Robert Brown

More cuts ahead

Another year and another round of cuts to council budgets from the SNP government in Edinburgh.

You would have thought from the statements from SNP ministers that large amounts of gold were being distributed to grateful council tax payers across the country.

The reality is rather different. Last-minute changes reduced the South Lanarkshire cuts by £7.778 million, meaning the council has to make savings of “only” £15 million.

Many councils have done a good job in recent years in managing cuts without cutting key services but this is done in part by salami slicing staff numbers.

So across Scotland there are now 4000 less teachers than when the SNP came to power.

But surely these are cuts handed down from Westminster? Again, not so.

The Scottish Government budget went up this year while council budgets were slashed.

Further the Scottish Government is now responsible for its own tax raising. Liberal Democrats wanted to provide a transformational investment in education of £500 million a year by putting a penny on income tax.

This is needed to stop Scottish education sliding down the international league tables, increase nursery and pre-school provision and provide the extra teaching staff who make such a difference.

I am sure many headteachers would echo Churchill’s famous saying “Give us the tools and we will do the job.”

So when the council finalises its budget on Thursday this week there are likely to be further cuts in flood prevention, roads staffing, school cleaning, employability programmes, poverty programmes, school music, children’s services, school attendance officers, playscheme grants, advice services and more.

It should really not be necessary.

No case for independence

Meantime the SNP Scottish Government and the Tory UK Government are heading up various garden paths. Theresa May is heading for the most extreme version of Brexit, where most links with the European Union are cut.

Nicola Sturgeon wants to plunge us into even more uncertainty with another independence referendum. What does she not understand about the decisive result of the last one?

Liberal Democrats are the only party campaigning to stay in the United Kingdom and in Europe.

Scotland’s trade with the EU is worth £12.3 billion a year but with the rest of the UK it is four times that at £49.8 billion.

We need both but we need the UK market much more.