SNP 3 - 1 WORKERS

Today saw another round of the farce that is Renfrewshire's full council meetings, A couple of diamonds as always emerged albeit unintentionally, a cracker started the meeting when Cllr. Adam attacked Labour over it's attitude to the Scrutiny and Petitions Board. Cllr. Adam is relatively knew and perhaps a bit lazy and; inexplicably no one seemed to have told him that prior to being made the administration in May 07 the SNP had not bothered to turn up to a Scrutiny board for 7 years, I'm not making this up honestly. There was rather a stunned silence when I pointed this out to him and the SNP were off to a rather gaff strewn and bad tempered start, it's not great to kick off the full council by making a complete a**e of yourself but at least Cllr. Adam did not seem too concerned. He gave the impression that he did not get it, his colleagues around him though did get it, if looks could kill. He looked stupid and they were made to look equally stupid for not spotting the gaff in advance, I think he might have his comments looked at in advance in future, still I suppose we should to remind ourselves that some people voted for this guy.

Cllr.Adam started off bad and then went downhill; I moved a motion against the part privatisation of Royal Mail and the SNP sneakily got the hapless and gullible Cllr.McCartin to move an anodyne amendment which we accepted, they did this to hide their own record on privatisation and it would have worked OK except for the aforementioned Cllr. Adam who decided to break the fragile agreement and attack the Labour Party. This gave me no choice but to raise matters like the attempt by the gnats to privatise the highland forests, and I of course had to mention TNT. They are the private company who are tipped to get part of the Royal Mail if privatisation goes ahead. Unfortunately for Cllr. Adam and the SNP; TNT also took over Renfrewshire Council’s internal mail service when the gnats privatised it so, to clarify; the SNP don’t want TNT to get a part of the Royal Mail but, they took the work from their own staff and gave TNT their own internal mail contract, this is the same TNT Co. who are fighting in the courts of several countries to avoid paying the minimum wage the SNP can sure pick them eh wow! there’s more. I also mentioned the municipal golf courses in Fife which the gnats are also privatising and the leisure centre in Stirling which they have privatised by handing it to a private Co. who; wait for it; wait for it; also own the Stirling Council PPP schools estate. Metaphorically speaking this was the day that Cllr. Adam and his unintentionally hilarious colleagues ran out with forks when it was raining soup; laughing aside though they, ‘the SNP’ are the Renfrewshire Administration. And that is not funny.

The title of this piece refers to 4 items on the agenda which related directly to workers and their wages, rights and conditions. All 4 were subjects of motions from Labour in favour of workers everywhere including Renfrewshire Council. The motion concerning the Royal Mail was; as you have seen, carried in favour of the CWU members 1-0 to the workers. Then there was a Labour motion to pay our council workers a minimum of £7 / hr. In line with Glasgow’s Labour Administration. The SNP squirmed and twisted producing spurious arguments and shamefully and; all to predictably turned their back on their workers again; despite being reminded that they gave senior officers a rise of £11,000 a year, that made it (workers 1 – 1 SNP).

Labour also moved that the council in preparation for the oncoming building work to upgrade its houses employ more apprentices again the SNP talked and blustered and once again predictably let down working people by voting it down; that made it – (workers 1 – SNP 2). We then had a truly sickening exhibition of cowardice from the gnats, the Labour motion was to condemn the recently exposed scandal of firms blacklisting workers because of past activities in union and health and safety matters, we called for Renfrewshire Council to be more diligent and find out if any of these companies were employed by us and whether any of them were tendering for council work with a view to bringing them into line. The idea that the council should stand up for victimised and blacklisted workers brought a palpable shiver of terror to the serfs on the SNP? Lib. Dem. side of the chamber and this was also defeated by the administration that made the final score ( workers 1 – 3 SNP )

These are the people who call themselves ‘Scotland’s Party’ their Lib. Dem. allies spent the day as usual grovelling and staring at the floor, a gutless bunch with no grasp of decency and no position on anything, they came in last in the election and are now forming the administration, is it any wonder these opportunistic political frauds like PR?

Just a foot note - the behaviour of Cllr.McFee SNP seems to be getting quite erratic; I fear for him I really do, it now seems that he feels obliged to speak on every issue no matter what , and with such fake passion as well. My theory is that his disappearance in to what was for him the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ known to the rest of us as Holyrood has traumatised him, not being allowed to appear or speak in public for 4 years by his own side has left him with an overwhelming desire to make up for lost time so; no matter how banal; no matter how preposterous the line, the self delusion or the embarrassment we, all of us will have to suffer, the knowledge that his own colleagues feel the same is little comfort.