NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY
I don’t know who makes these suggestions, but I would hope it is the “blow in” officials and not the elected representatives of the people of West Dunbartonshire.
The following items are the services that got off the hook at the Council Budget Meeting in the Burgh Hall on Wednesday:
I accept that councillors had to do something to appease the SNP government, who keep cutting the amount of money allocated to Scotland and subsequently to the country’s 32 councils.
But did they really have to scare the lives out of old folk in the Vale of Leven by threatening to lease their bowling club out to them, which would eventually have led to closure?
Bowling clubs are the only places elderly folk have to socialise, to sit down for a cup of tea and a blether and avoid the loneliness that often brings with it the dreadful diseases of dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Whose daft idea was it to believe it was possible for these bowlers in Renton, Balloch, Bonhill and Alexandria to say Yes to this and to keep voting Labour as they and their ancestors had done for the past century and more.
The councillors wanted the bowlers to lease their premises from them, to get out the lawnmowers and cut their own greens and do the maintenance work to keep their clubhouses wind and water-tight. Then they woke up. In their dreams!
How stupid was it for two Labour councillors to walk out of the budget meeting when Jim Bollan of the Community Party, remarkably the only member to stand up for these veterans – if anyone else did then we could couldn’t see them or hear them since we were looking at the back of their head and they were mumbling into the inefficient sound system in the chamber – and put their case
How politically cack handed was this proposal? It is generally accepted that old people are more likely come rain or shine to traipse down to the polling stations on election day and cast their vote for the party they have always supported.
Then the council came up with another daft idea of closing the only municipal golf course at Dalmuir. Did they really think pensioners had the cash to switch their membership to Cardross or Cameron House? What world do they occupy? Have they never heard the “We’ve got John McGinn” song ringing out from Hampden Park?
Or that the £15 Elderly Welfare Grant would not be missed, or that taking a chunk out of the clothing grant for school pupils or trimming back the Education Maintenance Allowance would be meekly accepted by the teenagers who qualify for it?
And if councillors ever did have the courage to make the politically naïve moves to cut back on street cleaning in the housing schemes and keeping public parks and town centres tidy that people would continue to vote for them?
Do they think that the private investors who are being coaxed into funding the pie in the sky industrial estate at the Esso tank farm in Bowling – 1,000 jobs are supposed to be involved – would be attracted to a dirty, dilapidated, deprived dump which Dumbarton would quickly become?
It’s little wonder that people who take an interest in politics are forecasting that Martin Docherty Hughes of the SNP will retain the West Dunbartonshire seat at Westminster since Labour’s man, Provost Douglas McAllister, and his Labour colleagues aren’t exactly covering themselves in glory at the council.
No politician in their right mind would be considering doing away with deputy head teachers when it is revealed – and it will be soon although only in The Dumbarton Democrat – what state our education system is really in here.
Given the upsurge in violence, drug taking, truancy and generally all-round bad behaviour in classrooms, not to mention the attacks by pupils on teachers and support staff, who would be naïve enough to suggest that the time was right to reduce secondary school management levels?
We have large, prosperous businesses around here – Chivas Brothers and Aggreko at Kilmalid, for example, and contrary to the strongly held opinions about nuclear weapons, HM Naval Base, Faslane at Faslane and Coulport, plus the potential for tourism to expand exponentially from Glasgow to Oban.
But we need personable, well-educated, young people to take up employment in it, and for recruitment to public services and the NHS to flourish here. With so many young people leaving school unable to read and write – don’t mention count – I am afraid West Dunbartonshire won’t cut it.
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Bullying, bragging and banning – plus budgets, of course – are words which West Dunbartonshire Council should perhaps stay away from, words beginning with B. Our elected representatives aren’t good at them.
The bullying comes from the fact that they victimised a disabled employee who is currently being offered around £1 million in compensation from the council for the way they victimised him.
There are employees not turning up for their work in the morning because they afraid of being bullied by their bosses.
The bragging comes in their media releases where they appear to believe they have carte blanche for deciding who receives what information from their public relations department. That’s anti democratic.
They were at it again today when they refused to e mail The Democrat with a section of Labour leader Martin Rooney’s apology for having to impose a raft of budget cuts on the people here.
And they banned us from taking photographs of the Council in session. Perhaps that is understandable because I know that if I were a councillor at this time I wouldn’t be happy about everyone knowing who I was and what I looked like.
Anyway, no one – except me, of course – paid any attention to their ban on Wednesday since I already had on file pictures of the council in session, one of which I impose on you now.
In case they didn’t know – and they really didn’t – some of the people in the public gallery last night ignored them and took pictures anyway, using their mobile phones. While I was made to nurse my camera. Welcome to the 21st century.
Those picture takers had better watch out. I have been banned for years for asking for the sound to be turned up and for a seat on the press bench. I am also not allowed to speak to members of the the communications team. That’s an oxymoron if ever there was one.
As I said the gallery snappers had better beware. The sentence for taking photographs in Church Street could well be death or life imprisonment. Or banishment to Siberia where I am told these anti democratic practices are commonplace. I just thought I would Putin this wee bit at the end.
Camera shy except when it comes to election time and photo calls – West Dunbartonshire Council members debate about closing Balloch Library. Top of page: local people calling for Labour to keep Balloch Library open were losers when it came to Budget Day.