Glasgow's Shame
The Daily Record has a reputation as a very partisan pro-Labour newspaper - but last weekend it ran a very strong story and editorial about the GERA scandal - in which three experienced Glasgow councillors 'gifted' £232,708.00 to a highly paid official.
Well I've been writing about what went on at GERA for some time - see previous post dated 20 February 2013 on 'Charitable Giving' - but for what's it's worth I absolutely agree with the Record on this occasion.
The charity regulator (OSCR) had every reason for pursuing the matter - in exactly the same way as bankers have been put under the spotlight for accepting large sums of taxpayers' cash - which their performance did not merit or deserve.
To my mind both OSCR and the Public Standards Commissioner had a duty to call a spade a spade - which meant condemning the behaviour of the three councillors involved, and taking whatever action was possible in the circumstances.
And by calling for the public money involved to be returned - so that it could be spent on the purpose for which it was really intended.
Obscene waste of public money
We revealed today how three councillors have escaped sanctions after they topped up an official's pay-off with more than £200,000 of charity cash.
It'S a tale of two cities. Glasgow is going to be hit the hardest by the Coalition welfare cuts, losing the equivalent of £650 a year for every adult of working age.
But while some of the poorest people in Scotland sink further below the line, others do very well out of the poverty industry.
Take Ronnie Saez, the charity chief who walked away with a cool £500,000 after being made redundant in 2011 as boss of the now wound-up Glasgow East Regeneration Agency (GERA).
He was given a parting gift of a statutory severance payment of about £40,000, plus pension contributions of about £200,000.
But somehow in the mysterious world that passes for politics at Glasgow City Chambers, he was also handed a discretionary top-up of £232,708, paid directly from GERA, who were set up by the council as a registered charity to fight poverty in the city’s east end.
Independent investigators at the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator branded the payout as “wholly unacceptable” and “misconduct” by the charity. But they can do nothing about the three councillors who rubber-stamped the pay-off decision.
The councillors must have known it was an obscene payment in a city that cannot spare an extra penny to feed all the hungry mouths, but they went ahead anyway.
There is no explanation of their decision, the charity regulator cannot pursue them for the amount and now, as we reveal today, the Public Standards Commissioner has let them off the hook.
What a depressing example of public life in modern Scotland. What a stain on the name of the Labour Party.
Is it any wonder people have so little faith in their politicians?
