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The truths they don't want you to read....

Friday, December 07, 2007

Please sir, can I do the opening?

Across the road from the SNP office in Stornoway, a new and spectacular building is taking shape.

The Bridge Centre is a mixture of a new building for the local YMCA; student accomodation for the University of the Highland and Islands Western Isles Campus; combined with commercial letting accommodation and public facilities. I was lucky enough to get a tour around the partly completed building recently, and compare the actual development with the hard-fought planning application over which I presided.

Our MSP has written to the chair of the Bridge Centre, enquiring when it will be completed and offering to open the facility along with a Ministerial colleague.

At this point anyone with local knowledge will be spluttering on their cornflakes; but let me expand for the benefit of those further afield.

The Chair of the Bridge Centre - and the person to whom Mr Allan wrote the personal letter - is a Donald J MacSween.

Mr MacSween has two dark and dirty secrets that Mr Allan is obviously unaware of, but which I can exclusively reveal to Mr Allan's staff (who I know are regular readers of this blog).

Brace yourselves for a shock, but Mr MacSween is a Councillor and also the Labour Candidate as MP for the Western Isles, and his response to Mr Allan is unrecorded, but I guess it was in the negative.

The wing of the new building directly obscuring Mr Allan's view of the world has been officially named 'Lamont Lane' after Johann, the former Labour Housing Minister, who ensured that the (very hard fought for) funding was delivered.

I also understand that Mr Allan (and Mr MacNeil) have never been in contact with the Bridge Centre during the entire building process until now, when headlines might be able to be grabbed, which has severely irritated the Bridge committee.

As a Labour supporter commented, "Why not walk across the road and talk to someone, rather than write an ignorant letter from Edinburgh and make an arse of yourself!"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe AA just has a wacky sense of humour?

Anonymous said...

Could be that the letter was written before his selection, or maybe he is attempting to rise above party politics?