COUNCIL BUDGET MEETING FROM HELL

Councillor Jim Bollan and UNITE convener Margaret Wood.

By Bill Heaney

West Dunbartonshire Council will be reported to the Standards Commission for turning away members of the public from their budget meeting on Wednesday.

Margaret Wood‎ told the West Dunbartonshire Against Austerity group: “The manual workers were all turned away from the meeting today after taking holidays [a day off work] to attend.

“I have been told there were empty seats all around. Why were these men refused entry?”

Mrs Wood added: “We pay £460,000 a year for democracy this is what your councillors cost.  Yet workers and taxpayers cannot gain entry to a public meeting.

“We will be reporting them to the Standards Commission. Enough is enough.  We have photographs of the empty seats. This is totally out of order.”

Most of the public criticism of the Council decision to keep people out was targeted at the SNP administration – but Labour did not escape it entirely for sitting on their hands while this was happening.

Greg Reid said: “Well said Margaret Wood – it’s time this administration felt the force of the workers.”

Of the meeting itself, Shirley Furie said: “It was like a school playground. Horrible to watch. We have had enough. It’s going to be a long three years.  God knows what damage will be done by then.”

She added: “Surely someone can do something about it, or do we just have to suffer it?”

Margaret McCallion asked was the ban imposed in order that the administration “could tell their lies to a small amount of people. [Are they] cowards who did not want a full hall.”

Councillor Jim Bollan described the move ae “quite disgraceful. This is the first I have heard about it. Do we know who refused them entry?”

He added: “I will make a formal complaint to the legal manager as the public have a legal right to attend and it appears this has been breached.”

Susan O’Neill said the lock-out was “a disgraceful treatment of the workers” and Linda Lacon, who turned up and wasn’t allowed in said it was “shocking”.

Elaine Neeson called for all the council trade unions to get together – “down tools and do a massive walk out”.

The ability of the public to hear and see what was happening at the meeting was questioned time and again and the members and officials themselves were wrapped up in coats and scarves because the half-empty chamber was uncomfortably cold.

The air conditioning in the cavernous £15 million “chamber” appeared not to be working and some members and officials left the meeting early buttoning up their coats.

Council SNP administration leader Jonathan McColl was one of a number of councillors who complained to the Provost and asked that the heating problem should be sorted out before the next meeting.

Council employee Michael Mulkern said you couldn’t hear from the public gallery – “Some councillors are talking away from the microphones and even councillors themselves don’t know what is being said by the others.  So, what chance has the public gallery?  It’s not that hard to talk well?”

Margaret Wood replied: “I know. The acoustics are awful in the new building.”

Trade unionist Sean Davenport said: “The seats in the public gallery may have been full, but there were plenty of empty seats, and lots of space for additional seats, around the floor of the main part of the room.

“Absolutely disgusting that employees, who had taken annual leave, and others were not permitted access. So much for being open and transparent.”

Community activist Louise Robertson said: “If I was in the SNP, I wouldn’t want to let anyone in the public gallery to see how incompetent I was.”

Harry McCormack said: “When I got in, there were four empty seats that I could see.

“When we were at the reception, we were told that only seven seats were free, so seven of us were escorted to them.

“But I couldn’t hear anything, so we asked for the speakers that were on the wall to be turned on [only] to be told that they didn’t work in a new building [costing £15 million to renovate] ! You had to lean over the glass balcony to hear anything. I didn’t hear much of what was going on.”

EDITOR’S NOTE

• I missed seeing the public being stopped from entering the building because I was told by the Communications Department to be there on time. I was escorted to the public gallery. As were two other journalists. They were later escorted to the chamber where seats had been set aside for them. When I followed them I was told I would not be allowed to sit beside them and that I should leave. I said the only way I would be leaving was if they called the police to remove me. Later when I was being told again to leave, Cllr Jim Bollan intervened and said that since I was a member of National Union of Journalists, I was entitled to take my place on the press seats. I was told by a communications officer that I was “on my fourth strike”. My offences, according to her, were that I did not pass a piece of paper to someone at a meeting in Clydebank; I stood outside a door when I was locked out of a meeting in Clydebank (they refused a request for a press seat, despite my having a press card) and that when a Communications officer and others interrupted me and asked me to leave when, during a tea break in Dumbarton. This was because I was asking (quietly) if something could be done so the press and public could see and hear what was happening at these supposedly public meetings. I told her to “bugger off” which she is now claiming was harassment despite the fact that I apologised immediately. If you ask me, it was me who was being harassed and the official (‘I am a public servant, you know’) who was being ageist. Both the SNP run council and the SNP councillors and MPs have banned and boycotted The Democrat, but they won’t silence us.  Bill Heaney, Editor.