Last week you might have had the misfortune of tuning into the latest fanciful and completely out of touch media outing of our council leader.

Not content with last month disparaging those voicing their legitimate outrage over the impact of her administration’s cleansing policies on fly tipping as ‘far right’, on Wednesday Susan Aitken responded to questioning from STV’s Bernard Ponsonby to claim that Glasgow’s streets aren’t filthy – they just need a little spruce up!

She claims she regularly walks the streets of this city but if that were true then there is no way on earth she could, with any sincerity, deny the scale of the waste and litter crisis that communities right across Glasgow are suffering.

Glasgow Times:

Unfortunately for Glaswegians this car crash interview, in which Glasgow’s SNP Leader struggled to come up with a single adjective to describe the state of the city under her administration, is not an aberration – it’s what we have come to expect from a council leader who refuses to recognise the reality we all see each and every day we walk the city’s streets.

Neither I, nor Mr. Ponsonby, take any pleasure in calling Glasgow filthy. But, like him, I have never seen our streets and green spaces in such a state. Glasgow Conservative councillors warned from the very start against cutting bin collections and introducing a bulk uplift charge.

It is common sense that both these measures would only exacerbate the sight of overflowing refuse and illegally dumped furniture and debris. But the SNP ploughed ahead regardless, spinning these policies as environmentally friendly at the same time as reports continue to spiral of rodent infestation across Glasgow – most recently near the children’s play area of Alexandra Park.

Enough is enough. I know that no politician likes to U-Turn but for the sake of the city we need to make an urgent change. This is why on Thursday I will be proposing a motion to a full meeting of Glasgow City Councillors in a bid to immediately suspend application of the bulk uplift charge until we get the fly tipping epidemic under control.

My motion is clear – the financial cost of scrapping the £35 fee should be borne by the SNP Government. It is their cuts to local authority funding that has driven councils to so drastically reduce the basic levels of service we are able to offer our constituents. SNP councillors in Glasgow would rather make you pay for their failure to stand up to the party elites in Edinburgh.

I have a different idea – how about Nicola Sturgeon stops wasting taxpayer’s money making up ministerial positions to buy off Green votes in Parliament and starts using that cash to address the disaster her colleagues are making of maintaining this great city.

You’ll have seen me write before in this column about the Glasgow Conservative petition campaign to scrap the bulk uplift charge, and I’d like to thank all of those who took the time to record your support. It’s time for those voices to be translated into action and that’s precisely what my motion will do.

The question is – will the other opposition parties in Glasgow put their money where their mouth is and support my bid to clean up this city? If you’d like to see the bulk uplift charge scrapped and a proper strategy to tackle Glasgow’s fly tipping nightmare – please contact your local Labour, Green and, yes, even SNP party councillor to tell them to support my motion.