It was with some sadness that I read and watched reports from the Sarah Everard vigil last weekend: the heavy-handed approach taken was clearly the wrong call.

Crimes against females are amongst the most shocking in the UK today, and the approach taken by the police towards a vigil for a murdered, innocent female has not done anything to give any female comfort.

Why did the vigil go ahead? Given the ongoing restrictions, should people have attended? Those are questions that can be argued with some justification. But the authorities knew it was going to happen, and no attempt was made to prevent such a large gathering. Why, then, after allowing the vigil, did we witness the shocking scenes we did? It was most certainly not a good advert for the authorities.

Closer to home, our SNP administration in West Dunbartonshire managed to push through, on a tie break, the council’s right to raid the reserves of the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) to plug budget gaps elsewhere.

This is money put in by tenants to pay for tenants’ housing needs. The council’s leader claimed that “the money belongs to the council, not the tenants”. That shows a complete lack of understanding of what the HRA is designed for.

It was a move recently made possible by the SNP government at Holyrood: until then the HRA was protected against such raids.

It has been said this will only happen if it is a necessity. Well, once you grant permission, necessity becomes a reality. This would not be the first time HRA monies are removed: the last time it happened, the West Dunbartonshire Tenants and Residents Organisation campaigned to have the money returned. It was a campaign they won, and I am certain that any new attempt to touch the HRA will meet the same fate.

Tenants – and I am one – pay our rents in good faith that our money will be used for housing needs, not to plug budget gaps created by the Scottish Government short-changing councils year in year out.

Finally, congratulations to Labour’s Neil Bibby. After years of seeing him fight to have public transport put back in to the hands of the people the Scottish Government has announced that rail services will be returned to public ownership next March. What we need now is our buses to go the same way, and to put an end to “profit before people”.