A California union’s decision to host a meeting about US policy towards Cuba has prompted a congressional probe and renewed attacks on international solidarity, writes CAMERON HARRISON
Give us a real national care service
Unison Scotland gathers for its Scottish council today. Regional secretary LILIAN MACER outlines the union’s alternative to the Scottish government’s failing national care service legislation
Humza Yousaf meets a care home resident when he was health secretary in 2022
The Baltic state is set to reverse its constitutional prohibition on nuclear weapons and foreign bases as part of accelerated Nato war preparations, warns TOM UNTERRAINER
Long-term underfunding and state neglect, while simultaneously probation services have been undermined, have intensified the prison crises, argues SOLOMON HUGHES
Holyrood incompetence has cost jobs and put the future of Clydeside’s Ferguson Marine shipyard into jeopardy. Its future should have been assured, argues KENNY MACASKILL
With the agitated debate now raging in the media about the early release schemes, Prison Officers Association general secretary STEVE GILLAN gives the view of those who work in the sector
The hounding of the late Jason Arday is an all too familiar experience for many black people. ROGER McKENZIE calls for collective action to combat what can feel like personal isolation
CRITICISING the Scottish government’s national care service Bill is easy. Everyone does it. Including these days even the Scottish government, which has announced that it is abandoning key principles of its own legislation. The real challenge is in outlining an alternative. This is what Unison Scotland has done in commissioning our new report Towards A Real National Care Service.
We’ve called the report A Real National Care Service to make a clear distinction from the Scottish government’s plans, which more resemble — as one delegate to STUC Congress put it — “ a press release that’s grown out of control.”
The Scottish government intended removing all of social work and social care and an unspecified set of health services from local government and the NHS, to be given to ministerially appointed quangos. These wouldn’t deliver services but instead commission and procure services in a market.
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