Anger as Glasgow Labour Council spend £15,000 on lord provost portrait

Sunday, 05 February 2012 16:42
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Glasgow Labour council have been heavily criticised after it emerged it plans to spend around £15,000 on an oil painting of the city's current lord provost, Bob Winter.

The Labour council commissioned the portrait from artist Anne Mackintosh – an artist very popular with royalty and the Tory Party, who famously painted Margaret Thatcher - the portrait has already been completed.

Ms Mackintosh received a hand-written thank you note from Thatcher, and is reported to have said of David Cameron: "I told him he had wonderful skin."

Other famous Tories she has painted include former PM John Major, former Tory Scottish Secretaries Ian Lang, Michael Forsyth and Sir Malcolm Rifkind.  Ms Mackintosh also painted Labour notables, the late Donald Dewar and John Smith.

The news comes in the wake of a recent decision by the council in Edinburgh to reverse a similar plan to fund a £15,000 painting of its incumbent Lib Dem Lord Provost George Grubb as well as cancelling another £15,000 to be spent on a stained-glass window of former Labour Lord Provost Lesley Hinds.

The £15,000 expenditure on a portrait also comes at a time when the Labour administration in Glasgow is implementing spending cuts of around £42 million in the next financial year with the result that council staff numbers are being reduced.

Glasgow’s Labour run council has already spent £32.7m to pay almost 2000 employees voluntary early retirement redundancy deals so that staff will quit their posts. The reduction in staff numbers will form part of the council’s overall reduced spending and may well adversely affect service quality.

With spending cuts at the fore, the decision to honour Labour Lord Provost Bob Winter with a commissioned portrait has deeply angered councillors and trades unionists.

Martin Doran, a GMB trade union organiser, said: "This sort of spending is galling and beggars belief.  Staff will be shaking their heads in disbelief at the callousness of such a decision."

A Glasgow City Council spokesperson said: "Since the early 19th century, the council has commissioned portraits of out-going lord provosts.

"They are part of the city's art collection and are hung in public view in the City Chambers portrait gallery."

Comments  

 
# Alan 2012-02-06 00:24
If they are following tradition fair enough, but they could have perhaps commissioned a lesser known local artist a lot cheaper and helped further a local career.
 
 
# chiefy1724 2012-02-06 09:56
Or even one of the many talented and skilled students from the World-Renowned Glasgow School of Art ?
 
 
# zeldomzeen 2012-02-06 00:48
I wholeheartedly agree with the strategy of being positive in our campaigning but Glasgow City Council spending 15G on a painting of the Lord Provost has surely got to feature in our council election literature!!
 
 
# alicmurray 2012-02-06 00:50
Your right Alan, Glasgow School of Art churns out award winning artists but obviously none of them good enough for Scottish Labour. I read recently that Glasgow labour councillors were going to get gold medals struck for the baillies but that was stopped after the oxygen of publicity. Roll on May and this shower will be out in the streets.
 
 
# Ben Power 2012-02-06 06:46
Disregarding the point that the artist actually should be paid well for her work.
The relevant point to me is that the council chose to spend money on a painting instead of the continued employment of an existing person on the payroll.
Ego, pomp and posterity versus employee equity and security.
In their minds ego wins every time.
Time for an election.
 
 
# brh206 2012-02-06 08:43
Just can't beat a good story from ' the People's party '.
 
 
# Auld Bob 2012-02-06 09:13
This story highlights the simple fact that these people, who we elect to serve us, view themselves as our well paid masters. The truth being they are officially, and legally, our servants.

Time for a complete cultural rethink. I suggest we start at the top, though, with the Wastemonster Millionaires.
 
 
# hiorta 2012-02-06 09:45
Have they never heard of cameras?
 
 
# proudscot 2012-02-06 14:52
Quoting hiorta:
Have they never heard of cameras?


Good thinking, hiorta - they could nip down to the local Tesco Superstore and use the passport photo booth, and the cost could then be deducted from Tesco's next donation to the Labour Party. That way they would get 3 wee pictures of the Provost at no cost to the public purse at all! Right, I'll away and see if there's any space for a wee lie down in the darkened room ...
 
 
# J Wil 2012-02-07 01:03
"Have they never heard of cameras?"

Quite right.

In days of yore when there were no cameras, it was one of the ways of preserving a person for posterity, along with mummyfication, embalming, death masks and sculptures.

Totally unneccesary now that we have cameras and freeze drying, except as an egotistical status symbol.
 
 
# Jiggsbro 2012-02-07 01:06
Quoting J Wil:
it was one of the ways of preserving a person for posterity, along with mummyfication, embalming, death masks and sculptures.


I vote for embalming.
 
 
# maisiedotts 2012-02-07 15:56
Quoting Jiggsbro:
Quoting J Wil:
it was one of the ways of preserving a person for posterity, along with mummyfication, embalming, death masks and sculptures.


I vote for embalming.


Preferably soon I hope?
 
 
# clootie 2012-02-09 15:05
Freeze drying sounds a good option - do they have to be dead first? How would we be able to tell?
 
 
# Christian_Wright 2012-02-06 10:36
What's wrong with a photograph?

I've got a 12 megapixel Casio and a wee tripod I got out of Dixon's.

If they pay me my bus fare and maybe throw in a tuna sandwich, I'll come and do it for nothing.

There's many a person in Glasgow who cannot afford to turn on their heating this winter and these pols think it's just fine to spend 15 grand of public money on a painting?
 
 
# gerrydotp 2012-02-06 12:08
Quoting Christian_Wrigh t:
What's wrong with a photograph?

I've got a 12 megapixel Casio and a wee tripod I got out of Dixon's.

If they pay me my bus fare and maybe throw in a tuna sandwich, I'll come and do it for nothing.


Yep - and with Photoshop you could turn it into a nice watercolour or oils representation, print it out on canvaslike paper have a framemaker build it into a nice frame - and Bob's yer Uncle - Not Auld Bob though!
:)

I'd like to have a nice tradition like that where I could splash 15,000 of someone elses money on a painting for my gallery. Unfortunately I'm one of the ones who's all in this together.
 
 
# heraldnomore 2012-02-06 10:46
I'm sure there are plenty of local artists desperate to get a breakthrough, with plenty of skills, and for whom the decimal point may be one, if not two, places to the left.
 
 
# gerrydotp 2012-02-06 12:11
It exists everywhere - a disconnect between the people - and those who are supposed to represent the people. I've seen it in the corporate world, Education, Politics and even in the committee of small clubs.
 
 
# Angus 2012-02-06 13:22
Haha, isnt this just like them!
 
 
# Teri 2012-02-06 15:08
It is hoped that Labour's lonag reign over Glasgow City Council comes to an end in May. This council sees self as the priority when spending and the councillors have done extremely well from it. Glasgow needs a council that will truly serve the people of Glasgow and ensure that citizens are provided with quality services. Only the SNP can do this. We have 3 months to convince the voters of Glasgow of this.

As for the provost's portrait, I suppose it will adorn the walls of the city chamber alongside all the labour great and good. If Glasgwegians were to visit the city chambers they would have a negative tale to tell of each one of them. Mind you, it will give me a chance to see what my local councillor looks like as I've never seen him, Bob Winter. I do believe, however, he runs up huge bills on being driven everywhere by limousine.
 
 
# Fungus 2012-02-06 21:35
.../glasgows-labour-lord-provost-bob-winter.html

Aye, Labour right enough.
 
 
# J Wil 2012-02-07 00:57
A waste of time and money?

We know well enough what he looks like and we don't like what we see.
 
 
# Diabloandco 2012-02-07 16:03
They splashed out on a mural of B.Connelly down in Finnieston ,allegedly for the princely sum of £50,000.
 
 
# edinburgh quine 2012-02-07 19:34
At least connelly USED to make us laugh. Not so much now since he joined the establishment - he's a laird up here, dont you know? (Donside)
 
 
# GuidedByPollard 2012-02-07 19:38
Quoting edinburgh quine:
At least connelly USED to make us laugh. Not so much now since he joined the establishment - he's a laird up here, dont you know? (Donside)

Shhh, don't say that or he'll storm off in a cream puff!
 
 
# lochside 2012-02-08 14:35
Of subject: what happened to the msm regarding the Stephen Purcell's wee stairhead rammy. [Comment sedited - NNS Mod Team]
 

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