Glasgow East deserves better
I find it hard to believe that Margaret Curran can hold her head up in public in the East End of Glasgow after blatantly lying to make herself seem like a more credible candidate. She claimed to have “lived and worked in the East End all her life!”, she claimed this was a ‘slip of the tongue’….she must think that people in Glasgow East are completely stupid.
In a campaign leaflet she attacks the SNP as letting the East End of Glasgow descend into a drug addled, violence ridden hell-hole and says that “her crime busting plan is to provide more CCTV cameras and more police on the beat!”. I might be living in a parallel universe here so correct me if i’m wrong but hasn’t a Labour MP been in Glasgow East for the past 50 years? And 8 years since the Scottish Parliament was opened? What was wrong that this wasn’t a priority, no, that this wasn’t already solved?
Labour taking a beating at this by-election is recognised across the media
As a campaigner for SNP in this by-election I have been all over the East End, asking people what they think of the candidates and how they are considering voting. My overwhelming experience has been that the people of the East End are sick of being treated like poor, simple minded cretins with no political interest or savvy and who blindly vote Labour. The majority of them are sickened with the tactics of Glasgow Labour and Westminster over this by-election and the last 10 years of power respectively. As a Glasgow East taxi driver stated, ” my collegues and I will be voting accordingly!”.
From my own view, what I have seen whilst trudging round the streets of Glasgow East has been truely atrocius. The difference in the wealth gap, from one street to another, at times hits the senses hard. And Labour have had more than enough time to bring Glasgow East to a par with other re-generated areas. The fact is that they havn’t. When I spoke to people in the Easterhouse area, I asked how they found the services of their local Labour councillor. I simply couldn’t repeat the choice phrases they used, and whilst I appreciate a councillors job is a tough one, I think it speaks volumes of how
New Labour have approached their duty of helping the most vulnerable people in society compared with their ferocious hunger to pander to big business. This is because, a phrase I heard on more that one occassion was that, “…she said her hands are tied!”. Yes, Labour have tied themselves to business interests- leaving the humble worker to sit and wait for the crumbs. Fuel and petrol issues was mentioned more than any other issue, with the overwhelming feeling that the government was not doing enough.
Personally, as a student and a researcher I believe that Scotland would be better off as an Independant country, but this is NOT why I would vote SNP. The reason is that I believe they deserve to win more than any other party, they have not taken the Glasgow East electorate for idiots and seem genuinely hungry to make a difference in that part of the city. I hope they get the chance, Labour do not deserve to hold Glasgow East back any longer. No longer indeed.
By Alanna Fiona O’Donnell
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Cartoons by Peter Brookes: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/chttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/cartoon/omment/cartoon/
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