Day 992 since Thistle’s Major Works Programme Started
Now 660 days after Thistle’s E.ON contract failed on 30/11/16
Thistle Housing’s Annual General Meeting is to be held
at the Cornerstone Hall, Glenmore Avenue
on Wednesday 26 September 2018 at 7.00pm
Now, almost a thousand days since Thistle’s failed Major Works Programme started and still not complete. The Scottish Housing Regulator has found it necessary to utilise its highest powers and march into Thistle Housing’s offices due to, amongst others:
- Serious and wide-ranging compliance failures
- Difficulties in managing a substantial contract
- Serious management and financial failures
- The governing body was unable to demonstrate that it has the skills and knowledge required to be effective
- It has been unable to assure us that it has the governance and leadership capacity
Just how bad can Thistle’s management be? Seemingly, really bad.
Other than the above damning findings by the Regulator,
it has now been revealed that the residents’ Association has collapsed into an annual loss of more than half a million pounds.
The two main requirements of the Annual General Meeting are for shareholders (i.e. Association members who have purchased a £1 share) to agree the annual accounts and to elect board members.
The Annual Accounts
It has taken Thistle management almost six months, from 31 March 2018, to concoct the 2017 to 2018 accounts for the Annual General Meeting which they cancelled in August as the accounts were fiddled evidently not fit for purpose. The accounts were available to some only last Thursday evening, 20 September 2018 which brings the question as to what was supposed to be available for the short notice cancelled AGM last month, the day before the Scottish Housing Regulator marched in?
Thistle’s accounts, unlike all other limited companies, are not made widely available to all until literally minutes before the commencement of the Annual General Meeting when there is little time to read and consider the contents. Yet another example of the manipulative practices of the secretive and dictatorial cabal that mismanages the residents’ Association.
No openness, no website, no honesty. The mark of Thistle’s self indulgent management. So much for the never seen director director, Grace McColgan’s “communication strategy“. Yup, that one worked really well.
This blog site managed to obtain a copy and its contents are far, far worse than expected. Residents smelt a rat and had a suspicion that Thistle’s management were incapable and ravenously feeding from the tit whilst furiously attempting to cover up their own multitude of errors for their own ends but these accounts are scarcely believable.
Thistle burns through in excess of ONE MILLION POUNDS in a year
Thistle Housing Association Limited has gone from an annual surplus of more than a half a million pounds directly to a deficit of more than half a million pounds. In other words, in excess of £1,000,000 has been squandered in a single year. Where has it all gone? Surely Grace’s handbags can’t be that expensive? Miss Sprott’s frequent outcries that all expenses, errors, failures would be met by their own chosen contractor, E.ON, have incontrovertibly been not only wrong but lies and a massive cover up.
Hence the requirement for the Scottish Housing Regulator to step in?
Thistle’s auditors comment in the accounts,
grave doubts as to whether
Thistle Housing Association Limited can continue as a going concern
The Banks React to the Unforgivable Failures of Thistle’s Incapable Management
The blatantly inept management have now broken the agreement with their bankers who, as a consequence, have now called in their loans, amounting to £9,500,000, which must now be paid within one year.
Thistle Housing’s financial reputation has dived
Thistle Housing doesn’t have the money
Thistle Housing management haven’t the slightest clue
Desperately Seeking Funds
Thistle management are now desperately attempting to refinance this huge debt and given the reputation they have forced onto the Association, there will be little wiggle room to negotiate. If renegotiated terms are successful, it will undoubtedly attract a penal rate of interest. If the rate increases by only 2% per annum, that will be an additional £190,000 of residents’ funds wasted only in the first year and then every year, decreasing over the many years it will take to pay back the loans. Wasted due to the gross ineptitude of Thistle’s senior management and the compliant Management Committee.
Possible Staff Redundancies
If Thistle management is unable to refinance the Association’s debts, then immediately it is no longer a going concern and consequently can no longer trade. That could therefore result in Thistle Housing being taken over by another association, with ensuing staff redundancies in Thistle Fort.
Those Responsible for the Mess – Are They Worth It?
The Chairperson
The inadequate chairperson of Thistle Housing, slated by the Regulator, the unknown and unexplained elderly hoyden, Patricia Jamieson (Grace McColgan’s pal) has no personal interest or attachment to Toryglen other than her hobby interest in housing, so she can just go. Without pain. What the hell, it’s just a wee pastime helping out her chum (to ruin Thistle, as it turns out). Why should she care? She has screwed it all up, doesn’t stay in Toryglen so really, it just doesn’t matter to her. She might miss the freebies and the Apple iPads though.
The performance review
A rag doll, dragged out when required. Seldom seen. Pointless. A failure.
The Director/Secretary
Thistle’s Director/Secretary, Grace McColgan, according to the Regulator, lacking in governance and leadership capacity, hugely well paid to be responsible for all things in Thistle (but never, ever accepting responsibility and quick to blame others), who vanished coincidentally just before the Regulator marched in, has now reappeared. Her annual emolument package is heading for £90,000 per annum. She must be approaching retirement so she can grab her fat pension and disappear to her palatial home in G44 or maybe use her foreign passport to jump ship elsewhere. She also has no attachment to Toryglen, doesn’t stay there, so she can go with her loot, reputation torn to shreds. She’s raked it in year after year after year so she should have a nice thick wad to finger. Hope she chucked away the empty brown envelopes, though.
The performance review
Money grabbing. Devious. Inarticulate. No value. Hugely expensive. Another unmitigated failure.
The Operations Manager
Daniella Sprott, the self confessed, “ahm no’ technical” Operations Manager. Well, well, well. The lies, stories, bullying and shouting have really worked, eh? She consumes an annual bucket of dosh and benefits swilling around £70,000 and for what? Complete and utter failure. She too stays well outwith Toryglen in a luxurious home so really, has nothing to lose except her job which, based on performance, should be lost sooner rather than later. Shame about her work reputation but there you go. Well deserved and definitely not technical.
The performance review
Self indulgent, self opinionated, mendacious, out of her depth, inexplicably over promoted and certainly overpaid well beyond her extremely limited abilities. A consummate failure.
The Finance Manager
Thistle’s Finance Manager, Jim Naismith, who is reputedly a nice guy but is reported to be unable to withstand the bullying and harassment from the NcColgan/Sprott duo, is, however, ultimately responsible for the accounts. That’s his well paid job. No excuses. If he can’t come up with the goods, he shouldn’t be there. Simples. Clearly the financial decisions taken were wrong and his oversight failed as the accounts make dreadful reading. Residents’ funds have been mismanaged and wasted. Mr Naismith ain’t no chicken so he too can bugger off having filled his boots like the rest of the coven in Thistle Fort. Another one who neither stays in Toryglen nor has any attachment. Maybe if he had practised more with a bag of chocolate coins, Toryglen residents’ money might not have disappeared like smoke up a chimney. Oops, better not mention chimneys.
The performance review
Read the accounts. Gasp, another flat out failure. Bullied by the witches. No stars on his jotter.
The Management Committee
The Management Committee. Woof, what a complete joke. Other than those individuals drafted in to sort out the mess caused by Misses McColgan, Sprott and Jamieson and their acolytes, it comprises of the same forever revolving inane aged names, mostly (if not all) with the same background, whose only interest (if they attend the committee meetings at all) is the expensive away weekends in lovely hotels so that they can bond. With their free expensive Apple iPads none of them can work. Probably the handful of cash they also get stashed into their clammy mitts allows them to get bonded up to the eyeballs even more easily. Oh, and not forgetting the ability to slide family and friends into nice rented houses and flats. As if they would ever do that.
The Regulator doubts that the Board/Management Committee have, “the skills and knowledge required to be effective”. In other words, useless.
Remember, it is the chairperson, secretary and committee members, as the board of Thistle Housing Association Limited, who are responsible, supposedly, for the running of the Association, the hiring and firing of staff, future planning, financials, etc. These people are way, way out of their depth but in all reality, they run nothing but merely doff the cap when told to by Mrs McColgan and her pal, the spooky, unknown and never explained Patricia Jamieson, aided and abetted by the growling harridan, Daniella Sprott. They are the ones who really run Thistle (into the ground). Or as can now be seen, don’t, can’t and haven’t run Thistle.
The performance review
Speaks for itself. Dullards. ‘Dae as yer telt’ zombies. Desperate for freebies at residents’ expense. Maybe too busy on other committees.
The Heating Engineer or if you like (and he does), the Clerk of Works
Then there’s the money grubbing stranger to the truth, any truth, the self termed heating engineer, Jeff Poulter. Jeff has his own wee £100 company and is paid a contractor’s fee, reputed to be £500 per day. That must be so that he can drive all the way from the east of Scotland every day to stroll around Toryglen issuing limitless fairy stories but in all reality, doing bugger all. Now Jeff should not have been in Toryglen after 30 November 2016, almost two years ago, when the Major Works was supposed to have been completed as in “all of the works to all of the houses” but this pretend ‘Clerk of Works’, expert in all aspects of building, finance, the secret of the universe and how many beans make five, has attempted to make as much work as possible (and loot for himself) since then. If he is on £500 per day, now for 460 work days, that would amount to £230,000 EXTRA! If he was on, say, a meagre £200 per day, that would still add to £92,000. All of this not including whatever he was paid before 30 November 2016.
Consider Toryglen residents, whatever it all adds up to sliding into Jeff’s pocket, it’s not Grace’s loot, Miss Sprott’s gelt, Patricia Jamieson’s spare cash, Jim Naismith’s wad but YOUR money, money which could have been spent on the Toryglen estate but nothing ever has been. No new houses, no fences painted, no backyards redone, no seating for the elderly, no parking maintenance, no bollards to stop strangers abandoning cars. Zilch, nothing at all.
The performance review
An expensive, over inflated dope. Believe nothing and certainly don’t take sweeties from this liar. Any further comment here would just have to include swear words.
The Painter
Lastly, Paul Nolan, a paid for (by Thistle) gift from Grace’s pals in City Building, a company which has attracted so much controversy and surrounded by corruption over the years. Mr Nolan, another expert in all things but, unfortunately for residents, another master of simply nothing at all. Except for strutting around the place vainly attempting to look important, lying and like Miss Sprott, an endless ability to swear. He terms himself a ‘Clerk of Works’. Nope, he is no clerk of anything but a simple junior painter with an over inflated ego.
The performance review
Like skitters. Sometimes happens. Manky and ever so pointless. No second helpings for this lad.
The STTA (The Who??)
A bit of an aside for info and thought. The strange, no effect ‘South Toryglen Tenants Association’, which until recently, had not been heard of for over two years, apparently chaired by an elderly woman and run by someone who used to be dead against Thistle due to her home being mucked around during the Major Works (sound familiar?). That was until she obtained money from Thistle to back a relative doing some type of sports when she was told that she had to stop running down Thistle management. That would be the ‘association’ funded by Thistle, like the recent tea party paid for and managed by Thistle when no discussion about the Major Works was allowed, holds very occasional get togethers in Thistle’s offices with Thistle staff reviewing any attendees (seldom more that one or two), the association few know anything about and refuses to explain its terms of reference, did absolutely nothing during the Major Works upheaval and frequently discusses issues with local politicians, politicians who have all confirmed they know nothing of this association. Lies and stories are certainly contagious when Thistle management is about. Oh, wonder how the driveway’s getting on?
None, not a single one of the persons mentioned above has done any good for the residents of Toryglen, as can now be more than clearly seen by the Regulator taking control of Thistle and the last year’s financial disaster where residents’ funds have been skooshed away by a pathetic bunch of managers whose only interest was not Toryglen residents or the hard working Thistle staff but to retain their interestingly remunerated positions.
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