| Archive for SRSM Scottish Republican Socialist Movement Forum - a venue for discussion on matters Republican and Socialist. |
| Donald |
mediawatchEvery Girl's NightmareUgh!! Hutcheon Tries Again That Paul Hutcheon has been given the task of assaulting the SNP seems in little doubt. This pathetic little story does not even make it very clear who it is that is angry at Nicola. The fact is that top consultants can not be kept here without an appropriate salary. Get a grip on yourself, Paul. Sunday Herald 11 Oct 2009 Anger at Sturgeon as more doctors get £75,000 pay boost Calls for reform follow Sunday Herald investigation HE A LT H Secretar y Nicola Sturgeon is under fire for her department handing out massive income boosts to more than 100 senior doctors in the middle of a recession, despite the Scottish government backing a pay f re e z e on the highest-paid public sector staff. Now the administration’s commitment to wage restraint for the wealthy is being questioned after Sturgeon’s officials approved a new round of “distinction” awards for NHS consultants, worth up to £75,000 a year each. A Sunday Herald investigation recently revealed how the SNP Government had set aside £ 30 million next year for distinction awards, a near 7% rise from 2009. Senior doctors can apply for a‘B’ award, which lands them an extra £31,959 a year; a £ 55,924 a year ‘A’; or a £75,889 annual pay increase for receiving an ‘A+’. The top-ups, which are pensionable, are added to a consultant’s income of between £74,504 and £100,446. More than 500 doctors currently benefit from the scheme. The awards budget exceeds the £12.3m a year spent on tobacco control, as well as the £8.5m dedicated to health screening. First Minister Alex Salmond has now indicated that the best-paid public sector staff should not receive increases in the current economic climate. He told parliament last week: “I support the view that in tough economic times, those on higher bands of pay scales should bear the heaviest burden.” However, Sturgeon’s department last week approved another 103 distinction awards. Nine doctors received an ‘A+’, while 29 were awarded an ‘A’, and 65 consultants were notified of their ‘B’ award. Each recipient of an ‘A+’ had previously received an ‘A’. Included in this year’s ‘A+’category were Professor Hilary Critchley, a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology; molecular medicine expert Professor Jonathan Seckl; and consultant neurologist Peter Sandercock. Sturgeon has also announced that Charles Swainson, the medical director of NHS Lothian, will sit on the body that makes recommendations on distinction awards, a placement that attracts rumuneration of £12,168. Swainson receives up to £205,000 for his NHS job and also benefits from a distinction award. Alan Boyter, director of human resources and organisational development for NHS Lothian, said: “ The money being paid for Dr Swainson’s appointment to this committee is being paid to NHS Lothian. Dr Swainson will not benefit financially from this sum.” Dr Ian McKee, an SNP MSP who has called for far-reaching reform of the system, said: “If consultants are getting the equivalent of a junior government minister’s salary, on top of their own salary, this latest round of awards does look a bit off. “I also think it unwise to add consultants to the list when money is short. There should be no pay increase for anyone with a distinction award in the short-term.” Labour leader Iain Gray said: “It’s important that the better off, including civil servants and politicians, show a lead. The public will find these large bonus payments to very well-paid staff difficult to understand.” Jeremy Purvis, the Scottish Liberal Democrat finance spokesman, said: “There is no restriction legally for this fund to be not just frozen, but halted. ” A Scottish government spokesman said: “The significant increase in consultant numbers in Scotland last year led the independent pay review body to recommend that the number of distinction awards should expand with the eligible consultant population. “However, in giving evidence to the pay review body this year, we recommended a pay freeze for consultants and no uplift to the amount payable as individual distinction awards.” Road To Auschwitz Keep this sort of thing off our streets. An appropriate welcome must be arranged for these people. Sunday Herald 11 Oct 2009 Their demonstrations have triggered violence on English streets ... now they’re heading for Scotland. We go inside the English Defence League SIMON insisted on a guarantee of anonymity before he would agree to talk. He wore a hooded top, with a black mask obscuring his face. Little wonder, for today there are many people who would wish him harm. Simon is leader of the English Defence League, the organisation which has organised a string of anti-Muslim marches, culminating yesterday in the largest so far, in Manchester, at which 40 people were arrested. Photograph: Gareth Cropley/PASupporters of the English Defence League at the demonstration in Manchester yesterday, at which 40 people were arrested. Below: Simon, who spoke to the Sunday Herald on condition of anonymity The Sunday Herald met him at a Bolton pub before he and other league members set off for yesterday’s protest. He spelled out in detail the views which have brought thousands of anti-far right protesters out on the streets to show their opposition to his organisation. “Extremists are inciting and recruiting terrorists to fight against this country and we’ve had enough,” said Simon, who claims to be the voice of an increasingly angry British working class which has fundamentalist Islam in its sights. “ We want to wake up the government, who are treating Muslims like a master race and bending over backwards to appease them.” Scotland will see for itself the Defence League tactics when it stages a protest in Glasgow at the beginning of November. It will be bolstered by activists from across England, who will travel to Scotland to show support. The organisation’s Scottish leader, nicknamed Don and refusing to give his full identity, gave his first newspaper interview to the Sunday Herald. Even though Muslim immigrants in Scotland are widely regarded to have integrated well, Don sees only parallel societies. “ We are against fragmented communities living side by side, divided by hatred and distrust. It’s time to take action because there will be bloodshed if we do nothing,” he said. These are familiar and discredited arguments to those who have mounted protests against the Defence League, which they brand fascist. The organisation has been called many things: racist by its opponents, and MI5 collaborators by the party you would imagine to be closest to its own views – the British National Party. The BNP reportedly believes the Defence League was set up by the state to encourage violence and whip up antiright wing feelings. Around 2000 people from around the country converged in Manchester yesterday. Police said there were angry scenes and some people were detained on suspicion of racially-aggravated offences or for possession of weapons or drugs. Police largely succeeded in keeping the two sides apart, bisecting Piccadilly Gardens, a square at the centre of Manchester, with a luminous line of reflective jackets. Penned into the square, the two sides were divided by only a few yards, with mostly white-faced, short-haired football casuals from the Defence League and its regional allies facing off against a cosmopolitan, youthful mass of anti-fascists. “We will protest outside every council building, police station and school that tries to erode the voice of the working class majority in Britain,” said Simon. “ This is only the beginning of our struggle. The Scottish Defence League has already been set up, but this will sweep Europe too. We’ve been in contact with groups from several major European cities who have the same goals.” The first Defence League was formed in Luton after a controversial protest by Muslims at a homecoming parade for soldiers returning from Iraq. The United People of Luton, which became the English Defence League, converged with a Welsh group called Casuals United. Using Facebook, the two groups found other like-minded people and held protests in Harrow and Birmingham, which both ended in violence. The Scottish Defence League claims to have 180 members and says a further 500 people have contacted the group to express an interest in joining. The defence leagues are keen to distance themselves from the BNP, which they depict as white only. The leagues say they have black and even Sikh members, although the Sunday Herald saw just two Afro-Caribbean faces joining the league at Manchester yesterday. The anti-league protests yesterday were organised by Unite Against Fascism, whose joint national secretary Weyman Bennett said: ‘‘ These people are street soldiers for the BNP, drawn from groups of football hooligans. The BNP have a voice and an electoral presence, but no storm-troopers, so the defence leagues serve that role. “We need to recognise that the recession will throw up fascist groups just like the 1930s, but instead of anti-Semitism, these new groups promote Islamophobia. We cannot let history repeat itself. ‘‘In the 1930s fascists marched against Jewish people and then marched against society. These defence leagues will march against Islam and then turn on us all.” Encouraged By The Tories? While there is an element of political posturing by Milliband in this story ,it is nevertheless a matter of some considerable concern. The Observer 11 Oct 2009 Miliband attacks Hague over EU ally ■ Fresh row over 1941 massacre of Jews Foreign secretary David Miliband today accuses the Tories of putting Britain’s relations with the world’s leading powers at serious risk by allying the Conservative party to far-right European politicians with neo-Nazi and antisemitic links. Foreign Secretary David Miliband, writing in today’s Observer, warns that Britain’s reputation abroad will suffer because of Tory party links to the far right. PA Writing in today’s Observer, Miliband expresses astonishment that William Hague, his Conservative opposite number, can describe as a “good friend” a Polish politician who reiterated last week his opposition to an unconditional apology by his countrymen for the massacre in 1941 of at least 300 Jews. In a blistering attack that takes the row over the Tories’ rightwing partners in Europe to new levels, Miliband warns there will be serious repercussions for Britain’s reputation abroad if the Conservatives were to win power while allied to such far-right parties. “There will be incredulity in Washington, Beijing and Delhi, never mind Berlin and Paris, that a party aspiring to government in Britain – the party of Winston Churchill, no less – chooses allies like this,” he says. Today Miliband will meet Hilary Clinton on her first solo visit to London since becoming US secretary of state. The foreign secretary, who is from a Jewish family, demands that Cameron suspend his party’s membership of the new European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR) in which the 25 Tory MEPs sit in the European parliament, alongside controversial Polish, Latvian and Lithuanian partners. Miliband launched his latest criticism after reading comments by the ECR group’s chairman, the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, in which he suggested in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle that the murder of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne by Poles should be considered a lesser crime than atrocities by the Nazis during the Holocaust. “I think that it’s unfair comparing it [the Jedwabne massacre] with Nazi crimes and putting it with the same level as the Nazi policy,” Kaminski told the paper, adding that he opposed a national apology for the Jedwabne massacre unless Jews apologised. Spud Tries Again SALMOND PLAN TO WORK WITH TORIES ‘BETRAYS SCOTLAND’ Alex Salmond has said he will support a Cameron-led administration Monday October 12,2009 By Rod Mills ALEX Salmond has been accused of betraying Scotland after admitting that he would support a Tory government in the event of a hung parliament at Westminster. The First Minister said he would co-operate with a David Cameron-led administration on key legislation if the Tories agreed to adopt nationalist policies. His decision follows a series of opinion polls which suggest the Scottish National Party could win up to 25 seats at the general election next year. The same surveys say the Tories are unlikely to win any more than three Scottish seats out of a total of 59. Mr Salmond is reported to have said that he accepts the Conservatives would have no democratic mandate to govern in Scotland. But he is claimed to have said in a newspaper interview at the weekend: “There’s a vast, overwhelming majority of people in Scotland, regardless of political preference, who rather like the idea of the Westminster parliament being hung by a Scottish rope.” Yesterday, Labour’s Secretary of State for Scotland Jim Murphy, said: “This is a betrayal of Scotland. Cameron’s Tory party is committed to an attack on public sector workers pay and pensions. “And they want to rob hard-working Scots in their 50s of hard-earned pensions. “Scotland will never forgive the SNP for trying to put the Tories back in power.” Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray branded Mr Salmond’s stance “unforgiveable”. He said: “The Tories will hit ordinary families hard if they ever get into power and the SNP are happy to support that.” But yesterday, the SNP strenuously denied it would support a Tory government, insisting it would only capitalise on a pivotal role in a hung parliament by offering support on an issue-by-issue basis. SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon said: “Our preferred outcome is a balanced or hung parliament, which is a perfectly possible scenario, with a block of some 20 SNP MPs wielding substantial influence on behalf of Scotland and the Scottish Government, on a n issue-by-issue basis. “In these circumstances, regardless of who becomes Prime Minister, where Westminster currently says no to Scotland, the answer will quickly change to yes.” Blogs and Websites Scottish Review http://www.scottishreview.net/KRoy133.html Politics Blog http://scottishpolitics.blogspot.com/ Ian Hamilton QC www.ianhamiltonqc.com Bye Election Bulletin http://www.snpforglasgownortheast.blogspot.com/ DestiNATION http://www.destination.sco.eu/ind...;task=view&id=10&Itemid=2 Craig Murray http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ Keep an eye on Oor Wullie at; www.williebain.com Anne McLaughlin MSP http://indygalgoestoholyrood.blogspot.com/ (Scottish Independence Convention http://scottishindependenceconvention.org Scots Independent http://www.scotsindependent.org/ BellgroveBelle: http://www.bellgrovebelle.blogspot.com (new super -glam foti) Joe Middleton http://www.politicalnewsfromscotland.blogspot.com/ Moridura http://moridura.blogspot.com/ Michael Settle http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/politicalblogs Julie Hepburn http://bidforfreedom.blogspot.com/ Labour Blog http://keziadugdale.blogspot.com/ Kezia is Head, office of Lord George Foulkes MSP Tory Blog . Ruth Davidson's Glasgow NE by-election blog http://www.ruthdavidson.org.uk/home Calum Cashley http://calumcashley.blogspot.com Dave Fallows http://www.davefallows.blogspot.com/ Bill Wilson MSP http://www.billwilsonmsp.org/ Bella Caledonia http://bellacaledonia.wordpress.com Gus Abraham http://1820.org.uk Additional of Interest http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com http://www.christianjones.net/ http://the-universality-of-cheese.blogspot.com/ http://ayewecan.blogspot.com Mediawatch is prepared by SNP activists in the west of Scotland.It has no official connection whatsoever with the Scottish National Party. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Party. It is circulated to a substantial number of contacts in politics and in journalism both in Scotland and internationally. Please feel free to forward it to your own contacts. It is sent blind copied to everyone to protect individual E Mail addresses. If you wish it sent to you post send an E mail to this address with 'subscribe ' in the subject bar. Similarly, write 'unsubscribe ' in the subject bar if you no longer wish to receive it. Posting Number 296 Monday 12/10/09 |