(c) Photograph: Steve Caplin
From the SNP Government website:
‘Thousands of individuals and families across Scotland are being forced into poverty as a result of UK welfare cuts. The cuts imposed by the UK Government will continue to reduce welfare, by 2020/21 social security spending in Scotland is expected to have reduced by £3.7 billion since 2010, a new report has found. The annual Welfare Reform report finds that the UK Government’s benefit freeze alone has led to huge reductions in spending – around £190 million in the current year 2018/2019, rising to around £370 million by 2020/21.’
https://news.gov.scot/news/uk-welfare-cuts-pushing-more-families-into-poverty
Is the SNP Government acting to moderate the effects?
From the Social Metrics Commission, ‘A new measure of poverty for the UK’, we can see that poverty is still a major problem for Scotland’s politicians but that, due to progressive Scottish Government policies, such as that compensating for the bedroom tax or for protecting the disabled, along with increased social housing provision, the overall situation in Scotland is significantly (in a statistical sense) better here. This is illustrated in Figure 37 from the report, below:
According to the report:
‘Figure 37 shows poverty rates overall for each country and also split by working-age adults, children and pensioners. The main differences are in the poverty rates for Wales and Scotland, where, compared to the UK average, poverty rates are generally higher for people living in Wales and lower for those living in Scotland.
http://socialmetricscommission.org.uk/MEASURING-POVERTY-FULL_REPORT.pdf
Recommended reading for next week’s seminar:
Scottish Government announces that poverty gap is closing. BBC Scotland ignores it
SNP administration only government with a commitment to tackle child poverty
Talking-up Scotland 
The tory party really is – as Treeza described it years ago – ‘the nasty party’. Not content with ‘punishing’ the population of these islands with their ‘austerity’ obsession they show scant regard for the norms of polite behaviour with our international guests.
Today rt is reporting that a petite (but feisty) Chinese journalist was manhandled out of a fringe meeting discussing Hong Kong. Link below – worth a watch (lasts a couple of mins).
I’m not holding my breath for The Col. to complain about the tory ‘goons’ doing the pushing and shoving. Clearly The Col. only spouts off on twitter about incidents involving ‘burly men’ when it suits her to ‘invent’ such.
Assault accusations fly after Chinese state reporter kicked out of Tory Conference
A Chinese reporter has been involved in a fracas at an event on Hong Kong at the Tory Party Conference, with claims she “assaulted” a volunteer, while CCTV, her employer, claim it was in fact their journalist who was attacked.
https://www.rt.com/uk/440044-chinese-reporter-assault-tory/
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Interesting stuff. Thanks
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