Roz Foyer

AS we approach the end of the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, I’m quietly reflecting that during those 384 hours – according to 2021 United Nations data – 1920 women and girls will have been killed in an act of femicide. Five souls per hour. Each with a name. A voice. Ambitions. Dreams. Hopes. Wiped out in a senseless act of gender-based violence.

We can raise £50 million from a frequent flyer levy, targeting those who undermine our net-zero targets. Added to this, £25 million can be found from a super tax on private jets for the 10,000 private flights that depart Scotland every year.

The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement a fortnight ago was a wolf in sheep's clothing and it is going to bite very hard in Scotland.

The news yesterday of the intention of Petroineos to close the Grangemouth Refinery within two years at the potential cost of hundreds of direct jobs and many more in the wider supply chain may well become Scotland’s defining just transition moment. It could also spill into the wider UK political discourse particularly in the context of a UK General Election.

The King’s Speech has to be one of the most, if not the most, archaic displays of pomp and pageantry within our democracy.

On November 25, we at the STUC will hold our annual St Andrews Day March and Rally against racism and fascism.

I started my role as the General Secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress in March 2020. Three weeks later we were in lockdown owing to a virus that was unknown.

THIS past couple of weeks, we all witnessed a deluge. But this isn’t the weather I’m talking about. A flood of votes for Labour in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election was too much for the SNP to fight against the rising red tide.

I’m standing on a picket line in Glasgow, the former workshop of the workshop of the world. Our city by all measures remains one of the most unequal in the UK, with high poverty and deprivation levels. Along with North Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, it has the highest unemployment levels in Scotland. I am standing alongside teaching staff, many of whom face the prospect of adding to Glasgow’s unemployment statistics even though they work in a sector which is, almost universally, accepted as being fundamental to creating the life opportunities which so many of Glasgow’s people need. They have been forced to strike for 13 weeks now.

Sadly, this is now expected but not accepted. We need to call it out.