The Steamie

Tuesday, 5 January 2010

David Maddox: True Grit

It has been a bitter winter in Scotland not least for the SNP leader of Fife Council Peter Grant (pictured right).
As the snow and ice have taken a grip on Scotland his council made UK headlines for running out of grit for the roads and being the worst prepared.
Things have got so bad that his own party - in the guise of Central Fife MSP Tricia Marwick - has called for an inquiry.
The press release did not apportion blame, but pointedly it only defended the actions of the Scottish Government.
It is very unusual these days for the SNP to publicly leave one of its own out in the cold as such, but Mr Grant is in many ways yesterday's man as far as SNP ambition goes, despite leading the party to breaking Labour's historic grip on the Kingdom in 2007.
He was the SNP's coming man in 2008 when the expectation that he would win the Glenrothes by-election was so great that two London based nationals ran early editions the day after the result proclaiming his victory.
Unfortunately for him and the Nationalists he not only lost but was thumped by Labour's Lindsay Roy by a massive 6,737 votes.
While Alex Salmond publicly took the blame for the humiliating result behind the scenes fingers were pointed at Grant himself particularly his policies to the elderly as council leader which undid what seemed to be a certain SNP victory.
Now his council's actions - this time its lack of preparedness - are under the spotlight again and it seems that the SNP is not in a mood to forgive.

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Monday, 23 March 2009

David Maddox: Dad's Army routs the Nats in new Battle of Stirling


If there is one group that seems to have the beating of Alex Salmond and the SNP it is Scotland's pensioners.
In November, furious over the increased charges on home care by the SNP led Fife Council, pensioners turned out in their thousands to stop the Nationalists from taking the Glenrothes by-election and dealt Mr Salmond is most humiliating defeat since coming to power in Holyrood in 2007. It perhaps did not help that the SNP candidate, Peter Grant, was the council leader responsible for the unpopular policy.
Now another one of the SNP select - Stirling Council leader Graham Houston (recently appointed by his party colleagues in the Scottish Government to a plum post in charge of the Scottish Qualifications Authority) - has also been done in by the grey army.
It appears his administration wanted to close down some care homes which provoked a bit of a stooshie, so much so that the Mr Houston and his colleagues backed down.
But to mark the triumph Stirling own version of Dad's Army -called Stirling's Homes Guard - made a montage of the bungling councillors on a picture of the original sitcom's cast (above) and recorded a song which can be listened to on their website or by clicking on their new words provided below - Who do you think you're kidding, Mr Houston?

Words - The Band of Stirling's Homes Guard
Performed by The Band of Stirling's Homes Guard

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