Councils and Whelk Stalls
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made the news headlines recently (though not in Scotland) with a barmy suggestion that local councils should be given additional responsibilities for running large utility companies.
Now exactly what this would mean is extremely vague, as with so many public statements from Labour these days, but presumably Jezza is referring to gas, electricity and water services if the following statement from Mr Corbyn is anything to go by:
"Privatisation isn't just about who runs a service, it's about who services are accountable to. It's about who shares the rewards, about protecting the workforce and getting a good deal for local people who use the services.
"After a generation of forced privatisation and outsourcing of public services, the evidence has built up that handing services over to private companies routinely delivers poorer quality, higher cost, worse terms and conditions for the workforce, less transparency and less say for the public.”
But given my experience of dealing with equal pay over the past three decades, I have to put my hand on my heart and say that some of the councils I've dealt with are hardly fit to run whelk stall - never mind large public utilities.
If you ask me, the words of Jeremy Corbyn about 'protecting the workforce' have a hollow ring when you think of the track record of Labour-run councils in North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, Glasgow and Fife.
