Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

I have been battling with Glasgow City Council since January 2018 to get an answer to an FOI Request in which I asked for details about the cost of introducing the WPBR pay scheme. Initially the Council said it did not have any of this information which struck me as rather odd because the whole business of Equal Pay and the WPBR is (and was) the biggest single employment-related event in the history of Glasgow City Council. So you would think that the Council's senior and very highly paid officials would have scribbled the odd note for posterity, just in case future generations decided to ask: "Where did all the money go and what was it spent on?" But to get round the problem of what I call the 'Manuel Defence' or 'I know nothing defence' I wrote to the Council suggesting that some of its former senior officials be contacted to see if they could help get to the bottom of things.  Here's the letter I sent to Carole Forrest at the time in an e...

The BBC reported earlier this year that the Cannes MIPM property show attended by senior officials from Glasgow City Council has acquired a skanky, sleazy reputation after becoming mired in allegations of sexism, drunken behaviour and prostitution. Now I find it hard to understand the value of such a conference, I have to admit, but as I said on the blog yesterday the City Council's director of development and regeneration services (Richard Brown) and his deputy (Tommy Turley) both attended the event in 2016. But who, I wonder, authorised two such senior officials to be away from the Council at the same time and what, if any, benefit did their attendance bring Glasgow? Presumably the director could authorise the absence of his deputy, but surely the director would need to get permission from his own line manager - the Council's chief executive, Annemarie O'Donnell. I think we should be told.      https://www.bbc.com/ne...