Fair Questions

Here's another interesting item I came across in The Hamilton Advertiser - a letter from one South Lanarkshire councillor to another.

Now I don't know Councillor Peter Craig and I haven't read what he describes as a 'bile-filled rant' by Councillor Jackie Burns - so if anyone can send this to me I'd be much obliged

But I have to say that Councillor Craig seems to me to be asking perfectly fair and reasonable questions - about South Lanarkshire Council's exceedingly generous severance/early retirement arrangements for senior council officials. 

I for one would love to hear what South Lanarkshire Council's former Finance Director - Linda Hardie - has to say on her own departure from the council - details of which have been reported previously on the blog site, of course.

Follow the money - as they say. 

"Councillor Peter Craig replies to Councillor Jackie Burns letter"

"I am writing in reply to councillor Jackie Burns’s bile-filled rant, which was directed at my colleague, in last week’s paper. Without using the personal attacks so prevalent in his letter I would like to inform your readers of some of the background circumstances.

There has been a lot of talk over the past few months both on the news pages of the press and also on the letters pages about large severance payments to senior council staff, the equal pay settlement, Primary School Modernisation and council budget cuts. All this speculation seems to revolve around South Lanarkshire Council’s previous finance director Linda Hardie.

Firstly, the Labour Party say her services were dispensed with because she made a £38 million error in the budget papers, a claim which has never been substantiated. Now they say it is because she was friendly with members of the SNP Group, again not only unsubstantiated but also with the implied threat to all council officers that if they should be seen to be “friendly” with any SNP members then they too will suffer the consequences.

These are worrying times for anyone with democratic principles, and obviously this Labour administration is running scared of the truth. The problem is that the more we learn about all these subjects the more suspicious the circumstances become.

What is the connection with Labour stopping the Primary Schools Programme, then suspending their finance director, then starting the Schools Programme again, arranging a massive £500,000 severance package for Linda Hardie, and then failing to settle the claims of their lowest-paid workers?

Councillor Burns talks about the SNP twisting facts. However, if he or his party is genuinely interested in the truth, let him and his administration state publicly and on the record that Linda Hardie is free from all legal and moral impediment and can discuss this whole episode in her own words in public.

They say the truth will set you free, but I wonder what it will do to this Labour administration.



Councillor Peter Craig"