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The National
12 hours ago
- Politics
- The National
Hunger doesn't clock off for the summer holidays
It's what drove me and all Scottish Green MSPs to make expanding free school meals a priority in recent Budget negotiations. Last week, the Education Secretary and I announced the result of those negotiations. From August, thousands more young people will benefit from a free school meal thanks to our new pilot programme. Eligibility for free school meals will be expanded to S1-S3 pupils who receive the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) in eight council areas across Scotland. READ MORE: Scotland can lead the world with 'ecocide' bill currently in Holyrood This builds on what Scottish Green MSPs achieved in previous years, namely the expansion of universal free school meals to P4 and P5 pupils, as well as the ongoing expansion to all P6 and P7 pupils who receive the SCP. These policies are the direct result of Green influence in government and Parliament. They show the transformational power voters will hold next May when deciding who they send to Holyrood for the next five years. It has a huge impact when you elect MSPs committed to changing Scotland for the better. In this case, free school meals do more than fill stomachs. They fuel learning, reduce stigma, and ease pressure on hard-pressed families during a brutal cost of living crisis. They're an investment not just in individual pupils but in a fairer and healthier society. But we can and must go further. Scotland should be leading the way in delivering universal free school meals across the whole of our education system. That's what the Scottish Greens are working towards. Another major Green achievement for Scotland's children was our cancellation of school meal debts. Almost £3 million has now been wiped off the books after years of campaigning on the issue. For thousands of families, it has brought urgent relief at a time of growing hardship. As the Scottish Greens' education spokesperson, I first published research back in 2021 which showed that more than £1 million of school meal debt was being carried by families. As the cost of living crisis deepened, that figure soared. But the emotional toll was even greater. I've heard directly from teachers who dreaded chasing children for money that their families simply didn't have. READ MORE: Westminster is set to decriminalise abortion – what about Scotland? I've talked to parents who went without so that their children didn't have to face shame in the lunch hall. No child should be forced to learn under the weight of that stress and embarrassment. No teacher should be put in that impossible situation. That's why I worked so hard to ensure that this debt was wiped out. Cancelling it was clearly the right thing to do. It's something the Greens are incredibly proud to have delivered. But again we believe in doing more than just wiping the slate clean only to see those debts build back up. We believe in changing the system which created the problem in the first place. That's why we will continue to push for universal free school meals for every child from nursery to the end of high school. Contrast this with the attitude of successive UK governments, both Conservative and Labour. Westminster politicians continue to dig their heels in on the indefensible two-child benefit cap and associated 'rape clause', a policy that has directly plunged hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. Research from the Child Poverty Action Group has shown that lifting this cap would lift 250,000 children out of poverty across the UK. Yet they refuse to act, instead prioritising their race to the bottom style of politics, demonising the poor and disabled, while succumbing to their own vested interests. Their silence speaks volumes. It shows us exactly how deep the commitment to austerity and inequality runs in the halls of Westminster. While Scotland has limited powers to undo the damage they inflict, we do have the means to make a meaningful difference, and that's exactly what Scotland's Green MSPs and councillors have been doing. READ MORE: Plans for Glasgow tourist tax approved by councillors Of course, this work is never finished. Hunger doesn't clock off at the end of a parliamentary session and neither can we. The Scottish Greens will continue to fight for policies that put people first – and we're not afraid to say that it's the super-rich who should pay more in tax to pay for this. At the end of the day, the choices we make reflect the kind of country we want to be. Do we want to be a nation where children go hungry while their parents work two or three jobs for poverty wages? Or do we want to be a country that invests in its young people, supports families, and builds a future based on fairness and compassion? The Scottish Greens know where we stand and we're proud to keep fighting for the Scotland that our children and young people deserve.
Scotsman
3 days ago
- Politics
- Scotsman
Scotland is stuck, fixing a broken political system
Scottish Green Party co-leader Lorna Slater Last week's U-turn by the UK Government on winter fuel payments is a damning indictment of a broken system. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... It is a change that anyone with a concern for the health and wellbeing of older people would welcome, but we should never have been in this position in the first place. It was the result of a system that continues to put Scotland at the mercy of decisions we didn't vote for. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This is not the first time Scotland has had to clean up the mess created in Westminster. Whether it's the cost-of-living crisis, a Brexit we overwhelmingly rejected which has hiked prices and cost jobs, or attacks on our social security system and the most vulnerable people. Many feel an apology for the Winter Fuel Payment mess is worthless. Far too often we're left dealing with the fallout of callous and chaotic decisions from a government that is out of touch with the people of Scotland. The winter fuel payment row is about more than just policy. It's about priorities. It lays bare the values of a Westminster system that continues to put ideology before people, threatening the wellbeing of older Scots to score cheap political points or balance budgets on the backs of the vulnerable. Pensioner poverty is rising. Energy bills remain sky-high. Thousands of older Scots are having to make impossible choices between heating and eating. The last thing they need is to worry about whether basic support will be stripped away next winter. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In Scotland, we've chosen a different path. Through the Scottish Greens' work in government, we've delivered the Scottish Child Payment, scrapped peak rail fares, expanded free bus travel and invested in warmer homes and fairer energy. But our ability to go further is too often constrained by a Westminster system that prioritises austerity over dignity. Scotland deserves better than this endless cycle of reacting to Westminster's chaos. We shouldn't be stuck offsetting misery; we should be building a fairer, greener, independent country. One where decisions are made by the people who live here, for the people who live here. Independence isn't about flags or parliaments. It's about fairness. It's about using our powers to build a Scotland where nobody goes cold because a distant government decided their support wasn't worth keeping. It's about giving our pensioners the security they deserve and investing in a future we can be proud of. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This winter fuel payment fiasco should be a wake-up call. It is yet another example of why Scotland must take its future into its own hands. We need independence and we need it now. Lorna Slater, Scottish Green party co-leader
The National
10-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Is there any escape from Donald Trump? It's complicated for Scotland
The date is June 2008. The Orange One, tie at full length and combover at full strength, is raising his arm at the gate of his mother's pebbledash house on the Isle of Lewis. In the background, one of his cousins keeks out the front door. Trump has been inside for a grand total of 97 seconds. You could be forgiven, these days, for thinking the image was some digital composite. Indeed, morph the hand into a fist, pixelate in some blood, and it's not so far away from Trump's physical reaction to the attempted assassination in July last year. His iconicity is so overwhelming – from the cheapest shots on social media, to the most momentous shifts in geopolitics and world trade – that I often have to shut him out of my mind, just to recover some sense of agency or citizenship. Even an old picture of him posing before a humble Scottish home produces, in the present, an authoritarian effect. Is there no fucking escape from this man? The excellent set of articles in this week's paper provides the answer: no, there isn't much. But if escape is difficult, engagement seems even more complex than that. The Scottish establishment already has a tawdry, pawky, cheesy relationship with Trump. The 2008 photo occurred during one of the Don's many dealings around his golf courses in Scotland, encouraged by first ministers McConnell and Salmond. Golf! Other than grouse shooting, is Scotland's territory ever more supine and passive to the executive classes than this? We not only host Trump Turnberry, but a second golf course at his resort in Aberdeenshire is about to open, titled after his mother's maiden name. The knot of mediocrity and sentimentality is pulled tight. READ MORE: What I saw when I visited Donald Trump's new Scottish golf course In these enterprises, Trump has predictably undershot the promises he made on jobs and revenue. But as the Scottish Greens' Patrick Harvie wrote earlier this week, there is deeper due diligence to be conducted. The New York State Supreme Court has found Donald Trump to be guilty of civil fraud – one of his misdemeanours being 'a false inflation of the value of his assets, including his Scottish golf course', reports Harvie. Patrick believes this justifies an unexplained wealth order to be raised against Trump by the Scottish Government. This is 'a mechanism that allows investigations into 'politically exposed persons', who are suspected of involvement in serious crime'. Can you imagine this happening? We've had a week when the UK Government agreed a trade deal (or call it a reasonably light punishment-beating) with the Trump regime. Tributes – a state visit and a dose of Balmorality – have been offered up. The notion of Scotland holding the US president's feet to the fire of his own criminality, amid all this vassalage… Well, I like it. It accords with the moral character I ascribe to Scottish sovereignty, now and in whatever more independent future. READ MORE: Scottish distilleries eye zero tariffs on whisky after US-UK trade deal But there's little doubt in my mind that an unexplained wealth order would trigger this capricious, thin-skinned autocrat. Who could then easily swing one of his many wrecking balls in Scotland's direction. Whisky and salmon are still labouring under the 10% tariff in this week's US-UK trade deal. Who's to say, if His MAGA-jesty's ire is raised by Scottish lawyers poking around in his financial affairs, that he wouldn't arbitrarily raise tariffs on these key Scottish imports? Yet Trump's petulant fiats raise deeper questions about business-as-usual, for Scotland as for many other countries. One of the more startling articles this week seemed to be investigating the effect of Trump's anti-woke zeal on Scottish universities. But it also contained information on how much research is funded by US defence grants. Between 2012 and 2022, Glasgow University received $9.4 million for research into various forms of drones and 'human performance enhancement'. Edinburgh University took $11.2m for studies that included 'ballistic modifiers' and 'amorphous explosives'. Several more defence millions were brought in across Strathclyde, Heriot-Watt, Aberdeen, Robert Gordon and Dundee universities. For those of us who took to heart a previous American president's warning about the rise of the 'military-industrial complex', all of that spend is good to know about. And no great loss if it disappears. What would really make the Eye of Sauron blink is a new Scottish nation-state, setting a timetable to remove Trident nuclear missiles from our soil – still the official policy of the independence-supporting parties, in or out of government. It was dispiriting to hear the voices of 'SNP insiders' render up wee hard-man quotes to our reporters. 'I was expecting an absolute fucking uproar… Don't get me wrong, you got cybernats online giving it laldy but there wasn't actually that much pushback.' As ably described by vice-president Grace Penn (The West Wing's Allison Janney) in Netflix's The Diplomat, Scottish nukes are seen by the US state as the last line of deterrence against a naval Russia sweeping through the North Atlantic. Scottish independence is rendered as a direct and truculent threat to that deterrence. This threat triggers VP Penn's black-ops skullduggery, discovered in the closing episode. (The third series is imminent.) READ MORE: Labour MP slapped down over claim UK-US trade deal 'great for Scotland' As I've written several times in this space: what exactly is gained from softening Scottish principle over Trident? There is at least as strong a case to be made on the other side. In a world recoiling from Trump's strong-arm tactics and toxicity, a Scotland that commits to nuclear prohibition sends an attractive message to hundreds of countries across the globe. Our soft power is profoundly enhanced by our moral removal of the hardest and most exterminist power from our territory. The other conclusion to draw from this week's series is that Scotland, more than ever in the Trumpian era, needs to find shelter and solidarity in a European context. The British state's indignities and compromises, involved in working the 'special relationship' with a rapacious, deal-oriented Trump regime, can be avoided if our indy seeks integration with the EU bloc. The mutating of globalisation into a multi-lateral world, made from vast economic and continental blocs, renders the European Union even more of a haven for a small, progressive nation. There's also something psychologically beneficial about the project of Scots indy, in the age of Trump. As he conducts his rule-by-whim, we should instead be facing the everyday challenge of arguing for, achieving, and then building an independent country. Trump offers a slippery, maddening world, where authoritarians win by bemusing the citizenry as to what is true or false. Against this, indy can be our commitment to fact and structure. That's the majority we need to win, the institutions we must forge, the missiles we should remove, the national resources we can manage and develop. I believe a Scots indy will face a much more unpredictable, transformative world than any of our current politicians realise. Artificial general (or super) intelligence, and shocks from ecology and the biosphere, may radically upend the working and living norms of societies. So. do we really want our capacity and our vision for these challenges to be sapped, as we react every time Trump goes to Crazy Town? There's a fine American invention on my Apple phone called Clean Up. You apply your fingertip to remove an item, or person, from your photos. Up comes Trump at the gate of his mother's house – and now, some swipes later, he's gone. Would that it were that easy. But it feels good and symbolic. Let's try to take our minds and purpose back from his endless Caligularity.
STV News
09-05-2025
- Politics
- STV News
MSP Gillian Mackay announces bid for Scottish Greens co-leadership
Gillian Mackay has announced that she will be standing for Scottish Green party leadership when current co-leader Patrick Harvey steps down this summer. Harvey, the Scottish Greens' co-leader and their longest-serving MSP, announced in April that he will not stand in the party's upcoming leadership election, which is set to take place this summer. The MSP confirmed her intention to run for party leadership in the coming months on Friday. 'I'm really proud to be announcing that I'm running to be co-leader of the Scottish Greens,' Mackay said. 'At a time when politics is dominated by the egos of men, it's all the more important that we have women with big voices and ideas in politics. I hope that you think I tick at least one of those boxes. 'Over the last four years, I've shown that I can deliver on the causes that I champion and bring people together behind them. I believe I'm the person that can not only take the party further and deliver great election results, but deliver fantastic things for Scotland and our communities.' Mackay was first elected in 2021, and she is the first ever Scottish Greens MSP for Central Scotland. She is currently the party spokesperson on health and social care, and her abortion clinic buffer zones bill was passed by MSPs overwhelmingly in June 2024. The bill brought in 200 metre wide exclusion zones, or buffer zones, around health care facilities offering abortions to protect women seeking healthcare from harassment. The Abortion Services Safe Access Zones (Scotland) Bill banned 'certain activities', including protests within 200m of abortion care facilities, and it was agreed by 118 votes to 1 at its final stage of consideration in the Scottish Parliament last summer. The Scottish Greens party has a co-leadership system with Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvey currently at the helm. Lorna Slater has been a Scottish Greens co-leader since 2019 and is a newly elected MSP for Lothian. She has already confirmed that she will stand for re-election in this summer's ballot. The Scottish Greens elect co-leaders every two years, with the winners of this year's contest expected to be announced in August. Any member can stand as a candidate, though one of the co-chiefs has to be a woman. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
STV News
09-05-2025
- Politics
- STV News
Gillian Mackay announces new bid for Scottish Greens co-leadership
Gillian Mackay has announced that she will be standing for Scottish Green party leadership when current co-leader Patrick Harvey steps down this summer. Harvey, the Scottish Greens' co-leader and their longest-serving MSP, announced in April that he will not stand in the party's upcoming leadership election, which is set to take place this summer. The MSP confirmed her intention to run for party leadership in the coming months on Friday. 'I'm really proud to be announcing that I'm running to be co-leader of the Scottish Greens,' Mackay said. 'At a time when politics is dominated by the egos of men, it's all the more important that we have women with big voices and ideas in politics. I hope that you think I tick at least one of those boxes. 'Over the last four years, I've shown that I can deliver on the causes that I champion and bring people together behind them. I believe I'm the person that can not only take the party further and deliver great election results, but deliver fantastic things for Scotland and our communities.' Mackay was first elected in 2021, and she is the first ever Scottish Greens MSP for Central Scotland. She is currently the party spokesperson on health and social care, and her abortion clinic buffer zones bill was passed by MSPs overwhelmingly in June 2024. The bill brought in 200 metre wide exclusion zones, or buffer zones, around health care facilities offering abortions to protect women seeking healthcare from harassment. The Abortion Services Safe Access Zones (Scotland) Bill banned 'certain activities', including protests within 200m of abortion care facilities, and it was agreed by 118 votes to 1 at its final stage of consideration in the Scottish Parliament last summer. The Scottish Greens party has a co-leadership system with Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvey currently at the helm. Lorna Slater has been a Scottish Greens co-leader since 2019 and is a newly elected MSP for Lothian. She has already confirmed that she will stand for re-election in this summer's ballot. The Scottish Greens elect co-leaders every two years, with the winners of this year's contest expected to be announced in August. Any member can stand as a candidate, though one of the co-chiefs has to be a woman. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
