Evening News
Tommy Sheridan, leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, said: "The sooner gas and electricity are back where they belong, in public ownership, the better because ordinary customers are paying for the massive profits of the private fat-cat owners."

BBC News Online
Planning regulations are set to be tightened after a row broke out over proposals to dump sewage from England on an opencast mine in Scotland.
Deputy Environment Minister Allan Wilson pledged to take action following a debate in the Scottish Parliament.
Locals have reacted furiously to the proposals for the site at Dalquhandy in Lanarkshire.
Socialist MSP Rosemary Byrne called on the Scottish Executive to take urgent steps to ban the practice.
Ms Byrne said sewage spreading was already happening in other parts of the country.
She said planning permission was not needed and that local communities were kept in the dark.
"We must find a way to treat and dispose of our sewage that is environmentally friendly and poses no risk," she said.
"But it must be done in a manner that is democratic and transparent.
"The communities of Scotland cannot and must not be used as a dumping ground."

Edinburgh Evening News
WHEN the Evening News ran a front page story a few days ago confirming that the number of heroin injectors in Edinburgh had doubled in the last five years, a collective shiver must surely have run up the spine of the Scottish capital.
• Kevin Williamson is SSP drugs spokesperson and the author of Drugs and the Party Line

Inverness

The Scottish Socialist Party staged a protest in Inverness yesterday to demand an end to the council tax.
About 40 campaigners held the lunchtime demonstration outside Highland Council's HQ in Glenurquhart Road after the authority approved its council-tax rate for the coming year.
Councillors yesterday announced a rise of 5.1%, as predicted.
The SSP has now vowed to step up its campaign, both inside the Scottish Parliament and on the streets, calling for replacement of the tax by a fairer system based on income.
The protest was part of a series of synchronised demonstrations outside council chambers across the country by Scrap the Council Tax groups, pensioners' forums and others who complained that the tax is regressive and an unfair burden on senior citizens, workers on low-to-medium incomes and their families.
It marked the launch of what is promised to be an ongoing campaign that will involve a large-scale national demonstration in Glasgow on April 24.
Highlands and Islands SSP spokesman Steve Arnott said yesterday: "We are calling for council tax to be scrapped altogether. People are dismayed that, once again, council tax has gone way up beyond the rate of inflation.
"Council tax was introduced 12 years ago and, for the past 11 years in Scotland, rates have risen above the rate of inflation. Pensioners and people on average incomes do not get big enough wage increases to cope with it.
"However, this is just the start of our campaign to put the nail into the coffin of council tax." Press and Journal


Aberdeen Press and Journal

Daily Record
Yesterday, Scottish Socialist MSP Rosemary Byrne led a debate on the issue of sewage dumping in Lanarkshire and across the country.
She said: 'The more that we find out about this murky business, the more concerns we have about transparency and accountability.
We are asking all those involved to come into the open and tell us the truth about what is going on.'
Opening the debate, Byrne called for more openness from Scottish Coal and Thames Water, who are supplying the sewage.
Byrne said: 'The disposal of sewage is being carried out in communities without their prior knowledge or consent and with little regard to the potential environmental hazards involved.
Why is this material being transported from England all the way up to Scotland to be dumped? We don't know.'

"ACCUSING MSPs and ministers of lying was yesterday ruled out of order in Holyrood.
George Reid, the Presiding Officer, said any member of the parliament who used the term would face a "two strikes and you’re out" procedure.
The offending MSP would first be told to apologise - "the yellow card", as Mr Reid put it. If no apology is forthcoming, they would then face expulsion from the chamber for up to one day after the offence.
Any expulsion for a longer period would have to be voted on by MSPs.
Mr Reid’s ruling came after Tommy Sheridan, the leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, repeatedly accused Jack McConnell, the First Minister, of lying - first over the SSP’s drugs policy and then over Iraq.
Yesterday, Mr Sheridan immediately complained that the procedure gave no right of appeal, putting ministers "above the law". "Scotsman

PROJECTED COUNCIL TAX INCREASES

Aberdeen - 8%
Aberdeenshire - 5%
Angus - 5.6%
Argyll and Bute - 2.9%
Clackmannanshire - N/A
Dumfries and Galloway - 4.9%
Dundee - 5%
East Ayrshire - 4.9%
East Dunbartonshire - 5.6%
East Lothian - 5%
East Renfrewshire - 5%
Edinburgh - 4%
Falkirk - 5%
Fife - 3.5%
Glasgow - 5%
Highland - 5.1%
Inverclyde - 5%
Midlothian - 5%
Moray - 9.7%
North Ayrshire - 4.9%
North Lanarkshire - N/A
Orkney - 4.5%
Perth and Kinross - 5.5%
Renfrewshire - 5%
Scottish Borders - 5.4%
Shetland - 7.2%
South Ayrshire - 5%
South Lanarkshire - 3.5%
Stirling - 4%
West Dunbartonshire - 2%
West Lothian - 4.5%
Western Isles - 5.1%

Meanwhile, a non-payment campaign may be launched by the Scottish Socialist Party.

Leader Tommy Sheridan said the move was not imminent, but had not been ruled out.

"We are starting a campaign, we are trying to inspire a rebellion, and in the course of such a rebellion every tactic will be examined," said Mr Sheridan. BBC News Online

Scottish Socialist MSP Colin Fox called for greater 'mutualisation' of the game, with fans being given a chance to have a greater say in the running of their clubs. Daily Record

The Herald
TOMMY Sheridan's Scottish Socialist party yesterday said it was considering a mass non-payment campaign in order to stir up a nationwide "rebellion" against the council tax.
Launching plans for a Scrap the Council Tax rally later in the spring, Mr Sheridan said the option was under active consideration by his party, although he and his fellow MSPs were paying the tax for now.

Scottish Mirror editorial, 10/02/04

THE Council Tax is a bit like a nasty cold.
Nobody wants it - but nobody's quite sure how to get rid of it either.
So the Mirror welcomes Tommy Sheridan's campaign - launching today - to scrap the Council Tax.
Everybody knows you don't get something for nothing. And local services - like schools and street lighting - have to be paid for somehow.
But, under the Council Tax, pensioners and the low paid get hammered while the rich pay a pittance.
So hopefully the Scottish Parliament will see sense and get rid of it.
But, like everything else at the Scottish Parliament, there is a problem.
The SNP want to scrap the tax, so do the Greens and the independents like Margo MacDonald.
Even Labour's coalition chums in the Lib Dems want to get rid of it.
But the parties who want it to be scrapped can't agree on what to replace it with.
The Scottish Socialists want a Scottish Service Tax, based on ability to pay and making the rich pay more.
The SNP, Greens and Lib Dems all want different kinds of local income tax. And they are all falling out over which system is the best.
So we could end up stuck with the council tax even though most people want it to be ditched.
The Mirror today calls on those opposing the council tax to bury the hatchet and unite on one thing - scrapping it.
Backroom bickering on what to replace it with can come later.
For now - just get rid of it and give Scotland's pensioners and low paid a break. That's medicine worth taking.

BBC News Online
A campaign aiming to "overthrow" the council tax is to be launched by the Scottish Socialist Party.
Last year SSP leader Tommy Sheridan put forward a member's bill at Holyrood proposing to replace the system with an income-based alternative.
The party plans to hold a demonstration in Glasgow in April, and will also launch a petition and a website.
Mr Sheridan said: "We will take to the streets in our thousands to scrap the unfair council tax."

Scotland On Sunday
By Bob Thomson, former Associate Scottish Secretary of Unison and a former chairman and treasurer of the Scottish Labour Party.
He is co-editor of Scottish Left Review

THE rail and seamen’s union (RMT), as the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, was one of the founders of the Labour party in 1899. That is why it’s called Labour - it is the party representing workers.
New Labour’s decision to expel the RMT from affiliation marks a watershed for the party and the Labour movement. Either Labour goes back to its roots and re-engages with the mass of workers or it will go into decline.
The five RMT branches affiliating to the Scottish Socialist Party give that party a credibility and respectability it has lacked. And there is intense pressure from firefighters and postal workers for their unions to do the same.