Who does Viceroy Murray think he's kidding?
English Labour won't lift people out of poverty
Published in The National, October 10th and in The Edinburgh Evening News, October 14th, 2024.
Who is Viceroy Murray kidding when he boasts that “Labour will lift people out of poverty - again”?
He cites the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s most recent report on poverty in Scotland, which makes me wonder if he’s even read it:
“It [UK government] still holds the majority of the responsibility for the social security system and while many of its weaknesses pre-date the current government, in its manifesto the Labour Party (at a UK level) committed to ‘reviewing Universal Credit so that it makes work pay and tackles poverty’. There is much to do for the new UK government to keep up its end of the social contract in Scotland.”
The report recommends the UK “remove the benefit cap and 2-child limit,” neither of which Starmer will do. 2000 families in Scotland are impacted by the former which the Scottish administration has tried to alleviate through discretionary housing payments. Ditching the 2-child limit would lift 10,000 kids out of poverty.
The report calls for other changes only the UK can make and stresses that these are MINIMAL. It begs the UK government to rebuild the tattered social contract and praises the Scottish administration:
“The introduction of the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) and the reforms to how disability benefits are delivered show initial steps to an improved system…. we predict that the SCP would reduce child poverty in Scotland by around 4% between 2020-23 and 2024-25.”
It’s a reason Scotland’s child poverty rate (24%) is lower than in England (31%) and Wales (28%).
The UK state is failing because it’s failing its people and most egregiously, its children. The Viceroy’s English Labour party, which Danny Dorling says ‘lost its soul’ in the late ‘90s, is in bed with its corporate donors, so will do nothing to alter the trajectory of this failing state.
The Scottish People need to end this farce.
Yep what an abolsute disgrace that the EngGBUK LABOUR government actually starves little children, and they deliberately plunge families into poverty, it's utterly criminal. We all know (but many, far too many do not) that the Scottish government has it's hands tied behind it's back while trying to mitigate EngGBUK govs' terrible austerity assault on the poorest and most vulnerable. The EngGov are going to squeeze Scotland's budget (crumbs sent back to Scotland once Eng has taken the massive revenues from resources belonging to Scotland) until the pips squeak. It's like the mafia, here's a few quid, don't give us any trouble, do as you are told, or else!
As for 'reviewing universal credit' they mean to remove people from being eligible, those with less severe disailities and long term sick, (long Covid is one of the reasons many are long term out of work). UC, so called, is a nightmare mostly, it's a jumps and hoops system. People already stuggle and the process creates so much stress it's disgraceful. 'Universal credit' (it's not really 'universal') enables employers to pay a minimum wage, and is essentially a benefit to employers making huge profits on the backs of the underpaid. Zero hours still exist, basically slavery, where a person has to be available at all times or lose their 'job'.
Murray his simply a jobsworth, and is there to keep Scotland down. Robert Burns had something to say about folks like that! Sadly some people believe the lies coming out of his and his masters' gobs in London. I hear that Scotland's population has gone up a lot recently. The SNP has to somehow inform people about what devolution is, and about which powers and exactlly how much control the EngGBUK government retains over Scotland on so many levels, much to the detriment of the people of Scotland, the environment and economy etc.
Too many people are easily fooled, and taken in by the BritNat propaganda used against Scotland so that the English can keep control of Scotland's vast resources.
Remember UN Rapportuer reported previously? UK gov choose austerity,