20th September 2010

A PRICE TOO HIGH

 Unemployment is a price worth paying, a Tory chancellor once claimed.

 As a community, we know how wrong those words proved to be as a generation of young people paid a very high price for the economic vandalism of that government.

 With a Tory Chancellor in Downing Street once again, and a global recession to use as cover for the cuts agenda, we have to ensure the mistakes of the past aren’t repeated.

 For Scotland, that battle to protect our communities from the Tory cuts begins at the Scottish Parliament.

 But disappointingly, the SNP Government in Edinburgh has been found wanting in the fight to save Scottish jobs.

 Figures this week show that unemployment in the last quarter grew in Scotland by 25,000 at a time when it fell across the UK.

 Construction workers, nurses and teachers have all lost out to the Scottish Government’s broken promises.

 And this all comes before George Osborne announces his swingeing cuts from Westminster, which will be tantamount to an assault on public services and jobs.

 That is why the Scottish Government has to put jobs top of its priority list.

 They can do that by taking on the Tories and helping to make the case for the aircraft carriers to be built in Govan and Rosyth, preserving thousands of jobs in the shipbuilding industry here in Inverclyde.

 They can do that by kick-starting spending on building projects like the Glasgow Airport Rail Link that will create jobs in the construction industry.

 And they can do that by getting to grips with our health and education services and create opportunities for would-be teachers and nurses who are currently unemployed.