COUNCIL COMMENT

they would have had another £200,000 worth of funding at their disposal to assist them in the amazing work they do.

We also recognise the pressure which Citizens Advice Bureaux all over North Lanarkshire will face in having to deal with universal credit enquiries, so we would also have funded them to the tune of £200,000 to assist them with another mess created by the Tories.

It is also a major disappointment to us that not only will we now be unable to increase the Scottish Government’s free school meals to Primary Four, and eventually to Primary Seven, we will not be able to continue the curricular swimming for Primary Fives.

These are just small snapshots of what an SNP budget would have offered, and I am disappointed none of them are included in the Labour/Tory one.

I know council leader Jim Logue has been urging the SNP to come back onto the finance sounding board and work with Labour and the Tories.

I accept this is a decision our group will have to make later this year, but I would say to him: never mind the Tories, come and work with us and keep the Tories out of the equation altogether. Let’s have a centreleft alliance instead.

Never forget this is the party who destroyed the industry in this country 30 years ago, and as far as I am concerned they are no better now than they were then – just ask some of the people who, although very ill, have been forced to attend back-to-work interviews.

Although this is a council group, they belong to the same party with the same ideals.

As I was finalising this column, I noticed that in his Advertiser column last week, Councillor Logue was criticising the SNP group for disrespectful language at the finance meeting.

I’m a bit disappointed he didn’t also criticise one of the Tory councillors who was the only one on the day stopped from finishing his speech by the Provost, for t aiming disrespectful comments at individual SNP councillors.