North Lanarkshire Update

While thousands of low paid workers are still fighting for equal pay in Labour-led North Lanarkshire, the new Labour Party leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, has set out his political stall, his road map to power.

One of Labour's political priorities includes the much-needed and long-overdue 'right' according to some anyway, to sell booze again to the masses at football matches in Scotland including the notoriously volatile encounters between Celtic and Rangers.

Now what does this tell you about the priorities of Jim Murphy and the Labour Party in Scotland?

Especially when you think that the Equal Pay Act was first introduced back in 1970 and yet all these years later people are still fighting a major Labour controlled council in North Lanarkshire for their basic employment rights.

"What has Labour's Jim Murphy said about equal pay in North Lanarkshire or the scandalous behaviour of the local Labour council?", you might ask.   

Nothing as far as I know and that helps to explain why the Labour Party is in such a terrible mess these days because equal pay in North Lanarkshire (and elsewhere) is a much bigger issue than selling booze to the masses at football matches.

In fact, the behaviour of North Lanarkshire Council is a national scandal if you ask me, just like the behaviour of its next door neighbour, Labour controlled South Lanarkshire Council which eventually settled its equal pay claims for the sum of £70 million according to newspaper reports.

Yet instead of standing up for the employment rights of their constituents on equal pay local Labour MPs have had nothing of substance to say and nor does their new leader, Jim Murphy.