Guilt Free Railing 19

[WouldBeGood]

Rail away!

No judgment, no resilience wankery.

Equal opportunity railing 😃

Could this be the last thread..?!

I totally agree @IsurviveonCoffeeandWinein2021, this ferry contracts scandal is just one in a long line of very major, very expensive cock ups by the SNP where basic principles of business weren’t applied. Contracts negotiated without safeguards by people lacking business knowledge, costs spiralling to frankly ridiculous levels and such poor record keeping that auditors struggle to understand processes. All the while the communities relying on these things aren’t being served. And no, in the real world this wouldn’t be tolerated, no matter how good your ‘intentions’ were, how ‘sorry’ you were, or how many times you insisted ‘lessons would be learned’. One hundred million pound cock up would usually be enough to get you sacked, let alone a string of them. It genuinely is amateur hour at Holyrood, which is such a shame as devolution could have been such a positive thing for Scotland.

But this has been the case for a while and every time an election comes around I think surely this time people will see how shit they are, how much they are damaging Scotland, and will turn away from them. Surely there aren’t so many people who want independence at any cost that they’ll give these rank amateurs free reign over our lives. And yet every time, the SNP (concentrating the independence vote) come out in top, take it as a ringing endorsement of their ‘record’ and carry on regardless. They know they are untouchable, take us all for granted, and this is why they really don’t give a shit when yet another scandal breaks.

Today I think SG should be thanked for their child payment increase. This is good, right? I would support more of this kind of thing.

Scottish Child Payment to rise to £25 as part of child poverty action plan

BBC LINK

I think helping children get out of poverty is a good thing @LizzieMacQueen. Of course. I'm not sure that an extra £5 will do it though, as the article you link to alludes to. Poverty is very complex and simple solutions like giving a bit of extra cash might make good headlines but don't make much impact on the underlying issues.

From the quote at the end of the article:
"It's quite likely that during the pandemic a lot more children went without food or heating or adequate clothing, simply because a lot of families' incomes were reduced."
He added: "It's those longer-term initiatives - employment, wages, housing - they can all make the long-term difference and they have a more permanent effect. You get a higher-wage economy, more people in work - it's a virtuous cycle - people in work spend money to keep other people in work."

Of course we already know that our longer harder restrictions that have, as it turns out, utterly failed to 'keep us safe', have led to a harder hit economy in Scotland than needed to be the case, which will then have knock on effects on the cost of living crisis. We are a relatively low wage part of the UK anyway, and really need action to increase opportunities and wages in order to raise living standards for everyone. Which I guess ties in with the need to have an administration that understands business and what is required to drive economic growth, which we really don't seem to have currently.

It's the investment in jobs and help with childcare part of that article which will help lift children out of poverty.
It is widely accepted that the most effective way to lift people out of poverty is good education and quality, secure employment.
That's what will make a difference. £10 a week is a sticking plaster

Good intentions is the standard excuse, as well as lessons will be learned...

If child poverty, or health, or education was their main focus, they wouldn't launch into all the huge additional costs and uncertainly independence would launch right now.

@LizzieMacQueen

Today I think SG should be thanked for their child payment increase. This is good, right? I would support more of this kind of thing.

Scottish Child Payment to rise to £25 as part of child poverty action plan

BBC LINK

Yes. I work in a deprived area - many work but the cost of living is so high that it's a struggle. My partner and I are in a well paying job and we're still short during the last week. Parents need all the help they can get at the moment.

The extra tax raised via not raising the hire rate tax should be going on NHS or schools not to individual families.

many work but the cost of living is so high that it's a struggle

This is a major problem, too many poorly paying, insecure jobs.
I would love to hear that a major tech company had been attracted by SG to set up in a deprived area and was going to provide X number of apprenticeships for local school leavers every year, leading to high quality well paying jobs at the end.

That's permanently lifting people out of poverty.
£10 a week is short term sticking plaster

Added to that, cost of housing is what all of the poverty reports cite as the biggest factor in families living in relative poverty.

I’m
Not sure what to think about the child payment. It snacks a bit of an SNP or thing, like the baby boxes, and iPads for all. Whereas if they actually tan the country properly then fewer children would be in poverty.

It didn't go far enough but at the very least it's a direct money payment and not generic preselected stuff

The point is where is the money coming from? Where else could it be better spent.

Housing in most of Scotland is cheaper that England - so surely Scottish people should be better off than the majority of English people anyway as benefits don't have regional weighting.

True @mapleleavesreturn.

I'm feeling a bit raily about freebies this week, particularly Edinburgh's free iPads to all children. Just been announced for the teen's high school. I'm all in favour of digital equality, but I imagine in this particular catchment the vast majority of pupils have access to devices. There are surely better to spend the education budget on or target resources.

Also on child poverty, yes the extra money is good, but it glosses over the fact that the numbers of children living in poverty have steadily increased under the SNP's watch. If they hadn't allowed that to happen, more families might have had a bit of bandwidth to cope with the pandemic and current cost of living crisis.

They’ve all had Chrome books in secondary in the highlands for the last 6 or 7 years. Mine barely used them. They had to take them to school for some lessons. Total waste of money for affluent areas but a great idea for deprived areas. It should be done in a needs basis I think.

It definitely makes more sense to issue tech stuff by need but it also doesn't take long for parents to clock - why bother buying if they are going to issue it.

I do agree that chromebooks or I pads for all is ridiculous.

I HATE the iPads for all. DC1 has access to a laptop but used the iPad to write NAT 5 essay submission because they said it was easier to access to the school network that way - am sure it would have been a 2 minute detour to get to the same place on the laptop but they were being lazy because they could. Tapping away cramped over an iPad when could have learned more about Word, typed more easily and am sure made a better job of formatting if had used a laptop. I don’t know why it has to be bloody iPads when a cheap laptop would be a much better learning tool. At least they have restricted the non-work apps available to them now.

If the government made the 30 hours childcare easier for childminders to offer. Or in fact catered it in a way where it’s realistic for childminders to implement the expectations of them. They basically expect them to be doing the same as in nurseries except they are one person who they cant do everything. And all for a few extra pennies and very little support. I know a few who tried for a year but ultimately sacked it off as wasn’t worth the stress, money, family time etc

Hope you know what I mean with all that waffle!

Or allow parents to use the hours towards a legitimate nanny. I have had enquiries but because I don’t come under the 30 hour scheme the families can’t afford. But childcare is completely full on my area so these families can’t work so the same catch 22 situation.

The 30 hours is great in principle but the practicality of it is very different.

In our area the school nurseries only do half day option so either need a private nursery split place (which was banned under covid for quite a while) or a childminder in order to work given very few jobs are 8-12 or 1-5pm, in our area childminders are like hens teeth and have longer waiting lists then the nurseries.

Private nurseries offer it but it doesn't cover costs such as food or trips out so parents still pay which is understandable but again limits poorer backgrounds.

SG always seem to tout aiming for Scandinavian model......except childcare is heavily capped at about £150/month depending on the country! We just couldn't subsidise that given most private nurseries are about 1k+ a month for full time!

The 30 hours works really well in private nurseries, or at least it worked fab for me, 2.5 days 8am - 5.30pm, of still had to pay for food but you'd need to pay that anyway.
I was using them for 3 full days and it was only costing about £50 per month.

What would be good would be more support for parents between mat leave and baby turning 3.

I know people with twins who simply couldn't afford to work during during that period of time.

It’s definitely a great thing to have but yet again it’s something that’s been plonked out with a single track mind assuming it will solve the problem.

My previous family chose to only do a few days at nursery as they didn’t want the children in a nursery setting for that many hours a day. They also felt that the children got way more from their time spent with me. So it’s such a shame that it’s not available to use more freely. They were obviously lucky they could afford a nanny of course

Do we have Queen Nic bracing us with her presence this week?

I agree @runningpink, I would have found that option so good when mine were wee. Flexibility is key.