#RedTories OPINION - PITCORTHIE PRIMARY SCHOOL CLOSURE: #Labour - TopicsExpress

#RedTories OPINION - PITCORTHIE PRIMARY SCHOOL CLOSURE: #Labour politicians used our kids distress to further their own agenda AS a member of the Save Pitcorthie Primary School campaign, I was saddened to learn last week that the ministerial call-in had been unsuccessful and that the closure is to go ahead. The pupils and parents of Pitcorthie are understandably devastated at the news and there is a lot of uncertainty and anxiety for us. I am therefore disgusted at the actions of two of our elected officials, Thomas Docherty MP and Cara Hilton MSP. As news of the inevitable closure spread, a Courier photographer asked a member of our campaign to organise for some parents and children to gather outside the school gates for a photo to accompany the following day’s article. When the photographer arrived he was accompanied by Mr Docherty and Ms Hilton, which was a complete surprise to the parents. Over half of the next day’s article was devoted to Mr Docherty and Ms Hilton completely misrepresenting the facts of the matter and trying to place the blame on the Holyrood government rather than on Fife Council’s executive committee, who were responsible for the final decision to close. This is a matter of public record and the names of those who voted to close the school (eight Labour councillors, one Lib Dem councillor, two Independent councillors and two unelected religious representatives) can be found on Fife Direct website in the minutes of the executive committee meeting of 15th April. These statements by Mr Docherty and Ms Hilton were also published on the Dunfermline Press website on Thursday 2nd October. As Ms Hilton and, to a lesser extent, Mr Docherty both worked with our campaign, I would expect them to be familiar with the guidelines for ministerial call-in and to understand that there is a very narrow set of circumstances under which the government can overturn a closure decision. These circumstances are all procedural and as long as Fife Council had followed procedure, which they apparently had, there was nothing the government could do. For Mr Docherty to suggest that the ministers could easily have overturned the decision is patently ridiculous and it would have been an act of political corruption if they had disregarded the rules in order to save our school. At no point did Alex Salmond or Mike Russell promise to save our school, as Mr Docherty claims, and we never even met with Nicola Sturgeon. All Mr Salmond could do was listen to our concerns and sympathise and Mr Russell made very clear that he could not hear any of the details of our situation but could advise us on how the call-in procedure works. I, and many others, feel that Mr Docherty and Ms Hilton have used what is a very distressing time in our children’s lives to further their own political agenda. Within hours of the announcement that the call-in had failed they were both busy trying to shift blame from the Labour-led council who made the decision to the Scottish Parliament who were unable, as a legal matter, to overturn that decision. Mr Docherty took to Facebook to repeat his claims and when I posted the facts of the matter he deleted my comments and blocked me from further posting, as he has done with several others. He has since claimed that he was only deleting abusive comments, which mine certainly were not. This is no way for an elected official to behave. We are now left with the job of reassuring our children and helping them through the transition to their new schools. We will be working closely with staff to ensure that the transition goes as smoothly as possible. In the meantime, our Parent Council will ensure that all our usual discos and other events go ahead as planned in order to give our children the best final year at Pitcorthie PS that they could possibly have. Shirley MacDonald, Address has been supplied