By the Editor
Readers looking for full and fair coverage of local affairs need look no further than The Dumbarton Democrat, our digital on-line news platform for West Dunbartonshire and Helensburgh.
We may be banned by West Dunbartonshire Council for fighting for the rights of local people and supporting local campaigns but we won’t be gagged.
We are a quality news source and we are free to access.
There’s a General Election coming up on July 4 when you will at last have a chance to decide who represents you in the House of Commons.
You don’t have to do what you did before. If you always do what you always did then you will always get what you always got.
That outcome for West Dunbartonshire has in recent years been pathetic. We have had the SNP and the Labour Party in power here for years.
If you want to see their legacy then you only have to look around you at our town centres which are shambolic, a disgrace which will take many years to restore.
Is it any wonder that the Communists and Fascists are again trying to get a foothold in our local politics?
Look at the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond which is polluted with sewage, the River Leven and the Clyde. You can swim or fish in our local waters, but don’t expect them to be sparkling clean.
Loch Lomond National Park has failed to deliver on what it was founded for, which certainly wasn’t the Flamingo Land resort in Balloch.
We are on a fool’s errand with the City Region project at Bowling, having loaned it £6 million and counting to clean up the pollution at the old tank farm there (the Exxon oil company that caused the pollution are billionaires, and we are a skint wee council covering a large deprived area).
We are being taken for mugs. They are telling us they will be creating access to Dunglass Castle and the riverside with our money, but there are already rights of way down there which the authorities have a duty to maintain but haven’t bothered their shirt to comply with the law.
The council caught the rest of us with our kilts around our ankles when they included an £8 million library we don’t need in the Dumbarton town centre “levelling up” project.
You are being ripped off by Scottish Water, whose executives and shareholders are filling their own wellington boots with ill-gotten cash while taxpayers are are up to their backsides in scat.
And by the Health and Social Care Partnership between West Dunbartonshire Council and the Health Board. That will never work in its present form.
There is no need for me to draw your attention to West Dunbartonshire Council’s shortcomings. I know you’re not daft. They are there for all to see.
The paying public aren’t stupid, contrary to what Church Street’s politicians and spin doctors appear to believe.
By all means cast your vote on July 4 but do that only after you have taken a long, hard look at the people who are standing for parliament. And their policies, of course.
Some of these people couldn’t spell democracy. Are they really the best we have to represent the rest of us in this community?
Make up your mind and show your interest in taking West Dunbartonshire back to what it once was, a proud, prosperous busy region of Scotland.
And look ahead while you are at it. We need people with ambition and aspirations, people with pride in our community, who will strive to make it a much better place in which to live and work and leave a civic legacy worth inheriting to our children and grandchildren.
What we have at present comes nowhere near that. The Dumbarton Democrat will keep saying this. We will not be gagged.
Top of page: Dumbarton from the air pictured by Pedro.
A fine summary of the issues and failures. Here in Adelaide, it leaves you with the question of who I will vote for. Voting is compulsory here, although you can, of course, spoil your ballot paper. In recent times here many have been voting Greens in the knowledge that the vote will flow to Labor.