Yesterday I was in Springburn, Glasgow to launch our campaign for the Glasgow North East by-election.Polling day is on 12th November and our candidate Eileen Baxendale has already been working hard for many weeks.
Eileen has made a commitment to make personal face-to-face contact with as many voters as possible. The constituency will benefit from her years of experience as a councillor and community campaigner.
We have good messages for people in Glasgow North East. Our campaign for a fairer society, for example. Our proposal is for a tax cut of £700 for people on low and middle incomes paid for by closing the loopholes used by the rich to avoid paying their fair share.
That will mean a lot to people in the North East of Glasgow. After all, many people there will remember that Labour betrayed them through the 10p tax band fiasco. And, as our recently published research shows, the SNP Government has used £950million to cut the taxes of the super-wealthy by more than £800 a year whilst leaving those at the bottom end of the income scale better off by just six pounds.
Yesterday's unemployment figures show how urgent action on jobs has become. Scotland's unemployment is rising faster than the rest of Britain.
Our party has significant plans to use the money spent by Labour on the temporary VAT cut to create thousands of new jobs in green industries, provide insulation to schools, hospitals and homes and to give young people the opportunity for paid internships and work experience when they leave school or college.
We must avoid sending a 'lost generation' to the economic scrapheap simply because they graduated from education in the depths of a recession. Mrs Thatcher was gui
lty of that in the 1980s and people expect the lesson to have been learned.
lty of that in the 1980s and people expect the lesson to have been learned.