GREEN Party member Jean Nisbet (Long Letter, December 23) is an apologist for all forms of government waste.

I attended a meeting of the Helensburgh and Lomond Area Committee on Thursday morning. Twelve local councillors and staff sat around a table for three hours and heard testimony from council officials – no doubt with “degrees in business management and accountancy or personnel management” – who have no idea how real life works. They sat around all morning wasting Argyll and Bute taxpayers’ money.

There are ten Helensburgh and Lomond councillors for a population of around 25,000. Each resident is represented by three council members. The job could be done by one competent part-time town manager at considerable saving to the public purse.

Helensburgh and Lomond have just spent £7 million putting Chinese granite on the pavements of the town, including Colquhoun Square. However, they have no money left to maintain the flower beds in the square and the job is being done by volunteers. In the recent cold snap there was no money for grit on the granite, and residents were at risk of injury from falls on the untreated surfaces.

The council and employees are installed in new council offices built at a cost of £8.1m. Most forms of communication with the council now require internet access. There are no public computer terminals in the new building. There are terminals in Helensburgh library, which is closed on Monday, Thursday and Friday mornings and closes for an hour lunch break on other days.

The SNP minority leaders in East Dunbartonshire Council just resigned after Lib-Dem and Tory councillors voted to reduce council employee benefits. At one time, salaries were better in the private sector and the poorer pay in the public sector was made up by greater job security and pensions. Since the 2007/8 recession that situation has been reversed, with public employees having better salaries but retaining their job security and pensions. The SNP administration in East Dunbartonshire just voted to keep it that way.

Local and national democracy is one of the most inefficient forms of government and was invented by Scots. We keep inventing new forms of inefficiency.

At a national level, we are each represented by one constituency MSP and seven who were elected by their party. Jackie Baillie, my constituency MSP, has regular surgeries in the town. The other seven are nowhere to be seen.

This year, the Scottish Parliament recognised that these folks were overworked and increased the clerical support from two to three. Not only do they do nothing, but they now have more office support to do it.

All of these folks get generous salaries, benefits including large pension pots and if an MSP does not get re-elected, they get a year’s salary to ease them back into real life.

In contrast, if you are self-employed or a young kid on a zero-hours contract your pension pot won’t support you in your retirement. You can look forward to working until you drop.

The NHS is regarded as a sacred cow by most including Ms Nisbet.

There is enormous waste in NHS Scotland. One third of the budget is for administrators. People who do not see patients, treat patients or contribute to the patients welfare in hospital. If this waste was curtailed, there would be money for better pay for nurses. The staffing crisis would be eliminated overnight. Politicians need to stop throwing money at the NHS and deal with the real problem of a sclerotic system suffering from an excess of bureaucracy. How do you tell if you have an excess of bureaucracy? When more than two people are involved in making a decision. When you get fifteen or twenty people sitting around at a meeting, you will be lucky if they can decide on the date of the next meeting!

My local GPs are negotiating a new contract that will see them doing less for the same money. Some are so impoverished that they are moonlighting as NHS 24 out-of-hours cover when they finish their day job.

Ms Nisbet thinks office staff and the janitors are the most important people in a school. The lady needs a reality check.

In her view, it is “the army of backroom people who make work … well work”. Well, NO. With modern technology, most back-office functions should be by computer and just-in-time logistics. It should not take an army of people to run the NHS, councils or schools.

Unhappily this Green view of the world will see the Green Party in Holyrood supporting the minority SNP government to pass the current budget, which increases income tax to pay for more spending on the NHS and education and maintaining the gap between private- and public-sector rewards.

John Black
The Scottish Jacobite Party