Using my spy skills on the Labour Party

I hear from my super sleekit pals in the meedjuh that Ruth Black, the Glasgow councillor and manager of the Glasgow LGBT centre who I just finished writing about, has been expelled from the Labour Party! Deary me. I guess there might be some truth in some of those accusations after all…? Perhaps a website update is in order, Castro webmaster.

Details as they emerge! *cue apocalyptic rave music*

ETA: Well, the party have suspended her and Gordon Matheson has withdrawn the Labour whip from her; in the world of murky Labour politics that’s as good as a straight expulsion. In other news, a stunning victory as SSY scoop The Herald on their own exclusive. Yaaaaas!

Unfortunately, as expected, Glasgow is about to lose its LGBT centre for the second time in less than two years due to the immediate withdrawal of the centre’s £50,000 grant. As much as Labour will want to put this down to one bad apple (and let’s be clear that this loss of another LGBT centre must be laid squarely at Ruth Black’s feet) this never would have happened without good old cronyism. And what exactly have they allowed to happen? Well, pretty much all the awful shit we detailed yesterday, but since this wee internal investigation is over we can stop being so coy and break out the juicier details.

- The centre’s management (ie Ruth Black) are under investigation by HMRC because despite deducting it from employee pay they have paid no tax or NI over for seven months. Naughty naughty! And also totally tragically hillarious from someone who has spent a lot of time over the past few years trying to convince everyone of what a good socialist she is. If the employees’ NI credits aren’t made up then they can lose pension and benefit entitlements. Fantastic. Well done Ruth!

- Part of the £50,000 grant for the council was used to buy a private car for someone.

- Huge phone bills have been run up and charged to the centre and stupid amounts of money have been paid to a Perth games machine company without any profits being declared.

- Ruth Black employed her partner’s son which is totally contrary to council grant rules. OOPS!

- The Centre has had its building insurance withdrawn because of non payment of premiums. OOOOOOOPS!

- Ruth Black has been operating the centre with no public or employee liability insurance. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS!

Ruth comes up with another brilliant money saving idea

However, good old Ruth has promised that the centre will continue to trade without the council grant. Do I really have to spell out why that is a totally stupid idea that is never, ever going to happen? Ruth has managed to get the centre into £45,000 of debt, but has only received £20,000 of the council grant and wont be getting any more. That’s called being insolvent Ruth, and we aren’t even taking into account your eventual bill from HMRC and the fact that you’re trading illegally without proper liability insurance. Apart from that, does anyone in the Glasgow LGBT community want this woman in charge after the uncovering of this mess? My guess is no. You have to wonder what the hell Ruth’s actually been doing at the centre apart from skimming money off the top and making a shitload of phonecalls. I suppose the answer to that is nothing. Perhaps someone should have explained to her that saving money for yourself and saving money for the centre are two different things, and that things like insurance and paying for your beer are really not expenses that you can neglect.

No matter what Ruth Black says, the Castro centre is finished. Well fucking done Ruth for ruining Glasgow’s second LGBT centre after the first one closed in other mysterious circumstances, and congratulations for beating the last one by having your spectacular flaming failure before the centre’s even been open for a year! Ruth Black should never be in any kind of position of authority in the Glasgow LGBT community again, and here’s hoping that this debacle helps encourage folk to take charge and demand the LGBT centre that they want, instead of the centre that the council want.

Maybe Ruth will want to follow her good pal Steven’s example and make a rapid exit for a holiday in the sun where she can get away from nasty rumour mongering bastards like us. Might I suggest the Cayman Islands? I think it’d be right up Ruth’s street.

Before you jet off though Ruth, fancy explaining what the hell you’ve been doing with the centre, and where the stolen tax and national insurance is?

Check your 'Purcell & Black' for irregularities and residue every month when you're in the shower.

Ah, Steven Purcell. Him leaving Glasgow City Council has been like one of those horribly awkward and protracted breakups that ends up sucking in a whole social circle, and you know the basic story of what happened but you get the feeling there’s more to it. Gradually, ever more horrible, cringeworthy and sometimes fucking funny details just keep leaking out. Of course, situations like that are gifts for gossipy petty folk who can’t get enough of delighting in the right people’s misery, and us folk at Leftfield are no exception. So it was with no small amount of schadenfreude that we learned that the Castro Centre, the new incarnation of the Glasgow LGBT centre which was forced to close down with debts of £300,000 looks like it’s about to close as well, because of *drumroll* big debts and possible massive corruption.

Please understand, it’s not the fact that Glasgow is possibly about to lose its only dedicated LGBT community centre for the second time that’s causing this glee. The fact that it may close again is a frankly ridiculous and outrageous situation. However, a large amount of disturbing evidence has emerged from various sources that suggests that not only has Solidarity Labour councillor Ruth Black (who ran the last LGBT centre and left her post just months before the centre was forced to close with crippling debts) only managed to find herself back in charge due to good old Purcell brand ‘irregularities’, but also that the centre is being run poorly and downright dishonestly.

When the LGBT centre first closed, people were understandably angry and upset. Groups lost a meeting place they’d had for years, and this was of particular concern to support organisations like Crosslynx Glasgow (a trans support group) who had very real concerns about finding a venue where they’d feel (and be) safe. As well as this, groups received virtually no notice that the centre was about to go under, and faced a frantic scrabble to find a new venue in order to stop a loss of momentum and members. As if that all wasn’t frustrating enough, what actually happened to the LGBT centre is still shrouded in mystery; all we really know for sure is that when it closed it was £300,000 in debt and that there were angry refutations of any suggestion of irregularity or incompetence in management posted to the GLGBT website before it was taken down for good. Also, there were whisperings in the papers that Ruth Black had essentially run it into the ground, but the stock response was she had left her job months before the closure and so had nothing to do with it. Which is a pretty pish counterargument, but oh well! Maybe, we hoped, Glasgow would have an LGBT centre again soon, and it would be better run and hopefully be a fun, useful and supportive place for LGBT folk to hang about. However, what actually happened was that Glasgow Labour cronyism did what it does best; ignored what was best for the people a service is meant to, you know, serve, and instead just did what was best for their councillors.

As The Herald reported, many LGBT people and organisations in Glasgow were unhappy to say the least when, after competing with Glasgay!,  a group that runs an annual LGBT arts festival in the city, Ruth Black and her still not really existent backing organisation were awarded the right to run the new centre by Ruth’s colleagues at the council. That alone was an example of rank cronyism and quite bad judgement given the major role Black had in running a centre that collapsed amid piles of debt, but it gets worse when you consider that the money the centre owed was owed to Glasgow City Council. According to the publicly available documents on the bidding process, the council considered Glasgay!’s declaration that they would not repay the debt owed by the previous centre to be detrimental to their bid, but what kind of nonsense and pish is that?! Glasgay! had nothing to do with the running of the previous LGBT centre, and the thinking about the debt essentially seems to have been that whoever started to provide LGBT one stop shop services in Glasgow, they would have to pay off the big old collective queer debt. Despite Glasgay!’s track record of organising successful arts events and a promise that if awarded the centre deal they would branch out to provide meeting spaces as well as health and social services, still Ruth Black got the contract with a projection of bar takings that was significantly larger than Glasgay!’s figures and a promise to eventually pay back the money the council lost. It’s worth remembering as well that during her tender as centre manager Ruth Black managed to alienate a significant amount of people in the community by banning the popular magazine ScotsGay because of what she considered inappropriate ‘adult’ content. ScotsGay contains a wide variety of material, and apparently the option of keeping it away from children or putting an “available on request” sign up (apparently the magazine was inappropriate for a centre that wanted to welcome families) didn’t even occur to the centre managers, even after ScotsGay approached them about the issue.

Given how close Purcell and Black were while he was still in charge of the council, people were suspicious. When Purcell’s corruption and “chemical dependency” emerged, people got more suspicious. Lo and behold, the herald got hold of the minutes of a meeting that have Ruth Black telling other LGBT organisations that Purcell and other ‘senior Labour figures’ would be backing her bid, a full five months before the end of the tendering process. As well as this, according to the Herald’s report, the meeting was originally set up by Black in her capacity as Glasgow City Council Equalities Spokesperson (Oh, did we not mention that?) and then she sprang her own bid on the other organisations who were meeting with her to discuss the Glasgay!  bid and the future of the centre in general. If these allegations are true then this will just be another scandalous addition to Purcell’s already corrupt leadership of the council, and will also show a wholesale selling out of the Glasgow LGBT community just so Steven’s pals could be happy.

It’s not just the award of the contract that’s the problem though. Before we even touch on what the media’s reporting, I’ll deal with my own personal observations about the Castro. The centre’s website is poor to say the least; SSY doesn’t have two pennies to rub together, never mind a fat contract from the council, but it’s safe to say our website is a lot better than this. The only blog articles on the site are to do with the rumours flying around about the centre (we’ll get to them in a minute) and a karaoke night, and there’s the distraction of the “GET A FREE WEBSITE’ bar at the bottom. A good website is important for such a vital public service, and there’s just no excuse for this kind of sloppiness when you’ve been funded to the degree the Castro has. Apart from the website, there’s a couple of other glaring problems. A quick glance at the About page shows that of the five board members, there are no young people and they’re all white too. But hey, give them credit, they do have a page asking if you’re interested in joining their youth steering committee. Unfortunately, it seems that committee’s pretty much going to be picked by the aforementioned board, and also has a very arbitrary cut off age of twenty-one. Please understand, this isn’t just a bitter twenty-four year old talking (WHY?!) but it’s genuinely the case that your special youth related LGBT needs don’t just stop when you turn twenty-one. Aside from the LGBT angle, SSY would direct the Castro board’s attention to the fact that anyone under twenty-five is still subject to state sanctioned wage and benefits discrimination, and if they’re single will only ever get fifty quid a week in order to keep up with their rent. Aye, all of this criticism is based on their website and what other people I know have reported. I’ve never been to the Castro. Know why? Because I didn’t even know it was open until I saw the articles saying it might be closing! I never saw one bit of publicity about the new centre, and that’s yet another failing.

Folk giving it yaldi at Stonewall

As I see it, the biggest issue is that a Labour council that has long since betrayed its original socialist politics and which actively works against the interests of Glaswegians has no business in deciding who gets to provide the Glasgow LGBT community’s only one stop shop that isn’t part of the commercial and often alienating scene. Like most of the scene world over, Glasgow’s is by and large targeted at young gay men, with very little provision for lesbians and trans folk (out on the Glasgow scene you’ll often be spoiled for choice if what you’re looking for is poisonous sexist and transphobic commentary on other customers), never mind the of course mythical, wily and elusive bisexuals or pansexuals. Sometimes people need an alternative to that, but a council that has shut schools, wants to sell off our parks and has already sold off our arts and heritage ‘assets’ to one of the many arms length ALEOs that they love so much (which has rebranded our museums as Glasgow Life) is not equipped to decide who’s best to provide essential services to marginalised communities. All they care about is profit and pals, and the birth of the modern LGBT rights movement couldn’t have been further from that agenda. At Stonewall, trans, lesbian, bi and gay people, many of them homeless, many of them sex workers and most of them poor who’d had enough of police raids and of the pro-assimilation and anti-violence rhetoric promoted by the mainstream LGBT rights proponents of the day rebelled. They drove the polis off in an emphatic declaration of their right to exist, their right to be free of state oppression, the right to organisation and what’s more their right to be different. This kind of collective action and emphatic rejection of assimilation into the mainstream is truly dangerous not only to heterosexist society but to governments and capitalists too. We must never fool ourselves into thinking that just because of the deeply embedded homophobia of society that capitalism has no interest in sidelining this dissent and using the LGBT community to make money. For example, most of the scene in Glasgow (and much of Edinburgh’s scene too) is owned and operated by one man, Stefan King of the G1 group. The venues peddle the same product, often leaving LGBT people who are marginalised within what’s supposed to be their own community with nowhere to go. Even on Pride day, which started as a political event celebrating the Stonewall uprising and demanding rights, advertisers now crowd the route of the march, hoping to cash in on the so called ‘pink pound’. Sometimes this adds up to people not knowing their own history and you get articles like this frankly embarrassing example from Gawker where the author declares that Stonewall was a load of gay men who fought back against the police. The rest of the community are erased, and a sexist, racist, transphobic, biphobic and affluent version of queer is sold back to us. With the poor running of the Castro Centre in Glasgow, there’s nowhere to escape that.

Of course, Ruth Black’s got a lot more on her plate than what I think. So, here’s a roundup of what other people (it wisnae us) are reporting. Not us, you understand. SSY has no interest in making allegations that we can’t prove.

The Herald has reported that the Castro “is on the brink of closure after an internal probe uncovered a range of financial irregularities”. They also report that a whistleblower has alleged that while tax and national insurance have been taken from staff pay, they have not been passed on to HMRC, which is an extremely serious offense in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the SSY Don’t be a Shitty Bastard Employer Squad. This kind of activity endangers the benefit and pension entitlements of employees and is blatant theft. The same whistleblower also alleges that while “excessive bills” are being paid to a Perth based gaming machine company, no profits are being declared from the machines, and that the council’s money is being used to run up huge mobile phone bills and lease private cars. There are also claims that the centre is sitting on tens of thousands of pounds worth of unpaid invoices and may be trading insolvently. Black’s response to the Herald was short and simple: “There are no irregularities.”

And then we get to the Record; we like to keep the really sensational stuff for last. They have reported that well known legitimate Glasgow businessman Paul Ferris has visited the Castro twice in recent weeks and has met with Ruth Black and her partner. This allegation seems likely to have come from the same whistleblower who has went to the Herald and the council. Black has responded that Ferris’ visits were connected with Unlock, an anti-reoffending and prisoners’ rights organisation that operates in England. A quick bit of googling shows that yesterday, five days after the original Record story was published, Ferris has chatted directly to The Sun about wanting to take who the police deem “their worst re-offenders” and to somehow teach them to go ‘straight’ but the idea is apparently still in its early stages. The article makes prominent mention of Ruth Black’s partner Jeannie McDougal, and Ferris says he is considering her as a tutor for his proposed program. He also says that he wants to meet with the head of Unlock towards the end of the month, but he doesn’t seem to have done it yet. So there seems to be some confusion about whether he’s chatting about Unlock or his own project. The Record also reports that the polis are investigating Ruth Black as they suspect her of selling speed at the City Chambers.

OICEBERG, ROIGHT AHEAD!

So, with all of this flying about in the press, and with the first google result for Castro Centre Glasgow being the Herald story about the possible closure (the actual centre being relegated to second place) the nervous and twitchy messages that adorn the Castro website are understandable. Call us cynical, but when us lot in SSY see the words “Please pay no attention to media stories which have no foundation and are based on rumour and speculation.” fall from the lips or fingertips of a politician who’s being investigated by the police and getting a lot of media attention we can’t help but suspect that some titanic calamity is about to befall them, and that maybe they’re wondering if that double hull of friends they’ve built up is quite watertight enough. Whatever happens to Ruth Black, whether corruption is uncovered or not, let’s hope that eventually the biggest city in Scotland finally gets the LGBT centre it deserves.

Jim Murphy, champion of Glasgow

While being interviewed by Brian Taylor about all this nasty Purcell business, which SSY has made passing comment on, Jim Murphy, Scottish Secretary (AKA official attempted whip of the entirety of Scotland) and knobhead, has said that he wishes everybody would stop being so nasty to Glasgow. The problem, of course, is that Jim seems to be getting the Glasgow Labour Party mixed up with Glasgow the city.

“The Labour Party is more than one individual. I think what happened to Steven Purcell was a horrible situation for himself and his family. It was a personal trauma for him, but there are wider issues about Labour in Glasgow.” Jim says. Resisting my language student temptation to analyse Jim’s interesting semantic choices (I guess all those drugs just ‘happened’ to jump up Steven Purcell’s nose), and the fact that it wasn’t just a tragedy for his family but a total abuse of Purcell’s office, from which he has escaped quickly and cleanly for a nice holiday in the sun, Jim’s right to say that there are wider issues about Labour in Glasgow.

School closures, service cuts and now their new plan to privatise Glasgow’s wonderful parks*; all of these are major issues that I have with Glasgow Labour. The fact is that they do a good enough job of besmirching their own reputation without Steven Purcell’s help.

Don't let those straws get their hooks into you, Jim!

Jim also says that “We should be proud of Glasgow in the same way we’re proud of Edinburgh, in the same way we’re proud of Dundee with the games industry, in the same way we’re proud of Aberdeen with the oil and gas industry.” and he’s right – Glasgow is a fantastic city. But the problem Jim has here is that nobody’s been saying that the whole of Glasgow’s been caning it up, palling about with super dodgy guys and abusing their office. This is just a really weak attempt to distract from the whole Purcell debacle. Take some friendly advice Jim; if you really want to upstage Purcellgate, then you’re gonnae need to check into rehab, disappear for three hours, come back covered in Llama shit and then run away to Antartica to live with the penguins.

* For more info and to help out with stopping this totally stupid plan, join the Facebook group here.

Jack Irvine contemplates 16 year old boys' bottoms

(With additional reporting by Sarah, Liam T, and Neevvy.)

Regular readers will know that Leftfield has carried the best coverage of Purcellgate in the Scottish media.

Leftfield favourite Purcell is now reported to have fled Scotland. In his absence he’s left behind a high powered and expensive team of lawyers and PR men to make sure that no one could ever allege he’s done anything dodgy. And that’s because he totally hasn’t, honest.

Heading the team is former editor of the Scottish Sun Jack Irvine. Now a PR consultant specialising in “crisis management” (what crisis?), he’s also been notable as a leading behind-the-scenes campaigner for organised homophobia.

Irvine was one of the main men behind the Keep the Clause campaign, which tried to stop the Scottish Parliament repealing a homophobic law that prevented schools from “promoting homosexuality.” Introduced by the Thatcher government in the 80′s, the real aim of this stone age legislation was to prevent children being able to learn about the possibility of being gay in sex education classes.

When MSPs finally got round to abolishing this nonsense, a powerful coalition of some of Scotland’s leading capitalists came together to try and defend legalised homophobia. The most famous of course was Brian Souter, head of Stagecoach buses, who got rich by cutting routes and driving rivals out of business. He’s also most notable for being Scotland’s most famous homophobe, as well as having donated £500,000 to the SNP just before their election to government in 2007.

But others involved in the Keep the Clause group included founder of the Sports Division stores and Scotland’s richest man Tom Hunter; Kwik Fit founder and multi-millionaire Sir Tom Farmer; Souter’s sister and Scotland’s richest woman Ann Gloag (who at one point was richer than the Queen); David Moulsdale the owner of Optical Express; and former head of Strathclyde Police, and then Metropolitan Police Commissioner under Thatcher Sir David McNee.

Many of these individuals also used Jack Irvine personally for their own PR. Irvine, who once described gay men as “Slobbering queers who want to get their hands on 16 year-old boys’ bottoms,” in the Scottish Daily Mirror, seemed the natural choice to run a political campaign of right wing homophobia on behalf of all these powerful Scottish figures.

The campaign was ultimately a failure, despite the attempts of Irvine and crew to engineer a fake “referendum”. Around 70% of Scots who received the ballots for this put them where Keep the Clause’s politics belonged-the bin.

Soapy Souter gets to grips with the "gay problem"

Irvine has found other ways to express his homophobia during the course of his career. In 1999, when Bank of Scotland announced a major business deal with rich televangelist, homophobe and general right wing bastard Pat ‘Knobhead’ Robertson, Irvine was on the front line defending BoS from gay rights protests. He also used a column in the Scottish Daily Mirror to peddle hate on a regular basis, such as this gem on the decision to equalise the age of consent for gay and straight 16 year olds:

“A pretty young boy of 16 can’t vote for his local MP, but he can now be buggered by him… So equality is the key, is it? In that case, shouldn’t 16-year-olds get the vote, be eligible to become, say, policemen? No? Why not? Because they’re not mature enough. But they are deemed mature enough to be bum chums for sleazy old pervs.”

But what keeps Irvine in sharp suits is his work for PR company Media House, which he founded in 1991, and which has helped him to the position where he’s been described as “Scotland’s answer to Max Clifford.” According to his biography page on the Media House website:

“Irvine specialises in international litigation and is a founding partner of Tactical Response, a confidential consultancy that advises boards on sensitive matters such as extortion, terrorism, fraud and abduction. They are operational on a global scale.”

That global reach will come in handy now that sources close to Purcell have indicated that “Mr Purcell has left the politics of Glasgow behind and is now resting and recuperating in the sun.” Leaving aside whether, as the former top man in the city, Purcell bears any responsibility for Glaswegian politics being a “mire”, we hope that as and when he does return to Scottish politics he’ll be refreshed by his experience on holiday. Indeed, he may even be able to recommend time on a beach for others with a chemical dependency stress and exhaustion. Most people with the same kinds of problems aren’t able to afford to recuperate in the sun, and find themselves in much less attractive surroundings. We hope Purcell one day finds the time to try and change the scapegoating and lack of support for people who may or may not allegedly have drug problems.

We also hope it’ll give him time to reflect on the contradiction of an out gay man employing such a notorious homophobe to defend him. Indeed, Irvine, who has used the infamous “but I have gay friends!” defence against accusations of homophobia, likes to claim his relationship with Purcell proves he isn’t a bigot.

According to another source “”Steven has always had an interest in the southern hemisphere and it is thought he might be spending some time there.” This mysterious and cryptic statement leads on to our bonus feature, Leftfield’s new favourite guessing game:

WHERE IS STEVEN PURCELL?

So, we can take out 50% of planet Earth from the equation. What options does that leave us with? Leftfield offers a few suggestions:

#Perhaps Stephen has hotfooted it over to Australia. He is rumoured to be about to surface on the new series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! where he will surely be a Glaswegian viewer favourite for those gruesome bushtucker trials. It’s possible that he’s been receiving advice from former contestants such as Daniella Westbrook (insert comment about deviated septums), Peter Andre (on how to revive a flagging career) and Brian Harvey, a man who knows all about addiction, since the day that he ate 47 baked potatoes and then accidentally ran himself over. It’s quite likely. Just sayin’.

#Maybe he’s in Colombia. Colombia is a lush and beautiful country, straddling the cool blue of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. To the north lie the impressive Andes mountains. To the south, the mystery and allure of the Amazon Jungle.

Steven P hangin' in Medellin

For the people of Colombia, Steven Purcell could certainly offer the wisdom of his extensive public service experience to assist with Colombian issues, for example he might be able to assist with a number of aspects of the Colombian exports system – agriculture, quality control, product testing… We know that Steven has been welcomed with open arms by several political organisations in the country who have received his direct financial support in the past. He is said to be keen to try out those local delicacies that have not yet reached the nutritionally challenged streets of Glasgow.

Colombian superstar Shakira was earlier overheard welcoming Purcell to her homeland, going as far as to say “Phwoar, I saw him earlier and I can tell you, even if he has lied about those SPT expenses, sure as hell his hips don’t lie”.*

*Shakira did not actually say this. Probably.

#This one may be a long shot, but you can’t deny that Antarctica IS completely covered in white powder…

So where is Steven? The first correct answer on a postcard will receive 1 dildo, slightly used, courtesy of Brian Souter.

1) Stephen Purcell is obsessed with making model volcanoes.

We all know someone who has fallen into volcano addiction. First it begins with small models, perhaps only the size of a molehill but eventually expands to the size of a back garden, swamping friends and loved ones in baking soda. The process of lies begins with an excessive amount of bicarbonate soda – all to be used in “baking cakes” which never seem to materialise.

But was Purcell a Volcanolic? Was his abscence during the Save our Schools campaign due to an obsessive desire to recreate Krakatoa in the bathroom of central chambers? Labour sources have revealed nothing.

2. Bunsen Burner fetishes.

Most times a bunsen burner is a vital piece of scientific equipment which should be dealt with caution in youth as a source of burny flames. However in the hands of a hardened bunsenaholic like Purcell the burner becomes an altogether more sinister piece of equipment.

Purcell could have spent literally days locked in his office burning various transitional elements, alkali metals and, given the correct equipment various noble gases. There is a time and a place for science but when the leader of Scotland’s largest council spends days conducting scientific experiments already extensively confirmed by various scientific institutions it is time for concerned families to ask questions.

3) Mentos and Coca Cola.

It begins as a joke – perhaps dropping one mento into a bottle of Diet Coke in someones front room at a house party, and watching as the room is covered with fizzy shite. But even this simple pastime can drag someone down the dark, souless road of an addict.

Did Stephen Purcell amass gigantic quantities of Diet Cola – up to 3 metric tonnes according to some sources – and subject it to mentos? Despite a lack of evidence, we can say with confidence almost certainly yes.

4. Fabric softener.

Take a look at Stephen Purcell. I think we can all agree he’s a well dressed man, ready to go out and do his best for the people of Glasgow. But did certain cleaning substances go beyond the realms of appropriate hygiene and into a murky world of fabric softener obsession? Did Purcell take regular half hour breaks from important council meetings to plunge his head into baskets of freshly laundered clothes, to get off on the smell of febreeze? Certainly not on taxpayers time and money, SSY hopes.

5. Distillation.

Distillation is essential for separating crude oil into various fractions which can be used for various purposes – fuels etc. But Stephen Purcells interest in this chemical process is rumoured to go far beyond either an amateur or even higher chemistry student interest.

Sources at Grangemouth say someone matching Stephen Purcell’s description has been secretly infiltrating the plant to oversee important chemical processes. Sources say that so far it has only been due to Purcell’s extensive obsession with safety that a major disaster at Grangemouth and several other plants has been avoided.

***

Of course we have no idea which of these chemical dependencies could be accurate or not, hopefully this has simply been an error made by Glasgow City Council and it has in fact been Stephen Purcells tireless fight against schools, binmen, and trade unions across the city which has got him so tired and exhausted.

After all, whenever SSY is exhausted there’s nothing we like better than having a sit down, cup o tea, watch a dvd and tell a high profile legal team to absolutely cut the shit out of anyone who even suggests weve been up to anything dodgy whatsoever like.

Looking shifty: Steven Purcell gets the sweats

After the resignation of the leader of Glasgow City Council Steven Purcell on Tuesday, it’s hard to find someone with a bad word to say about him.

Even SNP First Minister Alex Salmond, who once told Purcell to grow up, has been being nice about him.

So where do you go if you want to see someone be critical of this knobhead? Most of the media are, today at least, keeping cautious about the rumours about his resignation, since it was announced by his expensive high-powered solicitors. We wonder why that could be?

The official reason for Purcell standing down is that he is “exhausted and stressed”. But last week he seemed to be on good enough form to go to a fancy dinner at the Hilton with Gordon ‘Citric Idiot‘ Brown and Rangers manager Walter Smith to raise money for the Labour Party. But over the course of the weekend, things changed, and word started to come out on Monday he was standing down.

It’s easy to see why he would be stressed, following a major scandal at Strathclyde Passenger Transport, the public body responsible for running the subway and other public transport in Glasgow. Labour councillors have been in the top posts at this body for a long time, but recently it began to emerge that despite SPT bosses’ huge salaries, they’ve been making ridiculous expense claims, which added up to £520, 000. Free junkets enjoyed by top managers included trips to football games, expensive restaurants, £117,573 in foreign trips around the world, and even a Neil Diamond concert (where they undoubtedly had a few bottles of Red Red Wine).

Back of an SPT train

When this all started to come out several top managers were forced to resign. How this is linked to Purcell’s resignation remains to be revealed. Relations between the council and SPT have been severely strained by the affair. Tensions haven’t been helped by the slow pace of building up transport links needed for the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

Almost everyone who has commented on Purcell’s resignation has been quick to praise his role in bringing the Commonweath Games to Glasgow. But was the successful bid such great news for Glasgow as all the mainstream parties would like us to believe?

The current budget for the cost of the games is £288 million, but of course nobody believes such huge projects will ever stay inside their budget. Meanwhile, the race is on to for property developers and lazy rich people everywhere to get their hands on land in the East End and other extremely poor parts of Glasgow. Many know that if they own land they will get huge payouts from public funds for them. And after the Commonwealth Games, the long term effect is likely to be a wave of gentrification. That means that new housing and investment will mean that poor people can’t afford to live in areas they grew up any more.

It shouldn’t surprise us that this took place under Purcell’s leadership. Before he was leader of the council he was responsible for Development and Regeneration Services. What that really means is that he was at the head of efforts to use capitalist economics to transform Glasgow, and make sure it has no future as a working class city.

Purcell’s other greatest achievement was completely pissing off parents across the city when he decided to close 25 schools and nurseries, many of them in less well off areas like the Wyndford. This idiotic decision has been fought all the way by the city-wide Save Our Schools campaign. The fight included parents going into their children’s schools to occupy them.

Many were asking themselves why there was a bottomless pit of cash for the one-off Commonwealth Games, but nothing for the long term educational needs of Glaswegian pupils.

The full story behind Purcell’s resignation will take some time to come out. The announcement that today he came out of a drugs and drink rehab clinic may be the first sniff of the truth, but it’s still unclear why he was there. We do hope however that his recent experience in rehab, surrounded by people with serious addiction problems, will open his mind on the issues surrounding drugs in Glasgow.

Say hello to our new leader, Glasgow.

Glasgow urgently needs more support services for those with addiction problems. But Scotland as a whole needs to take a radical new approach, and recognise that the war on drugs has been lost. It’s time to stop treating people with problems like criminals, and give them the help they need through the NHS.

Unfortunately there seems to be little sign of the Labour Party as a whole taking this on board. The interim leader replacing Purcell is Jim Coleman, a man who has made a career out of being anti-drugs, and opposed several different education and support organisations. Whether this stance has any bearing on his selection as city leader remains to be seen.