Our city has so much to offer
The weekends in Stirling have come culturally alive recently and it has been good to be out and about seeing people enjoy what Stirling has to offer.
The Bloody Scotland 2021 Festival was one such event where I was privileged to meet the winners Robbie Morrison and Craig Russell. The festival has really cemented Stirling’s status as a cultural hub with international appeal.
I also enjoyed attending events at The Stirling Smith showcasing the work of Robert Mach and Bannockburn House showing the works of Mark Leslie.
Unfortunately, people are already contacting me about how they are going to survive winter during the perfect storm of energy price increases, the end of furlough and the cuts to Universal Credit. The £20 per week plus uplift in Universal Credit has helped many people through the pandemic but in fact, this increase was an admission by the UK Treasury that Universal Credit is too low to provide a safety net for the millions of low paid workers who require this top up just to make ends meet.
I recently took the message of SNP opposition to these cuts out to our constituents in Cowie, alongside our MP Alyn Smith and Councillor Alasdair MacPherson.
The Scottish Tories supported their Westminster bosses, being the only party to vote against the motion passed by our Parliament to cancel the cut, despite knowing full well the impact this will have on their constituents. And I will guarantee in a few weeks’ time Tory MSPs will be shouting for the SNP to do something about the poverty caused by these cuts.
The Scottish Government is providing £10m to local authorities to help tenants at risk from eviction due to the pandemic, on top of our £10m Tenant Hardship Loan fund.
However, there is only so much the SNP Government can do to mitigate the impacts of Westminster policies.
Also, to pay for the social care crisis in England, the Tories have imposed another poll tax on the poor across the UK – this time in the form of an increase in national insurance. This will hit the young and the low paid disproportionately hard and was also attacked by business leaders as a tax on job creation.
In normal times these policies would be bad enough, but they come just when Brexit is kicking in – labour shortages, higher prices, products disappearing from shelves and a shortage of HGV drivers to deliver petrol to garage forecourts and essential supplies. Scotland did not vote for this.
Rather than work with the SNP to get behind the cause of independence to benefit our people, Scottish Labour spends its time lining up with the Tories, talking Scotland down, and declaring its undying support for the Union, regardless of how badly it treats Scotland.
The SNP has undeniably improved life in Scotland in only 14 years, working with a fraction of the powers available to all other independent countries. The Tory/Labour UK Governments have failed Scotland for the last century.
Independence really is our only option to build a successful, fairer and greener nation.