Report to the People
28th January 2008
Invest in our Future
Setanta
Sports or some new curtains? A
fancy holiday, or a new kitchen?
For
as long as money has existed, we’ve had decisions to make about how to spend
it.
If
we’re being sensible, what wins is whatever’s best in the long-run.
The exciting option of the holiday might be great fun, but when it’s
over, it’s over. The boring new
kitchen, though, will enhance your home and its value for years to come.
The
same principle should also apply when budgeting for the nation. Money
should be spent on what will reap the greatest long-term benefit and I therefore
despair at some of the short-sightedness in the Scottish Government’s first
budget, on which MSPs voted last week.
The
Westminster Government has given the Holyrood Ministers some £30 billion of
taxpayers’ money to spend (double, incidentally, what Donald Dewar had to work
with), but there supposedly isn’t enough money in the kitty to provide
apprenticeships for more of our young people.
There
can scarcely be a better investment in a community’s future than giving our
young people a profession which they will develop and adapt throughout their
working lives. But, while I and
colleagues argued for 15,000 more modern apprenticeships a year, we were voted
down by an alliance of SNP and Tory MSPs.
This,
of course, is not the end, as line-by-line scrutiny of the Budget Bill now
begins. But, unless these
MSPs have a change of heart, young people’s futures will take second place to
short-term political gestures.
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