This is the politics of the workhouse, the politics of the SNP who are so proud of their efforts in the matter of food banks that they’re taking a leaf out of Tory Boris Johnston’s book and having a party to celebrate. Like Boris and Rishi Sunak, they should resign. We would all drink to that.
Lamb, new potatoes and broccoli may have been your main course for Easter Sunday dinner. Or maybe you had turkey or chicken or lamb with gravy followed by trifle, all washed down with a beer or a nice glass of wine.
That menu, more or less, is what most Scots expect to see on their plate at Easter.
Shame on you then Nicola Sturgeon and all your Nationalist cronies for even considering that the Scottish electorate will return you to power in the local council elections on Thursday, May 5.
That so many people should have had to depend on food banks, benefits handouts and Christmas toys for their children is a disgrace.
The SNP have two chances to win the election on May 5. As passengers on the Balloch, Bellsmyre, Bonhill and Brucehill bus might say: “A dug’s and nane.”
Can you imagine any intelligent voter being irresponsible enough to mark 1 or 2 or even 3 or four on their ballot paper beside the names of the SNP candidates? Or Tories?
The SNP are suffering from electoral dysfunction. They won’t have it in them to stand up against the Community Party’s two candidates in the Lomond Ward, Jim Bollan and Drew MacEoghan, where the sitting members are the SNP leader, Cllr Jonathan McColl and the Tory millionairess Sally Page, who will probably take the credit for hounding fellow millionaire Sir Tom Hunter out of Ross Priory. Good on her for that.
Tory Sally Page, SNP Jonathan McColl and Community Party candidates Drew MacEoghan and Jim Bollan. The first three will be standing in Lomond Ward.
Also standing in Lomond is Labour’s Martin Rooney who shamefully supported the SNP in the debate on corruption in West Dunbartonshire Council when the allegations were thrown out after a short (too short) debate in the Burgh Hall.
How then will “maybes aye, maybes naw” Jonathan McColl persuade the voters to support the Nats?
Talk about an albatross around your neck; that black and yellow SNP logo has the look – and the weight – of a horse’s collar.
That itself should be more than enough to sink SNP hopes deep into the allowances and expenses trough that local government members gorge themselves on, but not council taxpayers whose empty pockets they will once again be raking through this summer.
Sadly, in many households they will not find much there. The SNP have brought us back to the old heating and eating questions that prevailed 50 years ago in our deprived housing schemes and schools – “Lend us a shilling for the meter. Or a few bob tae Friday night tae buy the weans their dinner.”
The SNP’s local leaflet describes the party’s performance in national and local government as competent and claims they steered the country through the COVID-19 pandemic.
But that’s still a matter for debate and one that the SNP would almost certainly lose, especially if they those they consult (without pauchling the figures for a change) about the way our elderly at home and in care homes have been neglected. Even to the extent that many of them died.
The Queen Elizabeth and Vale of Leven Hospitals, both of which serve West Dunbartonshire.
And let’s not forget – as the SNP would like us to – the C-Diff scandal at the now grossly under-used Vale of Leven Hospital, where so many died as a result of infections. Or the Queen Elizabeth and Royal Children’s Hospitals, which serve this community and in which again there has been a scandal of major proportions.
As for education, the children in local schools have had the rawest of raw deals. There is no excuse for what happened, including the ludicrous idea from Nicola Sturgeon to cut the bottom off classroom doors to let the air circulate better through schools.
So much teaching time was lost. So many children were abandoned to get on with it on their own.
It’s really disgraceful that so many of the pupils in our schools cannot read or write properly when they leave school.
Ask some employers about the numeracy and literacy of many of the candidates for jobs.
The Council may have a thick file of statistics which challenge this, but proper scrutiny of the figures will prove them wrong. Again.
If Scotland in general and West Dunbartonshire in particular is left in the hands of the SNP after May’s election would someone please remember to switch off the lights.
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“Another major emitter was ExxonMobil’s ethylene plant at Mossmorran in Fife. Its emissions increased by a third to over 900,000 tonnes in 2020, though according to Sepa (the environmental watchdog) this was mainly due to the plant being closed for four months in 2019 for maintenance,” The Ferret investigative journalism team reveals today.
What’s more the Council, which is forever pleading poverty, is paying a cool £6 million to Exxon, one of the world’s richest companies to do the work.
Only in Dumbarton can local authority tax payers expect to be screwed to this extent by a multi-national company which doesn’t give a fig for climate change.
The polluted Esso tank farm site at Bowling, which the local council has gambled £6 million of our money on this becoming an industrial estate.
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Unite’s Margaret Wood (right), who will chair the hustings meeting at the Concord, with her UNISON colleague Val Jennings at a trade union meeting.
Tom Morrison tells me that as some of you will know that the TUC is organising election hustings for the forthcoming local elections.
A meeting in Dumbarton has been organised for this week. It will take place this week on Wednesday, the 20th of April from 7- 9pm in the Concord Community Centre, St Mary’s Way, G82 1LJ
