As usual I hope you all are as well as you can be in the current situation, as we move through, hopefully, towards Phase 4 of our return and to something nearer to our old norms.

Not forgetting: FACTS – Face coverings, Avoid crowded places, Clean your hands, Two metre distance, and Self isolate and book a test.

On the last one, we have had reports of people being phoned by scammers telling them that as part of a tracing alert they need to pay to book a test. No, you don’t: if you get a call like this, just hang up.

We have been quite busy in the office dealing with what, on the face of it, should have been a great new addition along the Duntreath Avenue to Lincoln Avenue-Great Western Road area – new cycle lanes.

But for some reason, council officials, in their wisdom, decided four months into the pandemic to use an emergency decision to impose their design on the residents of the area.

The story went to the press on the Saturday, before the work commenced on the Monday. There was no consultation with anyone living there, any community group, or anyone elected to represent the areas involved, and that, quite frankly, is not good enough.

At the time of writing this I still have not seen suitable answers to my questions to the committee chair or the officials involved. These questions include:

  • Can my constituents see the overall impact assessment, or the equality impact assessment?
  • What considerations have been made on the A82 of traffic turning left from the middle lane?
  • Who made the decision about the arbitrary withdrawal of the right to park in front of your own home with no mitigation?

Although the work is moving on apace, the community will now need some persuasion that there is any advantage for them in this imposition, and that that is not the intent of either the government or the city leadership.

It would be remiss of me to close this column without expressing my own and my staff’s heart-felt condolences to the family, friends and classmates from Camstradden Primary School on the tragic loss of young Shea Ryan, who was only 10 years old when he died following falling down a trench at the worksite near Glenkirk Drive in Drumchapel.

This must and will be investigated – but all the investigations in the world can wait just now, as the family, and the community, needs time to grieve.