A desperate man...

They say that desperate men do desperate things: the SNP's Stuart McMillan is certainly a desperate man, judging by the following motion that he has just lodged in the Scottish Parliament:

Date of Lodging: 1 February 2011
Short Title: Public Money Wasted on Sports Centre U-turn
S3M-07836 Stuart McMillan (West of Scotland) (SNP): That the Parliament notes with concern the announcement that Inverclyde Council has decided to scrap its plan to build a £10 million sports centre at Rankin Park, Greenock; notes that an estimated £338,000 of public money had already been spent on preparatory work for this project; further notes the local authority’s decision to instead go ahead with a number of smaller proposals; believes that such proposals should include a place for Belleaire Football Club, which has been established for over half a century and has made the grass pitch at Rankin Park its home ground; considers that, in the current economic climate, to have such a vast outlay of public monies on work on a project only for it to be scaled back is unacceptable, and hopes that the local authority will be more prudent in its future decision making.


A few points to consider:

The scaling back of the development at Rankin Park is directly related to savage cuts in the Council's capital funding by the SNP Government, which Mr McMillan supported.

Mr McMillan's SNP colleagues on the Council's Regeneration Committee supported the revised proposals for Rankin Park, full in the knowledge that these costs would be abortive.

The revised proposals will include a grass pitch.

The only way to avoid the costs being abortive would be to proceed with the original scheme, which would cost the Council an extra £2m.

The extent of the abortive costs for this project pale into insignificance when compared to the tens of millions of pounds of public money that was wasted when the SNP Government - backed by Mr McMillan - decided to abandon the Glasgow Airport Rail Link, on the grounds that they could not afford to proceed with the project!

People in glass houses...