Glasgow, Royal Weddings and Equal Pay
Here's an opinion piece from The Herald in which a 'leading' Glasgow-based journalist, Kevin McKenna, writes about the issues of inequality thrown up by the forthcoming royal wedding.
Now I find this a bot odd, I have to admit, because Kevin has not said a single word about the fight for equal pay in Glasgow, Scotland's largest council, which has been taking place right under his nose for the past 12 years.
The fight against gender based pay discrimination in Glasgow started under a Labour Government and a Labour-run city council.
The battle continues to this day under an SNP-led administration which has so far 'talked the talk', but has still to deliver on its pledge to introduce new pay arrangements based on the principle of 'equal pay for work of equal value'.
For me the royal wedding is a distraction from the everyday issue of discrimination that affect people's lives in Glasgow and if journalists are really interested in talking about and highlighting 'inequality', there really are lots of bigger fish to fry which far closer to home.
Kevin McKenna uses his regular column in The Observer to pose the question: "Why are we still too scared of crusading women who speak the truth?"
Yet there's been a fierce fight for equal pay, a crusade if you like, raging under Kevin's nose for the past 10 years - right here in his home city of Glasgow.
Because I cannot recall Kevin writing a single critical word about the dinosaur Labour City Council and its senior officials who created this scandal.
Or, even, a positive word about the thousands of low paid women in Glasgow City Council who have been fighting for their right to 'equal pay for work of equal value' all these years.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/11/why-are-we-scared-of-crusading-women-who-tell-the-truth
Why are we still so scared of crusading women who speak the truth?
Mary Barbour led an uprising against spiv landlords in 1915. Today, her like are crushed by trolls
Nothing became Glasgow more on International Women’s Day last week than the unveiling of a statue of Mary Barbour in Govan. To call this a mere statue is like saying Lionel Messi is a decent inside forward. It depicts Barbour, one of her arms aloft, leading a group of women into battle with the spiv landlords who were trying to put them and their families on to the streets.
There are so many reasons why this is one of Scotland’s most important monuments of recent years. In 1915, Barbour led her army of women and children in a struggle against the greed and viciousness of Glasgow landlords who sought to exploit the absence of husbands and partners fighting in the First World War. The city had experienced an influx of men from other parts of the UK eager for well-paid jobs in the heavy industries required to maintain the war effort. Some landlords viewed this as an opportunity to raise rents for the purpose of evicting wives and families to make way for these workers.
The city-wide rent strike that followed eventually forced the government to provide the protections that form the foundation of modern tenants’ agreements. The action in Glasgow inspired similar uprisings in other parts of the UK and across the Atlantic in New York and showed that the agents of freewheeling capitalism could be defeated.
I first wrote about Barbour five years ago in support of a permanent memorial to her. Before then, I knew next to nothing of her life and achievements. I certainly didn’t know that in Glasgow there was not even a handful of statues of women among the hundreds of men, including many whose heroism went no further than being agents of a tyrannical empire.
I suspect too that many of those who gathered at Govan Cross last Thursday to honour Barbour and her army had known little of her deeds until the Remember Mary Barbour Association had got into its stride.
This is hardly surprising. The deeds of Scotland’s working-class heroes have largely been written out of the approved histories of the nation that our children are permitted to read. Until very recently, a Scottish child could travel into adulthood unhindered by an ounce of knowledge about the story of Scotland and certainly about any of the women who have helped shape our destiny.
The remarkable Barbour prevailed at a time when the idea of women in politics or in any role that raised their profile was simply unacceptable. She went on to be elected as a councillor for Glasgow in 1920 and was appointed the first female bailie of the City of Glasgow in 1924. Together with her success in facing down the massed ranks of capitalism and the government that it had in its pockets, these make her one of the most significant figures in modern Scottish history.
“Mary Barbour’s campaign in facing down exploitative private landlords during the First World War was one of the landmark movements in Scottish working-class history. Discuss.” This will not be a question appearing on the higher history paper of any Scottish pupil soon.
For me the royal wedding is a distraction from the everyday issue of discrimination that affect people's lives in Glasgow and if journalists are really interested in talking about and highlighting 'inequality', there really are lots of bigger fish to fry which far closer to home.
Kevin McKenna: Royal wedding reminds us we celebrate unearned privilege and inequality
By Kevin McKenna - The Herald
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace
IN the nine-year period when Michael Martin, the former MP for Springburn, occupied the Speaker’s chair at the House of Commons we got to see what real class prejudice in the UK looked like.This wasn’t the endemic, institutionalised prejudice which maintains the educational attainment gap and ensures that only a privileged and gilded few will be permitted seriously to influence how Britain is arranged.
IN the nine-year period when Michael Martin, the former MP for Springburn, occupied the Speaker’s chair at the House of Commons we got to see what real class prejudice in the UK looked like.This wasn’t the endemic, institutionalised prejudice which maintains the educational attainment gap and ensures that only a privileged and gilded few will be permitted seriously to influence how Britain is arranged.
This polite prejudice has happened stealthily over many years, the social equivalent of boiling a frog, where gross inequality goes largely un-challenged in exchange for a few scraps to subdue any discontent. Those who benefit the most from it ridicule the very notion of its existence while those on the acquiescent Left rarely call it class prejudice because, well … such terms are so unhelpful and belong to an era when Arthur Scargill was in his pomp and CND was on the march and Socialism hadn’t yet been banished by Tony Blair and newly-gentrified Labour.
Glasgow and Equal Pay (12/03/18)
Kevin McKenna uses his regular column in The Observer to pose the question: "Why are we still too scared of crusading women who speak the truth?"
Yet there's been a fierce fight for equal pay, a crusade if you like, raging under Kevin's nose for the past 10 years - right here in his home city of Glasgow.
Because I cannot recall Kevin writing a single critical word about the dinosaur Labour City Council and its senior officials who created this scandal.
Or, even, a positive word about the thousands of low paid women in Glasgow City Council who have been fighting for their right to 'equal pay for work of equal value' all these years.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/11/why-are-we-scared-of-crusading-women-who-tell-the-truth
Why are we still so scared of crusading women who speak the truth?
By Kevin McKenna - The Observer
Mary Barbour led an uprising against spiv landlords in 1915. Today, her like are crushed by trolls
Nothing became Glasgow more on International Women’s Day last week than the unveiling of a statue of Mary Barbour in Govan. To call this a mere statue is like saying Lionel Messi is a decent inside forward. It depicts Barbour, one of her arms aloft, leading a group of women into battle with the spiv landlords who were trying to put them and their families on to the streets.
There are so many reasons why this is one of Scotland’s most important monuments of recent years. In 1915, Barbour led her army of women and children in a struggle against the greed and viciousness of Glasgow landlords who sought to exploit the absence of husbands and partners fighting in the First World War. The city had experienced an influx of men from other parts of the UK eager for well-paid jobs in the heavy industries required to maintain the war effort. Some landlords viewed this as an opportunity to raise rents for the purpose of evicting wives and families to make way for these workers.
The city-wide rent strike that followed eventually forced the government to provide the protections that form the foundation of modern tenants’ agreements. The action in Glasgow inspired similar uprisings in other parts of the UK and across the Atlantic in New York and showed that the agents of freewheeling capitalism could be defeated.
I first wrote about Barbour five years ago in support of a permanent memorial to her. Before then, I knew next to nothing of her life and achievements. I certainly didn’t know that in Glasgow there was not even a handful of statues of women among the hundreds of men, including many whose heroism went no further than being agents of a tyrannical empire.
I suspect too that many of those who gathered at Govan Cross last Thursday to honour Barbour and her army had known little of her deeds until the Remember Mary Barbour Association had got into its stride.
This is hardly surprising. The deeds of Scotland’s working-class heroes have largely been written out of the approved histories of the nation that our children are permitted to read. Until very recently, a Scottish child could travel into adulthood unhindered by an ounce of knowledge about the story of Scotland and certainly about any of the women who have helped shape our destiny.
The remarkable Barbour prevailed at a time when the idea of women in politics or in any role that raised their profile was simply unacceptable. She went on to be elected as a councillor for Glasgow in 1920 and was appointed the first female bailie of the City of Glasgow in 1924. Together with her success in facing down the massed ranks of capitalism and the government that it had in its pockets, these make her one of the most significant figures in modern Scottish history.
“Mary Barbour’s campaign in facing down exploitative private landlords during the First World War was one of the landmark movements in Scottish working-class history. Discuss.” This will not be a question appearing on the higher history paper of any Scottish pupil soon.
Mhairi Black has spoken of the slew of abuse she receives on social media. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Just over a century later and on the same day that Barbour was being honoured in Glasgow, another troublesome woman from the west of Scotland was having her say in London. Mhairi Black, the youngest MP in more than 350 years, stood up in the House of Commons to describe the incessant slew of abuse she receives daily on social media. These were primitive attacks carrying a degree of malevolence and violent intent that chilled you. Not a single aspect of Black’s person or her physical appearance was left untouched by this sickness. High-profile men also come under attack from the anonymous warriors of social media but rarely is there any degree of violent intent. They are rarely mocked for their appearance and there is seldom a sexual edge to this.
The experiences of Black mirror those endured by many young women in Scottish journalism. There are several positive effects of the rise of new media across the UK. It has allowed some compelling and eloquent voices to be heard that would have struggled to make it past the old boys’ network that once controlled entry into the hallowed editorial rooms of British newspapers. Among them has been a group of female commentators who have talked freely about issues such as violence against women, the gender pay gap and female sexual health. In response, they have endured torrents of violent abuse.
There are good reasons why this ought to concern the rest of us. For hundreds of years, very bright and very able working-class children have been denied the opportunity to fulfil their potential by an embedded system of reward and patronage administered by the UK elite. We will never know the cost to Britain of having thousands of its brightest and best denied the chance to improve the country by virtue of having been born in the wrong sort of community.
Similarly, we’ll never know how many gifted and able women have been prevented from sharing their gifts by a patriarchy that often discriminated in favour of incompetent men. Some women are now breaking free of these bonds but they are discovering that the methods being used to silence them are primitive ones from a darker age.
• Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnist
I came across this opinion piece in The Herald the other day in which Kevin McKenna offered some words of advice to the new SNP-led administration in Glasgow City Council.
Strangely, Kevin makes no mention of the long fight for equal pay which has been raging in Glasgow for the past 12 years and affects well over 10,000 City Council employees.
Instead Kevin focuses exclusively on an IT dispute involving just over 200 staff which was resolved earlier this year after the trade unions secured guarantees on jobs and future terms and conditions from the new service provider, CGI.
The SNP has pledged to resolve the outstanding equal pay claims in Glasgow which is a huge change from the previous Labour-led administration which had been dragging its feet over the issue for years.
So we'll see what happens in the weeks ahead and although the fight is far from being over that's what I call really big and important news for thousands of low paid workers in Scotland's largest city.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/15427752.Kevin_McKenna__All_the_pressure_is_now_on_Glasgow__39_s_new_council_leader/
Kevin McKenna: All the pressure is now on Glasgow's new council leader
Just over a century later and on the same day that Barbour was being honoured in Glasgow, another troublesome woman from the west of Scotland was having her say in London. Mhairi Black, the youngest MP in more than 350 years, stood up in the House of Commons to describe the incessant slew of abuse she receives daily on social media. These were primitive attacks carrying a degree of malevolence and violent intent that chilled you. Not a single aspect of Black’s person or her physical appearance was left untouched by this sickness. High-profile men also come under attack from the anonymous warriors of social media but rarely is there any degree of violent intent. They are rarely mocked for their appearance and there is seldom a sexual edge to this.
The experiences of Black mirror those endured by many young women in Scottish journalism. There are several positive effects of the rise of new media across the UK. It has allowed some compelling and eloquent voices to be heard that would have struggled to make it past the old boys’ network that once controlled entry into the hallowed editorial rooms of British newspapers. Among them has been a group of female commentators who have talked freely about issues such as violence against women, the gender pay gap and female sexual health. In response, they have endured torrents of violent abuse.
There are good reasons why this ought to concern the rest of us. For hundreds of years, very bright and very able working-class children have been denied the opportunity to fulfil their potential by an embedded system of reward and patronage administered by the UK elite. We will never know the cost to Britain of having thousands of its brightest and best denied the chance to improve the country by virtue of having been born in the wrong sort of community.
Similarly, we’ll never know how many gifted and able women have been prevented from sharing their gifts by a patriarchy that often discriminated in favour of incompetent men. Some women are now breaking free of these bonds but they are discovering that the methods being used to silence them are primitive ones from a darker age.
• Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnist
Glasgow's Priorities (10/08/18)
I came across this opinion piece in The Herald the other day in which Kevin McKenna offered some words of advice to the new SNP-led administration in Glasgow City Council.
Strangely, Kevin makes no mention of the long fight for equal pay which has been raging in Glasgow for the past 12 years and affects well over 10,000 City Council employees.
Instead Kevin focuses exclusively on an IT dispute involving just over 200 staff which was resolved earlier this year after the trade unions secured guarantees on jobs and future terms and conditions from the new service provider, CGI.
The SNP has pledged to resolve the outstanding equal pay claims in Glasgow which is a huge change from the previous Labour-led administration which had been dragging its feet over the issue for years.
So we'll see what happens in the weeks ahead and although the fight is far from being over that's what I call really big and important news for thousands of low paid workers in Scotland's largest city.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/15427752.Kevin_McKenna__All_the_pressure_is_now_on_Glasgow__39_s_new_council_leader/
Kevin McKenna: All the pressure is now on Glasgow's new council leader
By Kevin McKenna - The Herald
ALL political administrations, no matter how much unity of purpose they might previously have exhibited, collapse eventually amid recrimination and paranoia. During the end of days there are secret meetings, shifting alliances and sullen glances. It’s unusual though, to detect evidence of such behaviour at the start of a shiny, new executive stretch. Thus I was somewhat taken aback to learn from an impeccable source that a recent column of mine for The Herald had been the subject of some casual paranoia at a recent social gathering of the newly-installed SNP officer class at Glasgow City Council.
In my piece I had highlighted how the outgoing Labour administration had moved to shut down any debate over its decision to award CGI, the Canadian technology giant, Glasgow’s lucrative IT business. Thus the final act of the self-styled People’s Party was to ensure CGI received Glasgow’s business without any tendering process. The decision bore all the hallmarks of the Labour Party’s long, slow demise in Scotland. There was arrogance, a sense of entitlement and a failure even to give Scotland’s indigenous IT community the chance to compete for the business.
I’d simply encouraged Susan Aitken, the new SNP leader of the council, not to hide behind Labour’s supine and cowardly behaviour and to call in the decision. After all, Ms Aitken had spent the entire local election campaign telling us she would “stand up for Glasgow” and put an end to Labour’s old and discredited networks of power. This was an early test of her resolve to do things differently. Yet, 11 weeks on, Ms Aitken has failed to lift a finger to prevent this highly questionable deal going through.
Instead there has been idle and inaccurate title-tattle about the identity of the person alleged to have briefed me for my column. A wee word of advice here, Ms Aitken: some of us do not require the services of an army of highly-paid advisers, paid from the public purse, to do the work you and your newly-elected colleagues can surely do themselves.
What ought to be concerning the fledgling administration and commanding all of what exists of its collective intellectual finesse is the fragile nature of its mandate. The first 100 days are now recognised as being a key and defining indicator of the direction, tone and strength of your administration. In the case of Ms Aitken’s new team we had all better hope she and they emerge energised from their summer break and armed with something – anything – that shows she is ready to begin the task of “standing up for Glasgow”.
So far, she has indicated she will establish a first XI of councillors who will form the council equivalent of a full cabinet, each with responsibility for key areas. It carries the promise of empowering local politicians to take proper control of major issues affecting the city and laying down the law to unelected officials. At the moment though, Glasgow City Chambers is in the grip of a troika of senior officials: the Chief Executive Annemarie O’Donnell; Director of Governance Carole Forrest and Director of Communications Colin Edgar.
To the best of my knowledge Kevin McKenna has not written a single word about the long fight for equal pay in Scotland's councils which has been raging for the past 12 years, but in this comment piece for The Herald Kevin takes the SNP Government to task for failing to give prisoners a vote in the 2014 independence referendum.
I have to admit the priorities of Scotland's 'left-wing', middle class professionals never ceases to amaze.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15397247.Kevin_McKenna__The_treatment_of_the_elderly_and_infirm_shames_our_nation/
Kevin McKenna: The treatment of the elderly and infirm shames our nation
Kevin McKenna wrote a piece in The Guardian the other day attacking the SNP Government's alleged 'cosiness' wth the airlines industry in Scotland and new parking charges at Glasgow Airport.
Now the SNP Government can speak for itself, but what always puzzles me about Kevin and other 'left-leaning' commentators is that they're always happy to let fly, so to speak, at easy targets such as Glasgow airport's chief executive, Amanda McMillan, whose salary in 2014 was £293,000, apparently.
Yet Kevin has nothing to say about the eye-watering £250,000 bonus paid in 2010/11 to a senior official of Glasgow City Council who oversaw the council's handling of equal pay including the controversial decision to cap compensation payments to the council's lowest paid women workers at just £9,000.
The 'cap' was agreed by the local trade unions, of course, but none of this has been reported in the columns of The Guardian by Kevin McKenna or anyone else for that matter.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/02/enough-fly-boys-without-the-snp-cosying-up-to-airports-industry
We’ve got enough fly boys without the SNP cosying up to the airports industry
ALL political administrations, no matter how much unity of purpose they might previously have exhibited, collapse eventually amid recrimination and paranoia. During the end of days there are secret meetings, shifting alliances and sullen glances. It’s unusual though, to detect evidence of such behaviour at the start of a shiny, new executive stretch. Thus I was somewhat taken aback to learn from an impeccable source that a recent column of mine for The Herald had been the subject of some casual paranoia at a recent social gathering of the newly-installed SNP officer class at Glasgow City Council.
In my piece I had highlighted how the outgoing Labour administration had moved to shut down any debate over its decision to award CGI, the Canadian technology giant, Glasgow’s lucrative IT business. Thus the final act of the self-styled People’s Party was to ensure CGI received Glasgow’s business without any tendering process. The decision bore all the hallmarks of the Labour Party’s long, slow demise in Scotland. There was arrogance, a sense of entitlement and a failure even to give Scotland’s indigenous IT community the chance to compete for the business.
I’d simply encouraged Susan Aitken, the new SNP leader of the council, not to hide behind Labour’s supine and cowardly behaviour and to call in the decision. After all, Ms Aitken had spent the entire local election campaign telling us she would “stand up for Glasgow” and put an end to Labour’s old and discredited networks of power. This was an early test of her resolve to do things differently. Yet, 11 weeks on, Ms Aitken has failed to lift a finger to prevent this highly questionable deal going through.
Instead there has been idle and inaccurate title-tattle about the identity of the person alleged to have briefed me for my column. A wee word of advice here, Ms Aitken: some of us do not require the services of an army of highly-paid advisers, paid from the public purse, to do the work you and your newly-elected colleagues can surely do themselves.
What ought to be concerning the fledgling administration and commanding all of what exists of its collective intellectual finesse is the fragile nature of its mandate. The first 100 days are now recognised as being a key and defining indicator of the direction, tone and strength of your administration. In the case of Ms Aitken’s new team we had all better hope she and they emerge energised from their summer break and armed with something – anything – that shows she is ready to begin the task of “standing up for Glasgow”.
So far, she has indicated she will establish a first XI of councillors who will form the council equivalent of a full cabinet, each with responsibility for key areas. It carries the promise of empowering local politicians to take proper control of major issues affecting the city and laying down the law to unelected officials. At the moment though, Glasgow City Chambers is in the grip of a troika of senior officials: the Chief Executive Annemarie O’Donnell; Director of Governance Carole Forrest and Director of Communications Colin Edgar.
Scandals Of Our Time (08/07/17)
To the best of my knowledge Kevin McKenna has not written a single word about the long fight for equal pay in Scotland's councils which has been raging for the past 12 years, but in this comment piece for The Herald Kevin takes the SNP Government to task for failing to give prisoners a vote in the 2014 independence referendum.
I have to admit the priorities of Scotland's 'left-wing', middle class professionals never ceases to amaze.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15397247.Kevin_McKenna__The_treatment_of_the_elderly_and_infirm_shames_our_nation/
Kevin McKenna: The treatment of the elderly and infirm shames our nation
By Kevin McKenna - The Herald
Kevin McKenna: The treatment of the elderly and infirm shames our nation
ONE of the many tests by which a country is deemed to be truly progressive and enlightened was failed by the SNP Government during the referendum on Scottish independence. This one concerned our treatment of prisoners, an issue which has long disfigured Scotland’s claims to be a beacon of fairness and equality. The SNP put itself in the territory normally held by the Right’s howling banshee division when it refused prisoners in Scottish jails a vote in the referendum. It was an act of sheer political cowardice that smacked of bowing to the baying mob and went against the party’s own instincts.
Permitting our prison population a vote on Scotland’s future would have been the act of a civilised nation comfortable in its own skin. Our jail population is one of the highest in Europe with high rates of re-offending contributing to this. So what better way of addressing deep-rooted criminal attitudes by attempting to include prisoners in the Great Debate that was held up by the Electoral Reform Society as one of the finest examples of democratic engagement in the world. Instead, ever afraid of its own shadow and petrified by the prospect of authentic radical action, the SNP took the easy option and refused this little act of charity.
It was an illuminating episode that presaged the SNP’s actions in the years that were to come. This is a party which seems to value the retention of power more than the core values it unfailingly espouses at election time. Winston Churchill had this to say as Home Secretary 107 years ago: “The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.” In 2014 Scotland and its government failed that test.
Kevin McKenna: The treatment of the elderly and infirm shames our nation
ONE of the many tests by which a country is deemed to be truly progressive and enlightened was failed by the SNP Government during the referendum on Scottish independence. This one concerned our treatment of prisoners, an issue which has long disfigured Scotland’s claims to be a beacon of fairness and equality. The SNP put itself in the territory normally held by the Right’s howling banshee division when it refused prisoners in Scottish jails a vote in the referendum. It was an act of sheer political cowardice that smacked of bowing to the baying mob and went against the party’s own instincts.
Permitting our prison population a vote on Scotland’s future would have been the act of a civilised nation comfortable in its own skin. Our jail population is one of the highest in Europe with high rates of re-offending contributing to this. So what better way of addressing deep-rooted criminal attitudes by attempting to include prisoners in the Great Debate that was held up by the Electoral Reform Society as one of the finest examples of democratic engagement in the world. Instead, ever afraid of its own shadow and petrified by the prospect of authentic radical action, the SNP took the easy option and refused this little act of charity.
It was an illuminating episode that presaged the SNP’s actions in the years that were to come. This is a party which seems to value the retention of power more than the core values it unfailingly espouses at election time. Winston Churchill had this to say as Home Secretary 107 years ago: “The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.” In 2014 Scotland and its government failed that test.
Picking Your Targets (05/07/17)
Kevin McKenna wrote a piece in The Guardian the other day attacking the SNP Government's alleged 'cosiness' wth the airlines industry in Scotland and new parking charges at Glasgow Airport.
Now the SNP Government can speak for itself, but what always puzzles me about Kevin and other 'left-leaning' commentators is that they're always happy to let fly, so to speak, at easy targets such as Glasgow airport's chief executive, Amanda McMillan, whose salary in 2014 was £293,000, apparently.
Yet Kevin has nothing to say about the eye-watering £250,000 bonus paid in 2010/11 to a senior official of Glasgow City Council who oversaw the council's handling of equal pay including the controversial decision to cap compensation payments to the council's lowest paid women workers at just £9,000.
The 'cap' was agreed by the local trade unions, of course, but none of this has been reported in the columns of The Guardian by Kevin McKenna or anyone else for that matter.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/02/enough-fly-boys-without-the-snp-cosying-up-to-airports-industry
We’ve got enough fly boys without the SNP cosying up to the airports industry
By Kevin McKenna - The Guardian
The benefits to Scotland of the links between business and the nationalists are as yet unproven
The benefits to Scotland of the links between business and the nationalists are as yet unproven
Bosses at Glasgow airport – which has had its problems with customer satisfaction – have imposed a £2 charge for dropping off passengers. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Perhaps Glasgow airport, in accordance with the old Scottish Presbyterian stereotype, believes that too much enjoyment carries a risk of moral decay. Perhaps the prospect of tens of thousands of Scots jetting off for a two-week bacchanal in the sunshine is simply too much to bear. And so airport bosses see it as their moral and Scottish duty to inject a wee bit of misery into the proceedings lest we all become too frisky. “Welcome to the best wee country in the world” was the slogan that once greeted bemused visitors to the airport a few years back. “Life is not a bowl of cherries”: this could be its successor.
A sense of foreboding grips you as you approach Glasgow airport. You know that your primary aim is to get through the ordeal as quickly as possible and avoid, as best you can, the airport’s “fleece and fly” policy which also includes crippling parking charges. This is difficult if you are accompanied by small children, and the check-in and security desks are woefully undermanned. Thus you are impelled to avail yourself of the food and retail units to keep everyone happy, even though you know you will be scalped outrageously for grossly overpriced goods and inordinately bad food.
As of April this year, Glasgow airport bosses heaped further hardship on its customers by imposing a £2 charge at the drop-off area. The airport tried to justify what is effectively a travelling tax by saying that it would ease congestion, though on several visits over the past few weeks I would dispute this.
And so would the 14,000 people who have already signed an online petition opposing the charge.
One outraged parent calculated that the airport earned £220 from a group of school pupils embarking on their annual trip. “You are a monopoly; it’s extortion,” he said in an online message to the airport.
Amanda McMillan, the managing director of Glasgow airport, is a kenspeckle face on Scotland’s lucrative business guru circuit, one of the country’s fastest growing boutique industries. Every day and night of the week Scotland thrums with hives of business folk attending seminars, breakfasts and “leadership” events organised by a network of private and quasi-governmental outfits for the purpose of, well … making money.
McMillan, a compelling public speaker, is a regular at such symposiums and speaks passionately of the values that underpin her approach to leading her airport team. In an interview in the Herald a few years ago she warmed to this theme. “Everyone I know thinks Glasgow airport is a public service – they see it as being closer to a hospital or a school. The public don’t care if I hit my business plan targets, they want to make sure this place is always open; efficient; friendly and something they can be proud of.”
McMillan doesn’t say if her “business plan targets” include a bonus scheme accompanying a salary that was £293,000 in 2014; in which case the drop-off tax begins to make sense. Since then Glasgow airport has had what might charitably be called a “patchy” period. Earlier this year the influential consumer rights website Resolver published an extensive global airport survey that ranked Glasgow as one of the worst airports in the world for passenger complaints. Glasgow was also the highest ranked UK and European airport for complaints arising mainly from flight delays and cancellations and poor treatment of passengers. It was also revealed last year that 50% of AGS Airports, the firm that owns Glasgow airport, is registered in the offshore jurisdiction of Jersey.
Glasgow airport will point to a clutch of awards that it has picked up in these years including one made by a Scottish newspaper that was sponsored by … Glasgow airport.
What is it about civic Scotland and the business of flying? Last week the Scottish government, as expected, succeeded in getting Holyrood support for its plans to replace air passenger duty (APD) with a new devolved air departure tax (ADT) in Scotland from April next year. The government wants to cut the new tax by 50%, before eventually scrapping it completely.
Heathrow third runway expansion wins backing of Scottish government
Glasgow’s living-wage policy shames corporate giants
The council’s decision to make contractors commit to paying the city’s living wage shames Celtic FC and the Labour party
By Kevin McKenna - The Observer
Perhaps Glasgow airport, in accordance with the old Scottish Presbyterian stereotype, believes that too much enjoyment carries a risk of moral decay. Perhaps the prospect of tens of thousands of Scots jetting off for a two-week bacchanal in the sunshine is simply too much to bear. And so airport bosses see it as their moral and Scottish duty to inject a wee bit of misery into the proceedings lest we all become too frisky. “Welcome to the best wee country in the world” was the slogan that once greeted bemused visitors to the airport a few years back. “Life is not a bowl of cherries”: this could be its successor.
A sense of foreboding grips you as you approach Glasgow airport. You know that your primary aim is to get through the ordeal as quickly as possible and avoid, as best you can, the airport’s “fleece and fly” policy which also includes crippling parking charges. This is difficult if you are accompanied by small children, and the check-in and security desks are woefully undermanned. Thus you are impelled to avail yourself of the food and retail units to keep everyone happy, even though you know you will be scalped outrageously for grossly overpriced goods and inordinately bad food.
As of April this year, Glasgow airport bosses heaped further hardship on its customers by imposing a £2 charge at the drop-off area. The airport tried to justify what is effectively a travelling tax by saying that it would ease congestion, though on several visits over the past few weeks I would dispute this.
And so would the 14,000 people who have already signed an online petition opposing the charge.
One outraged parent calculated that the airport earned £220 from a group of school pupils embarking on their annual trip. “You are a monopoly; it’s extortion,” he said in an online message to the airport.
Amanda McMillan, the managing director of Glasgow airport, is a kenspeckle face on Scotland’s lucrative business guru circuit, one of the country’s fastest growing boutique industries. Every day and night of the week Scotland thrums with hives of business folk attending seminars, breakfasts and “leadership” events organised by a network of private and quasi-governmental outfits for the purpose of, well … making money.
McMillan, a compelling public speaker, is a regular at such symposiums and speaks passionately of the values that underpin her approach to leading her airport team. In an interview in the Herald a few years ago she warmed to this theme. “Everyone I know thinks Glasgow airport is a public service – they see it as being closer to a hospital or a school. The public don’t care if I hit my business plan targets, they want to make sure this place is always open; efficient; friendly and something they can be proud of.”
McMillan doesn’t say if her “business plan targets” include a bonus scheme accompanying a salary that was £293,000 in 2014; in which case the drop-off tax begins to make sense. Since then Glasgow airport has had what might charitably be called a “patchy” period. Earlier this year the influential consumer rights website Resolver published an extensive global airport survey that ranked Glasgow as one of the worst airports in the world for passenger complaints. Glasgow was also the highest ranked UK and European airport for complaints arising mainly from flight delays and cancellations and poor treatment of passengers. It was also revealed last year that 50% of AGS Airports, the firm that owns Glasgow airport, is registered in the offshore jurisdiction of Jersey.
Glasgow airport will point to a clutch of awards that it has picked up in these years including one made by a Scottish newspaper that was sponsored by … Glasgow airport.
What is it about civic Scotland and the business of flying? Last week the Scottish government, as expected, succeeded in getting Holyrood support for its plans to replace air passenger duty (APD) with a new devolved air departure tax (ADT) in Scotland from April next year. The government wants to cut the new tax by 50%, before eventually scrapping it completely.
Heathrow third runway expansion wins backing of Scottish government
Missing the Point (22/12/14)
Kevin McKenna, writing in The Observer, completely misses the point about low pay when he praises the actions of Glasgow City Council in relation to the 'living wage'.
Because the truth is that if Glasgow, along with other Scottish councils, had implemented the landmark 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement - an agreement aimed at sweeping away years of blatant pay discrimination against tens of thousands of female dominated jobs - then low paid councils workers in Glasgow, and elsewhere, would have been earning £9.00 and more an hour for the past 10 or even 12 years, i.e. much more than the 'living wage' which is currently £7.85.
Another Scottish journalist (Ruth Wishart) fell into the same trap as Kevin a little while back and I was given the opportunity to respond with a piece in The Herald newspaper which is reproduced below.
Glasgow’s living-wage policy shames corporate giants
The council’s decision to make contractors commit to paying the city’s living wage shames Celtic FC and the Labour party
By Kevin McKenna - The Observer
After the Commonwealth Games and other successes, Glasgow can celebrate a major victory in the battle to close the gap between rich and poor. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
By any instrument you wish to measure it, 2014 has been an outstanding year for Glasgow. As our biggest city is the boiler house that heats the nation’s economy and culture, that means that this has been a year like no other for the rest of the country too. The Commonwealth Games were successfully delivered with so much style and zip that an event that was in danger of becoming a sporting irrelevance has now been revivified.
Glasgow also hosted the UK and Commonwealth’s main commemorations of the start of the First World War, the MTV Europe Music Awards and the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Yet the city’s proudest moment was announced just last week but to curiously little media fanfare. Glasgow has formulated a new policy that represents a major victory in the war to reduce the gap between rich and poor. Companies bidding for contracts from Glasgow city council must now demonstrate their commitment to paying the Glasgow living wage.
If this were to be rolled out across every council in the UK, the lives of multitudes of our fellow citizens would improve dramatically. These are people whose daily struggles to dodge being dragged below the poverty line shame the rest of us in this, one of the most affluent and resource-rich nations on the planet.
We know it won’t, of course, because the interests of corporations that want to grow their brands, as well as their directors’ dividends, for the least possible outlay will always hold sway below Britain’s invisible moral equator. This is the line, probably just below the English Midlands, at which the morally bankrupt values of neoliberalism hold sway.
Thus votes and debates in Westminster can be bought in the ancient cottage industry of giving English Tory MPs shares in interested companies. The Westminster market in the share holdings of private healthcare companies is particularly buoyant.
The Glasgow initiative on the living wage is both visionary and enlightened. Companies seeking to secure council contracts must now be prepared to shed light on their attitudes towards their employees. Do they pay the Glasgow living wage? Can they demonstrate that they do not use exploitative zero-hours contracts? Have they ever engaged in the pernicious practice of blacklisting members of trade unions? The answers to these questions will now carry a greater weight in the tendering process.
Glasgow’s council leader, Gordon Matheson, has laid down a template that every company that aspires to decency and integrity, ought to deploy. “In recent years, we have taken steps to ensure that the city weathered the worst of the economic conditions, and as a result we have emerged with a much healthier and more diverse economy. But not everyone benefits from our improved position and we want to do everything possible to ensure that in future they will,” he said. “The responsibility to tackle the scandal of in-work poverty is something that is shared by the council and all of the contractors and suppliers with whom we do business.”
The city’s initiative shames two institutions close to my heart but whose recent conduct on paying workers a fair day’s wages has been a disgrace: Celtic Football Club and the British Labour party. Last month, Celtic, the richest sporting organisation in Scotland, had to be dragged screaming and protesting by its own fans to a decision to pay the living wage to its full-time employees. The club still refused to budge on a similar rate for its hundreds of part-time workers and was still bleating about remaining competitive and not allowing its wage policy to be influenced by a third party (the Living Wage Foundation). This club was established by poor people for poor people and receives loyal backing still from many poor people. The entire board of directors, a gentrified assortment of CV-embellishers, ought to be made to resign immediately.
And what are we to make of the British Labour party? In the last hours of the Smith commissiondeliberations, their representatives, taking their orders from the new Lab-Con pact, refused point-blank to accommodate the terrifying possibility of devolving the setting of the minimum wage to Holyrood.
Thus the party of The People, for The People, shafted The People one more time. As one official observer of the Smith Delusion memorably told me: “Seeing all welfare powers being taken away at the last minute and seeing Labour argue against the devolution of the minimum wage are things I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”
This is how wage poverty works for those of us who are bewildered at the notion of how two salaries in one household with a couple of children can yet be insufficient. Real wages in the last decade have increased by only around 2% while the cost of living has risen by around 12%. The cartelism of our major energy suppliers has seen gas and electricity prices spiral.
New social housing has all but ground to a halt following the big Thatcher home ownership lie and now people have to find massive deposits to secure their first homes.
Corporate giants such as Tesco issue profits warnings, as it did this month, because it only made £1.2bn for the last financial year. Yet when two of its employees, one a checkout assistant and the other a delivery driver, are paid so little that they cannot between them make their salaries last the entire month once two children have been fed and all the bills have been paid, Tesco shrugs its shoulders: “At least we provide lots of jobs.”
This is said in a way that suggests big-business owners are all providing employment out of their innate sense of benevolence and munificence. Bollocks. What they mean is this: “Until such times as we can make our money without them, we will, unfortunately, have to pay people.” And until that time they will seek to pay people as little as they are allowed to get away with. Under the Lab-Con alliance, they are being allowed to get away with a lot.
By any instrument you wish to measure it, 2014 has been an outstanding year for Glasgow. As our biggest city is the boiler house that heats the nation’s economy and culture, that means that this has been a year like no other for the rest of the country too. The Commonwealth Games were successfully delivered with so much style and zip that an event that was in danger of becoming a sporting irrelevance has now been revivified.
Glasgow also hosted the UK and Commonwealth’s main commemorations of the start of the First World War, the MTV Europe Music Awards and the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Yet the city’s proudest moment was announced just last week but to curiously little media fanfare. Glasgow has formulated a new policy that represents a major victory in the war to reduce the gap between rich and poor. Companies bidding for contracts from Glasgow city council must now demonstrate their commitment to paying the Glasgow living wage.
If this were to be rolled out across every council in the UK, the lives of multitudes of our fellow citizens would improve dramatically. These are people whose daily struggles to dodge being dragged below the poverty line shame the rest of us in this, one of the most affluent and resource-rich nations on the planet.
We know it won’t, of course, because the interests of corporations that want to grow their brands, as well as their directors’ dividends, for the least possible outlay will always hold sway below Britain’s invisible moral equator. This is the line, probably just below the English Midlands, at which the morally bankrupt values of neoliberalism hold sway.
Thus votes and debates in Westminster can be bought in the ancient cottage industry of giving English Tory MPs shares in interested companies. The Westminster market in the share holdings of private healthcare companies is particularly buoyant.
The Glasgow initiative on the living wage is both visionary and enlightened. Companies seeking to secure council contracts must now be prepared to shed light on their attitudes towards their employees. Do they pay the Glasgow living wage? Can they demonstrate that they do not use exploitative zero-hours contracts? Have they ever engaged in the pernicious practice of blacklisting members of trade unions? The answers to these questions will now carry a greater weight in the tendering process.
Glasgow’s council leader, Gordon Matheson, has laid down a template that every company that aspires to decency and integrity, ought to deploy. “In recent years, we have taken steps to ensure that the city weathered the worst of the economic conditions, and as a result we have emerged with a much healthier and more diverse economy. But not everyone benefits from our improved position and we want to do everything possible to ensure that in future they will,” he said. “The responsibility to tackle the scandal of in-work poverty is something that is shared by the council and all of the contractors and suppliers with whom we do business.”
The city’s initiative shames two institutions close to my heart but whose recent conduct on paying workers a fair day’s wages has been a disgrace: Celtic Football Club and the British Labour party. Last month, Celtic, the richest sporting organisation in Scotland, had to be dragged screaming and protesting by its own fans to a decision to pay the living wage to its full-time employees. The club still refused to budge on a similar rate for its hundreds of part-time workers and was still bleating about remaining competitive and not allowing its wage policy to be influenced by a third party (the Living Wage Foundation). This club was established by poor people for poor people and receives loyal backing still from many poor people. The entire board of directors, a gentrified assortment of CV-embellishers, ought to be made to resign immediately.
And what are we to make of the British Labour party? In the last hours of the Smith commissiondeliberations, their representatives, taking their orders from the new Lab-Con pact, refused point-blank to accommodate the terrifying possibility of devolving the setting of the minimum wage to Holyrood.
Thus the party of The People, for The People, shafted The People one more time. As one official observer of the Smith Delusion memorably told me: “Seeing all welfare powers being taken away at the last minute and seeing Labour argue against the devolution of the minimum wage are things I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”
This is how wage poverty works for those of us who are bewildered at the notion of how two salaries in one household with a couple of children can yet be insufficient. Real wages in the last decade have increased by only around 2% while the cost of living has risen by around 12%. The cartelism of our major energy suppliers has seen gas and electricity prices spiral.
New social housing has all but ground to a halt following the big Thatcher home ownership lie and now people have to find massive deposits to secure their first homes.
Corporate giants such as Tesco issue profits warnings, as it did this month, because it only made £1.2bn for the last financial year. Yet when two of its employees, one a checkout assistant and the other a delivery driver, are paid so little that they cannot between them make their salaries last the entire month once two children have been fed and all the bills have been paid, Tesco shrugs its shoulders: “At least we provide lots of jobs.”
This is said in a way that suggests big-business owners are all providing employment out of their innate sense of benevolence and munificence. Bollocks. What they mean is this: “Until such times as we can make our money without them, we will, unfortunately, have to pay people.” And until that time they will seek to pay people as little as they are allowed to get away with. Under the Lab-Con alliance, they are being allowed to get away with a lot.
