SNP’s “cavalier disregard for projects”

Dear Sirs

The SNP have made wild statements recently of their councillors’ attempts of trying to “split” the Western Isles Schools Project into smaller tenders – a false claim and a course of action which if it had taken place would have put other council projects at risk as well.

Council minutes reveal that in February 2008 the attempt by the SNP group was not about splitting the Schools contract, would have returned Schools money to the Scottish Government and would also have delayed or stopped the programme for all the following works:- Lews Castle, Harris House, Castlebay Fitness Suite, Lochboisdale Harbour Development, Manor Roundabout, Stornoway Town Hall and the Community Meals Service.

The tactics taken then by the SNP councillors look amazingly risky – and would not have helped the islands in any way. Their actions were either a cavalier disregard for projects across the islands or an idea with flawed logic which they have not ever explained. That proposal by the SNP group was defeated, thankfully, with only their own votes in its favour.

I trust the electorate remember this when voting

Yours faithfully

Matt Bruce

Chairman, Western Isles Labour Party

Bruised bits and non-existent babies in slippery SNP winter

NEW Year resolutions are just futile and ridiculous. What is the point of me trying to lose weight, doing something meaningful to reduce my carbon footprint or remembering to wear clean pants every day if I know I will give up and lose interest after just three days of hunger, sore feet and a fortune spent on washing powder?

I mean, we don’t even know what year it is. Should we say twenty ten, like we did for nineteen seventy in the last century? Or two thousand and ten? Or, more correctly, two thousands and ten? Or two ten? Or two oh one oh?

Uh-uh, not that one. Sounds like the title of a rubbish American TV series. Fair enough. Even the BBC’s uniform pronunciation people don’t have a policy on what to say. They can’t even agree among themselves.

Not only do we not know what year it is but we have also lost track of what time of year it is. Last week, the supermarkets began selling Easter eggs and daffodils. When I was in Glasgow in October, they were flogging Christmas trees in Bearsden. The world has gone mad.

Of course, chocolate eggs will sell in December. They could sell body parts if they were made of scrummy milk chocolate and a creamy fondant centre. But they would not be Easter body parts. Because it isn’t Easter.

Thankfully, we still have piles of ice and snow to remind us that it is the middle of winter. Having rescued an old cailleach who went flying down New Street in Stornoway on her backside last week, I went looking for coarse salt to treat the pavements myself. Oisean’s was shut and coming out of the Crofters after another vain inquiry I too slipped and bruised the base of my spine.

Sadly, I can’t sue Lewis Crofters Ltd because Mrs X is being silly about recording the evidence.

“I don’t care how sore it is,” she screamed. “I am not taking photos of your coccyx. Some things I will not do.”

Still, these weeks of permafrost just now will remind us the Scottish Government froze our council tax as another populist move which left us with no protection when Jack Frost came calling. Local authorities with no cash to grit our roads or pavements. Nice one, SNP.

Whether they can afford the legal insurance after the payouts to everyone who fell and fractured their fibulas and femurs in the last fortnight by falling on untreated pavements, even here on Lewis, is another question altogether.

However, as we apply more ointment to our government-inflicted injuries, there is always a goodly measure of uplifting news at the turn of the year.

Like hospitals announcing their first babies. Even the old grump Van Morrison has had a sprog. Aw. His “manager”, a pretty young thing called Gigi is the mother.

Van the grumpy man

Ah, those old superstars of the 1960s. Will she still knead him, will she still bleed him, when he’s 64? Obviously yes. Except no. Because she doesn’t exist and neither does the papoose. The arch-grump says his website was hacked. And his publicist who confirmed the story to the media says he got the “facts” from the website.

George Ivan Morrison, it transpires, is too dour to talk to his own publicist. They communicate via a website. Having had first-hand experience of vainly trying to get a few facts from Morrison before he came up to Stornoway in 2005, I do sympathise. But not with Van the Cantankerous Man who may not, in fact, be as virile as we were led to believe.

I have not made any predictions for 2010 yet. It is such a dodgy business. Last summer, after meeting former work and pensions secretary James Purnell, I confidently foretold he would be the next prime minister. So sure was I of this I suggested if he was not Gordon Gruamach’s successor I would run naked through Stornoway. Six weeks later, Purnell resigned from the Cabinet.

Happily for me, people had either forgotten my pledge or just had no desire at all to see me carrying out my forfeit. I wonder which it was.

This however is the time of year when we sit down and assess what has gone right and what we have made an absolute pig’s ear of. If I was going to make a resolution, which I am not, it would be to warn my dear, impressionable readers about the dangers of casual hanky-panky. It is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Beware the one-night stand. It can go badly wrong. I had one 14 years ago and the bit of stuff I picked up is still here.

Having got used to having her round the place, I am now beginning to despair in case she is about to take off again. Could this be the year she swaps me for a younger stud?

Shopping with her the other day, out of the corner of my eye I noticed she was whispering to one of those glitzy sales ladies in Superdrug.

They were both looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. I reached down because I thought I was flying low. All guys do when that happens. After the ladies simultaneously glanced at me they both collapsed into fits of giggles. Oh oh, something was going on.

When Mrs X stopped to gossip to someone else, I asked the assistant what was so funny as my wife had only said she was going to ask about hair conditioner.

The glamourpuss tossed her yard of blonde hair out of her eyes and over her shoulder and claimed she was only doing her job. She maintained, as it was the start of a new year, she was doling out advice to ladies who need to make certain changes.

“I tell them to say goodbye to dull and limp and hullo to a new and exciting bounce.”

Oh heck. Now I’m really worried.

We should choose our next MP by making hopefuls entertain us

THERE is a lot of hidden talent in these little islands way out west. You will never guess who appeared on stage playing the mandolin at a recent reception. One of our wannabe MPs, that’s who. No, it wasn’t Dr Jean Davis, of the Lib Dems. I do, however, have a suggestion for her that could help her win the next election if she keeps reading.

Somewhere, sometime, another parliamentary hopeful has been strumming furiously. Somewhere, sometime, a band was formed. And somehow Donald John Macsween, of Labour, is one of them.

Although he and most of his fellow performers were lurking beneath black fedoras so nobody would recognise them, your correspondent was not fooled by these mad hatters. Gavin Lawson was the lead singer and the unlikely ensemble was largely made up of a bunch of municipal types you bump into in the corridors of the White House council HQ.

Not quite what you may think of as eye candy: Derek McKim, Lachie Macinnes, Matt Bruce, Andy White and Alan Fish were obviously selected carefully because of other talents. Derek looked very chilled, as is anyone who can hide behind that bushy a beard. Matt looked meaner and moodier than usual – no, I didn’t think it was possible, either – lurking under a big brim. And the lot of them played not only adequately but almost superbly and in very melodic and harmonic time.

Gavin is a class act. That voice. He could put out the line no bother. If he wants to move his musicality up a notch, a future as a precentor in the Free Church (Continuing) awaits whenever he wants it. He and the lads soon had the small but perfectly formed congregation of culture vultures gathered in the Bayhead hall with the promise of a sausage and a swig quite enthralled. The mixture of wistful tunes drew heavily on mellow, western, jazzy, gospelly blues and stuff.

With yee-ha classics to boot, like Big Rock Candy Mountain, the huddle of Hebridean hobos put the count in country music with the seven of them wedged on to the creaking stage which had been kept warm by Murdo Dan Macdonald in the Altogether. Not that MD was showing us anything inappropriate, you understand, it is just that this new band of his is called Le Chèile, Gaelic for altogether.

It was a rollercoaster journey. The circle was unbroken by and by after we saw the light and then we went down to the river but we kept on the sunny side before saying goodnight to Irene and then seeing her in our dreams.

These guys do not even have a name yet. Suggestions like The Death Knell of Crofting, the Hillwillies and The Alasdair Allan Fan Club have, unaccountably, been discarded. Your suggestions, though, will be passed on.

Their professionalism even extended to a roadie being flown over the pond to take care of business. Mike Erickson soon had them wired up and, being American, he was also able to flip the burgers. Invaluable.

Mr Macsween’s contribution? Well, he is no Jimi Hendrix. Eric Clapton need not fret, either. But on this his first musical outing, he was, it has to be said, not that atrocious. He didn’t actually sing solo I don’t think, but I suspect he will be planning to withhold that particular treat until the post-election party. That news should clinch it for the SNP.

All bands have a rider – a list of demands you have to agree to when you book them. I have seen theirs. Champagne, caviar, pretty girls? Nope, just tea, coffee and home baking. Wow, how random is that?

Did ever-optimistic DJ know that Noel Gallagher was going to throw his toys out of the pram and that Oasis were going to have a vacancy?

The new Noel Gallagher

The new Noel Gallagher

Donald Lamont came up with the outlandish suggestion that, rather than knocking lumps out of each other over who said what and when over the rocket range in Uist, maybe DJ Macsween and Angus Macneil, the MP, should instead just have a sing-off.

That fits snugly alongside the radical new criteria of custom and tradition that is now the mantra adopted by the great and the good who rule over us. Can the candidates actually sing, though?

To make it fair, I wonder how well Angus B could play the mandolin. He has that dark-eyed look of a cool plucker and I bet he could squeeze a melodeon or get a cat’s wail out of a set of bagpipes, if pressed.

I am sure, too, that the Lib Dems’ lady-in-waiting would be more than capable of tickling the ivories if Jean Davis put her mind to it. She has, I would say, that well-rounded personality which looks so homely and comfortable, particularly if it was perched adjacent to a grand piano.

So each Saturday evening up until polling day, we could have BBC Alba screening all the candidates’ efforts through their respective musical renditions. The weekly theme could reflect that week’s election issue. So rather than have all that tedious debating over whether SNP-inspired RET is the best thing ever, they could each perform their version of Sailing and be done with it.

We would then ring in and vote. Done, matter decided.

On the Uist range issue, Macneil, Macsween and Davies and any other running mates which materialise from the Stop Sunday Ferries campaign could take it in turns to perform a tribute to defence minister Quentin Davies. Elton John’s Rocket Man? Or B.A. Robertson’s Bang Bang?

The next week, the issue could be, oh I don’t know, fishing quotas. The hopefuls could all give us their versions of Brotherhood of Man’s perennial Save All Your Kippers For Me.

Then, just before the phone vote, the candidates could all gather round and together play something appropriate. Like Prawn To Be Wild or something by Sushi Quatro?

Or maybe just something off the Sex Pistols’ memorably anarchic collection entitled Never Mind The Pollocks.