Former Labour council chief Steven Purcell flees Scotland to escape stress
Mar 6 2010 Exclusive by Tom Hamilton
TROUBLED council chief Steven Purcell sensationally fled Scotland last night.He is jetting abroad to escape the pressure after a dramatic week which saw him quit as leader of Glasgow council.
Sources close to Purcell said he won't return for up to a year.
The news came just hours after a teenage friend was found dying outside the City Chambers building in George Square.
Sources said 18-year-old Danus McKinlay had heart problems .
Earlier yesterday, Purcell followed up his decision to quit as £60,000-a-year leader of Scotland's biggest local authority by standing down as a councillor.
Purcell spent some time at the Castle Craig rehab clinic in the Borders after he quit as council chief .
He disappeared from the clinic on Sunday but turned up again soon afterwards.
A source close to Purcell said: "Steven has always had an interest in the southern hemisphere and it is thought he might be spending some time there.
"He is sick of the whole affair.
"He's had enough and needs to get away to put some distance between himself and the mire of Glasgow politics."
Purcell could not be reached for comment last night.
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8 comments:
"He's had enough and needs to get away to put some distance between himself and the mire of Glasgow politics."
'Twas ever thus in Glasgow, as far back as the (politics conscious) memory goes. What is it about the place? The council ever-corrupt, Martin able to retire from his constituency a rich man, whilst his constituency, one of the most deprived in the country, progressed not a jot or a tittle.
I can see no other solution to this than to grant Scotland full independence, thereby at a fell swoop, removing the canker of Scottish politics from the body politic, and the canker of Scottish MPs from our Parliament.
That would be a truly good riddance.
Finally, did you ever see anyone so replete in their self-love as Martin in his peer's robes, clothing his fat Socialist belly? (Except maybe Jack Straw)
FUBAR
The mireishness of politics in that part of Scotland is the swamp in which Brown festered before he festered in Westminster, isn't it Elby? Scottish friends tend to be Edinburgh conservatives or highland and islands emigres whose purity of pronunciation in English is a sure sign of a native gaelic speaker. So while I can grasp the constitutional and even some of the political imperatives of the drive for Scottish independence, no-one who stays here has the remotest link to Scottish labour realities.
But reading the Scottish, highly guarded, press this morning - something isn't normal.
The Subrosa blog is my point of entry into real understanding of Scotland.
True; I think that for this Little Englander, my perception of Scottish politics and politicians is coloured by what affects me. My father-in-law, a navy gunner on the Arctic convoys and all over the oceans, worked all his life at the Morris works in Cowley in all its incarnations until he retired (when he started it was 6 months on, 6 months off), having held a union card for longer than anyone else there. He was a country boy from Thame, who as a child could trap and skin a rabbit (6 months off!), a peace-loving man if ever there was and an old and old-fashioned Labour man. The sort of person I thought of when I decided to become a Labour voter some 40 years ago (politics bored ms stiff, truth be told, but in those days it was a minor item in the media most of the time, and not, as now, rammed permanently down your throat).
He could also roll a cigarette one-handed, a trick he learnt in the navy, showing me how to do it long after he stopped smoking, thought I never was expert at it).
I digress. He didn't like the Scots, as in all his naval career and the many bars he had drank in, it was always Scotsmen that started the fights. It was the only prejudice I ever heard him voice in the fifteen years or so I knew him.
Whatever happened to the Scottish Enlightenment? Where did all the great Engineers go?
Malk Whisky redeems a lot. My father introduced me to Laphroiag aged about 15. He offered a glass to a friend, who said it tasted like TCP, and I, liking the taste of TCP, asked for a small glass. I still love it and the peaty Island malts, so can forgive them much for that.
Not Brown and co., though. It's time they had them back. For good.
Ah hg, you have a scoop there. One of my hawk-eyed readers just emailed me to let me know. :)
It's a strange situation right enough but Scottish west coast politics is rather different to elsewhere in the country. Religion has a much bigger part to play and it's certainly labour dominated and has been for many years.
Elby asks 'where are the engineers'? Well Elby, once they're educated at some of the best universities in the west, such as Strathclyde, Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews, there's no work for them here so the really good ones go to Canada, the US, Australia or Germany (if they can be bothered to learn the language).
Some come home when they're tired but not many. If you look at many works in these countries you'll still find a Scot in the top management.
Oh, thanks for the compliment hg. Very kind of you indeed.
We need independence to clear it all out and start afresh.
WV: fookness (We have a labour lord who is an MSP here called Foulkes - it may suit him to be Your Fookness. ;)
@subrosa said...
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Elby asks 'where are the engineers'?
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Ah yes; and I am old enough to remember when all the old "First" Division teams had a complement of Scottish players, many of them excellent. Now most teams don't have one. Put your head down a mine shaft, and call them up, that was the saying. Poor Scotland. Poor England.
SR, Welcome. I have had a weird morning reading Scottish newspapers; have all comments been banned? They used to be so interesting and apposite when last I was reading about Scotland. I shall stick to your blog and links.
After friends from Scotland dismissed as, well, froth, the idea of a different constitutional settlement among the countries of the UK I had been thinking that what seemed obvious to me must be more complex for conservatives (with a small 'c', really.) Then Northern Ireland reared its head again over justice and policing powers and, clearly, there is a stronger case for unionism than the New Labour line pushes. Which then opened the politics of sectarianism by no means confined to Northern Ireland. As you point out.
A post on sectarian politics would be very interesting.
I'm not clued up on sectarian N I politics hg, Boballs blog is the one for that, but I will consider a post about Scotland. It won't be a long one because I've more or less explained it but I can give some links if I research it a little.
Remind me if I don't come up with the goods won't you? Rather busy with other bits of life at the moment.
In my wanderings I spent the past 45+ years living (by which I mean staying permanently for periods of two years or longer)in more than a dozen countries all over the world. In each one there were to be found well established Scots (and their ubiquitous St Andrew's Society branch, Scottish country dancing, and whisky tasting clubs) well ensconced in senior managerial or engineering positions. I am happy that many of them (but by no means all) became lifelong friends. Indeed several of them were second or third generation "Scots" having been born in those countries - but still clinging frantically (or do I mean fanatically?) on to their cultural mythology (baggage?)of kilts and haggis ceremonies. The Irish diaspora also seem to do something similar for some reason.
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