Scottish housing associations look like being next to offer all their workers the real living wage of £8.75 per hour after the Director of Angus Housing Association called for all housing associations to lose public subsidies unless they commit to achieving Living Wage accreditation.
It seems likely the Scottish Government will be sympathetic to the call as it already has a policy to pay all public-sector workers the living wage. Similarly, NHS Scotland will pay the living wage to all its employees. See these earlier reports for more detail:
The UK Government living wage is only £7.50 per hour and payable only to over-25s. The report in Scottish Housing News does not make clear the starting point for the Living Wage but I understand from other sources it will be 21.
http://slw.povertyalliance.org/about
Another small but important step to becoming a ‘better nation?’
Talking-up Scotland 
I have said before on this site backed up by reference to Professor Brian Murphy that paying a reasonable living wage makes sound economic sense as that money will be spent locally rebuilding the economy from the bottom up.
Low wage sweat shops in a modern country is surely a sign of failure?
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Absolutely correct
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Hi john. Richard Murphy’s blog is carrying an interesting tweet from George Peretz QC which is worth a look at; http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/01/08/can-may-appoint-new-lords-to-pass-the-eu-withdrawal-bill-without-legal-challenge/
George Peretz identifies how Theresa May’s Tory Govt has given itself a constitutional/legal problem by imposing the current ‘long’ Parliamentary session (which extends beyond the Brexit date). Apparently, the Parliament Act (if the Lords insist on making changes to the proposed legislation) can only be brought into action in the following Parliamentary session. The series of tweets describing the situation is an easy read but I’m posting a short series here which explain the situation a bit: (see below):
2. The problem the Government has created for itself is that the current parliamentary session, which started last year, will carry on until 2019 – after the planned Brexit day.
3. The decision to have one long session (2017-19) is a decision of the Government: it is the Crown that prorogues Parliament (brings a session to an end) and then opens a new session.
4. But the effect is to make it impossible to use the Parliament Acts in order to get a Bill enacted that has been passed by the HoC but rejected (or amended in a way unacceptable to a HoC majority) by the HoL
5. That is because the Parliament Acts apply only where the HoC passes effectively the same Bill in two successive sessions.
6. So the Government may consider either creating enough new peers to give it reliable support on all important votes, or threatening to create peers if the HoL votes for amendments unacceptable to the Government.
7. Would such a step be constitutional, however? (A difficult term in the U.K. context: it doesn’t necessarily mean “challengeable in Court”: there are conventions that are not.)
We really do seem to be reaching a point where ‘factions’ within the rulling elite are ,essentially, starting to act as ‘competing elites’. These are interesting points in the historical process and can be moments when major social/political ‘change’ can be effected. Here in Scotland we have to keep extra alert from now on in to maximise the potential benefits for Indyref 2 from these ‘competing elites’ moving beyond the ‘baring teeth’ stage into the ‘snarling and biting’ stage.
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