By Bill Heaney
Grit your teeth. West Dunbartonshire Council don’t invite The Democrat to their photo calls and press briefings and we never got as much as a mince pie from them at Christmas.
One of these briefings took place recently to offset the previous disaster when Council leader Jonathan McColl, pictured above right, assured the community that all was well on the road gritting front.
To his embarrassment, after trotting out gritting lorries and being pictured with colleagues shovelling road salt, more than 100 citizens ended up in hospital after falling on icy streets and pavements.
There was no sign of McColl at the latest photo shoot, just his colleagues, Cllrs Marie McNair and Iain McLaren, along with the council official in charge of roads.
Someone must have told him that when you are in a pothole ( and there plenty of them in West Dunbartonshire), you should stop digging.
The council roads team who are said to be working 70 hours some weeks.
The pictures were good – but the words from the Council were dire.
Like much of what goes on at West Dunbartonshire, they were mostly gobbledygook.
Hit me with your shovel Mick, hit me, but I can’t make sense of this stuff, which is meant to send us all out to buy our own shovels to clear our own pavements of snow and ice when it comes.
And it’s all to save a paltry £25,000, which is about £7,000 less than the Council leader’s annual salary.
Did you know he receives £32,000 a year plus expenses for turning up – and sometimes not turning up – at council meetings?
Now read these words: “… the service would not be affected if the cuts went ahead.” Really?
And this: “We have had a large consolidation of educational establishments, we have had a fairly significant consolidation of the council estates and there are places which are now empty.
“I would hope that if we are going to review and remove gritting that it would be because there is no longer a justification for it being a priority route.
“Subject to new developments, depending on where they are, it may be that you need to review the routes.
“We will still be providing the same service which is a higher proportion of treatment than any other council so I am fairly comfortable we are in a good place.”
For the life of me I cannot make head nor tail of that.
I take it the “good place” he is talking about is on a comfortable seat in his nice new office and not on his backside on an icy pavement nearby.
His boss, Cllr Iain McLaren, believes local people will back the cuts if they are assured the service would not be affected.
I am afraid the people too frightened to leave their homes for fear of falling will not agree with him.
And neither will the overworked nursing staff attending to stooky and strapping injuries in hospital casualty departments.
Naively, Cllr McLaren added: “I think is there is an understanding that the service won’t be of any detriment but will be more efficient. I don’t think many people will have a lot to say about it.”
Eh? The Council’s roads convener seems to believe that by reducing the staff time, money and materials allocated to this project, it will become more efficient.
What planet is he living on? Beam me up Scotty.
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For whom the bell tolls all night for two nights, the residents of Balloch.
New Year was not a happy time for the people living near the new school campus in Balloch.
It seems the bells rang out and wouldn’t stop ringing over the holiday period, driving people daft in the process.
Young children couldn’t sleep a wink for two whole nights because of the din, according to residents.
They telephoned the police and posted messages on their Facebook site to complain, but no one came to switch off the din.
It is supposed to be advantageous to have a local councillor whom you can contact to complain about such matters living in the communities they represent.
I have no idea where the councillors for Lomond were when this was going on, but it appears they didn’t respond and got no joy even if they did.
But a clear insight into why it happened is contained in the answer the Council gave to a local newspaper – “We are sorry for any disturbance caused to residents by the faulty alarm at Balloch campus.
“The alarm has now been silences and the external contractors responsible for servicing [the alarm] will visit the site to ensure there is no reoccurrence.”
God be with the days when we had janitors living on the site in a school house and could provide security and attend to these minor but hugely annoying matters.
And our schools were not financed with fancy PPI-type finance agreements and janitorial/servicing/maintenance contracts which cost council taxpayers a fortune in interest payments.
Write to your councillor and ask him how much is cost to switch the school bell off.
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There is disappointment and despondency in some quarters because of a threat to an initiative to keep party-goers and late night revellers safe while making their way home by taxi.
Someone came up with the bright idea that we should have taxi marshals to supervise the people in the queues waiting for a ride home. This was to be at council taxpayers’ expense, the marshals that is, not the taxi fares.
When I was the age to go to the dancing and late night parties, I couldn’t afford a taxi home and neither could anybody else.
There were no taxis in fact, apart from the limos owned by local undertakers, which would have cost a fortune to hire.
And the undertakers would have told us where to go had we asked for one, thinking we were at it.
Sometimes we had to walk it home from Balloch or Helensburgh.
How a cash-strapped council which can’t afford to keep the pavements clean and safe can even consider such madcap ideas as this is beyond me.
Someone should tell the Council that we employ police officers to keep the peace on our streets – even in taxi ranks.