DUMBARTON NOTEBOOK: IF IT WISNAE FOR THE VOLUNTEERS WHERE WID WE BE?

That is, of course, if you believe that Members of the Scottish Parliament can make a real difference to the town we live in. They don’t at the moment. Labour’s Jackie Baillie has been in post at Holyrood for the past quarter-century. She keeps telling us that she is not just working but working hard to make life tolerable for the residents of not only West Dunbartonshire but the whole Dumbarton Parliamentary constituency, which extends well beyond the recognised borders. To a large extent, they can’t, or if they could, we would not be living with social housing blighted by black mould, desperate, deserted shopping centres and an environment so appalling, spoiled by litter and fly dumping that it was featured on television this week to illustrate how bad things had become. Even the world-famous Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond is neglected by the local authorities, West Dunbartonshire, Argyll and Bute and Stirlingshire.

Or even allowing officials to restrict journalists from going about their business of reporting and commenting on what is being decided in the public’s name, in the not-fit-for-purpose £16 million council offices and chambers in Church Street.

West Dunbartonshire is now known as the DIY council. If you want public services here, you have to do it yourself or pay TWICE for them, as is the case with the bin collection service. You pay your council tax, and then you pay again to have your brown bin emptied.  Is there anything else you pay for twice? Your morning milk or your shopping from the supermarket? I wouldn’t think so. If you did, the men in the white coats would be at your door to carry you off to the loony bin.

Meanwhile, the elected members of the council love nothing better than seeing residents do things for themselves. Like cleaning up the most attractive parts of the region along the River Clyde, the River Leven and Loch Lomond. They claim to be supporting the Big Clean Up across the region. But I read somewhere that they are going to allocate TWO council vehicles to help with that work. Yes, that’s correct, TWO. They really are a crackpot council living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

There have been lots of photographs in the local media publicising the fact that clean-ups are on and that it’s great fun for the public getting up to their necks in the detritus that the uncaring public leaves behind. But when you see those preposterous, expensive and unsightly “Atlas” bollards along Station Road, it is easy to conclude that so much more could have been done with so much money.

All the candidates in the Scottish Parliament elections are telling us it is time for CHANGE.

It most certainly is, but the only people who can bring that about are the voters.

This is the electorate’s big chance to bring democracy to Dunbartonshire.

Unfortunately, this is not an election for Council seats. Not this time.

If it were, we would have the opportunity to get rid of the rotten representatives, none of whom I [or you, probably?] have ever seen volunteering for any of the public services they voted to cut. |Maybe a part-time shift in a local library or putting salt on the footpath outside their door on a frosty morning. Or like, the threatened Homecare service bringing a cup of tea to and tucking an elderly and infirm person in their bed of an evening. They are very good at sitting on their hands, though, when it comes to voting to improve matters for themselves, and the suits in the management team who do an appalling job, but who think they have died and woken up in heaven when they pick up their salary cheques at the end of the month.

And if you consider that to be unfair, then look at how the council has handled the Brian Gourlay case after they bullied and victimised him.

And why the big pension authorities have again imposed fines on the council for their incompetence, which will cost hard-pressed council taxpayers a substantial sum of money to pay for something that should have been properly dealt with and settled years ago.

The case has been going through the courts here (again at great expense to council taxpayers) for longer than Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.