Last week with my colleagues, Mike Russell MSP and Mike MacKenzie MSP, I produced a comprehensive set of alternative actions in response to the drastic and unnecessary cuts to vital services proposed by Argyll and Bute Council.

The council’s argument is that it is all the fault of the Scottish Government. Not true. It is down to the council’s own disastrous and long-standing failure to manage its resources prudently and keep its focus where it should be, serving the people it is there to represent. For too long now folk living and working in Argyll and Bute have had to put up with the incompetence and ego driven squabbles of a council that now wants to blame others for its own incompetence.

The council’s cuts will affect every family living in the area, with 44 of the 145 cuts to services affecting education and the future of our young people and hitting the most vulnerable, including children who need additional support to help them learn and grow. The cuts proposed will also see 400 council jobs lost.

For some time now this council has been warned by local residents and by Audit Scotland that it needs to get its financial house in order, reorganise services so they receive the resources they need and cut wasteful and bureaucratic spending. All of that good advice has been blithely ignored by a local authority intent on political point scoring, regardless of the cost to local residents.

That is why we have taken the unprecedented step of not only exposing the council’s actions for what they are and opposing their cuts, but producing our own 20 point plan which gives a practical alternative approach. We have set out clearly why the approach from the council leader Dick Walsh is wrong, we tell the truth about how the council has got itself into this position and we make sound, constructive suggestions for the future. We will also be meeting with Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney, and have invited the council leader to join us so we can bring the real facts and the truth to local residents and they can judge for themselves.

Already Argyll and Bute parents have given us their support and we are working with the SNP group on the council, with local trade unions and with community groups to bring this Council to its senses and get it to work for the people it is paid to serve.