by Councillor Paul Carey

I would like to thank, on behalf of myself and my constituents and the people of our great City of Glasgow, all of the emergency workers, namely the police, fire service, paramedics, doctors and nurses who went beyond the call of duty to keep everyone safe and well during the horrific weather conditions earlier this month.

Secondly, I would like to thank all our staff in Glasgow - for example, social care workers, residential workers, roads and cleansing staff. You are heroes who went that extra mile to keep this city going and to protect our elderly and vulnerable citizens and keep us safe.

I would also like to mention the budget that the minority administration passed in the last few weeks. There were some good items in the budget; however, there were a number of quite truly shocking items. For example, nursery fees increasing by 50 per cent this August and increasing again next August. This will mean the fees increasing from £2.54 to just over £4 and then next year increasing again to just over £5. This will mean that, in most cases, we will either match or be more expensive than the private sector for childcare.

I have no doubt this will have a huge impact on family budgets and, maybe in some cases, stop people from working because they cannot afford childcare.

The others issues in the budget that will damage the growth of the city are on-street parking. The minority administration intend to charge for parking on a Sunday and increase the prices during the week. All that will do is damage businesses and play into the hands of places outside the city, for example Braehead.

Finally, I would like to mention the possibility of a cleansing strike.

The GMB attempted, on a number of occasions, to obtain clarification as to whether the minority administration intended keeping temporary workers on.

This could have been resolved much earlier if the minority Administration had confirmed to the union months ago that they were keeping these workers on instead of putting these workers through the the mill so that they could score a cheap political point - shame on them.