TODAY (December 13) the 28 tribunes of South Ayrshire Council will meet in the royal burgh of Ayr to consider a benign motion put forward by the Tory Party to examine the case for a Citizens Advice Bureau in South Ayrshire. This comes after more than a year of lobbying by an apolitical and well-informed group of residents wanting independent and holistic advice services to be established in the area. In that time we have been refused the courtesy of a meeting with the SNP leader of council and the Labour leader has blocked access to his small group. We have been ignored, rebuked, even slandered. There have been clumsy attempts to discredit. Such is what passes for democracy in South Ayrshire, a council where motions laid by the opposition, the largest party, are routinely dismissed as a matter of course by people still fighting old battles, settling old scores and putting tribal loyalties before the interests of the people it claims to serve. Redefining the term Rotten Burghs.

The SNP-Labour coalition, an odd coalition of the Unionist and separatist socialist minority parties, is unrepresentative of the share of the vote. The two “Independents” who underpin the fragile coalition have said they will vote against the motion because they must support the coalition. This is not a definition of independent that many would recognise.

The coalition leadership has already instructed its motley crew to frustrate the motion. Not, we believe, on any merit or in the best interests of the people but simply because it has been proposed by the Tories. We, the citizens, have never been given even one reason for South Ayrshire Council's long-term resistance to have a bureau. Claims that council-run services do everything an independent bureau does is not and can never be true.

Unless there is an outbreak of humanity of those under the mysterious control of a locally unpopular SNP leader who seems to us to be pursuing old grudges and fleeting political power, whilst sitting ironically under a Burns quote of “Ne’er forget the people”, the people of South Ayrshire will continue to be disadvantaged by the absence of an independent bureau, unlike their neighbours in East Ayrshire.

Councillors, you should all allow this apolitical motion to pass without amendment in the best interests of those who are entitled not to suffer through lack of knowledge of their rights and responsibilities, of the services available to them, or through an inability to express their need effectively, or “In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin!”

John Dunlop, on behalf of the steering group,

19 Wellington Lane, Ayr.