Because of our domestic circumstances, I have to spend most of time at home. I am a round the clock home carer and so I only venture into Dumbarton for a short time to do the shopping, get to the bank and do all other things that carers do — like going to the health centre and then collecting medication for my wife from the chemist.
It has been like that since West Dunbartonshire Council and Scottish Water decided to collaborate on a project to update the sewerage system being directed into the River Leven at Dalreoch.
It would appear that putting their heads together successfully for these two public bodies to minimise traffic disruption and whatever else is required has been beyond their capabilities.
Dumbarton, left, is closed for business. That’s Glasgow Road and the A82 at Dumbuck.
Members of the public have commented on the council and Scottish Water’s performance with barbed quotes such as “If they had a brain in their head between them, it would be very lonely”.
“F***ing chaos” was how one frustrated motorist described it. Aptly.
I thought to myself that it couldn’t be that bad, but it was. In Dumbarton, levels of incompetence in the public services are at a height never before reached by mankind.
The shambles which is supposed to be administered by a council that is competent to deal with such matters as anticipating problems such as we have had visited on us this week on our roads all the way from from the A814 at Cardross Road up to the A82 at Milton.
Any public official worth his/her salt – or any vigilant councillor – would have had a plan in place to deal with such a problem were it to arise.
But what did long-suffering Dumbartonians receive? Roadworks and traffic lights and diversion and road up signs were everywhere. CHAOS.
Bright men and women we don’t have around the table in the faulty £16 million council chamber in the old Burgh Hall. That’s the chamber I was thrown out of for asking for the sound to be turned up and the press and public allocated a space where they could actually see what was going on. The council said I was havering, but later spent £52,000 on a new sound system.
One of their great triumphs, not, has been to refurbish that chamber and the half empty offices which were intended to replace the existing staff offices which they concluded they hadn’t enough of.
If the truth be told the council had more than enough office space, such as the now deserted offices in Bridge Street with that big, broken, ugly Offices to Let sign strategically designed to advertise the fact to passing motorists that there was no demand for office space in Dumbarton.
If you don’t believe me, gentle reader, then look around you at the other empty office spaces in West Dunbartonshire.
Lord save us, the council are even advertising office space to let in the Municipal Buildings.
Mind you, the state of the area around Church Street can’t be of assistance to the poor council workforce tasked with persuading new businesses to put these offices to use.
The SNP government’s performance in this regard since their attempt to modernise the Court Suite in the old Sheriff Court has been left with trees growing out of the roof and a tattered Saltire flag flying over the front door which looks like it’s done service at The Alamo.
The Saltire flag at the Burgh Hall only looks as if it was at Culloden.
I am often left thinking why do the councillors and council officers never notice these things.
One of the reasons could be that they park their their cars in the spacious car park behind the Burgh Hall and come and go by the back door. They mostly live in posh Bearsden or Helensburgh. Public transport they recommend but never use.
Whatever happened to that very expensive campaign to encourage local people to cycle to work?
The inflated salaries the members and officials earn for doing not very much with the cash allocations they have receive from central government – Boris Johnson and the Westminster Tories of the last government gave them £20 million to refurbish Dumbarton Town Centre, and just look what they have done with that money.
Between the crumbling Health Centre and the chemist shop in Church Place, which I visited in my carer’s role, I was able to take in the fact that the town’s main shopping street (so called) was the disgrace that it is. And has been since that crowd got in.
One empty shop after another, some of which have fake fronts which our councillors believed would help them to lease the premises, dominate the street where cars were parked, or abandoned, even on the pavement.
One of them had four wheels up on the pavement (should they want check this is true, the Yellow Peril will have the time of 12. 20 pm on Thursday in their diary) but did they book the driver? I think we should be told.
Meanwhile, two traffic wardens (it is said they hide up closes until someone parks where they shouldn’t before they appear to stick a penalty charge notice on the windscreen) I saw walking together along the Quay. They will brook no excuses. I looked for a discount and was refused.
I tried to speak to the warden. It seems that your granny could be dying but it wouldn’t matter to them or their bosses.
They booked me of course although I took only the few minutes to pick up the prescription before returning to my car, which was parked at the shop door.
I wonder if they put it in their notebooks that the streets in that car park area have no yellow lines on them and people think they are within the law to park there when they could be in line for a bright yellow penalty notice?
While they were doing this I noticed that nearby, behind the empty Credit Union building and beside the Bell Centre, there was an empty car park which had a huge PRIVATE PARKING sign emblazoned across it.
It’s not a private parking place at all though. The Credit Union, now closed like the banks and most of the shops, most probably rented it from West Dunbartonshire Council and it has sat there empty ever since.
It would take a morning’s work to add these EXTRA, MUCH NEEDED PARKING SPACES.
It seems however that WORK is a four-letter word in West Dunbartonshire Council.
There must be thousands of you out there who can’t wait for local government reorganisation which hopefully will improve public services here. Not before time, I say.