Johann Lamont
Johann Lamont
Johann MacDougall Lamontis a Scottish politician, who was leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2011 to 2014. She served as a junior minister in the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition Scottish Executive from 2004 until the coalition's defeat by the Scottish National Partyin 2007. She was subsequently elected deputy leader of the opposition Labour group of MSPs in 2008, and was elected to lead the Labour Party in December 2011. She announced her resignation in October 2014, and following a leadership...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth11 July 1957
consequences
It is not possible to spend on one thing and then not have consequences on something else.
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We have a government that boasts about free education. Those of us who have scratched below the surface know it is costing us by denying opportunities for others to attend college or university.
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Our task is a great one, not just because of how far we have fallen. Our task is a great one because of the challenges facing the people we seek to serve.
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We need to find a way of having a conversation across the parties on how you fund local government.
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With the emergence of the Internet, it has become possible for creative and bold people with focus and determination to establish businesses in some of our remotest communities. But these will not work if they do not have reliable transport routes responding to the impatient modern customer.
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I guess it feels to me that the political argument that has been lost in my lifetime is taxation. How do you engage in that debate when people don't trust politicians at all? It is almost impossible to start a conversation about taxation.
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I didn't particularly want to go to Westminster - not that there were many seats available or chances for women to get elected. In 1987, Labour sent down 50 MPs, and only one of them was a woman.
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Fair tax does not mean we don't want to encourage wealth creation. Wealth creation is how we raise the money to pay for world class schools and hospitals, for proper care of the weak, and dignity for the elderly.
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There is a danger of Scottish politics being between two sets of dinosaurs... the Nationalists who can't accept they were rejected by the people, and some colleagues at Westminster who think nothing has changed.
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My granny would come out and stay with us in the winter, and we would listen to the reports from the coastal stations and have a discussion in the middle of Glasgow about what the weather was like in Tiree.
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We won't enshrine the Tories' policies in Scotland. We won't run away from the Tories but then let them run our economy. We will face up to the Tories, and we will beat them.
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My uncle was skipper on the old Claymore sailing out from Oban to the Inner Hebrides. My father worked for MacBraynes all his life, on freight boats and then on ferries crossing to Skye, Barra, Uist, the small isles and Iona.
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Scotland has chosen to remain in partnership with our neighbours in the U.K. But Scotland is distinct, and colleagues must recognise that.
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When universities are forced to recruit more and more from outwith Scotland just to balance the books, it is inevitable that doors are being slammed shut on some of our brightest talent.