Arthur Daly would be proud of you John!

I spend much of Thursday and Friday working with colleagues behind the scenes trying to salvage something of the disaster that is the "Dodgy Deal" aka Concordat between the John (Arthur Daly) Swinney and CoSLA. Thankfully we were able to make sure that the final motion agreed by the Leaders meeting recognised that despite the words of Alex Salmond in the parliament, the deal is not agreed until each Council signs up to it. In particular, and here's a phrase I haven't written before, Well done Jenny Dawe for standing up and saying that its only Edinburgh that will decide whats good for Edinburgh and no-one else! Lets hope you have the nerve to stick to your guns in the Council Chamber

The trouble is that part of this "deal" is that if a Council does not sign up to delivering the SNP manifesto pledges, the extra money to freeze council tax is taken away even though the money to freeze Council tax is to do just that and not to deliver other pledges like smaller class sizes more cops, new schools etc etc with NO extra cash. And this is what they call a new relationship with local Government!