NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY
There was a remarkable e mail in my in-box at the weekend. It began: “Scottish Labour has called on the SNP to protect funding for Scotland’s libraries following a series of closures.”
I immediately checked the date. This must be wrong, I thought, some kind of internal plot designed to put the skids under Provost Douglas McAllister’s, pictured right, bid to become West Dunbartonshire’s next MP at the upcoming General Election.
Following on from the disastrous mess they have made of running West Dunbartonshire Council since taking over from the equally incompetent SNP, this was a howler of magna proportions.
Why? Because in West Dunbartonshire we’ve just had the highest profile community library closure in Scotland.
And it was Labour that did it.
It was Labour that put the key in the door of Balloch Library despite public protests in the streets of Dumbarton and Vale of Leven plus a petition signed by 1,500 people of all ages in one of the most deprived areas of this region.
The residents of Haldane and beyond are taking their case for a judicial review of the closure decision to the Sheriff Court. They are not finished yet. Good luck to them, I say.
Another council error which illustrates how badly this council is performing can be gauged from the Comments column they publish on Facebook, a weekly indictment they serve on themselves to their own detriment.
That charge sheet has been put together in such a cack handed way that it informs folk with complaints about everything from brown bins to Flamingoland that it’s not the dedicated phone line they should be contacting but someone else entirely.
It’s precisely not the kind of thing you would put out there to console people who were becoming more and more angry and frustrated by the minute (and there are lots of minutes) while hanging on the Church Street line for an interminable length of time.
This is the Labour Group at the meeting where they decided to close Balloch Community Library.
Basically the whole council complaints system stinks. Can’t Get No Satisfaction should be the song they play on the line to people while they are hanging on waiting to be answered.
That e mail I opened this Notebook with telling you about how not to treat the public or how to empower the electorate should be listened to and acted on.
Instead we have the Three Wise Monkeys installed in Church Street’s Fawlty Towers at great public expense giving out misleading information.
As for Labour, they are no better than the SNP. That press release from them urged the Scottish Government to stop closing libraries.
Are they suffering from memory loss. Have they forgotten already about what is happening at Balloch Community Library?
Cloth-eared Labour went ahead with the SNP decision to shut it even when they had the opportunity to keep it open.
That was just disgraceful and the arrogance in the way they did it was every bit as bad and politically inept and naïve as the way First Minister Humza Yousaf sacked the Greens.
That performance blew up in his face and the Haldane closure will do much the same to Provost Douglas McAllister and Labour when it comes to the General Election later this year.
I think Labour will win. Some people would vote more for a labour pedo than the other candidates. Craig Edwards got more votes than other labour candidates. The bar is low. At some point people might see the connection between who you vote in and how libraries are closed down. But we are a long way from that.