By Councillor Daniel Lennie

So miracles do happen, for a couple of days we had the big yellow thing in the sky, the factor 50 was on and people had their smiles back.

Well most people did, though I suspect the hard working, dedicated staff at Greenspace had very little to smile about.

When you take great pride in your flower displays, when you take pride in brightening up our green spaces it must be soul destroying to be reduced to cutting verges. Our parks and green spaces will be a sorry sight this summer that is for sure.

Universal Credit is coming to us in October, the stupidest idea ever thought up will be here shortly, I can only think this was thought up at an extremely boozy party during a game of “who can think of the stupidest idea”. This is financial and social madness in the extreme.

To give you an idea of the potential effects of universal credit let’s take a look at the results of this in Southwark borough in London when just 12 per cent of claimants moved over to this system in 2017.

Rent arrears totalled 5.3 million, mainly due to the six week wait for payments, a food bank in the same borough reported a 94 per cent increase in referrals, and, even more worrying, there was a reported increase of 179 per cent among families with children.

Now clearly Southwark is much bigger than West Dunbartonshire, about three times bigger, but this demonstrates the financial and social disaster that is heading our way.

The administration has, as predicted, back-pedalled on the issue of facility time, this was an attack on the unions and the membership, no matter how this will be spun it was an attack, make no mistake.

This is a victory for the members who campaigned hard to get this attack stopped, I am pleased there has been a U-turn, but why on earth was this allowed to happen in the first place?

Relations with the unions have been severely damaged – and for what? As I say I am pleased the U-turn has happened but we should never have been in this situation in the first place.

On Saturday, May 5 I will complete my first year as councillor representing the waterfront, it has been an interesting year to say the least, it has been an honour to represent my home area and am looking forward to the coming years.