Local Council Cuts
First of all, cuts to local council budgets are not new. The Scottish Parliament did not invent them and the Scottish Government is not the first to implement cuts passed on by Westminster.
I'm old enough to remember way back to the Tory government cuts of the 1990s. What happened then was that the different departments in a council - education, social work, legal, roads, cleansing, housing, finance, etc - had to come up with a 'hit list' of cuts departments could make. Top of the list for every department was resources: they agreed to spend less on goods and services they bought in. Then came abandoning new projects or putting them off for a few years. Then came not renewing the contracts of temporary staff (they didn't get redundancy payments so it was cheap to let their contracts lapse). And right at the end - because in so many areas the council was (and is) the biggest employer and the ramifications for the community were (and remain) awful - possible redundancies among permanent staff. The hope always was that no department would ever reach the end of its hit list.
What is new - to me at least - is how cuts are now being dealt with by some councils. I've just seen that Midlothian Council has given up its plans to abandon music lessons in schools. This cut seems to have been presented as top of the list for Midlothian. While I'm delighted that the very idea of giving up on an important arts budget for young people has been abandoned, I have to ask: Was this really the top of Midlothian's 'hit list'? Have all other cuts in resources and projects been exhausted? Are all its music instructors on temporary contracts and therefore cheap to get rid of?
Or is there a different agenda?
Midlothian is a 'minority Labour council'. It has good reasons to fight cuts imposed by the Scottish Government, but I would suggest that in the case of music tuition some of its reasons are political rather than financial. Today we had bands playing and young people accompanied by their instructors and teachers being congratulated by Labour politicians. The young people had fought a good campaign, being supported along the way by professional musicians like Nicola Benedetti. And Midlothian Council gave an undertaking that music in schools will not be at the top of the hit list in the next financial year. And of course the demonstration by young people and the undertaking by the council took place when the schools are on holiday so we can all see it on TV.
If this isn't a 'political stunt', then I don't know the meaning of the word. If it is a stunt, then Labour councillors in Modlothian should be ashamed to use young people and their employees in the music service in this way.
Has Midlothian attracted any more funding from Holyrood or Westminster? I can't see that happening. Has the minority Labour council come up with other ways to raise funds in their own community? I see no sign of that either. I do see a lot of opposition to any suggestions by any other party to plans to raise funds via the parking tax or the tourist tax.
The parking tax is an idea of the Scottish Greens. I can't say I'm happy with it. In my opinion, it won't get people out of their cars, not while public transport in Scotland is so poor. But it's one more idea for fund-raising than Labour has come up with.
In other words, good people of Midlothian, all this 'victory' means is that the cuts will be made elsewhere.
I'm old enough to remember way back to the Tory government cuts of the 1990s. What happened then was that the different departments in a council - education, social work, legal, roads, cleansing, housing, finance, etc - had to come up with a 'hit list' of cuts departments could make. Top of the list for every department was resources: they agreed to spend less on goods and services they bought in. Then came abandoning new projects or putting them off for a few years. Then came not renewing the contracts of temporary staff (they didn't get redundancy payments so it was cheap to let their contracts lapse). And right at the end - because in so many areas the council was (and is) the biggest employer and the ramifications for the community were (and remain) awful - possible redundancies among permanent staff. The hope always was that no department would ever reach the end of its hit list.
What is new - to me at least - is how cuts are now being dealt with by some councils. I've just seen that Midlothian Council has given up its plans to abandon music lessons in schools. This cut seems to have been presented as top of the list for Midlothian. While I'm delighted that the very idea of giving up on an important arts budget for young people has been abandoned, I have to ask: Was this really the top of Midlothian's 'hit list'? Have all other cuts in resources and projects been exhausted? Are all its music instructors on temporary contracts and therefore cheap to get rid of?
Or is there a different agenda?
Midlothian is a 'minority Labour council'. It has good reasons to fight cuts imposed by the Scottish Government, but I would suggest that in the case of music tuition some of its reasons are political rather than financial. Today we had bands playing and young people accompanied by their instructors and teachers being congratulated by Labour politicians. The young people had fought a good campaign, being supported along the way by professional musicians like Nicola Benedetti. And Midlothian Council gave an undertaking that music in schools will not be at the top of the hit list in the next financial year. And of course the demonstration by young people and the undertaking by the council took place when the schools are on holiday so we can all see it on TV.
If this isn't a 'political stunt', then I don't know the meaning of the word. If it is a stunt, then Labour councillors in Modlothian should be ashamed to use young people and their employees in the music service in this way.
Has Midlothian attracted any more funding from Holyrood or Westminster? I can't see that happening. Has the minority Labour council come up with other ways to raise funds in their own community? I see no sign of that either. I do see a lot of opposition to any suggestions by any other party to plans to raise funds via the parking tax or the tourist tax.
The parking tax is an idea of the Scottish Greens. I can't say I'm happy with it. In my opinion, it won't get people out of their cars, not while public transport in Scotland is so poor. But it's one more idea for fund-raising than Labour has come up with.
In other words, good people of Midlothian, all this 'victory' means is that the cuts will be made elsewhere.
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