Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

I've had a great response already today to my competition aimed at finding an equal pay musical tribute to Labour-run Glasgow City Council. First out of the traps was Lesley with a memorable golden oldie from Adam and the Ants - 'Stand and Deliver'. Now the City Council are the 'highway robbers' if you ask me, but I get the point that the senior officials and elected councils must now be held to account for the way they've behaved over the years. And just to clear up one enquiry, first prize in the competition will definitely not be a night out with Frank McAveety listening to garage music (although that could be the booby prize). In any event, more entries will follow tomorrow - because no one ever said that we can't have a bit of fun while getting on with the serious business of fighting for equal pay. In fact, I think it will help inspire people to get involved and send the City Council bigwigs a message that we're coming after them, big t...

The leader of Glasgow City Council, Frank McAveety, is a big music buff and has a fantastic collection of vinyl records, enough to fill a domestic garage. So I am starting my own music competition to find a suitable number that can speak to the City Council's appalling behaviour over equal pay for the past 12 years. I did something similar in South Lanarkshire Council a little while back although that focused more on the craven behaviour of the trade unions who actively discouraged local union members from pursuing equal pay claims against the Labour-run council. All suggestions for the Glasgow competition should be emailed to me (in confidence) and I'll be awarding a small prize to the winner in due course. Anyone can enter the contest, especially the City Council employees who are still fighting for equal pay, b ut out of respect for the foot-soldiers, I'm afraid, members of the senior management team are ineligible to take part.  ...

I said in a recent post that I had previously compared Scotland's public spending watchdog (Audit Scotland) to being savaged by a 'dead sheep'. Well there have been plenty of spending scandals in Scotland's councils over the past 15 years, but I have not witnessed Audit Scotland laying a glove on any of the culprits involved. If you ask me, the biggest scandals all is that council budgets in Scotland virtually doubled in the ten year period between 1997 and 2007, yet still the council employers failed to deliver equal pay for work of equal value.     More Dead Sheep? (20/03/14) The state of Scottish local government is laid bare in this article from the BBC's web site which sounds to me like a dialogue of the deaf. The public spending watchdog (Audit Scotland) warns that Scottish councils need to find new ways of saving money other than by simply cutting staff numbers, perhaps by working in collaboration with neighbouring councils to sh...