WELCOME TO THE PARTY POLITICAL BLAME GAME
IT is pretty clear that Labour, the Tories and the SNP are distancing themselves from working together in any permutation in the City Chambers after the election.
According to Malcolm Cunning and Thomas Kerr, Glasgow has never been in such dire straits.
And according to Susan Aitken if there are serious challenges to overcome it is because Labour dumped them there in the first place and the Conservatives at Westminster piled more on top.
On cleansing, Labour and particularly the Conservatives are seeking to win bin loads of votes from people’s dissatisfaction at the cleanliness of the streets.
The SNP leader in the city said it has taken them years to reform a service that Labour had mismanaged for decades.
On equal pay, which is yet to be fully resolved, Ms Aitken said that was the big decision she had to take to end the battle through the courts.
But Mr Cunning said that there has been a mythology allowed to develop around the history of equal pay and that Labour with the other parties supported the decision to stop the court appeals.
Meanwhile, the upshot is hundreds of millions of pounds paid back that is coming out of the city’s budget for decades to come.
A budget that is decreasing every year, leading to the sort of decisions that see council services, that were cut to the bone years ago, and now we are talking about amputating limbs.
The Greens in the City Chambers have not, contrary to many predictions joined in coalition with the SNP and said that it they who pushed for a better (or less worse) funding settlement.
Jon Molyneux, of the Greens, fiercely defended the independence of his party refuting any charge of being SNP lite or an independence B Team.
On hearing the leaders, coalitions look unlikely.
The election has one week to go with more arguments to be had.
Whether it’s bins, potholes or budget cuts, all the party leaders in the city recognise there are problems and on some they are even agreed.
The enormous difference is it is always someone else’s fault.