Elect socialist fighters not council cutters on May 5

Ronnie Stevenson, Scottish TUSC candidate, Glasgow Langside

Ordinary people are facing the biggest cut in their living standards for decades. Those on benefit are having the value of their benefits cut. Those in work are receiving little or no wage increases. All are facing massive increase in fuel prices, National Insurance payments and their weekly food bill is inflated beyond any income increase.

Against that background there is seething anger against the governments in Holyrood and Westminster. All of the parties in power or recently in power are responsible for the crisis facing ordinary people.

This situation is reflected in local government services where all the parties in power or recently in power have done nothing to resist the massive cuts in local services arising from the current economic situation.

This is graphically evident in Glasgow and across Scotland. Education services are under the cosh, exacerbated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part-Time education and mixed online education have adversely affected the lives of our young people. For those dependent on social work services support at home in order to survive then the service offered are not fit to meet their needs. 

Children at risk have had to survive without the level of social work service they require.

Libraries, sports centres, community centres, leisure activities have all been slashed.

Whether you travel on foot, bike, car or public transport then the state of the roads are beyond a joke. Basic cleaning services whether uplift of bins or keeping the streets clean have all been cut. 

We need a massive input of finance to put this right but all the parties, whether SNP, Labour, Lib Dems, Tories or Greens have been involved in cuts rather than fighting for the money councils need to reverse austerity and set needs budgets.

Against this background, Scottish TUSC are standing candidates across Scotland who will not vote for cuts and propose the use of reserves and borrowing to maintain and expand services while building a mass campaign of defiance to force governments at Holyrood and Westminster to deliver proper funding. 

Scottish TUSC also calls for the building of a new working-class party committed to a programme of bringing into common and democratic ownership the major sectors of the economy and running it in the interests of the many – the working-class majority – and not the greed of the few –  the billionaire capitalist elite.

See scottishtusc.org for a full list of our candidates