MICHAEL Fry states that: “Since 2017 there have been more Scots at work than ever before – over 75% of those aged 16 to 64, with only 3.6% of them idle. People who just ‘can’t get a job’ are a thing of the past” (Independence is an essential part of the answer to Scotland’s economic inertia, January 29).
Firstly, I’d be grateful if he would cite the evidence that shows being unable to get a job is no longer an issue. I’m sure that’ll be news to the older people I know who were made redundant in their mid-to-late 50s after having done skilled work for decades, who’ve been unable to even get an interview let alone a job for the past couple of years, despite all their experience and their best efforts.
READ MORE: Indy is essential part of answer to Scotland's economic inertia
Aside from the anecdotal, there’s evidence that the over-50s are the worst-hit group when it comes to long-term unemployment; once unemployed, older people are far more likely to stay that way. And age discrimination is not the only barrier – employer discrimination against unemployed people in general is recognised as being a further hurdle for jobseekers.
Is Mr Fry trying to imply that those still unemployed at a time of record employment are simply lazy folk choosing a life of unbridled luxury on Universal Credit? Regardless, his Pollyanna version of events doesn’t chime with any of the evidence on discrimination, let alone people’s actual lived experiences of this.
Secondly, the headline employment figure he alludes to fails to take account of under-employment – something I’ve written to The National about before. There may be a record number of employed people, but the nature of employment has changed so significantly that this isn’t the good-news story that it would have been “in the old days” – because there are also record levels of precarious employment, ie part-time, temporary and insecure work. There are people suffering significant hardship because they are unable to work the number for hours they need to. Combine this with concomitant low pay, the high housing and energy costs brought about by Westminster sell-offs, and a shredded safety net. Not so rosy when you start to look below the surface, is it?
Thirdly, his reference to unemployed people as “idle” is not only insulting, it’s downright inaccurate. As is the modern version deployed by the Tories – “workless”, as in “workless households”. Such terms come in handy for those who seek to denigrate people of working age who are either unemployed or unable to work due to long-term health conditions or disability; it’s rhetoric that helps to chip away at the whole concept of social security and facilitate the dismantling of the safety net. They conveniently disregard the large amounts of unpaid labour that is undertaken, often by women, in so-called “workless” households: looking after children, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, caring for sick and disabled relatives etc. Such unpaid social infrastructure is estimated to be worth £1.24 trillion a year in the UK, and so-called “workless” households contribute to this.
I’ll doubtless feel the need to write again regarding these issues!
Mo Maclean
Glasgow
THE Wee Ginger Dug’s article yesterday (The bright star of independence can lead us out of the darkness, January 29) was one of the best pieces of journalism I have read in years. He is absolutely spot on. For some deluded reason, England’s ruling class are having one last-ditch, extremely futile attempt to regain the glory days when they sailed the seven seas, invading and conquering at will, sending back their spoils to their ever greedy crown waiting at home for news.
READ MORE: The bright star of independence can lead us out of the darkness
In the Victorian era they thought poverty a weakness in the spirit and that it had nothing to do with their brutal treatment of the commoners, taking them from their villages, farms, fields and fresh air and cramming them into squalid, unhealthy, hugely over-crowded, unsafe accommodation so they could get them to literally work themselves to death in the glorious Industrial Revolution, where the owners pranced around on horses in full view of the wretched workers who laboured in intolerable, dangerous conditions making these monsters wealthy beyond their dreams.
They labelled themselves the “improvers” when in reality all they did was improve their wealth through heinous actions that included manufacturing a “famine” in Ireland to clear the way for them to steal the rich arable lands, and when it was all over they brought the same monster, Trevalynn, to clear the Highlands of Scotland and do it all over again. They own the lands, which is quite simply abominable.
If this is the type of world they want to live in, they are even more deluded than we thought and the sooner we get away from their greedy, grasping hands the better. The disturbing thing is that they actually think they are superior when most are the descendants of slave-traders, land-stealers and sweat-shop owners.
Who would ever have thought a nation of passionate Celts would accept subordination to an Anglo-Saxon bully? It’s time to get a grip.
Iain K
Argyll
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