Glasgow North East, Conservatives: Getting Glasgow Back to Work

Perhaps the biggest theme of the campaign has been how many people have come to me worried about Labour’s jobs crisis. There are 4,212 people in the constituency who have to claim unemployment benefit. That’s up nearly a thousand (989) in just a year and gives Glasgow North East the highest claimant rate in Scotland. That’s Labour’s legacy to Glasgow, unemployment and a jobs crisis.

Labour’s record in Glasgow shows a worrying complacency. Labour closed one Job Centre in Glasgow North East and replaced much of the face-to-face contact in the other with a mere telephone helpline. That isn’t going to help people get jobs. Labour have claimed in this by-election that they care about getting people back into work – but their actions in government don’t back that up. Broken promises and a broken economy, that’s all we get from Labour.

The Conservatives are different. We want to help people get into work because we realise how important jobs are for people. The Conservatives have the policies to bring new jobs, help the unemployed retrain, and tackle Labour’s debt mountain that threatens to hamper investment.

So we will provide tax breaks for new companies who provide new jobs. We will free up credit to help businesses. And we have a radical welfare plan that will help people who are out of work to get back into employment by providing the individual support they need, as well as providing incentives for providers who can help those in the most difficult circumstances get back into work.

This sounds like a tough message – as if we are forcing people to work. But in reality there is nothing compassionate about the current situation where people are left isolated outside society. We need to integrate people into work, support them, and help them. Most people don’t want to be on benefits, but the current system forces them there and then abandons them. That’s not progressive, and it’s not what the people of Glasgow North East need.

These are the Conservative plans to get Glasgow working again. But the only way that can happen is if you vote for the Conservatives at this by-election, and at the upcoming General Election. Only Labour or the Conservatives can become the next Government, and therefore the choice is between this failing Labour Government, or a fresh government, with real ideas to tackle the jobs crisis and recession, led by David Cameron.

David Maddox: A funny thing happened on the way to the job centre...

Strange indeed. Peter Duncan (pictured right), the deposed and would-be Conservative MP for Dumfries and Galloway, ran into a spot of bother whilst he was trying to make a local job centre a useful means of getting his old job in Westminster back.
In his recent In Touch leaflet Mr Duncan made great play about how job centres were being shut and included a picture of himself outside the JobCentre in Stranraer with a young woman who he said was "a jobseeker" suggesting the picture was taken quite recently.
Except she was not a jobseeker and the picture was five years old.
Kate Nassar, the young woman in question, in fact turned out to be a local teacher, but had been employed by Mr Duncan in 2004 when the picture apparently was taken.
"It really is ridiculous," Mrs Nassar told her local paper. "At a time of economic instability it really makes you wonder whether they are taking the issue seriously. Surely they should be speaking to people genuinely affected by the recession.

"Instead they used a five year old picture of me and I wasn't even unemployed then - I was working for Peter!"

Mr Duncan has reportedly declined to apologise but has promised that the picture will not be used again.

He said: "There are clearly a lot of unemployed people in contact with me and angry with the current economic situation and I will give them the opportunity to be involved in the future."

The offending leaflet can be found on page 2 of this link: Duncan%20leaflet.pdf

But never mind at least his Conservative colleagues in Holyrood are on the ball.... Or maybe not.

This week Nanette Milne (pictured left), the party's environment spokeswoman, the Scottish Government's efforts to reduce waste, even though the Tories tried to amend deposit and return out of the Climate Change Bill.

Then she praised the a recycling company Wood Works for doing good stuff on waste, except they ceased trading in June last year because of cuts in (Scottish) government funding. Maybe her researcher (Miles Briggs) is spending too much time trying to win Menzies Campbell's seat in North East Fife.