Two things I learned after pocket-dialling SNP leader Adam McVey – John McLellan

A couple of points from a trifling incident at the weekend: I was over at my parents’ flat on Saturday to clear some of my late father’s belongings from his lock-up and called my mum.

Hanging up, I put the phone back in my pocket and an hour later found that I’d managed to call council leader Adam McVey when it was in my pocket.

On Monday morning, Cllr McVey tweeted that he had just woken to a voice mail from me and “assumed the garbled nonsense I could hear was him dictating his latest column”. Ho ho.

Point 1: Check your phone contacts can’t be called before putting it back in your pocket.

Point 2: Check your phone more than once in 40 hours when you’re the £52,000-a-year leader of a council facing the biggest crisis in its history.

Give green light to charity homes

Charity begins with a home: A charity providing care and support for people with special needs wants to build 11 homes and community facilities for families with the greatest difficulties on the site of a car-park close to a centre for adults with complex care requirements, right next to the city by-pass.

But it was opposed by Edinburgh planners because being on the wrong side of the city by-pass it was on the Green Belt. Thin end of the wedge, eh? Thankfully, the plan was not thrown out and there will be a full hearing at which the charity can explain their proposal.

Don’t politicise a family tragedy

The death of a three-year-old boy out with his mum on Morningside Road was truly heartbreaking, it’s shocking that the lives of more than one family have been utterly changed in the most dreadful of circumstances in an instant.

Some of the comments on social media in the aftermath were disturbing to say the least and I hope anyone whose first instincts were to try to make a political point out of such an awful situation has a long, hard look at themselves.

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