The elephant in the room
People occasionally ignore the elephant in the room to support their point of view, but in his latest letter, Councillor Alastair Redman has ignored an entire herd in his living room.
In his latest rant he states that the SNP is failing councils as the cost of coronavirus could hit more than £400 million, but surely these costs would be the same no matter who was in power?
He also suggests that ‘essential local services have been underfunded for years’ yet fails to mention the years of needless austerity cuts, actioned by his party and their collaborators, to bail out the greedy and risky practices of the banks, which reduced funding to a devastatingly low level in general.
It is worth noting that the Scottish Government has put a greater percentage of its curtailed income into NHS Scotland than any part of the UK.
This has helped NHS Scotland to outperform all of the others in the UK for the past five years. This is paying dividends now.
He returns to his familiar attempt to insult by referring to citizens who want to take responsibility for making and managing decisions and working to make their country prosper within the priorities set by its citizens as ‘separatists’.
I’m glad to be described as a separatist because the alternative is to be an apologist for an unrepresentative government in Westminster and to abdicate decision making to that same out-of-touch group.
It is Councillor Redman’s final point, however, that demonstrates his blinkered sycophancy. His suggestion that the Scottish Government should follow the example of other parts of the UK. Could he really be saying that we should follow the chaotic shambles and incompetence that has emanated from his chums at Westminster?
Does he seriously think that any sensible person, irrespective of their own political affiliation and from any of the devolved nations, would swap what their government has done for the Westminster model?
Sadly, nowhere in his missive does Councillor Redman take time to mention the health and safety of our citizens.
It is this, together with scientific advice and without political point scoring, that is driving the Scottish Government’s response to this tragic pandemic.
Kevin MacKaveney, Tarbert.