They work for you

Last week Clare Haughey boasted that the Scottish Government budget was somehow ‘good’ for Rutherglen and Cambuslang.

This made me wonder in what way £170million of cuts to local services could be good for local people?

The truth is the budget forced through by SNP MSPs and their little helpers the Greens is damaging to local people.

£170million isn’t just a figure on a spreadsheet, it means that jobs will be lost, libraries closed and care packages cut.

It’s time that Clare Haughey and other SNP MSPs opened their eyes to what’s happening in communities here in Rutherglen, Cambuslang and right across Scotland.

It didn’t have to be this way. We should have used the powers of our parliament to invest in our communities and drive the economy forward. We have had 10 years of excuses from SNP ministers. This budget could have been different.

Scottish Labour put forward proposals asking the top one per cent of earners in this country to pay a 50p top rate of taxation. The SNP used to stand for this policy. It seems to me that they have gone weak at the knees when they had a chance to stand up for local communities.

It is fair, it is just and it is the right thing to do at this time when we have a massive skills gap in our economy. We have an unacceptable gap in the levels of educational attainment between the poorest and the richest, and we have growing inequalities in health up and down our country.

My politics are rooted in people who are serving our local communities. That is why I backed progressive polices which would have delivered fairer funding for South Lanarkshire. I believe that the daughter of a care worker in Cambuslang should have the same chance of a son of a merchant banker in Morningside.

So don’t ever let the SNP tell you they are progressive. They have slashed funding to our area all the while posturing on a second referendum on separation.

We have had enough of the division and the cuts.

As we approach the upcoming council elections, local people have a big choice to make. Do they want to support candidates that will stand up for their local area and oppose the cuts or do they want another team of hapless SNP politicians who take their orders on voting for a cuts budget from Nicola Sturgeon?