Do some schools present university as the main path to take when college, training and work are equally valuable routes? This is just one question the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee will explore in a new inquiry that will also look at whether information about other pathways, such as work and training, is offered in school. Continue reading Young people set the agenda for Holyrood’s Education and Skills Committee
The chronic, neurological condition myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) affects more people in Scotland than MS and Parkinson’s combined – but doctors receive almost no training on the illness. The urgent need to change this is the focus of a special event at the Scottish Parliament tonight, hosted by Gail Ross MSP and supported by UK charity, Action for M.E. Continue reading Edinburgh patients and professionals to show MSPs: This is M.E.
The Scottish Greens will today outline distinct plans for the proposed Scottish National Investment Bank to have robust policies on ethical investments, a push towards a zero carbon economy and overall greater scrutiny.
Green MSP Andy Wightman will attempt to win backing from Holyrood’s parties for his amendment to provide the new bank with better “social and environmental outcomes”, including an obligation to deliver strategic housing investment.
Wightman is also expected to challenge Scottish Labour to ditch its proposals for a bank focussed on “increased growth” and to instead put forward a strategic programme in line with the left-wing ideology embraced by the party’s leadership.
Mr Wightman, a Lothian MSP, said: “As a national financial institution, we all have vested collective interests to ensure that this bank will invest in projects and programmes that deliver a sustainable future. With our proposals, the bank will be required to have a strategic focus on the future of the Scottish economy by investing in new low-carbon technologies to build energy resilience.
“It’s surprising to see Labour insist that the bank’s main focus should be for it to ‘drive increased growth’. It’s far from being even remotely socialist and their insistence on profit being the bank’s key goal is disheartening. No economy can be sustainable when growing numbers of its young people cannot afford basic, affordable and warm homes. With social renting off-limits to all but the most financially challenged and affordable housing not worthy of the descriptor, an investment bank has a key role to play in providing the kind of strategic housing investment that is desperately needed.
“We also want Holyrood to have a key role in establishing the bank’s ethical investment code, which in our view should be enshrined in the primary legislation establishing the bank. We also propose that the bank could provide a Scottish payments company to reduce the costs to small businesses of processing payments. This cost reduction will lower GDP, but increase productivity. Currently around 2% of the value of payments is lost to the Scottish economy – some £1 billion per year at a rough estimate.”
He is known as the ‘go-to man’ in resolving major international conflicts, is currently working on historic new relations between North and South Korea, and was a leading mediator in the Middle East, the Balkans and former Soviet Union.
Lothian MSP Miles Briggs has met with former nominees and winners of the Sunday Mail Young Scot Awards to encourage other people from Lothian to make a nomination. Continue reading Briggs backs Young Scot Awards
A Scottish Parliament committee is calling for a radical rethink on Scotland’s new Screen Unit to ensure it can help Scotland’s dynamic screen sector reach its full potential. Continue reading Committee urges Government to see the bigger picture
NHS Lothian accounts for almost a quarter of Delayed Discharge in Scotland
Delayed discharge costs our NHS over £100 million per year, with NHS Lothian accounting for £28 million of the total. That means less money to spend on treating patients who require medical attention, while patients awaiting discharge are being kept in hospital for longer than they need to be, says Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs. Continue reading Briggs: NHS Lothian accounts for almost a quarter of Delayed Discharge in Scotland
Figures from the Trussell Trust, showing that 17,328 people in the City of Edinburgh and 21,443 people in Lothian were provided with three-day emergency food supplies from this one food bank charity alone, highlight the urgent need to implement the Scottish Greens’ ten-point plan to tackle poverty, says Lothian MSP Alison Johnstone. Continue reading Rise in food bank use is national scandal, say Greens
The Holyrood government should publish all documents relating to the safety and certification of baby boxes following fears over a fire risk with the products, says the Scottish Conservatives. Continue reading Baby boxes: Tories call for “complete transparency”
The Scottish Conservatives will today lead a debate saying that they are putting Shona Robison and the SNP Government on notice over their handling of the financial crisis facing Scotland’s health boards. Continue reading Scottish Conservatives put Shona Robison and SNP ‘on notice’
