Greens congratulate Lamont and Sarwar

Patrick Harvie today offered his congratulations to the newly elected Scottish Labour Party leadership team, and warned that Scotland has already changed around the Labour Party, whether they like it or not.

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“Johann Lamont and Anas Sarwar are both hardworking and capable people, and I’d like to congratulate them on their success today. But they have a tough job ahead of them in trying to reinvent Labour in Scotland.

“Labour has tried to make independence a “bogeyman”, but soon the voters will have the chance to settle that one, and all political parties must be ready to take Scotland forward whichever choice the voters make. If Labour maintain their tribal hostility to greater independence they will make themselves irrelevant.

“In the face of the UK cuts, Scotland needs an assertive left-of-centre response. The Greens have clear proposals to close the gap between rich and poor, to promote small businesses and protect public services, and to safeguard the environment from relentless exploitation. These things can’t be done without a clear challenge to free-market ideology. It will be instructive to see if Scottish Labour are willing to move in that direction.

“Meanwhile, all opposition parties at Holyrood need to find better ways of holding the SNP Government to account and offering constructive opposition. That in itself would be a welcome change of tone from Labour.”

Same sex marriage and civil partnership – consultation response

I have today sent my response to the Government’s consultation on same sex marriage and civil partnership. If you haven’t sent yours in yet, you have until Friday the 9th of December… not long! You can use this web version to submit your response.

Here’s the introduction I sent with my response:

I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to this consultation and congratulate the Scottish Government not only on the decision to publish it, but also on the expression of the initial view in favour of equal marriage.

One of my last tasks as a youth worker supporting LGBT young people was the development of a training exercise for mainstream youth workers, which involved asking participants to place various events along a timeline. In trialling this with LGBT young people, I can remember the looks of puzzlement from a group of 16-20 year olds on being asked if they knew when male homosexuality had been decriminalised. This group of young people was growing up free of the idea that they would ever have been seen as criminal. While it says a lot about the lack of visibility of LGBT history, that moment also represented a kind of hope. One day, not so very long from now, I hope to see a group of young people express the same puzzlement and incomprehension on learning that same-sex couples were ever denied the right to marry.

Download my full consultation response here.

Greens call for capital expenditure fit for 21st century

The Green MSPs today described the Scottish Government’s new Capital Spending Plans (1) as “a blast from the past”, reserving particular criticism for substantial new expenditure on oil and gas extraction (2). Some aspects of the plans were welcomed by the party, including support for district heating schemes (3), but on transport SNP Ministers seem determined to do nothing to prevent a substantial increase in road traffic, congestion and pollution. (4)

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“The SNP are clearly stuck in a 1970s blast from the past mindset, where Scotland’s future is built on oil, not renewables. They don’t seem to have noticed that oil output from the North Sea peaked in 1999, and are in danger of trashing Scotland’s record on taking climate change seriously. These proposals would instead see tens of billions of pounds misspent on oil and gas extraction and on unconventional sources of fossil fuels. SNP Ministers appear to want tens of billions of tonnes of fossil carbon to be pumped into the atmosphere.

“At the same time, they appear to have nothing at all to say about the most important infrastructure we need for a low-carbon energy system in the future – a subsea grid connection across the North Sea to let us trade electricity efficiently with the rest of Europe. This is an outdated approach, one which misses opportunities and aggravates existing problems, and one which would guarantee the much-trumpeted targets on renewables and climate change are missed by a mile.

“Greens back moves to support district heating schemes, if they materialise, but we must go further and develop local energy companies in every council area in Scotland. This remains our greatest opportunity to generate energy locally and renewably, boosting both jobs and revenue for vital public services.”

“The SNP’s transport plans remain utterly unsustainable. Scotland could instead be investing in a transformational approach, building new public transport services, expanding light rail in the cities, and supporting a new bus fleet running an affordable and regulated service. With an Oyster-style smartcard, the whole system could be made simpler to use, and a programme of repairs and redesign work for urban roads and pavements would make walking and cycling easier and safer, as well as improving winter resilience.

“Instead, we’ve got the continuation of the discredited ‘predict and provide’ model. They’re projecting a 15-20% increase in road traffic, and doing nothing to prevent it. SNP Ministers are committed to sitting on their hands as pollution and congestion rise, roads become less safe, and the mobility gap between rich and poor grows ever wider. New road investment, such as the AWPR and the additional Forth Road Bridge, are based on fantasy economics, and would only make sense in a world where climate change wasn’t happening and where urban roads experienced no congestion.

“On rail, the promise of a service that’s lower cost and more focused on local needs sounds great, but it bears no relation to the franchise consultation, which included a list of umpteen ways Ministers have come up with to make the Scotrail service worse. If Ministers are ready to dump that earlier document and produce a vision for a railway fit for the 21st century, then now is the time.”

Notes

1. See:
www.scotland.gov.uk

2. See p. 57

3. See p. 52

4. See pp. 44-45