CITY IS READY.. .WITH CAVEATS
‘Delusional’ council leader rejects vermin and litter claim
THE leader of Scotland’s biggest council was last night branded ‘delusional’ after playing down problems with rats and litter ahead of the Cop26 summit.
Susan Aitken described an incident in which a binman was taken to hospital after being scratched by a rat as ‘minor’ and blamed Margaret Thatcher for the state of Glasgow’s streets.
During a car crash appearance before Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee in Glasgow, the SNP leader of Glasgow City Council said she was not ‘embarrassed’ by the condition the city is in.
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross raised concerns at the meeting about ‘bins overflowing, there’s rats on the streets and some of your employees have been taken to hospital while collecting that rubbish’.
Miss Aitken initially claimed the comments were ‘gratuitous’, but when pressed, she said: ‘There was one, possibly two at most, small incidents where there was a health and safety incident and an employee was taken to hospital for what was very minor contact with a rat.
‘It is not unheard of, and has not been unheard of for decades, that our cleansing employees occasionally experience rats.
‘It is also something that is not unique to Glasgow. It is something that is happening across the UK.
‘All cities have rats – and there is evidence just now that there has been an increase of around 25 per cent in the rat population during the pandemic. All cities are struggling with this just now.’
Asked if she regretted previous ‘ridiculed’ comments that Glasgow only needed a ‘spruce up’, she said: ‘No. I would never ever use the kind of language about this city that you are using right now.
‘I do not in any way shy away from the challenges that we face as a city; historic challenges that have been around for many, many years, much of them a legacy of our postindustrial past when the Thatcher government walked away and abandoned and left in neglect communities right across this city, exacerbated by the pandemic.’
She said that Glasgow is ready for the summit, ‘with caveats’, and insisted none of the problems it faces is ‘enough to cause panic’.
Tory MP John Lamont said he had taken pictures of major problems with rubbish across Glasgow. He asked Miss Aitken: ‘Do you feel any sense of embarrassment personally that you have allowed the city to fall into this scale of disrepair and condition?’
The council leader told him she was ‘never embarrassed about Glasgow’, adding: ‘I think that is entirely gratuitous... I was in London a couple of weeks ago for the first time since the pandemic and I have to say I had a phone full of pictures as well.’
Sandesh Gulhane, Tory MSP for the Glasgow region, said: ‘Susan Aitken’s comments are completely delusional.
‘We’ve heard a lot of far-fetched excuses from Susan Aitken over the past few months, but the idea that Margaret Thatcher is to blame for the state of Glasgow’s streets, absolutely takes the biscuit.
‘The disgraceful state of our city right now is due to nothing other than years of SNP incompetence.’