The First Minister ended a rather hectic first day of election campaigning by meeting workers at the offices of the Department for International Development in his home town of East Kilbride. These workers have had their livelihoods on the line since the Conservative-led Westminster government announced plans to radically scale back the foreign aid budget. The Scottish Green-led government in Edinburgh, however was aghast at these moves and immediately made contingency measures to safeguard these jobs and Scotland’s soft power.

The First Minister held late night talks with employees were the manner in which any redundancies were to be mitigated was outlined to staff representatives. These were positive, we thanks going to the First Minister for his work both in government and as a local constituency MSP, indeed his presence at a protest on the weekend following the announcement is what spurned this issue into the national limelight.

The following statement was released to the local press, such as the East Kilbride News and Glasgow Herald,

The point of devolution was not to have a Holyrood Government in order to mitigate catastrophic decisions made down in Westminster but ultimately sometimes that is what is required. Giving these families reassurance and security of their livelihoods in the run up to Christmas is one of the most humane things the last term of Holyrood achieved and something for which we can all be proud. This fact was reiterated to the First Minister on Monday evening.

In turn the First Minister outlined what he expected the expanded Scottish International Aid Office would look like. Currently only focus countries are connected to for funding, to build up relations between both communities and governments, most famously with Malawi. This set up would continue but we would allow the extra funding made available to go both to immediate crises, such as in Myanmar, South Sudan or Yemen but also to longer term development projects. Crucially this would be done without regards to the country we are helping out, Scotland would see humanity as one. A new satellite office, complimenting the existing Edinburgh establishment would be opened here in the West of the Country.

The mere evidence of the government having to move in order to stop families falling apart shows that the Conservatives cannot be trusted with the contracts of our public servants. Without devolution, East Kilbride would be rife with redundancies just as the most carefree time of the year approaches. Even more dreadful is the idea of the other public services, our schools, our police, our treasured NHS that the Conservatives would get their hands on if they win this election. They have simply shown that they cannot be trusted to protect Scotland or our public services. They will cut them to the bone in the ideological pursuit of a smaller state, regardless of the real life consequences on the ground. These jobs didn’t need to be lost in the first place, Scotland has an annual surplus of nearly £15 billion, it was pure ideology.

They would turn our NHS into a voucher if they could get away with it, sacrificing healthcare workers just like many in local government already have been. This would be disastrous not only for the employees but for every single person in Scotland who uses the NHS every year. The experience of East Kilbride shows that Scotland needs a bulwark in Bute House against this dangerous, radical policies. We simply cannot afford to see our services suffer.

There is only one way that Scotland can truly avoid this sword of Damocles hovering over all that we hold so dear of our civic society. Scotland really must lock the Conservatives out of Bute House and this can best be done, here in Central Scotland and elsewhere by backing the Greens on December 21st.