Poor old Jonathan McColl. That’s something you will never hear around these parts, and certainly not from me, WRITES BILL HEANEY
You will have noticed that the leader of the SNP administration on West Dunbartonshire Council has been passing himself off as a tree lover and climate change aficionado in recent weeks.
And he has called in his personal propaganda department – they cost council taxpayers a cool £500,000 a year – to publicise this while he sits on his ample backside presiding over planning decisions which put trees in peril.
Ploughing through council minutes today – it’s a shame that trees had to be sacrificed and be turned into paper on which to print this bumph – and looking for something interesting to report to readers of The Democrat, I came across a list detailing councillors’ allowances.
It would be interesting if you could read it but, either by accident or design, and I consider it the latter, the typeface used for the list is the smallest I have ever come across in all my 55 years of dealing with printers. It’s unreadable without the help of a magnifying glass.
Does someone have something to hide? Sure they do. Yer man McColl is pulling down a cool £36,000 a year for lording it over us, telling lies and embarking on smear campaigns.
However, your response to this may well be “so what’s new about that” since there is a widespread belief in Scotland that a large proportion of elected representatives and public officials spend much of their time being either being economical with the truth or gilding the lily by praising praising projects that they must know are bound to fail.
The era of the brown envelope hasn’t completely disappeared for people dealing with council procurement matters.
In fairness though (when am I not fair?) most of the councillors in West Dunbartonshire take what they are given which is a basic £17,000 plus around £5,000 if they chair a committee.
Only one, Denis Agnew (see yon birkie ca’d a bailie) demands an extra £5000 for strutting his stuff in the council chambers with a big gold chain around his neck.
The chain is not a reward for loyalty. How could it be? Denis a multi party man. He began his political life with Labour before jumping the dyke and putting himself forward for election as an Independent.
Considerable political horse trading went on, of course, but Denis, pictured left, was given the equivalent of the cash for a convenership, which is more than £22,000, which works out at around £100 a week more than the ordinary foot soldiers receive.
And then there is the sad case – or maybe not so sad case – of Councillor Caroline McAllister who wanted to take on Labour’s Jackie Baillie for the Dumbarton constituency seat in the Scottish Parliament.
Sweet Caroline soon became Sour Caroline when the SNP constituency party pulled the (tartan) rug from under under her and parachuted in Nicola’s pal Toni who did what he always does when he stand for election – gets beaten.
Words on the street has it that Caroline, pictured right, who saw herself as a campaigner for women’s rights, wants back into the SNP but the her erstwhile pals have been told by the plotters and schemers at the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh have dictated that she’s not on.
She now knows that her colleagues are the type of people who, if she collapsed in the street, would step over her if there was the prospect of an advantage in it for them.
And in the meantime when it comes to money, Caroline will have £5000 docked from her councillor’s salary because since she is no longer in the SNP she cannot hold a committee convenership.
In politics, everyone but everyone is dispensable.