BANGING THE DRUM FOR SISTEMA
The disgraceful treatment of Sistema by SNP Councillors in Aberdeen exposes the hideous reality of more than a decade of Sturgeon-imposed local government austerity
SISTEMA is likely a fantastic charity you have never heard about. The organisation has been praised by many including Grammy-award winning violinist Nicola Benedetti as a “transformational social intervention programme”. Given all that you might wonder why we need to even discuss it, but Sistema has become caught up in a row exposing swinging cuts inflicted on local authorities. What follows is a story of hideous SNP austerity, double-dealing and disgraceful misrepresentations - all to avoid acknowledging the governing party’s role in hollowing out local government for more than a decade.
Cutting council budgets
The Scottish Government budget allocation for local authorities (2023-2024) is the root cause of the current strife. A yawning gap has opened up between what local government say they need compared to what the Scottish Government has been willing to provide. The Scottish Government insists they are increasing funding available to local government by more than £570 million, and while this is one sense true it is in another highly misleading.
What Ms Sturgeon’s Holyrood administration is disinclined to admit is that once we take into account the Scottish Government’s control-freakery that £570m slumps dramatically. Ms Sturgeon’s time in power can be defined as a centralists dream, as ever greater amounts of funding going to local authorities are subjected to ring fencing. Put simply, the SNP enjoy telling Scottish councils how they’ll spend ever greater swathes of the money they’re granted. So, that £570m is actually only an increase of £38m - at least according to COSLA.
Once the costs of previous Scottish Government policy commitments (for example expansions to free school meals and early learning and childcare) are accounted for, much of that $570m increase is already gone.
COSLA has made clear the SNP Budget settlement represents a significant real terms cut to “core” revenue funding. And they have been proven right, we have already begun to witness the devastating impacts on services and jobs across Scotland.
All of this comes in a wider context of more than a decade of systematic SNP cuts imposed on Scottish local authority non-ring fenced funding to a tune £937m over just eight years to March 2021. That’s nearly £1bn stripped from our councils going into the health pandemic, so none of this is new. Back in March 2021 the SNP were told by opposition politicians to “re-set” the Scottish Government relationship with local authorities, but apparently the 2023-24 allocation demonstrates a continuing refusal to do so.
Austerity dominoes falling
Now that we better understand the national context, we come to local government imposed austerity programmes. They are happening because council budgets are being squeezed and they’re squeezed thanks to SNP and Green MSPs voting for swinging cuts to local government in Holyrood.
Sistema, a charity working in some of Scotland’s most deprived communities, was one of the austerity dominoes to fall amid SNP-imposed local government austerity. It operates five Big Noise centres, working with over 3,500 children and young people across Scotland. It’s ‘Big Noise’ programme involves provision of after school clubs, music tuition and performance and social interaction. All for free and in some of the nation’s most deprived communities namely Raploch (Stirling), Govanhill (Glasgow), Torry (Aberdeen), Douglas (Dundee), and Wester Hailes (Edinburgh).
It is without a doubt a fundamental good which can help in the fight to narrow Scotland’s stubborn poverty related attainment gap in education. But thanks to SNP council cutting antics, the entire programme was hurled toward a funding abyss.
Case in point: Aberdeen
In Aberdeen for example the SNP and Liberal Democrats voted to strip the programme of its funding. Cllr Lee Fairfull (SNP, Torry & Ferryhill) felt content to vote to cut Big Noise funding on the basis it had “ultimately not delivered expected outcomes”. So, nothing to do with the swinging austerity systematically imposed on Scottish local authorities for the last decade by her own party. Not Nicola Sturgeon who has presided over the slow death of fiscal autonomy and health for councils. No, it’s because the social outreach and intervention charity is just a bit rubbish.
But not to be outdone in trashing Sistema and its Big Noise programme, SNP councillor (former MSP & MEP) Christian Allard was even harsher. He informed Aberdeen council that Sistema “had no impact whatsoever”, adding “even if we had the money, we wouldn’t do it [fund it] anyway”.
Yet when I approached Scottish Labour Cllr Deena Tissera for comment she provided me with an altogether different version of events. Cllr Tissera told me back when Labour ran Aberdeen they had “supported the project and every year the evaluation which we received showed the difference it made to closing the attainment gap and to the children’s outlook in life”.
The current SNP-LDem coalition running Aberdeen council voted to terminate the funding for a programme which Cllr Tissera explained succeeded in closing the attainment gap.
Cllr Tissera also singles out SNP Cllr Allard for specific criticism in regards to his trashing of Big Noise,
“I could not believe what I heard at the council meeting on the SNPs cuts agenda budget. To remove wholly from its budget SISTEMA Torry funding was one thing but for the SNP councillor Allard to hammer the good work that the project did in his own word was simply mind blowing.”
Interestingly prior to the debate where Cllr Allard voted to enthusiastically terminate funding for the deprived kids beloved programme, the Aberdeen council gave the nod to prevention and early intervention.
Cllr Tissera explains, “we went into debate on the budget the council approved a prevention and early intervention policy that was to ensure those most in need receive the support it deserves.”
So Cllr Allard (SNP) could be accused of a serious double standard. On the one hand he acknowledges the importance of early intervention for deprived children, yet later the same night votes to strip them of just one such early intervention.
Cllr Tissera insists “Councillor Allard has brought the council and the SNP into disrepute with its citizens by on the one hand cutting the budget for Sistema and on the other hand saying how important early intervention is for our children and young people.” She has called on him to apologise for his statements unfairly slamming Sistema contrary to evidence. Cllr Tissera also wishes Cllr Allard to remove himself from his role as the convener for anti poverty committee “as it’s obvious he is clueless as to his responsibilities as convener.”
Public outcry
Nicola Killean, CEO of Sistema Scotland, told The Press and Journal she was “shocked and heartbroken” by the council’s decision to axe funding.
“Children and young people in Torry are going to be heartbroken by this. They’ve been speaking out about the impact of this, and they feel like they’ve not been heard.”
She continued: “In terms of where we’re at in Big Noise Torry’s journey, we’re delivering clearly on confidence, wellbeing, and increasing educational skills. There’s an independent evaluation report that backs that up as well. So we’re hugely disappointed for local councillors to have misrepresented the evidence that’s there around the work of Big Noise Torry”
The local councillors she is referring to as misrepresenting evidence to trash the honest good works of the charity is Cllr Allard. Here is what he and fellow SNP Cllr Lee Fairfull said when voting to shut-down funding
That is what they said of a project providing free music tuition, as well as an orchestra programme, to more than 750 pupils and pre-school children in Torry’s Walker Road and Tullos Primaries. And they did it because their party nationally has imposed crippling austerity to Scottish councils for a decade. And they trashed Sistema instead of confronting the elephant in the room that the need for cuts came from Holyrood budgets their SNP colleagues enthusiastically voted for. Blame Big Noise, but let’s keep praising the outgoing First Minister.
Alas the public realised the importance of the Big Noise programme and mounted a sustained community fight back to rescue the funding that their SNP councillors had moved to end.
On Wednesday March 1, as Cllr Fairfull and Allard scrapped the funding the community were protesting outside As they pretended the programme was ineffective inside, outside the meeting their own community was banging the drum for Big Noise at Aberdeen’s Town House.
Reverse-ferret
An “exasperated” Dame Evelyn Glennie stepped into the public row. The world-leading solo-percussionist denounced plans to scrap the funding, explaining the “expertise, hard work, and dedication” of the team “has literally changed lives”.
“I find it exasperating that we are still having to talk about the benefits of music participation and plead for funding for transformational programmes like this,”
Such was the public opprobrium and censure within three days these same SNP councillors completely about-faced.
The same Cllr Allard whom had branded the programme a waste of time and money suddenly took to social media to praise Nicola Sturgeon in Holyrood for allocating cash to restore the programme to health
Within a mere three days Cllr Allard has went from labelling Big Noise something having “no impact whatsoever”, and something “even if we had the money, we wouldn’t do it [fund it] anyway” to now saying “Great news for the young people of Torry, Big Noise Torry”.
Some might call that a truly hideous example of hypocrisy. Some might very well think that of Cllr Allard (SNP) but I could not possibly comment…
Although someone very much able to comment is Tory Cllr Michael Kusznir for Torry/Ferryhill, who thinks Cllr Allard has quite the “brass neck”:
Celebrating Nicola?
Ultimately the final point worth highlighting is the farce where we witness SNP politicians praising Nicola Sturgeon for stepping in to save Big Noise. The outgoing First Minister has merely resolved to fix a problem she herself created with her addiction to centralisation, ring fencing of funds to local governments and hideous long term slasher cuts to local authority budgets of nearly £1bn in the eight years to March 2021.
Perhaps Cllr Alexander can answer the elephant-sized question lurking right over his shoulder: who is responsible for the “huge challenges facing councils”?
I’ll give you a hint, it’s someone on the hunt for a new job now that she’s leaving the current one.
While I celebrate the Scottish Government approving £1.5m funding to save Big Noise programmes held in deprived areas of the country, I refuse to hand them praise. This fantastic charity programme was only ever in jeopardy thanks to their malicious council cuts. That their own politicians were trashing Big Noise a mere three days ago are now praising it following Ms Sturgeon’s decision to return the money she stripped from local government is laughable.
Scotland really does deserve better than this.
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