AT last week’s Full Council, or the gathering of the clans as I have come to know it, the SNP and the Greens surprised no one at all by blaming the current budgetary crisis facing the council on just about everyone … except themselves.  

Despite running Scotland for 17 years and Glasgow for seven, the nationalists and their Green facilitators continue to argue that we have been the victim of Tory/Labour/Westminster (delete as appropriate) austerity measures and that every penny spent by the SNP in Holyrood has been wisely allocated.  

That is of course excepting the following and believe me this list is not exhaustive:  

l Almost £400 million spent on two ferries that have still to set sail.  

l The budget for replacing HMP Barlinnie soared to almost three times its original estimate of £170m – now it could cost £400m and is behind schedule.  

l £30m on a National Care Service which nobody wants.  

l £9m on fake foreign embassies.  

l £9m in a deal through their Scottish National Investment Bank in relation to their shambolic Deposit Return Scheme.

l £6m wasted on giving prisoners phones during the pandemic which were used to conduct crimes, including a firebombing.  

l £10m was wasted on John Swinney’s despised Named Persons Scheme.  

l £50m spent on BiFab, getting zero jobs or investment in return.  

l More than £50m wasted on costs in relation to the malicious prosecution of Rangers by the Crown Office.  

Thankfully, most voters have become alert to this gross mismanagement of taxpayer money but amidst all the confected shock about nasty Tories and Westminster governments handing Scotland less and less each year, let’s examine a few other facts.    

The SNP Holyrood Government now receives a record block grant from the previous Conservative UK Government to the tune of £41 billion.  

As a result of this SNP/Greens have been able to choose to spend that money on a variety of different options for Scots which are unavailable to taxpayers in the south.  

Be it free prescriptions, free tuition fees in higher/further education, baby boxes to new mothers or free travel to young and old alike, the SNP have been very generous despite that nasty Tory administration hacking away at its Budget like a lumberjack on overtime!  

As the old saying goes, to govern is to choose and the SNP have chosen to make policy decisions which have resulted in the provision of “free stuff” to most, if not all, of the population in some instances.  

Except it’s not free, it gets paid for by you and me in our already sky-high taxes. The SNP have chosen to increase income tax rates paid in Scotland not just for the wealthy, as they would have you believe, but for a lot

of hard-working people on middling earnings such as store managers, nurses, teachers or firefighters.

Again, a choice made by the SNP and voters will have to decide if this action has resulted in better services.  

In addition to increased income tax, they have further chosen to subsidise this “free stuff” by hacking away at local government budgets, in the same way that they accuse the Westminster government, incorrectly, of doing to Scotland.  

That’s why the SNP administration in Glasgow has cut local services such as cleansing, grass cutting and general maintenance; making Glasgow look as neglected as it has done in many a year.  

But it gets worse, as now the SNP/Green Budget is cutting teacher numbers by more than 400 over the next three years (more than 160 have already gone this year) and slashing school resources budgets, undoubtedly hitting the poorest families in our city.  

That’s a direct choice made by this SNP government, to subsidise university education, bus travel and give free baby lotion and nappies to all new born babies, including the offspring of the genuinely well-off.

To pay for it they are prepared to cut the vital education lifeline to the most deprived children in our city. The lifeline that will give these children real independence in their future lives.  

Next time you speak to your SNP/Green councillor ask them why they value the transport needs of well-off over 60s or the university education of the children

of millionaires over the aspirations of our city’s most needy families.  

 For it is a choice they made and continue to make.