The good news is the Press and Journal has named and – as far as most folk are concerned – shamed the 21 SNP and Lib Dem Aberdeen councillors who voted to make the anti-motorist bus gates permanent.
The bad news is there’s not another local government election in Scotland until May 2027.
So that means this undemocratic bunch of “representatives,” who are stone-deaf to their electorate, have around two-and-a-half years to sit-tight in the Town House – enjoying their many perks and cash allowances and making more bad decisions which harm our precious city – until we can vote them out.
I wonder how many of the Terrible 21 will have the gall to stand again.
Sadly, by then many of the traders who made their impassioned pleas for compromise proposals will have gone out of business.
I dread to think what a blighted sort of place the centre will be with so many motorists opting to shop in the Shire.
Meanwhile, most of us are still in the dark about the bizarre circumstances surrounding the legal advice document which was initially withheld from councillors, then shown, but not to be kept.
Shouldn’t these papers be the property of the citizens, not just councillors and officials?
And since there still seems to be no certainty that the Scottish Government would claw back £8 million if the gates were dismantled, couldn’t someone, somewhere simply pick up a phone to Holyrood and ask?
Maybe those behind the compromise proposals should follow the lead of Inverness traders and take the council to court. A dire and difficult course of action indeed.
But possibly the only way to heal Aberdeen’s heart, broken from the damage imposed by these municipal vandals.
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press and Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970.
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