THE news that Glasgow City Council appears to have agreed a settlement of £500 million for the Equal Pay Claim is welcome. The women who have been treated unfairly for so long deserve nothing less. The council's proposed method of financing this, however, is not at all welcome ("A long road still lies ahead, despite £500m equal pay win", The Herald, January 19).
Mortgaging the city's assets is simply a revised version of the totally discredited Private Finance Initiative. People in Glasgow will end up paying far more than £500m in the long term and this will be at the expense of both jobs and services. I am certain that that is not what the vast majority of women involved in the equal pay claim want.
The solution to the issue of how to pay the claim needs to come from our politicians nationally. Were the Scottish Government to repay all the money it has cut from local government over the last 10 years, there would be no issue. People will say there is no money, but that is not true. There are plenty of options even within its existing powers. It could use its powers to increase revenue, for example by reforming council tax and business rating system, as the Greens are urging. More immediately it could defer expenditure on capital expenditure projects, such as the A9 upgrading, by a few months to release the money.
The wider problem is the Scottish Government remains wedded to neo-liberal ideology, as illustrated by the report of its Fiscal Commission. Instead of looking at how a how an independent currency or devolved fiscal system could benefit Scotland, for example through applying the insights of modern monetary theory, it recommended yet more austerity.
What the Glasgow City Council equal pay claim shows is that we need politicians who are prepared to think out the box rather than arguing over whether we would be better off in a neo-liberal Europe or a neo-liberal Brexited Britain.
Nick Kempe,
23 Queen Square, Glasgow.
COUNCIL tax payers in Glasgow will no doubt be consoled to know that a large slice of the equal pay settlement will include also negotiated payment of fees to the claimants' lawyers. Some of the lawyers receiving fees will no doubt be union lawyers. Certain informed commentators may find this ironic since many observers claim that the unions colluded in pay discrimination, based on gender, until quite recently.
Gus Logan,
2 York Road, North Berwick.
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