LABOUR CONFUSES ME

I have to confess.

I'm perplexed.

Johann Lamont recently said that she didn't think that giving kids in primary school a cooked lunch was a priority. Labour in general seems to feel that across the board policies of social security are wrong, and that people should be means tested.

Indeed our own Niko, a strong Labour supporter, indicated on this blog that giving all the kids a free lunch meant that poor people were subsidising rich people... as ordinary workers would be helping to pay for the lunches of the rich (although technically that is dubious as the scheme only operates in state schools, and not independent schools to which the offspring of the elite tend to go, but fair enough that they would be subsidising the incomes of the lower middle classes).

However, Labour-run Glasgow Council has just come up with a brilliant scheme (for which I heartily commend them) to put £10 into every account with a credit union opened by any S1 pupil in the city.

The hope is that this will start a habit of saving and encourage kids to stay away for the payday loan sharks, like Mr Cameron's friend and advisor Wonga.com, that infest the internet, promising "never be poor again" loans at exorbitant rates of interest, meaning that, of course, you will always be poor.

Most children of brain surgeons or MSPs don't end up going to loan sharks, but they too will be at liberty to profit from the scheme and get their ten pounds. Par contre, the very poorest of the kids with parents living on dirt poor wages or social security, just scraping by, going cold and hungry, ill clad and ill shod, are the least likely to be able to find the money to open the account and profit from the free tenner, courtesy of Glasgow taxpayers.

Could someone please explain to me Labour's policy on who should profit from what?
**********

In another confusing situation, one of Better Together's strongest supporters, close friend of Tommy Sheridan, Mike Dailly, a lawyer at Govan Law centre, says that he is inclined to be pro YES, because he sees Scotland as a progressive country held back by the ancient and creaking systems thrust on it by a conservative England.

What stops him changing sides is that he sees no realistic chance of Scotland throwing off the monarchy and aristocracy and becoming a republic, so he's going to stick with the union.

So, that makes sense, doesn't it?

If Scotland isn't going to become a republic he'd rather stick with the erm... united KINGDOM.

Now, I'm all for a republic.  I didn't mind the royals in the old days. It seemed to me that they did no one much harm and they probably did attract a few gaupers to Deeside during the summer, and they would spend money so it was a t least good for the folk at Braemar. And yes, let's be fair, a lot of old people liked them and were thrilled to see them, meet them... whatever.

Then of course this family that we put on a pedestal and throw money at showed that they are a shower of self serving sharks, from the selfish self centred Charles Rothsay who was unable to see that you have to compromise on most things in life and insisted that he would have Mrs Parker Bowles and Diana, come what may, to Airmiles Andy, the fat pig who insists on royal flight helicopters to take him to golf matches and protection officers for his odious drunken daughters so they can have ordinary lives which soaking up al that we throw at them, and now to the queen herself who is splitting the money for the gold to be mined in Kernow with her equally greedy eldest son. Never mind the locals, huh? So yes, now I'm am very unkeen on them (even though my spell check tells me that I can't be "unkeen"!).

However, next to bedroom taxes, lords, MPs, nuclear weapons, illegal wars, bankers, etc, etc, etc, this shower of scroungers don't even figure. 

Scotland may not take titles away from people who have been given them. It's a bit of a waste doing that anyway; they just use them regardless. But lords will no longer be created in Scotland and those who wish to continue to sit in the house of lords will have to become English in order to do so.

So, what is important to this man. The grinding poverty and misery that he must see on a daily basis, or some old royals, who after independence will no longer be our expense, except when in this country (as they are in other monarchies like Australia, New Zealand and Canada).

And of the two... The UK and Scotland, which is more likely to get rid of this frippery in the next 50 years?

Does anyone in Labour ever think before they open their mouths?