In the week that an 11-year-old schoolgirl in Helensburgh may have died after having taken drugs, the Labour Council in Church Street have agreed to cut 20% from their budget for addiction services across West Dunbartonshire.
And done so while local deaths and destruction to families continue.
Oh, I know Helensburgh is not in West Dunbartonshire.
But it used to be and will be again once we have yet another reorganisation of local government, which is inevitable given the state we are in now.
The addiction services will be outsourced to a company called “We Are With You”, which has never worked in West Dunbartonshire before.
Local services are currently provided by Alternatives & DACA in Quay Street, Dumbarton, which is next door to the new children’s library where (recovering) addicts and alcoholics regularly hang about.
Yet another piece of skilful forward planning and waste of money by arrogant people who, if they had a brain in their head, it would be lonely.
And which many members of the electorate see as a waste of £8.5 million from the “levelling up” fund which was supposed to regenerate Dumbarton Town Centre.
I am told by Community Party councillor Jim Bollan that no consultation with service users or their families took place before these services were outsourced.
I don’t find it in the least surprising the Health and Social Care Partnership are involved.
The H&SCP, which is an ALMO (Arms Length Management Organisation), will rubber-stamp this move at their meeting on the 25th November 2025.
Three Labour councillors sit on the H&SCP but are not accountable to WDC for their actions.
This is the committee which illegally sacked a local GP during the Covid Crisis and refused point blank to accept any responsibility.
This is the committee which kept you standing out in the freezing cold at Crosslet House and forcing you not to touch your dying elderly relatives.
I had myself to go along as a witness to an employment appeal tribunal to underscore the point made by the objectors about the doctor.
This was that he was as efficient, caring and well-loved as his patients said he was in their ignored petition which might ass well have been slung in a bin.
Thankfully, the doctor was cleared by the judge of not having done anything wrong and eventually went back to work at Dumbarton Health Centre.
These people don’t have a clue about what’s happening on the streets and housing estates of deeply deprived West Dunbartonshire.
How could they? A fair percentage of residents in this area are living in abject poverty and forced to use food banks.
They were promised that things could only get better under Labour.
They were fed propaganda that their day would come under the SNP.
But it’s not happening. Not a bit of it.
Things will only get worse after the upcoming national Budget.
Direct taxation will not now take place under Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
It will be replaced by stealth taxes, a sleekit way of parting the public from their cash which was first introduced by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
And guess who is supposed to be holding Reeves’ hand through the Budget preparations?
Yes, you guessed it. That same old yesterday’s man Gordon Brown.
We need change – and we need it now, not a few years down the line.
What we don’t need is Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
In West Dunbartonshire, we need our hopeless council to be taken into special measures by the SNP Government, which many people would say has itself got us into over 17 years the mess we are in now.
New faces in Church Street and up to the minute policies made by councillors who are familiar with local people and places.
We need a council that communicates, not one that bans the press from asking legitimate questions about what they have done and what they are doing to improve our communities.
One that is open and transparent and honest.
Not one where people are victimised and bullied.
My own treatment falls into the category of elder abuse.
@@@@
That win over Denmark on Tuesday night was a boost this community badly needed and is very grateful for.
It gives us all something to look forward to, something to take pride in. A good news story at last.
The family and friends of John McGinn, the Scotland captain, have long-standing connections with Dumbarton and Dalmuir and Scott McTominay’s family’s history is in Helensburgh.
West Dunbartonshire Council’s spin doctors will be instructed to tell us over the next few weeks that Helensburgh is not in Dunbartonshire.
That’s the kind of gobbledeygook local government here creates.
Ask them in return why it is then that the Lord Lieutenant of Dunbartonshire’s remit extends to Helensburgh?
@@@@@
I see the Exonn company – the one that owned and probably still owns the land at the old Esso site at Bowling is shutting down its plant at Mossmorran in Fife with a loss of 400 jobs.
Only one councillor had the good sense to object to cash-strapped WDC giving those £millions away to one of the world’s richest oil companies.
However did you guess who? 21 Labour, Tory and SNP members nodded the “loan” through.
And they are about to give them even more of our hard-earned money from the public purse. Watch this space.
@@@@@
Top of page. The polluted Exxon site at Bowling, which WDC “loaned” them £6 million to clean up.
The artist’s impression shows an estate full of factories. What it doesn’t show are what they will be used for or if the City Region deal have tenants for them.