A former SNP candidate has hit out after a recent motion to break up Highland Council gathered positive headlines for the Councillors supporting it.
Rebecca Machin, who was the SNP candidate for Fort William and Ardnamurchan in the recent council by-election has issued a broadside to those who voted for the motion, which included the winner of that contest, Liberal Democrat Andrew Baxter.
“This motion was designed to win cheap, populist headlines for a right wing cabal of Tories, Independents and “Liberal Democrats”-in-name-only whilst trying to portray those voting it down as supporting power grabs for Inverness.
“It is exactly the sort of pathetic, short sighted, solution-free move which gives politics a bad name and fails to make anything better for actual people,” Machin continued.
“What this lacks is the nuance and detail of facts coupled with an understanding of how the political structures of Highland work,” she said.
“Of course almost everyone thinks Highland Council is too big.
“The vast majority of people agree that having the largest local authority in the world, outside of Korea, is difficult to manage to the point of futility.
“But breaking things apart without a plan is foolish to the point of folly.
“The reason why France, to take one oft-cited example, can have micro-communes and Mayors with extensive powers is because of land distribution – and so the ability for communes to raise far greater revenues per capita – but also because education and social care are centralised to national government.
“Here, Councils, in the form of their lobbying arm, COSLA, have stymied Scottish Government moves to distribute power to communities, instead choosing to feather their own nests and preserve their power.
“Highland Council slumped to the bottom of the league tables in both categories under the “leadership” of that last Independent/Lib Dem administration – of which Andrew Baxter was a lead actor, on his way to the Tories and then on to the yellow Tories – acted like an anchor on the area, allowing standards in education to plummet, before elected representatives flounced off when unable to get their own way on trivialities like car parking, as spoilt children do when unable to play past their bedtimes.
“In Social Care, delayed discharge (“bed blocking”) runs at 300 people per 100,000 in Highland, the only council with a Lead Agency model which patently does not work as we have seen only too clearly in Lochaber. The figure for the next worst local authority, Perth and Kinross, is 30.
“The National Care Service Bill was finally damaged beyond repair by COSLA, preferring the continuing lack of control on money or outcomes and avoiding the transparency required.
“In 2016/17, the Scottish Government tried a School Governance Review which would have put money, staffing decisions and accountability, back in the hands of Head Teachers.
“Spineless, out of their depth, the councillors of that same Independent/ Lib Dem administration allowed officers to convince them to block it, as turkeys vote for Christmas, keeping HR and staff recruitment policy, including that of Support for Learning teaching and non-teaching staff, centralised in Inverness rather than distributed to Head teachers and their school communities.
“Now, some of the same hapless individuals returned to the chamber to try and break up the council just as the SNP administration gets its investment plan through and we begin to see green shoots of recovery, finally tackling the maladministration of previous administrations, working in genuine partnership with officers and improving standards across the board.
“Many of these councillors should be ashamed of themselves as they manipulate the hopes of a better future for our youngsters, and better care for our elderly, by empty rhetoric and solutionless poses.
“As Shakespeare said, “it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.””
