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Its Time to Go, Jo.

One of our team, Neil Scott, urges his East Dunbartonshire neighbours to drop Liberal Democrat Leader, Jo Swinson as their MP at the upcoming election.

“As a teacher who works in one of Europe’s most deprived areas, helping hungry, poverty damaged children every day, I resent the fact that Jo Swinson, a woman from one of the most affluent areas, and from a comfortable, middle class home, who has never seen adversity in her middle class life, gets away with apologising for her mindless support of austerity cuts during her time in Government.

Her “mistakes,” which were pointed out as such by people from across the economic and political world, during her ego trip in the dark days of ConDem Westminster, have cost lives. I know children who have lost parents to the despair that is “the Glasgow Effect,” a social phenomenon known across the world – and one now being studied by American politicians as the poor in their own country start to die younger and younger. A phenomena that Swinson exacerbated by gleefully supporting and skipping through the Parliamentary lobbies with her new, Oxbridge mates, smashing the system that gave people hope and a hand when they had fallen on hard times.

When she announced the LibDem/ Tory pact back in 2010, I called her a patsy on twitter, to which her answer was that the coalition deal had most of the Lib Dem manifesto included

(Me: @joswinson astonished you lot let the tories in. Incredible. You’ve been had at our expense.

Her reply: 1. Lab bottled out of agreement 2. Good LD policies on fairness included plus much more fairness agenda than minority Tory govt

Me: We’ll see. You’ve played your part, Jo, a patsy again. You got two terms. But that’s it. Haven’t met one happy Bearsden neighbour tonight.

Swinson: we will see – do look at the coalition agreement when published tomorrow and compare to LD manifesto though).

Reading that document in retrospect shows their intention. I read it now, as an Irish man knowing that the Liberal society she supports led to the starvation of millions of people in Ireland. The decaying, broken Foodbank society she has helped create is a famine – one teachers like me try to mitigate as it arrives, shivering and malnourished into our classrooms.

Her absolute delight at propping up a right wing Government was palpable during the coalition. Her career choice – reliving her days on the School Council popularity contest run annually in schools, this time went a wee bit further than making announcements in the Assembly hall. This time her decisions impacted on the most vulnerable of people in our country. This time her decisions meant the deaths of vulnerable people and the starvation of children in low income and precarious family situations. And her decisions have seen a massive rise in homelessness, racism, hatred towards disabled people, in fact a lot of her decisions and support for her tory friends have been now ruled as illegal and human rights infringements (eg the bedroom tax and Tribunal fees).

Add to this her happily taking donations from fracking companies and then voting against a moratorium on Fracking, and her very quick as a flash answer to the question, “Would you use nuclear weapons?”

“Yes,” she said.

Their environmental policies, and her humanity, in tatters in one answer… and, of course, in their fracking vote track record.

Swinson’s Liberal Democrats are proven liars. Their big policy of the 2010 election – the one that had students voting for them in droves, was quickly dropped for the prestige of the red cases.

The binary choices of Brexit and Independence get in the way of reason at times.  But what Labour Unionists really need to do is ensure they are not fooled into voting for these people who have caused dreadful damage to a generation of children and young people living in more dire and precarious situations because of this woman and her party.

I trust the people of East Dunbartonshire to see through this charlatan at the next election. Let’s hope enough of them ensure we don’t have to deal with an even more right wing Tory / Liberal Democrat coalition come mid December.”

Sam Hamad wrote about Swinson for Ungagged {HERE}

 

 

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