London actually gets more funding
London gets more funding per head of population than ANY other place in the UK (including Scotland), parts of England are not that far behind Scotland either, despite having less issues with poverty and deprivation overall.
Part of the issue with Scottish poverty is England centric policies, several hundred years of oppression (even before the union), Communist leaning local authorities (ever wondered why so many Scottish towns bear such a resemblance to the Soviet Union....its where house designs came from) and political backhanders ( Devonport awarded the submarine refit by the Tories over Rosyth as Rosyth was a safe Labour, compared to Devonport, which at the time was a Tory target seat, despite money having been spent in Rosyth on said facility, which caused a LOT of skilled job losses and a lot of money respent in Devonport)...oh and the elephant in the room.....alcoholism, much of it though fuelled by poverty itself and historical issues (highland clearances, post jacobite crackdown, Employers using "kettle biler" tactics (refusing to hire men subjected to land clearances, leaving them stuck in slums "biling the kettle" for the women of family who were offered very low paid and mostly dangerous work in the 1800s and into the early 1900s - jute mill fever as an example)
Things need to change, the only solution to a lot of the issues is spending the money to tackle the deprivation, if necessary demolishing bad housing, building infrastructure (such as internet connectivity) in order to make local enterprises more competitive and to take on more local workers, Large tracts of Scotland are now without any skilled work as work has been offshored, contracts lost etc. I had a family member who was made redundant after every contract the company held was cancelled, for example bombardier trains sub contracted to said company and cancelled when they lost the contract for HS2 to Siemens, lots of jobs lost all over the UK.
Dead end jobs alongside high unemployment create deprivation,rising crime and alcoholism. Create a future for those going through school, give them positive male and female role models (not "I iz a blingged up gangsta aiiiiii, show me your tittiiessss gurl!"), encourage them to think during school, not simply bleat out times tables and take down dictation (after the required mass teacher sacking...those who can't and all that), clamp down on those dealing, using and cultivating drugs and abusing alcohol. This country was successful when we had a strong manufacturing base, a pride in our work and achievements and valueing engineering. Anyone else noticed CMD and Georgie boy backtracking at a rapid rate on Thatcher's "service economy" mantra, perhaps some have realised where we are going wrong....however given the muppets like Hague and the wannabe pope IDS we're doomed.
Scotland has many of the same issues as the rest of the UK albeit magnified, we need to train people, give them experience....This "needs 5 years experience" culture is a sickness which is killing our economy, how can you get the experience without doing the job? Yet employers constantly scream about a "skills shortage"....well train people then, stop laying off apprentices 3/4 through their apprenticeship, Look for those who could make a sideways change from another trade and thats just off the top of my head.
The govt claims we are broke, yet they constantly splash taxpayers money on "aid" "loans" etc, so we are not as broke as we seem, if necessary raise taxes and invest the money in infrastructure - fix the roads, build some social housing solely for rent, repair our crumbling schools and require x% of the workers to be trainees / apprentices. Offer companies who agree to train and do train x amount of apprentices a year tax incentives to do so.
Create a fund to lend money to entreprenuers, where the business case is sound but the banks aren't interested, especially where there are areas of high unemployment / difficulties getting started in a career.
Of course much easier to wave a 5% income tax cut under middle England's nose right before the election.....
Seems the Tea Party are in the UK, just that most people know them as the Conservative party......
Biting the hand that feeds IT
