On Tuesday, Aberdeenshire Council declared a major incident following the second consecutive day of snow across the county I am proud to call home. It is the seventh consecutive day of snowfall and rural areas are becoming cut off from vital services, food and supplies.
Council staff and local farmers in Aberdeenshire and across Scotland are working hard to keep communities connected but the truth is they have been handicaped from the start by the SNP Government in Edinburgh distracted by the neverending campaign for independence.
If they had spent the last few years getting on with the day job, then maybe we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in now. The SNP have taken a sledgehammer to Local Government funding in Scotland with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COLSA) forecasting a funding gap for Scottish councils of nearly a billion pounds over the next two years.
What’s worse, rural councils in Scotland are not properly compensated for the costs that they incur purely because of their rural geography. The cruel irony being that these are the areas that have been disproportionally impacted over the last few days.
Now we have already seen the impact of these cuts with libraries, swimming pools and community centres being closed. But during this period of extreme weather, we have seen it particularly acutely, with local authorities struggling to clear roads, keep communities connected and ensure schools stay open.
The SNP did not have to spend years wasting taxpayer cash on trying to enact their unlawful gender reform bill or allowing their cabinet secretary to use taxpayer funded limos to get to football games or opening ‘embassies’ around the globe. They were a choice. A choice which has now put parts of Scotland in real peril.
The SNP Government could have stepped up and provided additional funding to our rural councils or requested the support of the military. They have done neither. Instead, their ‘Resilience Room’ has been meeting throughout the week – is that it?.
The whole dithering response to this situation just serves to epitomise their years of inaction in Scotland. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In May this year Scotland has a chance to vote for change and vote to install a First Minister in Bute House who will govern Scotland with common sense for a change – Russell Findlay.
The SNP are all out of ideas and – we hope – not long out of time.