{"id":752,"date":"2010-10-04T14:03:14","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T14:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=752"},"modified":"2014-09-03T14:06:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T14:06:09","slug":"time-for-a-living-wage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/?p=752","title":{"rendered":"TIME FOR A LIVING WAGE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>4<sup>th<\/sup> October 2010<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>TIME FOR A LIVING WAGE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It landed with an ominous thud on my desk, hundreds of pages of doom and gloom.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It was the briefing \u2018notes\u2019 for a finance seminar I attended with Scotland\u2019s top economists, academics and number-crunchers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They had pulled together to outline the hard choices facing politicians as we try to pick our way through these straightened financial times.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It posed many difficult questions but unfortunately give us very little in the way of answers as we enter into a dark period.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We need to think long term about what cuts are fair, what cuts are necessary to sustain services and what cuts will only lead to more pain in the long run.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In responding to these difficult challenges, we must ensure that the sick, the elderly and the working poor do not pay the highest price.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">That is why I welcomed the announcement this week that Labour leader Iain Gray is supporting the living wage campaign for workers on low pay.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At the same time, there was a pledge to introduce pay restraint for the highest earners in the public sector.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It isn\u2019t fair that there people have to survive on low pay while top earners enjoy generous bonuses.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly half a million workers in both the private and public sector earn less than the Scottish Living Wage of \u00a37.15 per hour while bankers get extravagant add-ons and nearly 1,000 public servants earn more than the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We have a difficult task in tackling the many challenges that face us but we have to ensure that fairness is at the heart of these decisions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>4th October 2010 TIME FOR A LIVING WAGE It landed with an ominous thud on my desk, hundreds of pages of doom and gloom. It was the briefing \u2018notes\u2019 for a finance seminar I attended with Scotland\u2019s top economists, academics and number-crunchers. They had pulled together to outline the hard choices facing politicians as we [&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-752","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\/752","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=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions\/753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/duncanmcneil.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}