Unemployed Scottish teachers to work in England
Private recruitment firms are targeting at the unemployed Scottish teachers to work in England due to the growing recruitment crisis in the schools. The new market has opened up for those teachers who cant find work in Scotland for a permanent basis. Many of the teachers found it hard to work and realised that there are plenty of vacancies in English schools were teachers trained in Scotland are highly prized.
With the growing demands of work by the Scotland teachers, the teaching unions and the opposition politicians have blamed the Scottish government for such a problem, accusing them for backing out from their election promise of maintaining teacher numbers.
The growing trend of the teachers without work moving to Scotland adds up to the current difficulties faced by the newly employed Scottish school staff in securing employment. A recent report also found that two-thirds of the new teachers in Scotland are failing to secure a full time permanent job almost a year after qualifying. Many argues that this trend amounts to the colossal waste of the taxpayers money, with the annual cost of the teachers in Scotland calculated at £85 million.
However the Scottish government argues that the recruitment policy is much better in Scotland than elsewhere in UK. The situation has arisen in the recent years due to thousands of additional school staff being trained as part of Government moves to bring down the class sizes, lead first by the Scottish Labour Party and now by the SNP.
The main plan was that, as the population declined, more teachers would be employed to reduce class sizes, therefore improving the standards in education. However, instead the plans took a different role, where the local authorities reduced teacher numbers to save money, with the situation worsening in the current financial climate.
Scotland scores high for jobless people in West Europe
It might be really strange to know that Scotland is loosing jobs at a faster rate in Western Europe with the impact of recession forcing employers to resort to layoffs in order to sustain their businesses. As per reports over 10,000 people lost their jobs in the last quarter ’09, which takes us to the present figure of 206,000 with previous years figure of 140,000.
The upward trend in the rate of jobless people has come up as one of the major concern for Scotland. Meanwhile economists suggests that this could be due to the historical nature of Scotland for lagging behind the rest of the UK. But if we compare the present figures for the jobless people in UK we can find that 7.6 per cent of people are out of job in Scotland with UK wide figure of jobless people standing at 7.8 per cent. Even analysis done by ONS has reported that Scotland’s rate of increase stands out to be the highest across the continent with just four countries including Greece, Estonia, Latvia and Romania succeeding Scotland rate of jobless people.
This report has come out to be a disappointment not only for the people of Scotland but also for the government who needs to tackle this problem soon. Liz Cameron, Chief Executive Scottish Chambers of Commerce said, “It is concerning we appear to be lagging against the reductions in unemployment being experienced in the rest of the UK. It may be some time before improving business.”
It is strongly felt that, if this problem is not addressed soon, then it might be a major setback for the ruling party and even a serious concern for the next elections. While SNP ministers have come out claiming the UK government needs to continue to spend to sustain the economy, the Enterprise Minister Jim Mather said, “ “The figures clearly demonstrate the compelling case for an economic stimulus package in the UK. Now time will tell who will decide the fate of those jobless people in Scotland.
News Source : The Scotsman
SNP chief oppose the new pub laws
Edinburgh, Oct 2: Strict laws are being implemented against the pubs in Edinburgh. The restrictions include the opening hours and the number of people allowed to stand up in the bar. Mixed remarks for and against this pub laws are coming out since then. The council put forth this law as an attempt to restrict the anti social behaviour.
The council’s plans to impose the pub laws were announced last month by the Liberal Democrat coalition Councillor Marjorie Thomas, chairwoman of the city’s licensing board.
The deputy council leader Steve Cardownie raised doubts regarding the outcome of this implementation. The SNP leader made an outspoken attack and he termed this attempt as a backward step. He further described the idea of sending “bean counters” to count the number of people standing up in individual bars as “nonsensical”.
While commenting on the need of the pub laws Cardownie said: “I think it is a good thing that people can go out a bit later now if they want to. Changing the rules would be a backward step when we are trying to compete with other major cities around Europe”.
“The situation is better in Edinburgh than it is down south where you get all the pubs shutting at once and huge queues forming at taxi ranks, when you get arguments and fights breaking out. I also think it’s nonsensical to try to impose some kind of limit on the number of people who can stand up in a pub. How on earth would you enforce that?”
Meanwhile the Councillor Thomas said: “I stand by the comments I made earlier this month but it is important to stress that we have simply put these proposals out for consultation at the moment. We have already had a big response, both from publicans and the licensed trade, but also from people in local communities across the city. Some don’t like what has been proposed, some are in favour, but we are going to listen to all views. However, we’re certainly not talking about turning the lights out on Edinburgh“.
Paul Waterson, chief executive of the Licensed Trade Association, Scotland, said: “The draft policy isn’t just bad, it’s plain daft. Are they going to have people walking into pubs and demanding that half the customers sit down?”
Liberal Democrats Councillor Paul Edie, who is leading the council’s efforts to tackle antisocial behaviour, said: “Although this is really a matter for the licensing board, I’m certainly not aware of any demands by the police to cut back the hours of city pubs. There are obviously hot spots in the city, but there has been a lot of money invested in CCTV facilities and the police do seem to have coped well with the liberal licensing hours in Edinburgh“.
While commenting on the political version of things the city’s Labour leader, Ewan Aitken, said: “This is just another example of the complete chaos the SNP and the Liberal Democrats have got themselves in. They don’t seem to be speaking to the other party or even amongst themselves.”
Hope all these mixed responses will pave the way for some clear modification in the pub laws considering the public interest.