Herald letter: It’s time we had a Greater Glasgow Council

THREE cheers for Mark Smith’s article regarding the state of local government in Scotland (“Can someone stand up for our cash-strapped councils?”, The Herald, December 19). It reflected what has been apparent for many years – that a double-devolution revolution is needed: local councils need more powers so that they can provide better and more responsive services to their citizens.

Moreover, they also need better financial arrangements – there are plenty of options, from the long-promised but just as long-overdue reform of local property taxes to the reversal of Michael Forsyth’s nationalisation of non-domestic rates. All of these could be done by the Scottish Government in short order, if the political will were there to do so, which sadly it never has been – it has always been clear that all parties at Holyrood see councils as part of the problem rather than of the solution.

Moreover, in highlighting the problems of Glasgow City Council, Mr Smith ignores a vital issue: that of the city council’s boundaries. Unlike Edinburgh and equivalent cities in England such as Newcastle and Manchester, Glasgow’s boundaries are tightly drawn to exclude its affluent contiguous suburbs such as Bearsden and Clarkston.

As a result, Glasgow’s local taxation base has been chronically under-resourced and has lacked the structural capacity to redistribute resources from the richest to the least well-off. Although this was mitigated to some extent in the days of Strathclyde Region, no measures were put in place to replace that mechanism in John Major’s ignorant and prejudiced reorganisation of the mid-1990s. A short-term solution might be for the Scottish Government to set a Greater Glasgow Precept for the surrounding councils on both the council tax and non-domestic rates, although a much better longer-term aim would be to include those areas in a strategic Greater Glasgow Council funded by a regional income tax, working with smaller burgh councils funded by local property taxes and service charges to provide local services for local communities.
Peter A Russell, Glasgow

Poem for all strikers at Christmas

The Strike At Thyssen’s Steelworks
Wolf Biermann (trans. Peter Russell)

In Duisberg Thyssen’s furnace was out
Their great furnace cold day and night
The foundry workers union up there
Forced into a six-week strike
Better pay was their demand, but their aim
Not fired by Maloch or greed  -
A fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage
And a thirty-five hour week!

The foundries stand cold in the wind
The coke ovens quiet and still
Nothing burning, no industrial stench, 
it was a ghostly quiet idyll
No smoke, no soot, no dust, no racket
All the mess was far far away
For once the Ruhr coalfield was as clear
As a spa on a summer’s day

But this environmentally friendly scene
Concealed a struggle elemental
A strike, my nature-loving friends
Is never sweet nor sentimental
The workers were every man locked out
Pickets barred the main gate
They asked the board of directors
If they could ever imagine that fate:

“We freeze our bloody arses off out here
Being persuasive, militant and restive
Meanwhile Herr Thyssen sits cosy at home
with his Christmas goose so festive.”
So they took their stand on Silent Night
And watched the sun sink dim and low
And warmed their freezing fingers
By the heat of the brazier’s glow

Then while pickets watched their wives came down
With Stollen, Glühwein and rum
They laughed and sang Oh-Tann-en-Baum 
And in solidarity swore and drank as one.  

Herald letter: Look To The Future.

AS surely as Boxing Day follows Christmas, supporters of Scottish independence will respond to any proposal to improve the governance of the UK by shouting “The Vow” and listing a long string of grievances.

These will include unconditional guarantees of EU membership, a number of promised frigates, perpetual legal guarantees of constitutional privileges, federalism in the UK and much more. The problem is, of course, that no such pledges were ever made in the Vow of 2014: the three pledges were to preserve the Barnett Formula (delivered); to deliver more powers to the Scottish Parliament (delivered); and enhanced statutory protection for Holyrood (delivered).

What is now clear following the delivery of Gordon Brown’s report, New Britain – Renewing Our Democracy And Rebuilding Our Economy, is that a new and radical alternative is available, and we can move on from the old sterile debates of Yes/No and Nat/Yoon. The debate is now between the past and future, and the nationalists amongst your readers have shown their hand by demonstrating how they are stuck in a past of spurious grievances and confected untruths.

The rest of us can take inspiration from the sage advice of one our most revered and ancient seasonal songs: in the words of Sir Nodsworth of Holdersfield, let’s “Look to the future now – it’s only just begun!”

Peter A Russell, Glasgow