Thistle Housing Popularity? You Couldn’t Gracefully Whack It

Day 760
Now 428  days after Thistle’s E.ON contract failed on 30/11/16
Now   97  days after Thistle’s E.ON contract failed on 31/10/17
Now   67  days after Thistle’s E.ON contract failed on 30/11/17

760 DAYS OF A FAILED BUILDING CONTRACT, 428 DAYS LATE
BY WHATEVER MEASURE CAN THISTLE MANAGEMENT’S INCAPABLE EFFORTS BE JUDGED COMPETENT OR ACCEPTABLE?

760 days after Thistle Housing’s management agreed to a profoundly imbalanced and failed contract (with an unexplained lack of penalty clauses) with an equally unexplained choice of contractor, a contractor with not quite the best of reputations, Toryglen residents still are nowhere near the end of Thistle’s Major Works Fiasco.

Residents deserve compensation for living in a building site for so long.

Thistle Housing management. What are you doing about this?

All of the multitude of comments made of the inept money grubbing management of Thistle Housing, the fiddles, the diversions the whatabootery and the deflecting of lies they have adopted to stop Toryglen residents from becoming member/shareholders should they ever deem it necessary to actually hold a vote.

In the 1930s, that became to be known as fascism
No vote, no say!
That’s the Thistle way

As a mere mirror of what appears on the web and remember, this is throughout the entire globe, aided by this small blogsite and now witnessed by 173 countries throughout the world, grab a PC, a laptop, a gaming systems, a tablet, a smart TV.
Open a browser and see what others have been appalled by the shenanigans of Thistle Housing’s corrupt, grossly failed and inept management. Their failures are now, quite literally, worldwide and forever.

For example, key in:

You’ll be surprised. Or maybe not. Click here to see for yourself.

Here is a reflection of the success of Thistle Housing’s management over the past eighteen months or so,

The Scottish Housing Regulator may well hold some interest.

A Clip of the SHOCKING results

Picked up from Facebook over the past while. No comment on the accuracy of the clips but there’s no smoke without Thistle fire. Any reasonably run housing association would never have these entries or be at the thick end of these clips. Something is amiss in Thistle.

By any measure, hardly a success but an indication of what the ordinary person can achieve when the back is to the wall.

Let’s examine a few facts which Thistle’s failed management may not savour
A Scottish Government sponsored development of a sixty year old housing scheme which has had minimal to no investment over the decades and certainly nothing in the current Major Works Programme part of Toryglen, mostly owner occupied. A coincidence?

An existent and autocratic management which has completely and absolutely forbidden any form of general open meeting or discussion.

Fiddled AGM …but a successful Bingo Nite, loads of free prizes
A housing association which manipulated the laughingly termed Annual General Meeting last August, otherwise known as big prize bingo nite for their pals, where questions as to Thistle’s performance were hardly invited. Jings, one elderly witch even screamed at an older association shareholder who insisted in asking questions, “You’re just a posh hun“. Whatever that meant.

Association Memberships Forbidden
A housing association which disallows its customers to apply for membership for fear that those new shareholders might not agree with its management’s authoritarian and despotic pronouncements. Member/shareholders might even vote them out of office. Can’t be having that, eh?

A chairperson of which no Toryglen resident has any information and the current Director, Grace McColgan refuses to explain plus the additional and equally unknown members from other housing associations allegedly co-opted at the express demand of Thistle Housing’s solicitors in an attempt to mask their shortcomings.
Why? Explanations? Truth?

Clueless Allegations
A Management Committee, bereft of ability, their very expensive Thistle provided Apple iPads apparently having been compromised by outside hackers (not that they know how to operate them), enjoying lavish weekend spa hotel luxury at Toryglen residents’ expense, the members of which seldom change, any unexpected alteration being damned with unprovable and illiterate accusations for fear that the truth of their incestuous self serving behaviour being exposed.

The Unexplained Contract (With No Penalty Clauses)
Thistle Housing management signed an agreement with Glasgow City Council in September 2015 for the (mis)appropriation of millions of pounds of Scottish taxpayers’ funds to ensure that their Scottish Housing Regulator statistics were dragged up from dreadful to acceptable. Thereafter, they jumped into bed with E.ON for whatever reason but entirely unexplained to this very day. Failure ensued to the extent that this unexplained contract is now, as of today, 428 days late and still no completion date, still no acknowledgement of the significant building defects afflicting so many Toryglen homes, no details of the mythical and no doubt valueless 25 year warranty which Thistle management refuse to discuss.

Residents are concerned not with today’s problems but what will be the outcome two, three, four years time? Alas, Thistle stays silent.

Thistle Housing at the Bottom of the List
Thistle Housing languishes near the bottom of the Regulator’s acceptance tables. The Major Works Programme, unguided and mismanaged as it has been, was not undertaken for residents’ benefit but for that of Thistle Housing’s management and Scottish government requirements. Not for the first time has Thistle’s management been in the view of the Regulator, a view which will only be focused more clearly.

The Equal of It’s Peers …or Not
Thistle Housing management refuse to have a website, refuse to publish minutes of meetings, refuse to publish accounts, refuse residents’ input. They claim that ‘none of their residents’ would use a website. How likely would that be?

The Housing Regulator
And yet, still failed. Thistle’s management is under the spotlight of the Scottish Housing Regulator which now holds a special interest in the management of the Director, Grace McColgan, Daniella Sprott, the “ahm no technical” Operations Manager and the completely unknown and unexplained chairperson of the Association, Patricia Jamieson.

Together with the above, the mute Management Committee will be under the spotlight, given that Misses McColgan, Sprott and Jamieson have (they think) craftily arranged for any and all blame to rest on their unexpected reputations. Committee members, you’ve been fingered.

No Information At All
Last but not least, an utterly failed redevelopment programme in which Thistle Housing management refused to involve residents, no prior consultation, no warning, no time to save up money, even although they signed an agreement with Glasgow City Council in September 2015. Mind you, they also refused to advise the same residents why their homes were not included in the first phase some seven years ago. Not a letter, not a meeting, not a word, not a thought.

Meeting with Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Friday 2 February 2018
At a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland and Toryglen residents’ MSP last Friday, 2 February 2018 and after a fair amount of heated discussion, Ms Sturgeon, in alliance with residents’ local councillor, Susan Aitken, Leader of Glasgow City Council, are to progress residents’ fears in a more ‘active’ manner.

Plainly and from reports received from residents, it would seem that both local political representatives are, for want of a different description, ‘pissed off’ with the arrogance of McColgan and Sprott, the lack of engagement with residents’ unanswered fears. Other more direct and aggressive avenues are now to be followed. It would seem that, having allowed the arrogant cabal in Thistle Fort more than sufficient opportunity to make good their failed ways, the bell is now faintly but increasingly tolling for Thistle’s management. Not before time.

Residents now await the full effect of the fortune of having the two most powerful political people in Scotland as their local representatives. No other area of Scotland is so lucky. Surely Toryglen residents can now, at last, benefit from this representation and have this Thistle Housing mismanaged mess brought to an end and with those responsible held to account.

Residents, both tenants and owners, have been in discussion, personally, with Ms Sturgeon, since March 2017 when they forced a meeting chaired by Ms Sturgeon and her able constituency manager, Dr Caroline Scott, with Misses McColgan and Sprott (who had bugger all to say but screeched and argued with each other like bitches in a trap), three useless representatives from E.ON (who promised everything, boots on the ground and argued with the aforementioned trapped ladies), Patrick Flynn, Head of Housing, Glasgow City Council who wasn’t quite chuffed at the once again previously mentioned howlers blaming Glasgow City Council for the selection of E.ON as contractors. Then again, that was only one of Thistle’s many and never ending lies.

Loot and Desperation
Thistle now is in a process to cash in as much as possible. The Association’s accounts are in jeopardy.  How could the situation be otherwise?  Remember, as Thistle management has announced, all income comes from rent payers (and also the sneaky fees and expenses screwed from Toryglen owners, which they always refuse to explain. Wonder why?).

Have you considered why the insurance rip off, twice the going rate, is now being demanded up front?

The additional huge and unneccesary expense of retaining temporary staff, employed only for the duration of the Major Works Programme, is now approaching some £400,000. That’s FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS which has evaporated, gone, disappeared, never to be seen again. Wasted due to incompetence.

Gone in the direction of the know-all-about-everything plumber-but-with-no results at a reputed five hundred quid a day paid to his two bob company who should have been well gone by 30 November 2016. Now, that’s cost the Association and therefore YOU, in excess of £140,000 ….and every day that increases.

Then there’s the other temporary “Ahve went and done this before” staff like the well known “nae loans available, geez the money noo” liar or the plumber’s pal (or apparently not?) latest expensively retained idiot who has never seen water gushing down the blocks despite the hundreds of (faked, of course) images sent to Thistle.

That’s REAL money. Hundreds of thousands of pounds. All lost. All due to the ineptitude and arrogance of Misses McColgan, Sprott and the unknown and becoming mythical Patricia Jamieson.

Resources, a drastic loss to Toryglen residents.

Think what that could have added to your backyards, a few benches for the auld yins on their way to ASDA, a few new street lights, maybe a couple of mobile cameras to catch those bloody flytippers, a flowerbed or three, some bollards to stop cars parking over the green your dug shits walks in. Whatever. Hundreds of thousands of pounds, of YOUR money lost and who is to blame?

Grace McColgan, Director
Patricia Jamieson, Chairperson
Daniella Sprott, Operations Manager
The Management Committee

Who has taken honest, hands up responsibility? None of the above. None of those who are paid such huge salaries, pensions, association paid for cars.

Don’t complain. You’ll be barred, banned, membership rescinded and, most likely, the police will be knocking on your door as a result of irrational fears, hatred and utter ignorant unfounded allegations from Thistle Fort.

Meanwhile, Thistle stays silent