Humza Yousaf has been a disaster wherever he has gone. From the nursery in Broughty Ferry via the Health Minster position to the scooter tumble in the hallway and finally to the job as First Minister. It’s been one train wreck after another for Humza, while his party implodes due to serious fraud investigations surrounding Peter Murrell and his wife Nicola Murrell, I mean Sturgeon, and that random 90 grand mobile home no one knew about.
And the problems seem to be growing for Humza, as suddenly the pigeons are coming home to roost, and those wonderful pay deals he is so quick to tell everyone about… well, they need paying. The problem is, the SNP will be getting no extra cash from Westminster to cover these costs. So, somehow, Mr Yousaf and his left wing mob are going to have to find money to cover their promises. This means cutting services or cutting public sector workers. There will be no extra borrowing allowed to cover this.
They could stop funding migrant hotels across the nation and use that 7 million pounds a day saving to cover all this, and more, but no. Westminster has its priorities, and they don’t involve the average person on the street.
Anyway, back to Scotland. Humza was always keen to point out that he had arranged a pay deal in Scotland for nursing staff before similar pay increases had been ironed out in England. He put Scotland first and worked hard to get the increases agreed so that strikes were avoided. Absolute hero. Now, how are you going to pay for it?
Last week, the Scottish Govt agreed a pay deal for junior doctors, a staggering 12.4% pay rise. 12.4% is a massive jump in pay for anyone. Private sector workers can only dream of such fortune. What a deal. Now, how are you going to pay for it?
Now on to the education sector. Teachers were on strike this year demanding better pay, and they were listened to. An increase of 7% this financial year. That’s decent. Especially for some of the results we see coming from some schools and specifically, certain teachers. However, there’s a lot of good eggs in there that deserve a pay increase. Now, how are you going to pay for it?
You see, when you don’t actually care about the nation, it’s people and it’s future, you can make these wild promises and take all the plaudits for “solving” problems. But sooner or later, you are going to need to front the bill. The Scottish Government have already pulled £46 million pounds from universities and colleges to help balance the books and fund the rises for teachers. This has not gone down very well in the higher education sector. Nor should it.
If we had a real Nationalist government, one with a vested interest in the future of the Scots and their nation, this sort of shambles wouldn’t happen. Cloth would be cut accordingly. There would be no mass funding for interpreters in NHS Scotland (£7.4 million a year in 2020) We wouldn’t be wasting ungodly amounts of money on Equality & Diversity officers in public bodies. We wouldn’t be funding LGBT groups to the tune of £3 million pounds over 3 years. There would be no £6 million a year wasted on offices in Canada, Germany, Belgium, China, the US, France and Ireland. Migrant hotels, an obsession with independence, nonsense green projects that ruin the countryside that are heavily subsidised by the government, net zero carbon pipe dreams; these would all be off the table in favour of bread and butter policies that people want and need. And these would be properly funded, not half baked.
Perhaps a more useful way of funding some of these pay rises would be to reduce MSP pay and certainly to massively reduce their expenses.
That’ll be the last public sector pay they think about cutting. But as time goes on, the electorate will have different ideas.
