFI contracts which only benefitted their friends in the private business sector.
There was more, but everything he did (including asking his ministers not to accept the mandatory pay rises, but to donate it to charities) he did to benefit the poorest in our society in Scotland & especially the children..
Under Sturgeon, we got baby boxes, and HUGE increase of salaries for the already high salaried SNP MSPs MPs and office staff. Self serving loathsome people who are all about themselves.. A government supposedly elected to get Independence, yet hands £3million to a UNIONIST daily Rag, & even hires the UNIONIST editor of the VOW, a country which such poverty, yet they have money for Stonewall.. Yet there are those who say she has done & is doing a great job.. It’s S***E being Scottish right enough..
Excellent piece, Michelle, more power to your elbow!
Scotland’s shame is the way it treats its own folk. Poverty can be eradicated if the will to do so is there but it doesn’t stop at free meals and sports. The tiered wage levels need to done away with. There should be one tier. Those who do the same job as another colleague should be paid the same regardless of age or experience. Younger folk cannot gain experience if the wage is so low that they are forced to leave in order to find a higher paid job that would allow them to live. A true living wage should be made mandatory. Anything less is to state plainly that they do not respect their employees enough to pay them enough to live on. There should be no need to support companies financially through tax credits or tax breaks etc. What these tiered systems do not take into account are young folk who are in care and have no-one to support them financially when they leave or youngsters who leave home for a myriad of reasons.
Another point that needs stated is that Scotland does not have a devolved government. It is the Scottish administration in Holyrood that is devolved from the Scottish government which sits in the parliament of Great Britain. Scots need to stop viewing themselves as an English region under English dominion.
Excellent article Michelle. It is Scotland’s shame that almost 1 in 4 children live in poverty in 2021. The SNP Government has ignored this matter and do not appear to have the political will to address the issue. Independence is the key to addressing the policy change needed to address this position. As Michelle rightly points out Alba has a plan to deliver the change needed to give children and young people the support they need to change this appalling situation.
Indeed, Michelle, there is nothing inevitable about poverty. It is a phenomenon produced by political choices and, therefore, can only be reversed by the making of political choices.The retaking of Scottish Independence (no need to lecture you), will be the first and most important political choice any of us will make in the eradication of poverty. in all its forms and guises.
Sense at last. A policy to make a difference , grounded in day to day reality and not social engineering.
If only children were the priority instead of pronouns and thought control.
Brilliant article Michelle. You are exactly what this country needs, a politician with heart and the fight to make things better for those without a voice. Honoured to call you my friend. xx
Excellent piece Michelle. Scotland should hang its head in shame that a majority continue to vote into power a party who have done nothing about the disgraceful state of poverty in our country. The last 7 years have certainly been a wasted opportunity in all respects. I do hope people are finally waking up. I hope there will be plenty of feedback from conference, to allow those of us who are unable to attend, to know what is decided. So wish that I could be there.
Thanks everyone for the feedback and kind comments. What’s clear, is that child poverty is increasing. So is pensioner poverty and persistent poverty is on the rise amongst all age demographics. The ranks of the working poor will rise on the back of Austerity driven reforms from WM. We need a new plan.
Indeed, I would suggest though making it clear that these are English government policies (there is no government of GB in the treaty) and is a consequence of the Scottish government abdicating responsibility for the governance of Scotland.
Any new plan must have at its heart Scotland’s representatives asserting Scotland’s authority and acting as the equal partner with equal authority to the state that it is. No more capitulation to the English government and its establishment.
PS hope you do well in the vote.