ANOTHER week and another deluge of reports about the state of Glasgow’s streets under the city’s first-ever SNP administration.

It seems a long time ago that the SNP were promising £1 million for every ward across Glasgow or to open the books on what happened in the corridors of power under successive Labour-run councils.

In true nationalist fashion, big promises have been broken, and similar to the way they appear to brush off serious harassment complaints against their elected representatives, any sign of ambition for our city has been quietly swept under the carpet.

That’s why I was so proud to see John White, a young student that I am proud to call a friend, featuring in this very paper last week. He had written a scathing letter to Susan Aitken, the leader of the council, inviting her to see first-hand the fly-tipping crisis that has engulfed his community.

Only 18 years old, John seems to know more about the state of Glasgow’s streets than the SNP councillors three or four times his age who so arrogantly proclaimed at this month’s budget meeting that there was no issue with cleansing services in Glasgow. Instead, they deflected with the oldest and most tired political trick in the book by claiming those raising concerns were “attacking” hard-working staff.

It is not the bin collectors who have made the budgetary decisions to slash funding to Glasgow’s cleansing department. It is not the street sweepers who chose to introduce a £30 charge for bulk uplifts at the same time as Glasgow was named the fly-tipping capital of Britain.

No staff member voted in favour of moving from a fortnightly to three-weekly refuse collection cycle in the middle of a pandemic when the people of Glasgow were being instructed to stay at home – with all the extra waste that entails.

These were all political decisions made by the city’s SNP administration – with a little help from their Green colleagues who are so blinded by their shared ambition of breaking up our United Kingdom that they’ve forgotten about the environmental credentials that should be their top priority.

Glasgow Conservative councillors attempted to stop them. Our budget proposals would have scrapped the bin collection cuts, scrapped the bulk uplift charge and invested in a “Clean Glasgow” taskforce. Every single one of these fully costed measures was voted down by SNP, Green and Scottish Labour councillors just a few weeks ago.

This week they will have the opportunity for a rethink. They will have the opportunity to actually acknowledge the seriousness of the emergency Glasgow faces.

On Thursday, Glasgow Conservative councillors will submit a motion instructing the council to formally declare a cleansing crisis and compel the SNP administration to bring forward a plan within the next three months to tackle the environmental and social disaster that is plaguing communities across the city.

We already know how Susan Aitken will respond to this. Far from accepting it is her responsibility as the leader of the council to lead from the front on cleaning up Glasgow’s streets, she says it’s yours!

If she continues to defend the indefensible on Thursday then she will be reaffirming where her priorities lie – not with the people of Glasgow, but with her own ego and that of her administration.

For the other political parties, I have a message to you. In recent weeks you have claimed to oppose bin collection cuts. You have claimed to want to clean up our city’s streets.

It’s time to put your money where your mouth is. Support the Conservatives’ declaration of a cleansing crisis and urge this inept SNP administration to get their act together. It’s time to clean up Glasgow.