Edinburgh finally gets much-needed clean-up squad after 'evil Tory bad' SNP councillors ousted from council administration – John McLellan

Great news! A seven-day-a-week, rapid-response cleansing unit for the city centre. Extra trucks to tackle fly-tipping. Investment in gully-clearing up by 50 per cent. And a graffiti task force. Just what Edinburgh needs.

Cleaning up graffiti is one reason why people pay their council tax (Picture: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

So well done Edinburgh Council for recognising the necessity of a blitz on the grime which has been damaging the city’s reputation for years. “We've listened to the public and we acknowledge that perhaps these services haven't had the resources they needed in the past and now it's about fixing that,” said transport convenor Scott Arthur with commendable honesty.

The bit he missed out was, “and I apologise unreservedly for being part of an administration which was entirely responsible for such negligence” because, under the last SNP-Labour administration, this sort of approach was repeatedly proposed by my Conservative colleagues in the annual budget rounds and ignored every time, primarily because of who was doing the proposing.

In my time on the council, calling for action on litter blackspots and weeds produced little action, ultimately because the SNP-Labour administration didn’t regard it as a priority and officers could get away with lip-service to opposition councillors. Having got rid of the vindictive, “evil Tory bad”, extreme left-wing local SNP from the administration, a motion by Conservative leader Iain Whyte last October has formed the basis for the action plan, as a report to today’s transport and environment committee recognises.

This is what people pay their council tax for, not pointless reports on whatever the latest politically correct world action day demands.