WE are all tired of hearing it.But, it is nonetheless true that Covid-19 has changed everything. 

But it would seem that such a revelation has bypassed the SNP leadership of Glasgow City Council. 

This month, they announced that implementing their new funding for community organisations would go ahead, using a model that was designed almost a year ago.

Plans to scrap existing funding and replace it with the Communities Fund have been beset by problems from day one. 

Most recently – in March – it was delayed again at the very last moment, throwing the future of more than 400 organisations into doubt.

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These organisations have been the driving force behind the city’s response and demonstrate the very best of Glasgow. In the midst of everything, they responded quickly and without hesitation.

In May, my colleague Martin Rhodes made a request for the SNP to postpone for a further six months, use that time to assess what recovery from Covid-19 might look like, and adapt accordingly.

Such a request fell on deaf ears, and the SNP administration have decided to press ahead. 

The consequence of doing so?

The council advises that all those who currently receive funding should take necessary precautions, given many stand to lose their funding in the transition.

That means issuing redundancy notices in the middle of a global pandemic with a very uncertain future ahead of us.

The current funding supports more than 400 organisations, and over 2,000 staff and sessional staff. The very same staff who have been responsible for keeping the city going. 

It’s a slap in the face, and it needs to be stopped.

If not, some form of contingency funding is needed to avoid the spectacle of workers receiving redundancy notices while the city looks to them for support.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. It is this SNP administration who brought forward a proposal encouraging staff to leave just as the public health crisis hit. 

A proposal that will likely come up again before the July ‘recess’.

This proposal creates greater uncertainty among a workforce that is already anxious about what the future might hold.

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The council is, rightly, eager to congratulate staff volunteering for new roles to adapt to the new situation.

But asking them to volunteer to give up their own job is a step too far.

The council will continue to face financial pressures after a decade of underfunding by the SNP at Holyrood, but we still don’t know how the council will have to change.

The timing of both these decisions are, to be blunt, tone deaf.

I recall a politician of some renown attacking the grotesque chaos of councils that sought to scuttle around delivering redundancy notices to their own workers. The SNP would do well to heed that lesson.