Standing up for workers: SSP wants Salmond book: Fox £10/hr min. wage, publicly-owned lifts the lid on Yes banks, scrap anti-trade union laws... leadership and SNP • see pages 6&7 NOW! • see page 9 £1 • issue 456 • 10th – 23rd April 2015 scottishsocialistvoice.wordpress.com SMEARS • LIES • SCARES The Better Together zombies stagger into the election fray BACK THE REAL ANTI- •A£1U0S/hToEuRr mITinY. wAaGgEeN NDOA W • End zero hours contracts • Axe anti-trade union laws ScottishSocialistVoice.wordpress.com /ScottishSocialistVoice @ssv_voice WELFARE by Sandra Webster, SSP national co-spokesperson THE PRESS is full of pictures and interviews of ordinary everyday life in Number 10. Sam and Dave posed with their family. Dave was praised for combing his daughter’s hair even though he is left handed. The emphasis was on an ordinary family with a father with an extraordinary job. Look a little closer though and the staging of the UNPOPULAR CHOICE: many people left disability charity pictures was evident. Despite ‘Contact a Family’ when Sam Cam was made their patron the children sitting round the kitchen table doing their homework. The three Rs are important to the Camerons, the dishwasher was empty at dNifficualt, pusttintg soyme atpanort cotveyr the egxtra ecost tof s cnall peaoples out tof iwoerk r 9.20am. Given most of us breaking point. disability which multiplies “feckless” and “lazy”. These can’t afford one how many Carer’s Allowance is a with the number of disabled are the actions of Cameron’s “ordinary” dishwashers are pitiful amount £62 a week people in a family. Many government. Life for carers empty at breakfast time? but it provides a small disabilities have a genetic and mothers is a thousand Then there was little Ivan payment to compensate disposition which runs in miles away from Number who as usual was discussed. carers for their unpaid work. families. Again the most 10’s cosy kitchen. Life is The death of any child is a At present it is a universal vulnerable are under attack. hard and a struggle. tragedy. Little Ivan only benefit. The leak announced Child benefit may be Most carers I know are lived a short time. According this would only be paid to limited to the first two keen to emphasise how to Sam Cam he changed families in receipt of children. having a loved one with a their world forever. She Universal Credit. Thousands Again, this is a safety net disability has changed them. talked about why their of families will lose out. benefit which means that They are able to be more experiences of being Ivan’s For many, this is a safety parents can ensure there is compassionate and walk in father was a good reason to net payment allowing people food on the table. others’ shoes. Can Sam and re-elect Dave for another to remain at home rather Dave Cameron say the same? five years as he truly knows than being cast into the Breadline Britain Looking at the world the impact of disability on a workplace. That is if you are In ‘Breadline Britain’, through Tory-tinted glasses, family. not too exhausted to work. every penny counts for they may believe they are Many carers work over 60 struggling families. All of the supporting families. Sam Austerity cuts hours a week and there is no carers I have spoken to can Cam is a patron of ‘Contact All these happy family sick leave or respite. barely believe what is a Family’, a charity which photographs the week after ESA and Carer’s happening. Things are supports families with a the nasty party may have Allowance may be taxable difficult enough now but if disabled child. I know many become nastier. I didn’t and again will be means these rules become who left after they made think that was possible tested. This will affect many legislation it will tip many Sam Cam patron. either. young adults who stay at over the edge. Enough is enough though. However, the cuts to home with their families. The sad fact though is that Although people feel isolated welfare spending “leaked” The transition from children this policy seems to be and crushed by the present by civil servants last week to adult services are difficult popular to some of the cuts, I can sense anger from will have a huge impact on enough to traverse without electorate. Their ire, fuelled people who have never been the lives of people with this increased financial by the ever growing list of politically engaged before. disabilities and their difficulty. programmes about how life It is time for a change and families. As Sam Cam Perhaps most contentious on benefits is a bed of roses, a challenge to the Tories to described, with a disabled is if you have more than one means they believe the face the inconvenient truth child in your family, life is disabled child you will only divide-and-conquer rhetoric that their policies are not the fragile. For many families, be able to claim for one of of the Tories. Being poor is oxymoron “caring these proposed austerity cuts them. This will decrease not protected by any conservatism” but an attack will make life so much more many families budgets but legislation. It is acceptable to on the most vulnerable. 2 • scottishsocialistvoice.wordpress.com • issue 456 EDITORIAL by Ken Ferguson THE BRITISH state and its political class have a centuries- old, well deserved reputation for lying and duplicity which ZOMBIE earned them the label Perfidi - ous Albion across the globe. The two-year referendum BETTER campaign with its scares, smears, prediction of doom and TOGETHER outright lies dished up by the politicians of the cross class Bet - ter Together and their “Project STAGGERS Fear” were but the latest refine - DAWN OF THE ED:: workiing cllass ment in the dark arts of duplicity INTO Scottlland iis under tthe yoke off INTO iinsecure,, poorlly--paiid work,, tthanks that is their stock in trade. tto Labour,, Liib Dems and Toriies As the days tick by towards the UK general election which sEuppLorEtersC of MTosIleOy’s pN ro-Hitler comment before publication. this alternative a reality involve seems to be moving inexorably Blackshirts) ran their right wing Now it is clear that the “story” massive house building for to the doom of Scottish Labour bile with variations on the theme came from a Scottish Office rent, action to implement a and their erstwhile Lib Dem and from the rest of the media pack civil servant answerable to £10-an-hour wage now and Tory chums of last year, mount - but it was left to the supposedly Scottish Secretary Alistair public ownership of key serv - ing panic is gripping the suave “quality” Daily Telegraph to open Carmichael whose party, the ices as a step towards an liars of Westminster. its pages to the Zombies. flexible Lib Dems, are bywords economy putting people and Enter then, in a Dawn of the Perhaps before examining for honesty and truth. Chal - planet before profit and greed. Dead moment, the Zombies of the Telegraph ’s tawdry role we lenged on Channel Four, he The anti-austerity offer made the supposedly deceased Bet - should recall the recent book by once again showed that he is during the debate is an opening ter Together to unfold, yet again, their Scottish man Alan London’s man dismissing it as towards such a politics but their menu of dirty tricks. Cochrane, a willing stooge of “one of those things”. needs to go much further. Britannia, in which he boasted Amidst the clanging of Labour Sturgeonmania of his role in spreading the ma - bosses deleting gleeful tweets Profit-crazed bosses In the wake of the leaders’ nure for Better Together. and postings the Labour delight Working class Scotland is debates and the growth of Stur - Thus, hot on the heels of the turned to gloom as one more under the yoke of insecure, geonmania they furiously seven-way TV debate, the Tele - Zombie bit the dust. badly-paid work and slashed treated us to screaming head - graph broke an “exclusive” As 7 May approaches the benefits and this is not an act of lines about the “most danger - telling readers that Nicola Stur - significant development is that, God but the outcome of 30 ous woman in Britain” and geon had told the French am - despite the iron grip of big fi - years of ruling class war on multiple variations on the theme bassador that she favoured nance on all aspects of UK life workers which made trade as they scrabbled to defend the Cameron over Miliband for from parliament to papers and unions almost illegal and left unionist’s austerity agenda at Prime Minster. TV, a glimpse of another way workers at the mercy of profit- the heart of Labour, Lib Dem What a scoop!! In one fell has broken the mass media crazed bosses. and Tory programmes. swoop the carefully calibrated blackout. Socialists, Greens All the fruits of their domi - However modestly and rea - anti-Tory SNP message was and the progressive move - nance from zero hours con - sonably tabled, the idea set out exposed as a sham and des - ment have, of course argued tracts to plummeting wages are by Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne perate Labour chiefs—led by for an alternative to austerity rooted in arrogant and unchal - Wood of Plaid and the Greens Miliband—seized on the tale since the great crash but for lenged bosses power and win - Natalie Bennett that there like drowning men at straws as millions of voters such policies ning back workers right to might be an alternative to aus - proof that the SNP are Tory are either unheard in the cor - organise is an essential first terity came like a thunderbolt supporters.