The mother of parliaments?

“England is the mother of parliaments” is from  speech given by John Bright MP in Birmingham the 18th of January 1865.  Now obviously that quote, is wrong on so many levels. It was the UK Parliament he was talking about and I’m pretty sure the ancient Athenians might call him out on it as well. Today we saw the truth, the UK Parliament is democracy without decency.

Firstly we have an unelected woman who receives state aid  (and her husband) in a  gold carriage escorted by the Household Cavalry (serving soldiers playing dress up) through the streets of London, then this benefits claimant enters the House if Lords (an unelected band of  wasters who get £300 quid a day for signing their name) and sits down on her seat, sorry Throne. Then the only people who are actually elected by the people are SUMMONED to attend and listen to the benefits scrounger read a speech, written by a political party who got less than 37% of the votes at the recent General Election, that tells us what they are going to impose on on the 63%+ of the electorate who voted for anybody but them.

Secondly we had the site of 56 adults being pulled up for daring to applaud a colleague in a debate as it is the convention in the House of Commons to act like braying Public Schoolboys and cheer, jeer and catcall instead.

Thirdly with such an important debate on “zero hours contracts” taking place it was disgusting to see an empty chamber with only a handful of  MP’s outwith all 56 from the SNP bothering to turn up.

A genuine political revolution took place in Scotland 3 weeks ago, we can only hope that during the next few years the rest of the electorate in the UK wake up a some point in the next 10 years the SNP MP’s will be returning to Scotland forever and they will e on their own.

 

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South Lanarkshire Council v Uddingston

A sad day for Uddingston yesterday as South Lanarkshire Councils Planning Committee voted (by 15 votes to 7) to destroy another chunk of Crofthead Public Park, the only park in central Uddingston, by  granting planning permission for the extension of a car park. The Planning Dept made social housing planned on an adjoining site, previously the village hall, conditional on the car park extension being granted. In essence they held Uddingston to ransom .

Now we all know that social housing is badly needed in Uddingston, but there are several Brownfield sites in Uddingston, including one literally across the street from the park. Uddingston Community Council vigorously opposed the application as did over 1700 local residents who lodged objections to the proposals to the Council. At a public meeting in Park Church on the 23rd April, a packed hall overwhelming backed the UCC in the battle to save the park. Also in attendance at the meeting was Councillor Jim McGuigan (SNP), who informed those in attendance that he could not publicly comment on the proposals, as he would be barred from voting if the proposal went to a full Council vote in the event of any appeal. Also at the meeting were Councillors Maureen Devlin (Labour) and Ann Kegg (Conservative), but both refused to address their constituents on the matter. However all the Councillors there couldn’t fail to see the overwhelming opposition to the destruction of a popular park. The planning officers were invited but declined to attend, which  in my opinion showed their contempt for the people of Uddingston.

At the planning meeting yesterday Councillor McGuigan  spoke passionately to save the park, sadly Councillor Kegg spoke in favour of the application and even worse Councillor Devlin not only spoke in favour of the application (despite knowing that local feeling was against it) actually voted in favour of it as she is on the planning committee. Sadly it looks as if loyalty to their Party line is far more important than loyalty to their constituents and we are stuck with them for at least 2 more years.

Crofthead Park is now about 20% of its original size, I’m sure South Lanarkshire Council will do their utmost to build over the little that remains as soon as possible.  It was only a few years ago that the public stopped the Council from allowing major building work on Crofthead Park, but as they say, revenge is a dish best served cold.

A sad day for the people of Uddingston and democracy.

 

14th May 2015