Well, if Stephen Purcell gets his way, anyway. He called today for free school meals to be abolished to pay for the Glasgow Airport Rail Link. What is it with these big kids and their train sets? Here's a thing, though - GARL, like the Edinburgh Tram, appears to be aimed primarily at improving the profitability of the airports, especially when you consider the supporting documents from the legislative process. Why isn't BAA picking up the tab? In the Promoter's Statement there is a vague allusion to BAA paying some of the cost but when it was cancelled it was revealed that compensation payments were to be made to BAA as well as us paying for the airport to have a new nursery, car rental facilities, multi-storey car park and fuel farm.
Why should the public purse be subsidising a very profitable private business so heavily?
Something else - have a look at the route from Paisley out to the airport and you'll find it crosses an industrial estate when it could easily have avoided built-up areas. Why would anyone want to build where you were having to pay out additional compensation? Why would anyone want to disrupt businesses?
Most of all, though, why would anyone want to take food from the mouths of children to fund a rail line? Where is Charles Dickens when you need him?
Stephen Purcell
6 comments:
Didn't I read somewhere that 10% of admission to children's hospitals are due to malnutrition?
So maybe not the best time to propose this.
I thought that Labour was for poor people, not airport owners?
I suppose that was Labour of 50 years ago, or more?
Aye the peoples party right enough.
I'm sure Tormod, that they will tell us that airport owners, and bankers, are people too. And they may even be right.
It's madness for Purcell to come up with this in the middle of Browns recession.
Hundreds of families are struggling to provide a balanced diet for their kids by stopping free school meals, again it'll be the kids from the poorest backgrounds who will suffer.
How sad, Labour manage to break my heart almost every day!
What complete rubbish. If anything school meals should be means tested. I make a good salary, and i have no qualms at paying £7 per week for school meals.
You make a good salary? Forgery, eh?
I'm all for means testing - through progressive taxation. It's a concept no longer welcome in Labour circles, but it's still right, taxation based on the ability to pay. Universality in the disbursements of the benefits of our society is also important - unless you believe that "there's no such thing as society".
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