Is this the worst council leader in Britain? – The Spectator

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asgow: the second city of the Empire, onetime shipbuilding capital of the world, home of Adam Smith, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and John Logie Baird. But for a great metropolis which gave us television, ultrasound and Alex Ferguson’s football genius, the city’s leadership has all too often failed to live up to its illustrious past.

The council’s current leader Susan Aitken is a perfect case in point. Swept to power in 2017 on the SNP tidal wave that engulfed Labour’s last bastions, Aitken’s four-year reign has been characterised by arrogance, incompetence and mismanagement. Such follies were perfectly encapsulated last month by the city’s waste crisis in the wake of bin collection cuts and bulk uplift charges, which left giant dead rats floating in bins and rubbish piling high in streets.

After GMB general secretary Gary Smith warned that Glasgow is ‘crumbling’ and ‘filthy’ ahead of November’s COP26 summit, Aitken likened such criticisms of Glasgow’s dirty streets to the ‘far right’. Asked about whether she was ’embarrassed’ by the state of her city she replied:

I’m not embarrassed, I’m more angered people are using that kind of language for political purposes. There’s a real echo of the language that some far-right organisations have used about Govanhill for a long time. It’s the same kind of words. It’s a scapegoating and a targeting of Glasgow.

Unsurprisingly Smith was not too pleased about being compared to fascistic goons and responded by calling the embattled leader ‘desperate and disgraceful.’ But it’s not just on bins where Aitken has failed: cuts mean the city’s libraries have remained closed since March 2020 with nine still awaiting a reopening date owing to the city’s dire finances – despite her party leader’s professed love of reading and books.

Scotland could miss out on £20m for road and rail links – STV news

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Scotland could miss out on £20m to help boost road and rail links because of the “disappointing” response from Holyrood ministers to a nationwide transport review, it has been claimed.

Scotland Office minister David Duguid hit out at the “lack of engagement” from Nicola Sturgeon’s government to the Union Connectivity Review (UCR).

The review, being led by Sir Peter Hendy – the current chairman of Network Rail and former commissioner of Transport for London (TfL) – will look at transport infrastructure across the UK, considering where future spending could be targeted.

At the end of June, the UK Government promised £100m would be invested across England to improve the quality of local roads – helping local economies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Scots casualty departments record worst EVER performance for second straight week – The Sun

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CASUALTY departments have recorded their worst ever performance — for the second straight week.

More than 1,000 people waited over eight hours to be seen in the seven days to August 15 in Scotland.

Rival MSPs slammed Nats health chief Humza Yousaf as official stats showed just 76 per cent of patients were seen within the national four-hour target.

Coalition of stasis – stephendaisley.com

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The partnership agreement between the Nationalists and the nationalists who call themselves Greens was inked last week but there was no vellum, no pomp — and no wonder. Sold as a great innovation in the operation of government in Scotland, it is in fact a tawdry treaty planned, drafted, agreed and signed for one purpose only: meeting the present political needs of the First Minister.

Nicola Sturgeon has never excelled as a minister but as a backroom plotter she is second to none. There is a delicious villainy to what she has done and as she detailed the scheme on Friday afternoon, her oblivious prey on either side of her, I am certain I detected a Machiavellian twinkle in her eye. Her snare could not have been more obvious if it had the word ‘trap’ beside it in flashing neon lights, and still they leapt right into it.

The Scottish Greens believe they have joined a government. They have actually just undergone a hostile takeover. Not a permanent one, for they will be dropped when they are no longer needed and all the baggage from their time in government will crash down on their heads swiftly thereafter. They might protest that they got red lines written into the agreement but there is not one of them that will have pained Sturgeon to concede. Who cares what Ross Greer thinks about private schools? Given how many on the SNP benches attended one, the party will be only too happy to let the Greens have that issue.