Why I support the Posties...

Click HERE for my reasons
Click HERE for more coverage from the SSP

Me with Willie Marshal CWU Scotland No2 branch

Me outside a Royal Mail Depot - where I will be on Thursday and Friday this week - showing my support on the picket lines.

Defend our door to door posties!

If ever evidence was needed of Labour's capitulation to Thatcherism look no further than their disgraceful complicity with Royal Mail management in their provocative attempts to break this week's national postal strike.

After a ballot that overwhelmingly supported strike action to stop managements attempt to bully the workforce into accepting the imposition of changes to their terms and conditions it is outrageous that the response of management to this is to consider bringing in an army of scab labour in an attempt to break the strike.

It is difficult to believe that this threat has not been tacitly supported by the labour heirarchy as part of their determination to break the CWU to smooth the way for their declared goal of handing over our postal service to their big business friends.

Everyone should get behind the postal workers this week and beyond as they are fighting to defend a national door to door service. Labour's talk of standing up for people in Glasgow North East is again shown to be hypocrisy. When push comes to shove profit will always come before people for them.

Colin Fox Speaks on the Jeremy vine Show, 19.10.09 (the discussion begins at 7 minutes 50 seconds)

The fight for women's rights is still raging...

Attended the 'Gude Cause' march In Edinburgh yesterday to celebrate 100 years of women's suffrage. Delighted to be part of such a big and positive demonstration.


Went along for two main reasons. the first was simply to celebrate and honour those that fought for the right to vote for women. They didn't wait to seek approval from anybody but instead realised that they would have to organise themselves to fight for what they believed was right. In the face of whatever obstacles where thrown in their way they kept going and changed the course of history. Power lies in people once they are organised and determined and those that seem powerful can do little to stop them. Its a simple but crucial lesson. Things can and will change if we want them to - we just have to stick together and fight in the way that the suffragettes did.

The second reason is that the fight for equality and rights for women is far from over. I have two daughters and they are growing up in a world where they are still likely to receive less pay for work of equal value, face the threat of domestic or sexual violence or be bombarded with images that objectify and demean women. Tackling these issues will take more than just the vote to change. For me they are part and parcel of the struggle for a society that is based on co-operation and respect, not exploitation and inequality. Celebrate our past but build for the future that's why I was on the Gude Cause march.

Get Scotland Working! (...and the Tories won't do it)

It seems like the eighties are back. If it's not Crockett and Tubbs in the remake of Miami Vice or bands ditching their guitars for synths the eighties revival is in full swing. As a child of the eighties, if nothing else, it may allow me to look at my old photos without being completely embarrassed.


Another more depressing side of the eighties is reappearing however, with growing levels of unemployment, particularly amongst the young. When I left school in 1982 I remember feeling lucky that I was doing so to start a job as amongst my school pals not too many of them were as fortunate. This was the time when the question you asked people was not so much,'what do you do?', but 'do you have a job?'. Too many lives were blighted by unemployment as the Tories, followed by New Labour, re-shaped the economy to one based on low pay and job insecurity.

Not another wasted generation will be the slogan of the March for Jobs that is being organised in the Glasgow North East constituency later this month. We can't sit back and allow the future of thousands to be crushed under the juggernaut of corporate profit and capitalism as the price once again to be paid for the failure of the system. Resistance has to start now and our march for jobs can be part of the process of rejecting a future of unemployment and low pay for our young.

Glasgow City Council - Labour Party Haste to justify closures was just not true!

It seems almost beyond satire, but after savagely closing schools across Glasgow and justifying it by claiming school rolls are falling, Glasgow City Council have admitted that surprise, surprise the number of kids at Glasgow schools has actually gone up (see HERE)!

You might expect that this would mean an apology to the parents and campaigners who so determindely fought to save their schools? Or perhaps the councillors who so contempously dismissed the case against closure would now be investigating how they could re-open the slashed school spaces to take account of their startling new admission? Not a bit of it. Once again exhibiting the twisted logic of Glasgow City Council these revised figures means that they will have to find another £22 million to cut from the education budget.

The more pupils there are - the less money we will have to spend on them. Nothing like investing in our future and that certainly is nothing like investing in our future! The fight to save our schools hasn't gone away no matter how much Labour might want it.

Vote for Education, not Labour school butchers

Started back at University recently and like most of us doing teacher training the worry is whether there will be a job at the end of it. Apparently only one in seven newly qualified teachers got a permanent job last summer and the signs for the future aren't good.

Last week the SNP attempted to cover their retreat on smaller class sizes by announcing a maximum of 25 for primary one. Some way short of the 18 promised for primary ones, two and three. Laughably the Labour Party are leading the charge to decry them. The same Labour Party that this summer butchered Glasgow's schools, closing twenty of them across the city, including schools in Glasgow North East. Pretty much sums it up for mainstream politics right now, in that society's educations needs are not met both for users of services and for those who want to work in them.

There is no doubt that part of the reason for the delay in calling the by-election was in the hope that the anger about school closures will be forgotten. Hopefully this will not be the case and more than this the demand for smaller class sizes, maintaining local schools and providing much needed jobs in education are at the heart of the campaign. Certainly the SSP will do what it can to make sure that's the case.

On the campaign trail...

"Just back from campaigning at Springburn shopping centre and again a real willingness for people to talk and to listen about what the SSP has to offer. A week that's been dominated by the cuts agenda now being pursued by every one of the main parties, with the Tories and Labour falling over themselves to compete over just how savage their cuts are going to be. The SNP has just got on with it by announcing their cuts budget this week.

Enjoying the campaign trail in Springburn

The equivalent of £31 000 for every family has already has been paid to bail out the bankers greed and now they're telling us that we have to pay for it again with unemployment, wage freezes and job cuts. Communities in Glasgow North East have already seen their schools stripped out of them and now their community facilities will be under threat because free market politicians are terrified to make the rich pay for the economic mess they have made.

Springburn Residents were, like us, confused why the rich who caused the economic crisis were being given our tax money, and we are paying again with loss of jobs and cuts in our services...

Its no surprise that people are cynical about politics but its a cynicism that doesn't prevent people from thinking about alternatives. That's why my pledge to take only the average wage and not the inflated MP's wage is going down extremely well. Its time for politicians to put their money where their mouths are, but somehow other than the SSP, I suspect none of them will."

SSP ex-MSP Frances Curran, with me and other activists at Springburn Shopping Centre