Baffling mystery solved
A few months ago, lots of people in the Glasgow area were wondering how the city’s Labour party was going to be able to fund some of the lavish promises in its council-election manifesto, such as free wi-fi covering the entire city. Thanks to the intrepid journalism of local freesheet The Glaswegian, the answers are beginning to emerge.
“Thousands of elderly people could be forced to give up safety alarms after the introduction of charges. Glasgow City Council will next month introduce a £3-a-week charge for the community alarm telecare service.
The council’s arms-length service provider Cordia say that around seven per cent of the 13,500 users – 945 – have indicated they no longer want the service due to cost. But opposition councillors say they have been told up to 3000 will give up the alarm.”
Here at Wings Over Scotland, we say good riddance to the despicable something-for-nothing scroungers demanding that ordinary taxpayers fund the emergency service that could be the difference between their life and death. We only hope that Labour will increase the charges as time goes on, because otherwise snatching £3 a week from 10,000 vulnerable old folk will still take over three years to produce the £5m that the council is contributing towards a “regeneration” project intended to restore the “lost grandeur” of the street directly outside its imposing city chambers.
Aha the GREAT and the GOOD of GCC looking after and ensuring BEST care for Glasgow’s elderly. I’m just gobsmacked that we all just didn’t vote for Labour in May.
£1 for you £10,000 for me
£1 for you £10,000 for me
£1 for you £10,000 for me.
Right that’s enough money for you the rest is for me and my expenses.
When my mother moved from Lanarkshire to Borders she was appalled to discover that she had to pay for the alarm she had had free in her old home. She could afford it, and paid up, but her horror was really for the principle of the thing. It was something she strongly believed should be a free service to everyone who needed it.
She was right, of course, but try telling that to a Tory council. The council is now SNP-led, but I don’t suppose they’ll abolish the charges….
At least they will die happy knowning George Square will be a monument to Labour.
Sickening.
Still we can always rename it independence square after 2014 and put the alarms back.
and who lost the grandeur in the first place at huge cost? The very same Labour controlled GCC.
Labour make me sick on so many levels — it used to be just the betrayal of their values in the 1990s; now it’s the adoption of Tory values and a lust for power that puts every person who isn’t rich in the domain of having no representation in England. Fortunately, in Scotland there is the SNP.
Typical British Labour Party, make the poor pay. Sometimes, its hard to feel any empathy towards Glasgow because they vote for this crap. Nothing has changed much in all the years of Labour rule, yet they vote them in year after year.
People have placed trust in the “brand” of Labour but it has never lived up to the values of their 13 years of UK Government and certainly not in all the years of GCC control.
Shame on GCC once but thereafter shame on the voters for allowing Labour to continue.
I blame the SNP……..especially Samond…..regards from the West Midlands .
Got to disagree with Jen…Glasgow’s views are changing. As an industrialised City the influence of the Labour party is understandable with its Trade Union links.
I’m not sure they deserve it .Plenty has changed for the working man in lifestyle due to the Labour movement.
I was born and raised in Glasgow and worked for GCC for most of my working life. It is a great city full of great people, but it has been ruined by corrupt, stupid and sectarian Labour politicians.
I could write a book on each of the above, but the one that really gets to me is the sectarian element. Most Scots know that sectarianism is a serious problem in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, what they probably don’t know is that the sectarianism is kept on the boil by Labour politicans (and the Tories back in the Fifties and Sixties) whose only real policy is divide and rule!
The latest incident of Matheson talking to the OO before the Council Elections is only one of hundreds of sectarian strokes which Labour has pulled over the years.
I left Glasgow because I was sick of the corruption, the cronyism and the ‘whit fit does he kick with’ sickness which still infects sections of the population of the West of Scotland. It is a sickness which is encouraged and used by Labour politicians in the West of Scotland to further their own ends. It is one of many reasons why I want an end to the union.
Kenny Campbell says:
” Plenty has changed for the working man in lifestyle due to the Labour movement.”
Unfortunately the Labour movement bears no relation in actuality to the Labour Party.
Keny Campbell where are you in the West Midlands? I’m in Stourbridge and there’s always a debate to be had about what happens here
Sorry I was being facetious about the West Midlands bit, its a catchphrase used by a regular poster on the Herald. I’m not sure he’ll be available for an open dialogue.
As to the other comments around the Labour party no longer representing the Labour movement. I’d agree completely.
It’s actually £5m from the council and £10m is “retail led” private investment.
link to restoregeorgesquare.com
Cheers for that, Barry. Article edited accordingly.
To be fair to GCC they do make an extra cold weather payment to pensioners over and above the government one. Mind you limiting it to those 80 years and older in a city with probably the lowest life expectancy in the UK does make you wonder how much they actually pay out. Perhaps the removal of free safety alarms is a further efficiency exercise in shrinking this expensive demographic.
Iain says: to be fair to GCC – and told with a straight (type) face! Thanks for my mid-morning laugh.
i can just imagine some creep doing the cost/benefit analysis on what age entitlement should apply. Cost to GCC, benefit to the Labour party.
On average, they’ll pay out nothing:
“Glasgow continues to have the lowest life expectancy in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Figures for 2004-2006 and 2008-2010, show that men in the city live to an average age of 71 and women to 78.
This compares to 85 for men and 87 for women in the highest UK areas – Kensington and Chelsea in London.”
link to bbc.co.uk
@Rev. Stuart Campbell
Actually we may have stumbled across SLAB’s future electoral strategy:
Free nursery care for the over fives
Free home care for centenarians
Free social care for stable nuclear families on incomes above 50k
Free alcohol counselling for Muslims & Mormons
No council tax for the homeless
etc
(Great last post on SLAB’s strategy there, Rev.
Scary to think that it is probably true.)
I have an idea too – forget the alarms and just give all these people
an Ipad to go along with the free Glasgow WiFi that we are getting.
Iain: With the innovative thinking you are displaying here I can see you being headhunted by GCC. Or should that better read, GCC being after your head?
Just read in Private Eye about Glasgow City Councthe doing the George Sq it’s makeover. Were you aware that they are borrowing the £15 million to use it, contacted fewer that 50 Glasgow residents. Apparently they’ve also not revealed which, if any, of th statues will be returned (given that last year the renovated Crum Fountain from George sq was “suddenly removed and eventually rediscovered dumped in a field near burnside.” (I did read about it on here the other day, this is just an additional!
)