Sign up and you’ll make a difference
Community council wants new members
24.05.2018 Johnstone Community Council is appealing for another 10 members to fill its ranks.
As it stands, the community council has just nine members representing an area with more than 16,000 people.
And secretary Iain McMillan, who was a councillor for the area for 22 years before standing down last year, has encouraged new blood to sign up and stand up for local issues.
He said: “For the first time in a long, long time we are getting a lot of interest from members of the public.
“We seem to have sparked a bit of interest and people can see that rather than just sitting around moaning about things, we are actually quite proactive.
“The new community council committee took charge in the autumn.
“Very shortly after that the council introduced parking charges in Johnstone without any consultation whatsoever.
“As you can imagine, people were not very happy about this.”
Four or five people have expressed an interest in joining the community council and Mr McMillan described the difference members can make.
He added: “You can make a difference in your community. It is a forum for people to air their views.
“You find that people have got issues with this thing or that thing and they’ll talk about it in pubs or down their bowling club, but if you come to the community council then people will listen.
“Most of us have lived in Johnstone all our lives and we care about the area.”
Johnstone Community Council hold meetings once a month in Johnstone Town Hall.
The next meeting will take place on Thursday, June 14, at 7.30pm and is open to all members of the public.
The deadline for applications to join the council is Friday, June 1. Paisley vets Kerry Molloy, from Love Street Vets, and Neil McIntosh, of Abbey Veterinary Group, share their views with you every Thursday. Today, Neil recalls how his grandmother’s great advice has stuck with him throughout life.
My dear old gran, now long departed, taught me many things.
But two stand out and have lived with me since her death.
The first arose from her ability, especially later in her life, to get words a little mixed up.
She knew what she wanted to say.
It just didn’t always come out right.
Thus she could often be heard, while peeling potatoes or making her famous dough balls, singing in her classic, shrill, wavering granny voice, a stirring rendition of that old favourite, “Under the chessing spreadnut tree...”
Similarly, when she was quite close to the end and I enquired after her health, she responded by telling me: “My liver isn’t working, my kidneys are bad and my heart is pretty poor.
“In fact, my only organ that is still functioning properly is my mouth organ!”
The second came from a more direct piece of granny advice.
She would say: “Don’t judge people till you have walked a mile in their shoes.”
Now, as a young boy, this always amused me.
She, after all, took a size five and I was a healthy size nine, but later in my life and especially after I had qualified as a vet, her words came back to me over and over.
Veterinary surgeons, just like ‘normal’ people, can sometimes find it difficult to summon exactly the right words on each and every occasion that speech is required.
And let me tell you, I think we communicate far more than our medical counterparts.
I certainly try, with every consultation, to explain what I think and why and what we are going to do about it.
But, inevitably, even with the very best of intentions, sometimes the words just come out wrong.
Particularly when clients are not very well known to you, an attempt at explaining a poor prognosis or giving bad news can come out a bit like my gran’s chessing spreadnut tree and that can cause upset when none was intended.
And, quite naturally, anxious people who are worried about their pets often have heightened emotions and can hear an unintentional change of pitch or see an apparent shrug of the shoulders that is just not meant.
Which brings us nicely back to the second part – “Don’t judge someone till you have walked a mile in their shoes.”
It is crucial for us vets to appreciate what our clients are concerned about and what our patients are feeling.
We need to remember that the wee bitch that is to be admitted to be spayed might be our third of the morning but, for the owner, it may be the only one in 13 years and that is why they want to ask a hundred questions and kiss their pet before they leave to spend a day fretting on the outcome.
But this works for clients too.
Occasionally, just occasionally, that vet that you are castigating for having kept you waiting too long might just have had to euthanase a muchloved pet.
Perhaps one that he has known for years.
We could all do with wearing each other’s shoes sometimes.