Labour have failed the people of Glasgow according to Bill Butler MSP

Last week the Scottish Government published a report on the City of Glasgow which found evidence of
poor diet, increased anxiety and ill health.

Now, two years ago during the Glasgow East by-election there were hundreds of stories describing the deprivation, the shorter life spans and many other health concerns of the residents of Glasgow.

So I was a little surprised to see this press release in response to the above mentioned report, from the Scottish Labour MSP for Glasgow Anniesland, Bill Butler, which quoted him as saying;

"This report shows that much more needs to be done to fight poverty and should serve as a wake-up call to politicians. We need a relentless campaign to raise expectations, drive up living standards and encourage people to live healthier lifestyles.

"In this context, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition's decisions to cut programmes that will hit the poorest hardest is absolutely disgraceful.

“Many of Glasgow’s communities are still struggling to recover from the last Tory government and further cutbacks will condemn too many vulnerable people to a hard life, ill health and an early death."

 I have never heard such a hypocritical rant from a Labour politician for a while now.

The Labour Party ran the Scottish Government for eight years from 1999 to 2007, they ran the Westminster Government from 1997 to May this year and have run the City of Glasgow Council for around 40 years.

So why did Bill Butler's Labour Party not solve the problem during that 40 year period?

I will explain why, because Labour didn't know how to solve the problems so just threw money (and continue to do so) at the problem areas and hope someone somewhere will sort it out with no one person responsible for reviewing the work of the schemes that just hand the money out.

The Labour Party like to operate by blaming everyone else for their mistakes, whether it be the previous Tory Westminster government (thrown out of power back in 1997) or the new current Lib Dem-Tory coalition government which has been in power a mere 6 months.

Just look how many ministers over those 13 years were Scottish MPs and yet they failed the people of Glasgow who despite being let down by Labour over the years continue to ignore the problems thrown at them and continue to thrive within their communities.

Bill Butler needs to accept he has played a part in the issues contained in the report he has casually thrown out comments to.