McColl is our very own answer to Boris
He is West Dunbartonshire’s answer to Boris Johnston, part of a rare species seldom seen in the zoo that politics has become in recent times.
Just like the Tory boor and bully boy who will brook no media or public scrutiny, Councillor Jonathan McColl, leader of the SNP administration on West Dunbartonshire Council, has gone into hiding.
He has become a recluse and led his team into a boycott of press and public.
And again, just like Johnston, McColl refuses to tell the people who elected him what his plans are to deal with the planning application for a leisure complex from Flamingo Land on Loch Lomondside in the heart of his own Balloch constituency.
This is the biggest and probably most sensitive project McColl will have to deal in his lifetime in politics, which many people have wished for a long time hope will be suitably brief.
He is neither fit for purpose nor value for money, the £33,000 plus expenses and other fees which he receives annually from the public purse.
At least Boris Johnston delegated the task of smuggling him into 10 Downing Street to a hand-picked team of sleekit spin doctors from his own wrecked party.
Winston Churchill would choke on his cigar smoke and brandy at the thought of Boris setting foot in the place.
But there was not a single elected member of the SNP present at the consultation meeting of 300 concerned people to put McColl’s and party’s position to the public.
Or to reveal whether they are for or against what many regard as a threatened blight on the Bonnie Banks, which is renowned across the world in song and story.
Someone should tell McColl that leaders are expected to lead from the front, and that’s not curled up in front of the TV in his own living room.
There is no question that he should have been out there in the White Church at that meeting.
Especially since it was in his own ward that Flamingo Land propose to set up their gaudy chalets and cheap hotel.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon should stir McColl into activity by thrusting a thistle up the kilt covering his ample backside and get him out there on the doorstep.
If she doesn’t there will be no Failte go Lomond for the SNP and the impact of McColl’s incompetence will cause even more harm to the already seriously damaged national party.
Meeting report and pictures by Bill Heaney follow below in the next item.