By Bill Heaney
West Dunbartonshire Council Labour Group leader Martin Rooney has come out publicly in support of the Flamingoland planning application to the Loch Loch Lomond Park Authority for permision to build their highly controversial £40 million resort and zoo in Balloch.
Councillor Rooney, who represents the Lomond area, which includes Balloch, on the basket case council, says Flamingoland would be of huge economic benefit to the Loch Lomondside village despite an outpouring of objections from more than 80,000 people from across the world.
It’s the latest message from the Labour that they couldn’t care less about public opinion – 1,500 people signed a petition against the closure of Balloch Library and more than 1,000 signed a petition against the sacking of a Dumbarton GP, but both went ahead regardless – and this looks likely to put paid to the party’s chances of success at two upcoming elections.
Martin Rooney (centre) whose stance on Flamingoland could be coming between Provost McAllister and an election victory over the SNP’s Martin Docherty Hughes (right).
The Labour Provost Douglas McAllister is standing in the West Dunbartonshire parliamentary seat which is currently occupied by the SNP’s Martin Docherty Hughes, who looked in serious danger of losing it to Labour. He now looks odds on to come out as the winner.
Labour’s jacket on the back of the council seat for Clydebank East, which they lost after their councillor Craig Edward was convicted at Dumbarton Sheriff Court on child pornography charges, now also looks to be on an extremely shaky nail.
At one stage a Labour defeat in the parliamentary seat at Westminster looked as likely as snow in July, but their performance in opposition during the SNP’s five-year tenure in office in Church Street was abysmal.
It now looks as though Dame Jackie Baillie’s seat in the Scottish Parliament will be the only one in which Labour are able to claim any credit for political nous.
The Labour administration on West Dunbartonshire Council is made up of amateurs who are building up a dossier of failure and simply carrying on the SNP’s reputation for incompetence in delivering rotten public service.
Clear evidence of this is the weekly Council complaints column on Facebook which is crammed with examples of services where Labour are failing to deliver, from environmental strategies such as failing to cut grass in parks and other public spaces to charging people extra on their council tax to have their brown bins emptied.
Then there are the hundreds of potholes wrecking cars people cannot afford to replace on roads from Bowling to Balloch
Such matters may seem unimportant to councillors and officials, but they very much matter to householders (electors) who have to put up with them.
Meanwhile, the Council’s communications department is placing undemocratic restrictions on the media reporting such matters.
Labour is doing nothing to correct this despite the fact it was imposed by the SNP and is being kept in place by an unelected officer with what looks like a personal grudge against The Democrat.
The Rooney report of support for Flamingoland comes in the wake of a decision by Alexandria Community Council, chaired by the Rev Ian Miller, whose son, Andrew, was employed by Flamingoland in the early stages of the planning application.The retired Church of Scotland minister, formerly of Bonhill Parish Church, pictured right, has tremendous political clout in the Vale of Leven despite the fact he is not a politician.
He is hugely popular with many local people and is the man to go to for a funeral or a wedding service in these unChristian times and dwindling church membership.
Scottish Enterprise, an SNP government body, has determinedly pushed the Flamingoland project as it has no wish to be seen to make as much of a mess of it as they did with Dumbarton Football Club’s stadium move from Boghead to Dumbarton Castle, where planning issues have still not been finally resolved many years later.
So far as we know at The Democrat – remember we are not permitted to ask questions of the Council in anti-democratic West Dunbartonshire – there is no estimate for the time the work to create the Flamingoland project would take. It could be years.
It would obviously involve massive construction and roadworks which would interfere with traffic and be a deterrent to visitors to Balloch’s small businesses, which would most probably be forced to close if their trade was decimated.
What it would do for traffic heading for Loch Lomondside, Helensburgh, Luss, Arrochar and even Oban is unthinkable.
Even large businesses such as Lomond Shores, Duck Bay Marina, Cameron House Hotel, the Colquhoun Arms Hotel, the Inverbeg Inn, Tarbet Hotel, Arrochar Hotel, the Drovers’ Inn, Loch Lomond Golf Club, the Carrick Golf Club, caravan parks and guest houses, would all be badly hit.
If the Loch Lomond and Trossachs Park Authority, which is regularly exposed as being incompetent, gives planning permission to Flamingoland then supporters of the resort, such as the Labour council, deserve all that’s coming to them in the forthcoming elections.
The truth will always out. The Labour Leader said Labour were “neutral” on the Flamingo Land development, but we now have the truth from Cllr Rooney who represents Balloch.
Ian Miller seems to be the only person allowed to do letters in the Clydebank Post. Which is a lot of power.