{"id":1530,"date":"2016-03-07T11:47:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T11:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=1530"},"modified":"2016-03-15T12:21:24","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T12:21:24","slug":"returning-to-normal-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=1530","title":{"rendered":"Returning to normal politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Monday 7<sup>th<\/sup> March 2016<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>RETURNING TO NORMAL POLITICS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It has taken us some time to get here but finally it would seem we are witnessing a return to normal politics.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Now that the vow has been delivered and a fair funding settlement put in place we are now at long last moving onto the issues that matter to people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In particular, education has been high on the agenda and rightly so. It is widely recognised that our schools and colleges are underfunded and as a consequence are under performing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">All parties agree that investing in education is not only vital to the prospects of our young people it is also directly tied in with the success of Scotland\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Interestingly the focus on education has also led to a serious discussion on taxation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For some considerable time the dominant view has been that tax increases of any kind should be resisted. Political parties on all sides have feared a backlash from voters &#8211; after all no one likes to pay taxes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, the immense financial pressure facing our public services has forced us to consider alternative ways of raising money.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">All the political parties are now saying that that they will raise taxes for those who can afford to pay.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In February Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats announced their intention to use the powers of the Scottish Parliament to raise income tax by 1p in the pound.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And low and behold last week even the SNP said that those on higher council tax bands will pay more.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Finally the political debate has got interesting. Part of me wishes I wasn\u2019t retiring from front-line politics just yet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I sincerely hope that this return to normal politics continues well beyond the election. If it does, we will all be the better for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday 7th March 2016 RETURNING TO NORMAL POLITICS It has taken us some time to get here but finally it would seem we are witnessing a return to normal politics. Now that the vow has been delivered and a fair funding settlement put in place we are now at long last moving onto the issues [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holyrood-message"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1531,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1530\/revisions\/1531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}