TELE POSTBAG ‘SNP AND TORIES ARE BOTH GUILTY’

COUNCILLOR Chris Curley will find no argument from the Labour Party that the Conservative government has crashed our economy and is utterly useless.

However, in his lengthy letter attempting to absolve the Scottish Government of the blame for local government cuts I didn’t see him explain why, while the Scottish Government budget is increasing in cash terms over the next three years, the amount they are giving to local government is not increasing at all.

If he doesn’t believe me he can look at the Scottish Government’s own Spending Review, and it’s there in black and white. I have put this to SNP members many times, but none of them are able to provide an explanation.

Politics is about choices and Scotland is currently badly served by two governments — a Tory one and an SNP one — who are both guilty of choosing to gut local authority budgets.

With a budget rising in cash terms, they could choose to provide more money for local government services, but they have not.

Councillor Curley also doesn’t deal with the fact that the Scottish Government are now also clawing back money from our local health budget.

In September, the government asked for £4 million back from our Covid budget, and this month they raided the primary care improvement budget for over £1 million.

This is money that we had planned to spend on employing additional staff to relieve the pressure on GPs, but is now going back to Edinburgh to make up for the black hole in the government finances.

If any SNP councillor is able to explain why they’ve made these choices, I’m all ears.

CLLR MARTIN MCCLUSKEY