The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Rethinking what councils can do
There was something comfortingly ordinary about some of our reporting this week. We’ ve all become so fluent in talk of R numbers and new variants and flattening the curve that to hear people kicking up a stink about overflowing bin sand slippery pavements felt like a return to familiar territory, a tantalising reminder of a life less interesting.
Gripes about council services have long been the bread and butter of local newspapers.
As council tax payers, readers are literally invested in how their local authority spends its money. Every unfilled pothole and flickering street light feels like a personal affront when you notice the dent that direct debit leaves behind every month.
And so when the mountains of rubbish piled up next to overwhelmed recycling points in Fife, and iced-over paths turned Perthshire parks into no-go zones, people weren’t shy about letting rip.
It must be a thankless business, local government. The stuff they get right goes largely unnoticed – I don’t think anyone’s ever contacted me to tell me how thrilled they are that the bins were emptied on time this week – and for every penny spent in one department there’ s a phalanx of armchair critics with a dozen suggestions for ways it could be better spent elsewhere if only the council knew what it was doing.
It will soon be budget-setting time again. And this year, the traditional belttightening and wrangling over where to make cuts – another annual staple for the local news pages – is likely to be more brutal than ever.
The divide between central government settlements and services on the ground always claims its share of casualties, and the additional costs resulting from the Covid-19 response mean budgets will be stretched thinner still this year, and for years to come.
It may be time for people to start making a stand about the services they simply cannot afford to do without.
It may also be time for the rest of us to re-evaluate what we expect our councils to do for us, and to consider who will take up the slack if there isn’t the money and manpower at city hall.
It’s been perishing cold here all week and if I was the grumbling sort I maybe would have something to say about the lack of gritting.
I’m feeling charitable, though, so I’m willing to accept that an unusually long stretch of sub- zero days, coinciding with public holidays, higher than usual sickness rates and the added toll of staff self-isolating has put already harried winter maintenance teams under extreme pressure and they’re prioritising the main roads with the most traffic because that’s where they will have the greatest impact.
If I was a better person I’ d be like the older neighbour I saw in our village the other day, penguin walking back and forward between the grit bin and the pavements as he treated the icy tarmac at the cold crack of dawn.
It was barely light. There were few, if any, cars on the move. If it wasn’t for an ancient dog with a dicky bladder I’d have been indoors behind drawn curtains like the rest of them.
I dare say our Good Samaritan with the snow shovel would have been happier tucked up somewhere warm, too – maybe even penning a strongly worded letter to the editor about the council’s failure to fix the footpaths – but he’d hauled himself out of bed and done the street a good turn, and it’s possible I’m the only one who even knows he was there.
T he re- emergence of community spirit has been one of the few bright spots in the past year.
Within hours of the latest lockdown being announced volunteer squads were reassembling like Whatsapp avengers, ready to collect prescriptions, drop off messages and check in on vulnerable neighbours. Others had never stopped.
As the long-term costs of Covid start to become clear, we might find they are needed more than ever and we might all want to start thinking about how we can do our bit.
FITTING TRUMP FINALE
When Nicola Sturgeon was quizzed on rumours Donald Trump might be preparing to fly to Scotland after he quits the White House it felt like a moment of light relief to leaven the gloom of Tuesday’ s coronavirus briefing.
Then on Wednesday an armed mob egged on by the outgoing president and his enablers stormed the Capitol, disrupting the business of confirming his successor Joe Biden and wreaking havoc that left five people dead.
It’s a fitting conclusion to a presidency whose low lights include the Muslim ban, locking babies in cages at the Mexican border and a botched pandemic response that is now responsible for 4,000 deaths a day but no, it’s not funny any more.
He might not be Washington’s immediate problem after January 20 but his business interests here mean we can’t close the book on him just yet.
At least his four years on the biggest stage in the world show what he’s made of. Anyone who supports his enterprises knows the measure of the man whose pockets they are lining.