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By Liz S
More brass neck from Labour and this time from the Labour MP Brian Leishman .
Leishman who in the past, together with Anas Sarwar, campaigned in 2024 in the UK GE when he and Sarwar were both promising (in what turned out to be an empty promise) that “a Labour government would step in, keep Grangemouth working, and invest hundreds of millions into the site’s transition”.
Labour won the 2024 UK GE.
Grangemouth Oil Refinery was not saved and so over 400 workers lost their jobs.
Then when Sarwar was challenged as to why the Refinery was not saved, he stated that they, Labour, could not intervene directly because it, the Refinery, was operated by a privately owned company.
That’s the same “privately owned company” that was seemingly not a concern for either Sarwar or Leishman when they were both canvassing in 2024 and pledging that the Refinery (and so all jobs there) would be saved by Labour HQ if they were elected as the next UK government.
Leishman posted this today:
“The SNP and Greens are no friend to workers. 23,000 workers in Glasgow are to be the victims of the biggest fire and rehire in British history. Shame on the SNP/Greens for this. Utterly indefensible. The SNP assault on workers and services local councils provide continues”.
Really ?
I think we all know Labour’s history with certain workers within Scotland, like say the Glasgow female council workers and more recently the workers at Grangemouth Oil Refinery , but unfortunately Labour MP’s like Brian Leishman seem to have no shame in respect to past shocking behaviour as he prefers to cry out #SNPBAD (yet again in deflection mode as a typical Labour chancer).
In fact what Labour did to both sets of the above workers proves that they are most definitely “no friends to workers” as Labour’s actions were “utterly indefensible“.
Labour still trying to get away with “Do as I say not as I do” hoping that the public have very poor memories and so then have forgotten how Labour treat workers , especially in Scotland.
Leishman still clutching at (any) straws to try to keep his job as Labour MP for Alloa & Grangemouth come the next UK GE.
It is really nauseating how shameless Labour politicians, at all levels, are.
Fortunately female workers at Glasgow council impacted by the former Labour council in Glasgow and also workers at Grangemouth Oil Refinery all should surely know the duplicity at play just now by Labour. (as will all of their friends, family members , neighbours and their communities).
Vote Labour and you get betrayed , just ask some of the workers in Scotland who in the past may have been taken in by what turned out to be nothing more than Labour’s empty promises ( all just to undeservedly win an election).
Liz S
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Labour will be voted out again. People voted Labour to get rid of the Tories. Support for SNP and Independence increasing.
Scotland can still go the EU and complain about Brexit.
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And there’s more (as I just added this below comment onto a previous post ion here).
To expose even further hypocrisy in respect to Labour (in Scotland) who currently seem to be declaring that they, as a political party, would never ever behave like this , then let me remind them of this below:
Birmingham ” Bin strike a fire and rehire situation, says union”.
The BBC reported this on their website in a May 2025 article under a page for local English news (for the Birmingham area) in respect to what a Labour Council in Birmingham were accused of doing:
“The regrading of workers at the heart of the long-running Birmingham bin strike should be called out as “fire and rehire“, a union boss says.”
“The focus of the row is now on plans to downgrade the role of drivers, which the union said could cost some workers £8,000 a year”
“The city council said it needed to regrade drivers to ensure it complied with equal pay laws”
“Speaking before negotiations began on Thursday, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “They have said to these workers that the job that you do, the pay that you get, you either do that job now for £8,000 less or go”
“In any other situation we would be calling this out as fire and rehire. Equal pay does not mean you cut the pay of workers. It’s supposed to mean you push up the pay of women, if it’s commensurate with the role that men are doing.”
In a separate BBC article in April 2025 also under local English news for Birmingham:
“Unite confirmed reports about 200 drivers, mostly men, were told on Tuesday their jobs would be moved down from Grade 4 to Grade 3 under the new proposals”
“The union added driver team leaders were in a Grade 4 pay band which ran from £33,366 to £40,476“.
“This would be dropped to a Grade 3 pay band, which runs from £26,409 to £32,654, if the proposal goes ahead”.
“Every job at the Labour-run council is being reviewed as part of the authority’s efforts to avoid another equal pay crisis”.
(In 2024 , in the same area and involving the same council in Birmingham led by the same party, Labour, it was reported that an equal pay dispute related to claims that staff in female-dominated roles, such as teaching assistants, had historically been underpaid in relation to those in male-dominated positions. So the campaign for the 6,000 women was launched four years ago, the GMB union said, and talks restarted in November).
Birmingham council was under Labour majority control from 2012 to May 2026.
So much for what Michael Marra wrote on ‘X in respect to the minority SNP Glasgow council in that it was a:
“Despicable way to treat working people” and that it was “straight out the Tory playbook“.
Especially when his own Labour party in Birmingham intended to do the exact same thing – that as a situation is still unresolved in Birmingham as the bin men are still on strike in what has now been over 20 months !
As too is the hypocrisy of the Glasgow Labour Group who wrote on X that in relation to this situation the “Scottish government cannot stand on the sidelines”
Well in July 2025 FBU ( Fire Brigade Union) general secretary Steve Wright said in relation to the situation in Birmingham he:
“Likened the current Labour government’s approach (under Keir Starmer) to Tony Blair’s cabinet in the 1990s, highlighting what he said was the latter’s failure to intervene in a dispute involving Liverpool dockers, as well as strikes by Hillingdon hospital staff and Magnet kitchen workers”.
In April 2025 it was reported that “Deputy (Labour) Prime Minister Angela Rayner has urged striking bin workers in Birmingham to accept a new deal to end the dispute – sparking an angry response from the head of the Unite union”.
It was also noted that “The Labour UK government has largely backed the Labour-run local authority over Unite“.
Also that “Angela Rayner was not the only member of the Labour government to get involved”
As “after a visit by a Labour MP , Jim McMahon , in his role as Minister for local government, Police officers changed their approach to policing a picket line at the Tyseley depot”.
( Then the “West Midlands Police shifted their tactics at the Tyseley (Atlas) depot picket line during the Birmingham bin strike, warning picketers that delaying bin lorries could constitute public order offences”).
“Unite members had previously been effective at delaying bin lorries from being deployed, but from 4 April they were told their actions could amount to public order offences“.
That is the real Labour party and not the pretend one that some within the Labour party here in Scotland are promoting as being the ‘Party for workers”.
“Do as we say and not as we do” that’s Labour yet again playing politics at the workers expense and also at all of our expense too.
(Also note that Labour , as a party, now always talk about the “working people and not the working class as Labour no longer want to be regarded as a party that wants to work for the working class people).
Liz S
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Workers for Scottish Coal at Killoch DP (near Ochiltree) in the late 1990s had their contracts ripped up and were told to sign on to new terms and conditions if they wanted “to keep their jobs”.
Scottish Coal Directors? Brian Wilson (ex-Labour Minister) of the Herald and Scotsman newspapers infamy (?), and Lord Lindsay (ex-Tory Minister). Hucksters and fraudsters, the lot of them.
gavinochiltree
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SCOTLAND’S largest local authority spent more than £2.5 million fighting equal pay claims by female council workers over the last 10 years.
Figures released following a Freedom of Information request show that between 2007 and 2017 – when the Labour Party controlled Glasgow City Council – £1.8m was spent on legal fees and a further £700,000 on “internal staff costs” to contest claims by women who were victims of wage discrimination
Then who had to fix it SNP
Glasgow City Council to pay £770m to settle equal pay dispute
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-63584376
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There’s even more hypocrisy in respect to the self righteous Labour politicians in Scotland .
Yesterday Prem Sikka, who is an outspoken member of the HOL’s, posted this below *** in respect to ex Labour MP , Tom Watson, who is now Baron Watson of Wyre Forest, a Labour Peer in the HOL’s.
(Watson was also previously a Labour Junior Minister and party whip in both Tony Blair & Gordon Brown’s governments and he was also once the Deputy leader of the Labour party).
Prem Sikka’s post yesterday stated this in his post on Bluesky:
***”Tom Watson’s move to Palantir is the latest sign of how far the rot has spread in UK politics. Like Blair, Cameron, Clegg, Mandelson, hired to open govt networks to companies and corporate capture of the state. They sell political capital built with public money. What do we get in return”?
Quite.
#DemocrayForSale does then equal dirty politics that some current Labour politicians allegedly seems to embrace and so encourage.
See also donations made to various Labour UK government ministers , as in thousands donated to individual Labour politicians by those in business, that includes those whose business is Private Healthcare.
It was reported that these donations resulted in “Campaign groups and medical professionals having raised concerns that donations from private health interests risk influencing policy or encouraging further outsourcing within the NHS”.
The latest news on Tom Watson’s was reported in a BBC headline:
“Ex-Labour deputy leader Tom Watson joins Palantir”
Also elsewhere reported that:
“In September 2026, Watson joined Palantir as a senior vice president. The US tech firm is renowned for its controversial contracts with the Israeli Defence Forces and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (known as ICE)”
“In the UK some UK MPs urged the (Labour) government to drop the NHS’ £330m contract with Palantir, and the Green Party MP , Siân Berry , highlighted Watson’s appointment as an example of the “corrosive revolving door between politics and big business lobbying that has no place in public life”.
That’s your real Labour party , not forgetting of course Anas Sarwar now Baron Sarwar of Maxwell Park.
Keith Brown , Scottish government Minister said this in July 2026 in respect to Sarwar:
“Anas Sarwar’s departure confirms everything we already knew about Scottish Labour.
After leading his party to its worst-ever Holyrood election result, he has been rewarded for failure with a peerage and a ministerial job in London.
Only weeks ago, he was asking people across Scotland to trust him to lead the country. Now, he is abandoning Holyrood and the voters who elected him at the first opportunity.
It also reinforces the reality that Scottish Labour is nothing more than a branch office of the London Labour Party. Its politicians talk about putting Scotland first, but their real ambition always seems to lie at Westminster.
Having helped bring down Keir Starmer, Sarwar has now received his reward from the man who replaced him. What a look”
Spot on.
Honestly the case against Labour being very much a wasted vote in Scotland just keeps mounting , what with every new Labour party scandal, latest controversial Labour actions, latest Labour fiasco , continuous Labour HQ policy U Turns, complete lack of accountability and transparency via both Labour HQ and their Scottish branch office and so then their overall rubbish input, as a political party, just does nothing to improve nor enhance life for us in Scotland.
Labour can certainly talk the talk but they always fall down when it comes to them (constantly) failing to ever walk the walk.
Liz S
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