Monday 15 November 2010

EARTH CALLING MR ANDY KERR...


Mr Andy Kerr, who is apparently the Finance Spokesman for the Labour group in parliament has accused the SNP of implementing Tory cuts following the announcement that the salaries of public sector workers earning over £21,000 a year will be frozen for a year.

Now, I have no idea what the London government has done about public sector workers in England who earn more than £21,000, but surely Mr Andy Kerr realises that the grant that Scotland receives from London has been reduced by something in the region of £1.2 billion. (The Treasury says that it is only £900 million, but who would trust the Treasury?)

Surely Mr Kerr doesn’t believe that this reduction can simply be ignored. John Swinney has calculated that by adhering to a pay freeze for a year for those on over £21,000, £300 million, or around 10,000 jobs can be saved. Mr Kerr can’t be thinking that it would be better to lose the jobs so that the better off public servants can have a pay rise, can he?

Mr Kerr accepted that tough decisions had to be made and in particular (and this is the bit you have to love), there would have to be pay restraint in the public sector...... OK, Mr Andy Kerr, would you not say that accepting that better off public sector workers agreeing to forego a pay rise at the moment would be the restraint which you appear to call for?

Apparently not. Because he continued that it was not the Scottish Government’s job to implement Tory cuts for them. Actually, strictly speaking it probably is. They set the amount of money Scotland gets, and if it is less than before, the Scottish Government has to implement cuts. It’s a system set up by Mr Andy Kerr’s party when in government; he should be able to understand it, at least a little bit.

Mr Kerr said that a Labour Government (ah, they are calling it a government now) in Scotland would use this budget to provide low-paid workers with a living wage.

Wait a minute Mr Kerr. Is that not what John Swinney is proposing? He’s going to be allowing pay rises for the lower paid...at the expense of the better off.

Mr Kerr further added that the SNP needed to decide whose side they were on.

Oh they know which side they are on. They are on the side of Scotland, which is a lot more than “Scottish” Labour can ever say.

Mr Kerr ended his disjointed and somewhat lacklustre rant with: “John Swinney’s talk of a ‘social contract’ is nothing more than a smokescreen for cuts that will hit children and pensioners hardest.”

Erm what? Council tax will be frozen for another year. If Labour hadn’t stood in the way of local income tax, most pensioners wouldn’t be paying any local tax at all, making many of them around £1,000 a year better off! And yes, children, like everyone except the very rich, will suffer. Mr Kerr would do well to reflect that the catastrophic financial situation in which we now find ourselves was overseen by his dear friend Gordon Bloody Brown.

I’m afraid that Mr Andy Kerr appears to live in La La Land, where Labour are in power and money pours out of the permanently blue sky full of chirping birds, and life is like a great big box of chocolates.



26 comments:

  1. If you want another example of Labour being on another planet try this,

    http://breakingnews.heraldscotland.com/breaking-news/?mode=article&site=hs&id=N0084631289843385586A

    It includes the following gem from Iain Gray (WHO?),

    "He pledged to make Glasgow an economic powerhouse if Labour wins next year's election and said the SNP had "undermined" the city"

    This will be like the Glasgow economic powerhouse that was created between 1999 and 2007 when Labour was in charge both at Holyrood and Westminster.

    I was going to say "you could not make this up" but Labour do on a regular basis, and it will undoubtedly by the number 1 item on Newsnight North Britain with no one asking how it will happen now, given that Labour could not achieve it before.

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  2. Great post Tris and thanks for the link Dubbie. Right enough, you couldn't make it up.

    Glasgow an economic powerhouse? For Labour politicians only.

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  3. Another eminently forgettable Scottish Labour idiot opens his mouth and without thinking waffles the biggest load of horse manure I have heard in a long time. Does logic mean nothing to these people? Can their unthinking, autonomic, vitriolic criticism of the SNP GOVERNMENT not even have any logical structure, they don’t even seem to try to stick with the same hymn sheet, jumping from one ill-thought out illogical and contradictory argument to another all in the same speech!

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  4. Sheeesh Dubbieside; he's even nuttier than Mr Andy Kerr, and that's saying something.

    Either they live in a parallel universe, or they think Scottish people are so incredibly thick that they will swallow this twaddle.

    The gloves are off. We must find a way of countering this kind of rubbish, without the help of Labour's propaganda unit consisting of the BBC, The Scotsman (printed in England), and The Daily Retard.

    As the man said, this kind of stuff only goes to prove that Elmer isn't fit to be in opposition, never mind government.

    Mind, if Glasgow gets more money per head of the population than any other area and still it is not an economic powerhouse, what on earth is the council doing with it....? Silly question.

    And if they can't make an economic powerhouse out of more money than the rest of Scotland, will Iain Gray (desperately trying to shake of his east coast credentials) simply starve the rest of the country of funding so that his party's powerbase can swim in money?

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  5. Yes SR... I wonder what is happening to all the police investigations into Glasgow's council.

    All seems to have gone quiet on that front.

    I wonder why.

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  6. You don't like him much then Munguin?

    Actually he's only forgettable because he's eclipsed by that overwhelming personality of whatisname... you know thinging..the wee fat figity, stuttery, bloke...

    ... no, don't tell me, it'll come to me....

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  7. Tris

    Maybe time for the SNP to campaign with "unless you want Scotland after May 2011 to be governed by Glasgow vote SNP"

    All Labour policies are centered on Glasgow, the Glasgow Air Link that very few people will use is a prime example.

    I do wonder though how Labour think that campaigning for a rail link that the vast majority of Glaswegians will never use, and a lot could not afford to use (not many flying holidays if you are on the dole) will win them votes?

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  8. It must be a perception thing Dubbieside.

    It sounds to Glaswegians like the nasty horrid SNP monsters are anti West Coast and only care about Embra adn the North East... No problem to have a tram in Embra but no airport link in Glasgow, which as you say, 90% of them would never use, but don't let that, or the fact that they voted against the tram, get in the way of some anti SNP rhetoric.

    Every time I go to Glasgow there is more and more road building, still people will believe any rubbish if you tell them it often enough.

    The only trouble with your slogan, accurate though it is, is the Weegies would love it, and that's where half the seats are!!

    We do have to start hitting back hard and labour's weakest point is that they were crap when they were in government.

    After 8 years of Labour in London and Edinburgh, some places in Glasgow are worse than some of the slums I've seen in the third world... by a mile.

    Labour talks big but when it comes to action they are as much use as an underwater hairdryer.

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  9. Tory cuts? SNP cuts? What have zanulabour been smoking over in Edinburgh?

    It is their debt the coalition wrestles with, it is their pfi debt the SNP struggles with, it is their bankrupt education legacy which has been the bane of this SNP executive... and all wee-Andy can do is play pathetic games with the responsibility for it.

    Time for those who can actually govern, and lead to step forward -- so someone ought to tell wee Andy to shut it and bugger off.

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  10. Well said Dean...

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  11. Ya! still gonna lose to the Labour Party and Iain Gray 'IS' going to be the next First Minister

    and nothing you can say or do is going to change that fact

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  12. Dean,

    As usual I completely agree with you.

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  13. Who Niko?

    I don't think I've heard of him.

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  14. Glass of water for Mr Brownlie please

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  15. My my Dean keep the blood pressure down but you're actually talking sense for once, keep it up. I see that Labour's financial wizard is being excluded from defending the union.

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  16. tris,

    I am shocked and horrified at your weeist, fattist, figgityist, stutteryist, blokeist comment. Just goes to show if your scratch a tris hard enough you find a Niko.

    Must say I totally agree that this GARL is an absolute nonsense.

    I use the airport quite often and can get a taxi there which avoids the heavy traffic in the city centre and drops me off right at the entrance.

    If I needed to catch the GAR I would need to get a taxi into the busy town centre, carry my luggage onto the train and carry it off again at the other end. Pretty much of a nightmare, I should imagine, for a family travelling on holiday. It might suit business people with only light luggage but I fail to see how we ordinary folks would benefit.

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  17. Hmmm... that's very odd ...seeing as he is their financial wizard. Could it be coz he's not got much of a grasp of finance?

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  18. I'm sorry if I let you down there John. But you know now that you should never, ever scratch a Tris, even if he's itchy...

    GARL, it seems to me, was largely another vanity project, like the daft bloody trams fiasco. It would ahve cost at least 3 times what they budgetted, it would have been 5 years late...and it would have run out of money and stopped half a mile from the airport...

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  19. Tris,

    What is the problem with GARL? It seems to be that it doesn't achieve what we need our capital investment projects to achieve.

    Do we need to improve infrastructure in Scotland? God yes, not least to maintain economic competitivness. Does major capital investment projects stimulate job creation, improve foreign investment potential? Yes.

    Does GARL do this? Well, kind of, but there are other, much more useful projects that that money might have went toward spending. New highspeed rail links that go north of Manchester, or a new set of rail or road networks. GARL seems to me to represent the mindset of Labour right now, so Glashow centric.

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  20. It seems to me that every week there are one or two people killed or seriously injured on the A9. All my life governments have been threatening to "duel" the road, but it's never happened.

    Anywhere else the main artery to the highlands would be motorway, but we have a road which is, in places, not even duel carriageway, and a deathtrap.

    That should be our first priority.

    The next one should be comuter trains to ease the horrific traffic problems in our main cities.

    All of these things are more use than the vanity projects; they improve the infrastucture and provide a mass of "men's work", which is what so many young men want.

    And without which they are bitter and frustrated.

    It would also, therefore, be cost effective from the point of view of the "happiness meter". And happy tired young men don't want to go out every night and wrecked and cause trouble.

    Win win win...

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  21. Agreed Tris, except I don't bother much about utilitarian ideas like happiness measurements ... #cough...including the coalition one#

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  22. Tris

    Mr Andy Kerr said

    I ain't the same person I was when I bit that guy's ear off.

    Alex Salmond, I'm coming for you man. My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah!"

    or perhaps it was

    (Mike Tyson)

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  23. Nope; It's a pile of pants Dean...

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  24. Easy mistake to make Niko.

    Tyson....Salmond....Salmond ....Tyson..

    They could be twins.

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  25. 3 Andy Kerr's = narky and nerdy red kerry ark drank rye. or nonsense.

    The problem with basic infrastructure projects is just that, not headlines on ministers CVs so have never been prioritised before the more prestigous ones as one will be new capital projects whereas maintenance can be delayed to become someone elses problem. The failings of how our politics are constructed.

    I think March must be the busiest month of the year as councils run around spending money on pointless projects as that money cannot be carried forward in next year.

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  26. It happens everywhere in government. I've worked for projects that are funded by Eduinburgh and the EU, or the local council, or London(through Jobcentre Plus)

    It's always the same, spend, spend, spend, often on rubbish, because it's spend it or loose it. Daft as a brush!

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