NHS Scotland in crisis: Make the mega-rich pay!
The Holyrood government has dropped a bombshell on NHS Scotland health boards, telling them that there is no more money for critically-needed healthcare infrastructure projects for at least two years.
This includes plans for a new cancer centre in Edinburgh, replacement hospitals in Fort William and Airdrie, and treatment centres in Livingston, Aberdeen, and Perth. All these have been cancelled at the stroke of a pen!
For years, the SNP have plastered over the cracks of crippling infrastructure failures and staffing shortages – from trains, to ferries, to the NHS.
Now Scotland’s ruling party is fumbling to address a £1.5 billion funding shortfall. But apparently we all just have to suck it up, as inflation has cut the SNP government’s budget!
This is a feeble excuse. There is more than enough wealth in society to build much-needed public buildings and infrastructure. But this wealth is harvested by capitalist parasites, who sit on their hoards while our schools and hospitals crumble around us.
For example, Danish-born Anders Holch Povlsen – the largest landowner and richest man in Scotland – increased his wealth by $2 billion last year, to amass a fortune of $8 billion.
The second-wealthiest Scots are whisky monopolists Glen Gordon “and family”. They keep their estimated $4 billion wealth in offshore tax havens such as Jersey. Elsewhere, the Royal Bank of Scotland regularly posts profits of over $5 billion per year.
There is plenty of money in Scotland, in other words, but it sits in the wrong hands.
Despite their opportunistic jeers and cries against the SNP, none of the other parties in Holyrood are talking about this.
We must immediately expropriate this wealth – produced by the working class, but stolen from us – and nationalise the banks.
Only then can we properly fund public healthcare and education, and create a society that meets the needs of the majority, rather than lining the pockets of a super-rich few.
Calum Macdonald, Edinburgh Communists
CalMac ferry fiasco: No fair winds under capitalism
Shipbuilders Ferguson Marine have announced yet another delay to the two vessels commissioned in 2015 for the Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) fleet, planned to service the Isle of Arran.
The ships’ construction, which was promised to conclude in 2018 with a budget of £97m, has faced multiple design and supply issues, with costs nearly quadrupling.
This news comes as no surprise to anyone – especially the Scottish island communities who have suffered under the incompetence of CalMac and Ferguson Marine for years.
Last summer, a quarter of South Uist’s population staged a rare protest after all direct sailings to and from the mainland were suspended. This resulted in a massive hit to the island’s economy, including wartime-style rations on milk and bread.
CalMac has also recently announced that one of its main ferries, serving the same route as the awaited ships, is out of action until June, due to major steel repairs.
The 31-year-old ship epitomises the entire CalMac fleet: aging, dilapidated, and barely receiving any maintenance or investment.
Two-thirds of CalMac’s major vessels are either approaching or beyond their operational life. As a result, the cost of unplanned repairs has tripled in the last five years.
Responding to these delays and cancellations, the Scottish government stated that it is “deeply disappointed”. It is their mismanagement, lack of investment, and accumulated austerity, however, that has led to this fiasco.
Scotland has a strong heritage of shipbuilding – especially on the River Clyde, where working-class communities’ pride was in their craft. This has been stripped to the bones by the capitalists and their representatives, robbing people of their livelihoods and leaving ghost towns in its wake.
Only a few shipbuilders remain. Ferguson Marine is the last merchant vessel builder in Scotland, only just propped-up thanks to state intervention. This is what the anarchic laws of the profit system lead to.
Sara Al Disi, Edinburgh Communists
Cops spy on custody death lawyer
On 3 May 2015, Sheku Bayoh was murdered by police in Kirkcaldy, as they searched for a suspect with a knife after receiving a 999 call. Mr Bayoh, however, was found completely unarmed and in a state of distress.
Police ‘restraint’ left him with over 50 injuries, causing his death. Police Scotland, and the constables involved, lied about what had happened and avoided criminal prosecution. But this forced a public inquiry to be opened in 2019.
Now it has been revealed that Police Scotland have been illegally spying on those involved in this inquiry, including the lawyer of Bayoh’s family.
Well-known human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar concedes that some of this intelligence gathering may have been ‘legal’ – for example, when Anwar was sent death threats by far-right extremists.
But he maintains that any intel gathering that targeted his activity as a campaigning lawyer and a representative of Bayoh’s family is “unjustified and wholly illegal”.
This case shows that the law not only protects the institutionally racist police, but also the lethal abuse of their powers.
The police can seemingly commit crimes with a sense of impunity, hiding behind sham legal proceedings that acquit them in the face of overwhelming evidence. And they even break the law to disrupt any attempts at obtaining justice.
This reveals the reality of the capitalist legal system and the capitalist state’s ‘armed bodies of men’: instruments that exist not to protect us, but to defend the interests of the ruling class.
This is why there can never be any justice for the oppressed and the exploited under capitalism.
Gavin Stewart, Glasgow Communists
