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Labour by-election hat-trick shows that Glaswegians want to shake up the Council

Last week, the people of Maryhill, the North East and Drumchapel & Anniesland Wards elected three new Labour councillors.


Marie Garrity, Mary McNab and Dr Davena Rankin will be excellent local representatives who will be tireless advocates for their communities in the City Chambers and who will challenge the mismanagement of Glasgow City Council. Next Thursday, residents in Partick East & Kelvindale Ward will also go to the polls to elect a new councillor.


Having spoken to thousands of fellow Glaswegians over the last few months, it is clear to me that most people are fed up with a knackered SNP Council administration who are out of ideas, who arrogantly put party tribalism ahead of our city’s interests and have tangibly failed to improve Glasgow over the last seven and a half years.


Communities across our city are demoralised by the impact of relentless cuts handed down by the Scottish Government and compounded by the Council, the most severe inflicted on any Scottish city. The disgraceful decision to cut teacher numbers by 172 this year and by a total of 450 over the next three years will be felt most acutely in schools in the poorest districts and it will affect those that require additional support the most. It is a social injustice that will have lifelong consequences.


While the SNP increased charges for parking, they have failed to improve public transport so that people have a practical alternative to driving, meaning that it is effectively an extra tax on those who have no alternative way to get to their work or to care for their relatives.

Public transport in Glasgow is continues to underperform, with the most expensive bus fares of any British city, and services that are notoriously unreliable, while the Subway doesn’t operate after 6pm on a Sunday or stay open later to support major public events.


The regional transport authority, SPT, is working to establish a bus franchise for Greater Glasgow so that we can regain public control of our bus network, but the SNP Scottish Government has undermined progress on this by slashing SPT’s capital budget to zero and dragging their heels on implementing the necessary legislation. When you compare this stagnation with the progress made in rival cities like Manchester and Liverpool in recent years, it is all the more galling to see Glasgow failed like this.


This is a council administration with no imagination or creativity – and they are out of ideas for Glasgow’s progress.


They have allowed the housing situation in Glasgow to descend into a crisis even though there is enough empty floorspace in Glasgow city centre to fill New York’s Empire State Building. They even slashed the budget to build new affordable housing by a quarter earlier this year.


Part of the solution to the housing crisis lies with the bolstering of community-owned housing associations. Yet, when the pioneering Reidvale Housing Association in Dennistoun was being railroaded into an asset-stripping takeover by an opportunistic London-based housing group, SNP councillors stood idly by while Labour Councillors and Parliamentarians fought to save Reidvale, in what was one of the most successful grassroots community campaigns in the city’s recent history.


Susan Aitken has now surpassed the late Pat Lally – who oversaw the Garden Festival, European City of Culture and construction of the Royal Concert Hall – as the longest serving Council Leader in the city’s history – what will her legacy be other than having held Glasgow hostage while her party bosses in Edinburgh imposed unprecedented cuts to the city’s budget, defending the indefensible to a risible extent, all the while overseeing a palpably worsening situation in cleansing, schools, public transport, as well as a housing emergency?


Glaswegians don’t like being taken for fools. When the people of Partick East & Kelvindale vote for a new Councillor in the by-election next Thursday, I hope that they elect Labour candidate James Adams who is dedicated to the improvement of his community and addressing the big challenges facing this city with integrity and imagination. Glasgow needs a shake-up in its administration, and next week, people can once again send a clear signal to Susan Aitken that they are scunnered with her party’s shameful stewardship of our city.





2 Comments


Great job the labour party team

Thanks

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Great article

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