THIS North Ayrshire Council nonsense has to stop.
NAC Chief Executive Elma Murray and her cohorts are spreading doom and gloom around the district with their Edward Scissorhands outlook on life.
Cut, cut, cut is their motto. Sell, sell, sell....everything has to go.
Shut the toilets, the council don't want to spend a penny. Close the libraries and leisure centres, the councils are not here to support culture, for goodness sake. Take down children's swings and slides and tell daft Joe Public that it's health and safety.
Let's not be responsible for community centres and the town halls dotted around the area despite the fact that the Brisbane Centre in Largs, for example, has paid for itself hundreds of times since it opened in the 1830s.
What part of community is it that North Ayrshire Council are not getting? As I've said before in this column we have a mindset in local government where they don't actually want to do anything for you any more.
A council bureaucrat has told Cumbrae Community Council that they don't have a statutory obligation to provide public toilets. They don't have a statutory obligation to stop dogs defecating, so are the dog bins to be shut next?
Okay, there's still a recession - and nobody knows that better than those of us in the private sector - but Mrs Murray and other like-minded civil servants must stop preaching that after slashing costs and services this year they will just keep on cut, cut, cutting. Not while we are still paying our council tax you won't.
Leisure Trust: The decline in services began about a decade ago when it became the fashion to set up trusts and agencies to take over stuff that councils used to do. In Glasgow and elsewhere they like to call them ALEOS, 'At Arms Length' organisations where some fat cat councillors and bureaucrats can line their pockets.
And surely one of the most useless organisations ever to be set loose was North Ayrshire Leisure Trust which, in a decade, under chief minute taker Frank Keddilty has managed to run down places like Vikingar! and make the football facilities of a third world standard?
Six weeks ago Largs Tennis Club offered to do up the courts at Douglas Park in preparation for their season which starts next week with Scottish cup matches. "Don't touch them, that's our job" said a Leisure jobsworth. There is no sign of anything being done and the tennis fraternity are frantic.
When councils set up these bodies which are not accountable to you and me they know what they're doing. They're shifting the blame. It has to stop.
Nuclear hot spot: It's the season for politicians throwing grenades at each other but I had to laugh at Labour man Alex Gallagher's letter about SNP MSP Kenneth Gibson.
He accuses him of supporting nuclear power. Nonsense. I support nuclear power and have argued the toss with Mr Gibson for years. Mr Gallagher must know this.
This is why we're sick of politicians.
