Steven Purcell: Out of Rehab, and into Knobhead's Korner.

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.