Scottish Parliamentary Elections May 2021

[invergowrie arab]

35 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

We've just seen how unable to cope our health service is. It needs heavy investment.

The exams fiasco last year highlighted how big the education gap is. We need more schools and teachers to reduce classroom sizes.

There's 2 for starters.

Kids cycling to school to learn to play the trumpet is all well and good, but it's not the priority.

Moar schools and hospitals!!!

[Todd_is_God]

10 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

Moar schools and hospitals!!!

Why would this be bad?

[GordonS]

23 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

If it "isn't that expensive" then why can some councils not afford it now? It's clearly been cut back for a reason. The current price is per instrument too. With no additional tax income, how will the SG make up the difference in council budgets whilst also covering their breakfast and lunches scheme, bikes scheme, tablet scheme, free dental care, and 4% pay rise for nhs staff?

I don't deny these things would be nice to do, but coming out of a pandemic, with a healthcare and education system needing serious investment, I don't see how they can deliver all of it without some severe cutbacks elsewhere.

Councils are skint AF, and IMO those who cut it back did so because they're small-minded, overwhelmingly male and a bunch of coffin-dodgers. They never cut back school sport.

I don't know how the SNP plan to afford those things. Some of them are surprisingly inexpensive and collectively they all cost less than, say, 1% more for teacher pay. What I do know is that the SNP must be expecting to win the election so they know they'll have to deliver this stuff or be seen not doing it.

I know you don't value playing the trumpet much, but when West Lothian announced their plan to end strings and percussion tuition altogether I saw kids in floods of tears. It's not just the tuition, a really big part of it is the orchestras and bands, and the opportunity to play together. This stuff is very, very important to thousands of kids. Imagine whatever was most important to you as a kid had been taken away.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

2 minutes ago, GordonS said:

Councils are skint AF, and IMO those who cut it back did so because they're small-minded, overwhelmingly male and a bunch of coffin-dodgers.

You must live in  Angus as well 

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

16 minutes ago, GordonS said:

Councils are skint AF, and IMO those who cut it back did so because they're small-minded, overwhelmingly male and a bunch of coffin-dodgers. They never cut back school sport.

I don't know how the SNP plan to afford those things. Some of them are surprisingly inexpensive and collectively they all cost less than, say, 1% more for teacher pay. What I do know is that the SNP must be expecting to win the election so they know they'll have to deliver this stuff or be seen not doing it.

I know you don't value playing the trumpet much, but when West Lothian announced their plan to end strings and percussion tuition altogether I saw kids in floods of tears. It's not just the tuition, a really big part of it is the orchestras and bands, and the opportunity to play together. This stuff is very, very important to thousands of kids. Imagine whatever was most important to you as a kid had been taken away.

People dont equate the educational benefit of engaging kids in music, it has a proven positive impact on educational attainment elsewhere and provides marginalised kids a skill that opens up other opportunities. I did standard grade music, taught myself guitar largely but that opened up a wide range of options for me when I was older. The socialisation skills too are fantastic. The arts are so important not only for the cultural benefits but the fact music and art are amongst the most important forms of expression and social commentary. 
Scotland has for me punched above its weight artistically and that needs to continue. 

Ive read a lot of the pledges in the SNP manifesto and having lived experience of being a child growing up under the poverty line for a good chunk of my childhood, im quite inspired by what seems to be a real commitment to ending child poverty, I think thats what I needed to read to be won over. I still think they have a lot of things to improve on (and thats being incredibly kind and I reserve the right to berate them on their failings) but if they come through on these promises my wee boy will have some opportunities that I never had and hopefully things will get better for some of the kids i’ve encountered who are living in poverty too. Id still like to see the primary school day extended to 5pm for sports and a warm evening meal for kids but its a step in the right direction. For the list vote I think im going to vote green even if it will be Ross Greer, I do fly a couple times a year but i suppose its only right to offset that etc and I think they’ll keep on the snp to keep their promises.  Anyway, think i know how im going to vote now. That said if they make an arse of this parliamentary term my vote will definitely be lost forever. 

[Baxter Parp]

3 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

We've just seen how unable to cope our health service is.

Eh? It just coped with its biggest crisis since it's inception. Of course it needs investment, it always will but this is bullshit.

3 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

The exams fiasco last year highlighted how big the education gap is. We need more schools and teachers to reduce classroom sizes.

What did the "exams fiasco" have to do with the "education gap" and classroom sizes?

[Benjamin_Nevis]

2 hours ago, oaksoft said:

The single biggest investment you can make in the health service is to improve the health of the nation starting with kids.

It is believed that our obesity crisis is at the root of why we suffered so many deaths from covid.

We need to stop pouring cash into putting out fires and invest in preventing the fires happening in the first place.

This is absolutely spot on. Whilst I've no doubt there will be many folk utterly seething at the "free bikes" proposal, it has massive potential benefits. Over the coming years there are going to be a shit-ton of unused bikes lying about that folk bought up during lockdown - hopefully this scheme will encourage these to be handed in and refurbed. Angus already has a few Cycle-hub type shops which take in unwanted bikes, refurb and sell them on for bargain prices. Tapping into this would seem like a pretty good idea. 

[sophia]

7 hours ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

People dont equate the educational benefit of engaging kids in music, it has a proven positive impact on educational attainment elsewhere and provides marginalised kids a skill that opens up other opportunities. I did standard grade music, taught myself guitar largely but that opened up a wide range of options for me when I was older. The socialisation skills too are fantastic. The arts are so important not only for the cultural benefits but the fact music and art are amongst the most important forms of expression and social commentary. 
Scotland has for me punched above its weight artistically and that needs to continue. 

Ive read a lot of the pledges in the SNP manifesto and having lived experience of being a child growing up under the poverty line for a good chunk of my childhood, im quite inspired by what seems to be a real commitment to ending child poverty, I think thats what I needed to read to be won over. I still think they have a lot of things to improve on (and thats being incredibly kind and I reserve the right to berate them on their failings) but if they come through on these promises my wee boy will have some opportunities that I never had and hopefully things will get better for some of the kids i’ve encountered who are living in poverty too. Id still like to see the primary school day extended to 5pm for sports and a warm evening meal for kids but its a step in the right direction. For the list vote I think im going to vote green even if it will be Ross Greer, I do fly a couple times a year but i suppose its only right to offset that etc and I think they’ll keep on the snp to keep their promises.  Anyway, think i know how im going to vote now. That said if they make an arse of this parliamentary term my vote will definitely be lost forever. 

It won't really matter next time around as by then we should've verified our return to a normal constitutional arrangement.

For now though the number of seats and total votes for the good guys is in inverse proportion to the ability of the nasty party to deny us. 

[ayrmad]

I'd have preferred us take more of an interest in mental health and addiction services but who really gives enough of a f**k about those areas to vote for them. 

£180 million with a further £50m to £100m annually on tokenism certainly wouldn't have been better spent on those areas. 

[101]

14 hours ago, MONKMAN said:

When do the postal ballots need to be in by? Mine arrived at home today, but I’m working away for another couple of weeks.

You can hand it in to a polling station as well if you miss the post, I personally wouldn't risk it 3/4 days before the count.

[vikingTON]

17 hours ago, Pato said:

Because I'm bored at work I decided to apply some deep learning™ to the issue. Focus on the black line lads.

^^^ Whig found

[invergowrie arab]

50 minutes ago, ayrmad said:

I'd have preferred us take more of an interest in mental health and addiction services but who really gives enough of a f**k about those areas to vote for them. 

£180 million with a further £50m to £100m annually on tokenism certainly wouldn't have been better spent on those areas. 

There is a commitment to increase front line mental health services by 25% and that 10% of all NHS front line budget will be mental health services by the end of the parliament. 

Also a 250 million increase in drug and alcohol rehabilitation services.

 

[vikingTON]

14 hours ago, Detournement said:

£10 million to fund a 4 day week. Forget the comical amount of money and definitely don't think about whether the government should be funding office workers who fanny about on FB to have an extra 40 odd days off a year and whether it's unfair to people in jobs where you are required to be constantly working eg a bus driver can't drive 38 hours of buses in 32 hours. Same thing in retail, care, construction, manufacturing and plenty of other jobs.

Who do you think drives the buses when that employee has a day off or holiday leave? 

5 employees X 32 hours = 4 employees X 40 hours

Leaving aside of course the productivity gains of not working an insane number of hours each week for a technologically advanced, 21st century society. 

The amount of money pledged on the other hand isn't enough, which is one reason why I'm extremely comfortable with the SNP forming a minority or formal coalition deal with a strong-performing Yes party. It's exactly the sort of area that can be horse-traded at Budget time to create a more effective policy. 

[ayrmad]

Just now, invergowrie arab said:

There is a commitment to increase front line mental health services by 25% and that 10% of all NHS front line budget will be mental health services by the end of the parliament. 

Also a 250 million increase in drug and alcohol rehabilitation services.

 

Aye, 14 years in after they're both at crisis levels, perhaps if we'd kept on top of them all through, our budget wouldn't be required to feed quite so many kids. 

When my youngest was 21 she knew far more dead people in her peer group than I did in my own and I'm giving her 25 years. 

[Mark Connolly]

25 minutes ago, 101 said:

You can hand it in to a polling station as well if you miss the post, I personally wouldn't risk it 3/4 days before the count.

Do you know of any recent elections where a candidate raised a question over postal ballots?

[101]

1 minute ago, Mark Connolly said:

Do you know of any recent elections where a candidate raised a question over postal ballots?

The Tories have been fairly sceptical in this election, other than that not that comes to mind 

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

Does Baroness Panzer-Tank still get first dibs on sifting through the postal votes it does wee Douglas now get that privelage?

[SandyCromarty]

14 minutes ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

Does Baroness Panzer-Tank still get first dibs on sifting through the postal votes it does wee Douglas now get that privelage?

She was interviewed by the police over that but not charged, my personal opinion is that she was let off the hook.

She declared on television that postal vote tallies were taken were before the referendum ballot closed.

The fact that she admitted that a sample of the postal vote had been taken meant that the NO campaign, with that information to hand, were able to target areas where the YES vote was more prominent with promises of power to Scotland.

We all know what happened to those promises.

In short we Scots were blatantly no lubed.

Edited April 16, 2021 by SandyCromarty

[Salt n Vinegar]

3 minutes ago, SandyCromarty said:

She was interviewed by the police over that but not charged, my personal opinion is that she was let off the hook.

She declared on television that postal vote tallies were taken were before the referendum ballot closed.

The fact that she admitted that a sample of the postal vote had been taken meant that the NO campaign, with that information to hand, were able to target areas where the YES vote was more prominent.

In short we Scots were screwed.

It reminds me... "Perfidious Albion" isn't a football team. 

[invergowrie arab]

2 hours ago, ayrmad said:

Aye, 14 years in after they're both at crisis levels, perhaps if we'd kept on top of them all through, our budget wouldn't be required to feed quite so many kids. 

When my youngest was 21 she knew far more dead people in her peer group than I did in my own and I'm giving her 25 years. 

Yeah, you made an arse of it by by whining about what people wouldnt vote for so wouldnt be in a manifesto when you clearly hadnt read it.

However  if you want to shift the goal posts you are right. There shouldn't be a guitar string near a school until this is solved once and for all.

Tories - Zoomers

           

But 14 years !!