Whispers from the bunker

We understand that the antics at Argyll and Bute Council meetings are back in the schoolyard. Were they ever anywhere else?

At last Thursday’s meeting the ruling coalition had obviously decided in advance on what passes for a strategy in these brain-free environs.

Each attack any of them made on the SNP group was greeted with applause by what our witty source describes as ‘the performing seals’. (And this information comes from a source many would find surprising and not an SNP affiliate.)

Council Leader Dick Walsh is now said not to be comfortable with his majority and is trying to be nice (a gruesome image) to the Argyll First group.

If any ploy was doomed to be a loser, it has to be this one.

Argyll First have shown themselves to be responsible, altruistic and unequivocally guided by principles. In this they have raised the bar of local politics in Argyll and Bute and gained widespread credit with the electorate.

But this is an attitude to politics the Council Leader does not understand, He thinks they can be bought.

The question is whether he is not happy with his  majority because he sniffs the odour of dissent in the ranks of the ragbag coalition Councillor Freeman refers to as ‘ConDemAll’; or whether, like any fascist, he just likes it to be as close to 100% as he can get?

Justly embattled Chief Executive, Sally Loudon, is said by staff  ‘not to be coping’.

Since she failed to cope with the demands of her job when there was no scrutiny of her performace, it is hardy surprising if she’s having difficulty ‘coping’ now.

Councillors are now down for what is being called ‘a school seminar’ on Thursday (17th February).

Whatever the session is actually to be, we have enquired if members of the public are to be admitted and, if so, we will be there, notebooks to the fore.

We understand that the session is to be a talk-through for elected members on the latest list of schools to be closed. A selected few (the ABC of democracy again) have seen this list.

According to a very well disguised mole, its purpose is to second guess the schools the Education Secretary may have had in mind when he advised the introduction of sanity into this process and the production of a small list of school whose closure was so logical it would meet little opposition.

Evidently the witless ones think this will be a politically smart move. How exactly?

Executive Director, Cleland Sneddon is also expected to give a one-sided response to the Scottish Rural Schools Network (SRSN) team’s devastating analysis of the flaws in the last set of school closure proposals, which, circulated to elected members in advance of its presentation to a meeting on 5th January, saw the proposals swiftly withdrawn.

Snbeddon’s coat is said to be ‘on a shoogly peg’ and for good reason.

This is the man whose vocabulary does not include simple words like ‘wrong’, ‘mistake’ and ‘error’; made possible by living in a bunker where daylight does not intrude. He claims – unbelievably – that the only thing wrong with the withdrawn proposals was the GAE funding calculations.

They were wrong – but Bruce West. Head of Strategic Finance, was far from being the only dunderhead.

Sneddon’s peroration at Thursday’s ‘seminar’ (aka brainwashing) should be up to par.

The question that makes a nonsense of all the laughable bluff and bluster is that, if the proposals were so right – why did 31 proposed closures progressively come down to 26, to 25, to none and now back to a rumoured 9?

Ah but we’re talking ‘Kilmorons’ here – to coin a memorable epithet created in a comment by a witty site reader.