WITH the recess now over, councillors are returning to their posts. Not that the majority of councillors have been idle during the break – most have continued to work hard for their communities during the summer.

Recently, I attended the fantastic summer fete at Centre 81. Once again the organisers did an amazing job, the sun shone and the children had a real blast. On arriving I thought there had been a major accident, with kids walking about with bandaged hands and arms in slings – but it turned out it was the ambulance service teaching kids about first aid.

Saturday once again showed the true worth of our hard-working community activists, just ordinary people looking to help their community and doing wonderful work. All over West Dunbartonshire, unpaid residents just want something better for their communities and we, as a council, should be supporting these groups with every resource we can muster because, without them, these great things would not happen; without our community activists our communities would potentially be very different places.

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You may have heard that the number 16 bus to the QEUH from Drumchapel has been withdrawn as it was not making enough profit. It seems our old and infirm are nothing more than cash machines to those who control our transport system – mainly SPT and First.

What kind of society are we that allows those in greatest need to be abused in this manner? We have known for years there are huge issues with our transport system, yet politicians do little or nothing to change this.

I do not include Labour’s Neil Bibby in this as he has worked tirelessly to change things for the better, but far too many are happy to sit on their hands and do nothing.

Of course, it is not just transport – the power companies are experts at it too, putting profit before people. We are paying first-class prices for our transport and getting a second-class service.

Power companies are the cause of fuel poverty, so we need to stop negotiating with these profit-hungry firms and start fighting for our people, which starts by taking SPT and the power companies out of the equation, through public ownership of transport and district heating systems across Scotland.