Maybe we all need to be reminded of this simple fact, MSP’s work for the taxpayer and are accountable to us but not just at election times when the ‘soft mouthed’ promises of a sunny tomorrow are abundant and the horrible history is glossed over.
They are supposed to be our leaders and not rulers and we have the right to challenge and defy their rules if we do not agree with them. The MSP’s are given our mandate but this is not Carte Blanche, to run wild and overshadow the rest of opinion in Holyrood as this is supposed to be a house of discussion and agreement. Scotland needs to remember this, no matter the party they are supposed to work for the betterment of Scotland and its people.
We have given trust, a fragile thing, and when it is lost, that is a hard bridge to rebuild no matter the promises of milk and honey tomorrow.
We have a hope that common sense will prevail and yet we see things in the last month when International Women’s day was celebrated that did not protect women. Where was the common sense? We see a Hate Crime Law passed that does not allow open and sometimes heated speech in our own homes, where is the common sense in that? This can be reported by a ‘reasonable’ person, who is that and how do we judge reasonable, there is no sense in that. How can a government that has our trust to protect us all go so far away from that by introducing such a bill?
Where did we lose trust in the present government, in reality the promises of 14 years to better education? None of this has been achieved and we see our trust in judging the result of the OECD report are being hidden from us, this suggests the SNP do not trust us to judge our employees on their work record.
We have lost trust in our own Holyrood over the Salmond debacle and it has taken Westminster to inform us of the connivances of the SNP. How can we trust them again when Scotland’s own Parliament should be able to clear up its own mess without having the public informed by a 3rd party outside of Scotland?
How can we gain back trust when there are homeless in the streets at foodbanks and our SNP losses money hand over fist on bad investments, Fort William steelworks £675m plus private loans to millionaires for £7m with no result to better Scotland? The losses for the CalMac ferries £57M, the losses at BiFab in Fife £57M all mean that we, the taxpayer and employers of the government have huge debts and holes in a budget that could have gone to homelessness and child poverty or new roads or widening of the A9. The only things rising in Scotland under this administration is our debts, suicides, drug abuse, council and personal tax, child poverty and poverty line wages. Things going down, age you will die, employment, business start-ups, businesses remaining open and more, you just have to look around Scotland at the dead high and main streets and the many closed SME’s that create the first jobs and incomes to go into the wider economy.
We do not want to hear what England did, we want to hear what our government did. There is no excuse, like the schoolyard excuse of “Look what they did” when caught out. It does not change the truth that Holyrood failed us because of the SNP internal failings.
The recent and more importantly the past cover ups of seal issues must make us all worry about what is not known to date. Surely our FM could accept that these misgivings are not plausible or acceptable. The sorry answer is that she ‘forgot’, ‘doesn’t know’, would have to clarify later’ etc.
In my profession, when I meet clients I must know, I am not allowed to forget or lose notes I am accountable and my clients , in this case you the taxpayers, has every right to hold us accountable.
An old saying is “people in glass houses should not throw stones” yet this is the first option for the SNP and deflection is the modus operandi.
So we have no trust, no hope for our government to safeguard us, no clarity in legal matters, no honesty in the as yet undisclosed education reports, no explanation of how the SNP’s dreams will be funded or fiscally sound, no chance to get lost funds back for our taxpayers which has been spent recklessly, no funds for hospitals or schools as the SNP throw money at legal cases and EU flags as well as the bad investments, no jobs or investment for the future for our children and grandchildren.
It is accepted that when furlough ends, unemployment will rise. It means jobs that would go to school leavers are gone and taken up by the glut of parents trying to get work to pay for living in Scotland and it high tax regime. Where will our children go to find work? If lucky, out of Scotland, never to return as they build families away from home. Who then builds Scotlands future when we drive them and valuable working people out of Scotland with these failures?
The SNP answer is to encourage immigration instead of investing in the people of Scotland already here.
I agree that we need highly skilled people and that we should encourage them to come and support our economy but not at the level of replacing Scots who had to leave because work was scarce or unavailable.
This May we all need to think carefully, 14 years of our employees’ failures repeated or a change?
Einstein said “Insanity is – Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results “
Vote and go for a different result, as employers we can change our employees if they fail, well we can count the failures in many pages, so May is our chance to break the cycle.
John McCallum
