Who killed Bambiiiii-iiiiiii....

A morning getting some stuff wrapped up at work was followed by a trip down to the parliament to join the rally against FE cuts. In a sector which has often served as a second chance for people needing to re-train after job losses we have already faced some of the highest public sector cuts with more to come over the next three years. This has meant more than 44,000 college places lost in the 2010 - 2011 college year with the scottish funding council yet to publish the overall numbers for last year, but a broadly similar number expected by the EiS.

No one in the FE sector doubts the need for austerity measures, but as mentioned we have already faced some of the toughest cuts in the public sector and have more to come. In addition to this between redundancies, cuts and voluntary severance the sector is losing some very experienced specialist educators. At a time when problems with the global economy have resulted in higher numbers of people made redundant and needing to re-train it doesn't seem the most sensible option.

There's rumblings amongst colleagues that our government will try and blame it all on Westminster in a bid to raise support for the forthcoming independence referendum, but the general feeling seems to be incredulity that our government could believe us to be that naive. From speaking to people today there's a general attitude that a government committed to winning independence should try to do so by showing how much better they could make things with limited autonomy, not how much worse....

After the rally Mackie and I headed for a coffee for a bit. Given that it was a lovely sunny day it was quite a pleasant way to spend it.