Day: April 26, 2021

The 2019 General Election Labour Party in Scotland branch office issued a manifesto for government

It contained a commitment that a Labour party in government would end zero-hours and “bogus” self-employment contracts and require employers to work on tackling the gender pay gap or face heavy fines.

But Leader Richard Leonard had no authority to promise or do anything since he was required to comply with instructions of the Labour Party leadership in London and any failing on his part would bring about a speedy end. to his tenure of office.

His commitment to end zero-hours contracts was cynical in the extreme based on his Union’s prolonged attacks on the welfare and pay of women in the employ of Labour controlled councils in the West of Scotland .

Short term employment contracts

Yet another embarrassment was an attack by Ed Milliband on the Con/Dem government over the issue of zero-hours contracts and his solemn promise that the next Labour government would bring an immediate end to the practice. But the strategy was speedily binned when it was revealed that 68 Labour MPs (Edinburgh South MP Ian Murray) employed staff on short term contracts!!! So much for the Labour Party sticking up for exploited workers.

Equal Pay for all employees in Public Service

The equal pay policy commitment was another Labour party joke which was sprung on Scottish workers by the very people they elected, (the Unions) to protect their rights at work.

In Glasgow, from 2007, female workers were denied equal pay with male workers. Their GMB union (led by Richard Leonard) and Labour Party Glasgow City Councillors pressurized them into accepting low settlements by offering them cheques for a few thousand pounds just before Christmas so long as they signed quickly. And many signed away their rights.

But a substantial number held out against the injustice and ill judged advice from the the GMB and took their fight for justice to Action 4 Equality which was owned by Solicitor Stefan Cross. In doing so they had to wait a very long time but were awarded far greater settlement sums than the women who had taken the advice of the GMB. And not only did Cross take on and beat Glasgow City Council, he also sued the Unions for failing to properly represent their female members. Cross was the women’s hero. One said: “I will have to give him 10 per cent but he deserves it. He stuck with us when the unions couldn’t be bothered.”

The incident, which took over 13 years and many court appearances to resolve revealed the duplicity of the Unions who supported the illegal policies of their Labour Party Councillor colleagues assisting their efforts to deny women workers a fair wage.

The election of the SNP to the control of the Glasgow City Council brought an end to the sorry saga when the council accepted all of the recommendation’s of the court and paid the women the money they had been denied for so long. And Leonard claimed his undying love and support of the women.

Jun 2017: The Labour/Tory Alliance of North Lanarkshire Council was forced by the courts to pay pension costs of hundreds of women it underpaid

Not to be outdone by their Party colleagues in Glasgow the Council set about screwing their female staff out of their pensions. Yet again the Unions and the Labour party were complicit in heinous acts against women employees. As events unfolded it became evident that the Council would incur a £1million bill after systematically ducking its pension responsibilities to hundreds of female staff it had previously denied equal pay.

The Council was ordered to cough up after a Scottish Public Pensions Agency (SPPA) investigation found it had systematically tried to “obstruct” a fair deal for almost 700 women who had been underpaid for many years earning wages much lower than their male colleagues doing jobs of equivalent worth.

In 2018, after a tribunal forced the authority to award the women their back-pay they negotiated another settlement worth a further £7.1m, after being represented by Stephan Cross. There was no support for staff from the Unions.

The agreed final salary pensions remained below those of their male counterparts, as their contributions had been much lower due to their underpay and the women appealed the judgement.

It was then identified that local government pension regulations required all back pay awards to be treated as “pensionable”, meaning bigger pensions and bigger lump sums for those affected.

The change required the Council to top up their employer contributions to pension funds. However in February, North Lanarkshire once again tried to sidestep its duties to the Strathclyde Pension Fund, which covers the female staff, by claiming the women’s second round of back-pay was actually a form of negotiated “compensation” and therefore not pensionable.

The women’s lawyers appealed to the SPPA pointing out the potential differences would be profound if the back-pay was not made pensionable. Some of the North Lanarkshire women would be denied a pension rise of £1500 a year and lump sums of more than £4000, a lifetime difference of around £50,000.

The SPPA ruled that the council had “misconstrued” the law, and criticised its arguments as “confused and an obstruction to finding an equitable solution to the disagreement” and said that the council had to pay the income tax and national insurance on the second wave of back-pay as well as employer contributions, an estimated total of £1m.

A Warning to be heeded

It is entirely possible that the Scottish Green Party will be invited to join with the SNP in forming the next government at Holyrood. An invitation that will be extended to Harvie by Sturgeon so that they will be able to make major advances in their declared social behaviour agendas. Voters need to be alerted to the excesses of a number of their favoured policies. The discredited Yogyakarta principles will be fully implemented and other transrights and GRA policies will be forced onto statute by government without consultation and with the active assistance and support of the all powerful “Equality Network”.

Voters concerned about plans to remove women’s rights and exposure of their families to regulatory imposition of oppressive social norms need to be alerted to the foregoing so that they will be better informed and able to give their vote to “ALBA” a party that fully intends to consult with and gain the support of the electorate before adding any new statute to the Laws of the Country.

Other reading: https://caltonjock.com/2021/04/19/the-okedokees-of-the-snp-greens-lib-dems-are-intent-on-selling-scottish-women-down-the-river/

23 Apr 2019: Green Party Leader accused of being a misogynist

The blog “A Thousand Flowers” posted a derogatory twitter article declaring Joan McAlpine SNP the winner of its weekly wanker accolade for airing her views about the rights of women and trransgender people.

Patrick Harvie couldn’t resist commenting and shared it with his followers writing: “If the SNP wants to be a safe and supportive place for trans and gender non conforming people, they have to squarely take on those trying to prevent trans people having the same rights as anyone else“.

Twitter users were horrified. A spokeswomen for the Scottish Women’s blog tweeted “Good grief! I’m horrified that Harvie could ever retweet an abusive blog about another politician. Surely this goes against the code of conduct expected from our parliamentarians?” Her comments were echoed by other contributors.

Harvie has form. In a previous twitter exchange he questioned the online abuse Joan had received when he said: “there is a serious debate to be had about such “abuse” but we can’t have it if people react with outrage to complaints from anti-trans campaigners but say nothing of the horrific wave of transphobic hostility, prejudice and violence that’s destroying people’s everyday lives”.

To which Joan responded: “My comments were in response to (male to female) trans activists who called me trash and justified violence against women who disagree with them. And the male leader of the Green Party in Scotland, pins his colours firmly to the she was asking for it mast.”

Harvie replied: “It’s disappointing that Joan McAlpine and a few others in the SNP have promoted anti-trans rhetoric in recent months, and apparently want to roll back trans people’s equality and human rights. Those attitudes and actions should be challenged, robustly but without abuse.”

Joan said: “Patrick Harvie should be ashamed of trying to justify the online abuse of women and indulging in it himself. Women are concerned their rights to privacy, fairness and dignity and safety are affected by proposals which means males can legally become women without surgery, medical diagnosis or gatekeeping. It is not “anti-trans” to question this proposal, but doing so has resulted in women being abused or threatened with violence. That Patrick Harvie seems to think they are asking for it is very worrying but bullies will not silence us.”

23 Jun 2019: Harvie stirs the sh*t at the Edinburgh Pride march

I met up with around a dozen like minded friends aged between 20-60. Some were wearing t-shirts proudly proclaiming “we are Lesbians”. We wanted to ensure lesbians would be visibile yet despite an outward display of confidence we were alerted to an undercurrent of nervousness between the marchers and ourselves. Our apprehension was based on the negative attitude of other groups who did not approve of relationships that excluded men in our choice of partners. Acceptable? Yes!! but only if we conducted our chosen lifestyle in secret.

But we displayed our banners and sang our songs. Other lesbians came up to us and said they wished they had known we were marching and bemoaned the lack of Lesbian spaces and community in Scotland. They waved their hand-made purple and black placards, courageously yet quietly proclaiming their Lesbian existence and relieved to have support and solidarity of like minded people. There was an act of physical aggression against our group when an angry young person grabbed a placard and destroyed it screaming “TERF” but the stewards soon restored order.

But what was chilling and caused fear in our group was the content of speeches from MSPs who addressed the crowd at a pre-march rally, from the top of an open top bus. In particular the words of Patrick Harvie, Green MSP, where he said “I am sorry that this parliament very recently was used as a platform for transphobic hatred and bigotry”. And went on to say he felt compelled to apologise for the undemocratic workings of Parliament, and its decision to put a hold on GRA reform until it had been fully considered and deliberated by a broad range of groups who might be affected and, importantly, the conflation of sex and gender that has infested policy making in Scotland. His speech whipped the crowd into a frenzy, since they had already been warmed up by previous similar speeches. And whilst the promoted theme of the “Pride” was “Be Yourself”, the real focus was not about the right to be loved and to express love without prejudice, it was about “transrights” and only that.

Thanks to the spittle infused rhetoric espoused by Harvie our group’s situation was upscaled from hostile to dangerous. We feared for our safety and attack from the mob, since immediately after, a number of people started shouting “get the TERF’s out” They meant us and we had already been blocked in by some very large people with “Trans” and “Non-Binary” flags draped over their shoulders cancelling out our groups “lesbian visibility” banners.

It later transpired that lesbians had abandoned the march after they had been harassed by “transrights” activists who accused them of being bigots for standing up for female rights and forcing politicians to add their support. Lesbians were no longer welcomed at “Pride” marches.

Full story here: https://womansplaceuk.org/2019/06/23/lesbians-at-edinburgh-pride-a-personal-account/