BY THE time you read this Monday January 19 will have just passed It’s known as Blue Monday, with much chatter online that it is the most depressing day of the year.

However, given the current horrors in international politics, just when you think things can’t get any worse they do; it should perhaps be the Blue Era.

We are told to do Dry January and give up your favourite tipple for the month. New Year, new you and all that. However, the reports that the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that “although she was not much of a drinker, current world events might drive her to alcohol.”  Though she said it was a joke, it does have gallows humour.

Closer to home January brought the Scottish government budget last week and the devil in the detail is currently being pored over. Safe to say that Unison Scotland does not believe it goes anywhere near far enough in terms of vision and funding for public services. The demand for all our public services increases, yet the funding is not keeping pace. It is no wonder that many people feel so powerless and become disengaged.

That is going to be a major concern with the upcoming Scottish parliamentary elections in May of this year. How do we engage people to use their vote and make them believe that we can build a better Scotland? Unison Scotland believes that public services are at the heart of a fairer Scotland and asks our members to look at who best will deliver for us on a political basis.

For too many workers in Scotland daily life is a struggle trying to balance work, family life and caring responsibilities; and the cost-of-living crisis rages on. Not only have we seen a rise in pleas from food banks for donations where demand is outstripping supply, but a demand now for clothing donations to help with clothing poverty. It doesn’t take an economics professor to tell you that our economy is not working for us and we need a radical change to make the difference that is required.

Who can help lead the way? Our trade unions are ideally placed within our workplaces to engage, showing that there are positive solutions which will make a difference both here and internationally.

Unison has and will continue to argue that we need to look at our taxation system and make it far more progressive, coupled with increased funding to ensure public services are fir for purpose. That old phrase that “those with the broadest shoulders” should carry a bigger load makes perfect economic and political sense.

The recently announced Budget highlights the continued false narrative that the public sector can be used to make to make savings, well let’s call it what it is — cuts — to shrink back the public sector.

Public-sector reform will cost a conservatively estimated 11,000 jobs. So, 11,000 workers who paid tax out of work and thus no longer paying tax and 11,000 jobs no longer available within Scottish communities.

This myth that public services can bear the brunt of cuts to so called non front-line services — areas like finance and information technology, procurement and human resources to name a few — is a nonsense. Front-line services cannot perform unless there is a sound infrastructure of which finance and information technology, procurement and human resources are key.

Let’s not forget that across the public sector there are a wide range of different IT packages being used and that increased investment would need to be put in place if economies of scale were to be achieved and yet this is not mentioned.

Add to that the worrying overarching theme much loved by the SNP government of centralisation and outsourcing, be that to the third or  private sector, it highlights how out of touch some politicians are with the day-to-day service delivery challenges the public sector faces.

For Unison Scotland that is why our manifesto, Public Services at the Heart of a Fairer Scotland, will be what we will take to our members, their communities and use to challenge all prospective Scottish parliamentary candidates to do the right thing for Scotland’s public services and workers.

We all use some of these services now but you never know when you may need other services you don’t currently use. We need to fight to ensure those services are properly funded and fit for purpose for our generation and those who follow us.  

After all if the demand is not decreasing, it doesn’t make any sense why funding should be decreasing.

Brenda Aitchison is a Unison Local Government Committee member.