Lamont's Scotland

It's November 2016. With the independence referendum lost, Scotland languishes under a Conservative government with no Scottish MPs. 

Johann Lamont's Labour Party has won the Scottish Parliament election the previous year, and is bound by a manifesto described by the Daily Mail as "common sense". 

A retired nurse, an octogenarian widow, leaves her Glasgow home in the depths of winter. Stripped of her free bus pass, she either has to trudge for five miles through the snow, or pay Labour's privatised buses a fiver for a return ticket to the doctor's. She's worked all her life, but on her pitiful pension, she can't afford the bus fare. But why should we give her a free bus pass? This is Scotland! This is the land we don't give something for nothing. 

Her local surgery has closed as a result of the reduction in the Scottish block grant. There's nothing Scotland can do. What are we going to do - vote out a government which has no MPs here anyway?

The doctor writes a prescription for the medicine she needs to stay healthy. There's no point in it - since Labour abolished free prescriptions for the sick, she can't afford to buy it. But we can't simply give the sick something for nothing. 

She knows that she's against a wall. She can't afford her medicine, so her illness will get worse. If her illness will get worse, she'll require care. But Labour have abolished free personal care for the elderly. They can't get something for nothing.

She gets home to an ice-cold house. With Labour not having built a single new council house in Glasgow since 1979, the wind whips through her home. She has to choose between heating her home or paying for Labour's Council Tax, which has risen far above her pension. But tax is tax. We can't freeze it. We can't give something for nothing. If the old lady has to freeze, so be it. But we must raise the Council Tax. 

She rings her grandson, a bright young boy, the hope for her future. She'd always wanted him to go to university and make the best of himself. He's just got five Highers, all at A grade. But he won't be going to university. Labour have abolished free higher education, and the brightest working-class kids are now unable to go to university. We can't, after all, give something for nothing.

With a Conservative government in London, there is no investment in jobs. The unemployment lines across Britain have reached five million. This boy's only choice was university or the dole queue. 

With Labour's abolition of the one thousand extra police officers introduced in the last Parliament, law and order begins to break down in the streets. With no prospects of using his brain, and no hope of a job, what other option is there but a life of crime?

This is the vision Johann Lamont outlined for Scotland yesterday. 

This is why you must vote Yes.