We’re all sick and tired of ill-tempered Labour
Last week at South Lanarkshire Council social work committee, plans were passed that will see a new care facility built on the old St Joseph’s Primary School site in Blantyre.
This constitutes phase one of an ambitious plan to modernise care in line with the Strategic Commissioning Plan, which focuses on intermediate care and the ‘home for life’ principal.
As a result of the vote, the council will move towards creating a modern community-based care hub that will deliver better care to those who require it.
It will do this by providing intermediate care in a homely setting for older people who do not need to be in hospital.
The facility will provide support from a range of on-site specialists, allowing people to get well and return home after a relatively short stay. Research has shown time and again that people want to stay in their own homes and that those who are able to do so have better outcomes.
We should be doing everything we can to support this.
During the committee session, the Labour Party changed positions on four different occasions, and eventually backed a motion moved by another party.
Amidst a flurry of notes passed back and forth from their leader Councillor Joe Fagan in the gallery, the Labour group first advocated a different model of care home, then supported the St Joesph’s development, then moved a motion to defer the paper until the next committee session which they then withdrew, and then eventually voted in favour of a motion proposed by Councillor Robert Brown.
Questions asked by the Labour councillors had been answered already at the several presentations on the matter to which all councillors were invited to attend in the preceding months.
It is disappointing that the party came to committee so under prepared to serve their constituents.
At one point a Labour councillor was heard to say of another councillor who was speaking: “He is talking **** ”.
The same councillor then made a disparaging remark about the council leader and was asked to withdraw the comment. He refused. This level of discourse is completely unacceptable when debating a gravely serious topic which impacts everybody’s lives and I am utterly appalled by it.
South Lanarkshire Labour have shown us once again that they are in total disarray and while they carp from the sidelines, the SNP will get on with the job of governing South Lanarkshire Council effectively and with ambition.