Letting people stay cold this winter - Lesley Macinnes
At the last full council meeting my SNP colleague, Cllr Vicky Nicolson, argued strongly, and with facts on her side, that we should spend an extra £25,000 (a drop in the ocean as part of the council budget) to expand the use of Warm Spaces for anyone in the city who is having difficulty heating their home and needs a space to go to keep warm this winter.
At a time when so many people are having to choose between heating and eating and when electricity and gas bills are continuing to rise to dizzying heights, this could not be more important.
No one should be willing to see people suffer during the long winter months when extra help can be provided at relatively low cost through the voluntary sector.
But what did the Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat councillors choose to do? They voted against her request. They actually voted in favour of making it difficult to get the money out to organisations quickly. They voted to hide behind process and requesting further reports until winter is effectively over.
They hummed and hawed and finally took away the small additional funding that could have been spent quickly and with care by the much-valued voluntary sector to deliver additional resources to communities across this city.
The money is available, the mechanism for delivering the service is there. It should have been a no brainer.
So why did they vote against it? They will dress it up as being concerned about careful use of public money etc. But in reality many of us believe it was because it came from the SNP, supported by our Green councillor colleagues. It is this kind of petty tribalism which is driving many of the decisions of this council administration.
It is a rare moment when an SNP proposal is accepted by the unofficial Labour, Lib Dem and Tory coalition currently running this city, no matter how sensible and effective it can be in improving services for the people we serve. On this one, they were willing to curtail the possible expansion of Warm Spaces this winter.
Vulnerable people in Edinburgh, already struggling with fast-rising energy bills and increased inflation, despite promises from the UK Labour government to drive down both, now have a little less support and a lot less than they deserve in this coming winter.