1,444 DAYS – THREE YEARS + 11 MONTHS + 14 DAYS
since Thistle’s mismanaged Major Works Programme started on 7th January 2016
1,116 DAYS – THREE YEARS + 21 DAYS
since 30th November 2016 when “all of the works to all of the houses in Toryglen will be complete“. Today, 21st December 2019, still incomplete, work proven to be shoddy and more importantly, dangerous and now possibly hazardous to life and limb
Lest you forget!
Below, a few newspaper and other snippets going back to December 2016, laying open Thistle Housing’s disastrous management of the Toryglen estate.
Now into its fourth Christmas, the ghost of Christmas past haunts the failed Major Works Programme not just incomplete 
but with the various discoveries over that time, much of it will have to be redone. This only as Toryglen residents refused to be bullied by the festering corpse of Thistle Housing’s inept management, reeking with the stench of failure, continued the fight against those in Thistle Fort who have held interest only for themselves.
A wee phone video shot in February 2017, see here, details some of the 
problems at that time. Alas, they have only got worse since then with none of them having being rectified by Thistle’s failed management.
One wonders what the alternative outcome could have been had residents done nothing as in meekly accepted the word of Thistle’s mendacious management. Dangerous chimneys, even more dangerous, poorly built roofs, highly toxic asbestos, previously hidden by Thistle’s management, discovered in the homes of potentially hundreds of residents, poor and increasingly sodden wall insulation and dampness, cracking roughcasting, gutters which don’t catch rainwater and window cills which rattle at the slightest drop of water (from the roofs as the misplaced gutters don’t catch it). A veritable litany of disaster issued upon Toryglen residents by a couldn’t care less management who have never been proactive in this disgusting affair and they have the cheek to demand money from owners, who form the majority of those affected? Alas, their own tenants suffer the same results but Thistle’s management lie, deflect, prevaricate and hide away in their office unless forced by residents whilst their own properties crumble.
Would Thistle have done anything about these major faults? As they did nothing except expend furious attempts to conceal them, you make up your own mind on that score.
The Scottish Housing Regulator has been the overseer in charge of Thistle now for sixteen months since August 2018, at which time its silent Director, Grace McColgan immediately took convenient ‘sick leave’ continuing to do so, grabbing in as much of her huge and totally undeserved salary package until September 2019, at which point she vanished for good with no explanation from Thistle Housing.
The massive failure of the Major Works Programme has been Thistle Housing’s undoing.
Once the Regulator realised that this multimillion pound taxpayer grant funded refurbishment scheme was a disaster, (see the Regulator’s latest determination here) the whole story of financial incompetence and gross mismanagement stretching back years, even well before the Major Works Scandal, began to unravel.
Faked performance statistics had been furnished to the Regulator, inexplicable expenditure adding to hundreds of thousands of pounds have been revealed, massive amounts of shoddy and dangerous building work have been uncovered and yet, other than the deservedly booted Grace McColgan together with the compliant and incapable ‘all pals’ Management
Committee, the same management structure remains. That would be Daniella Sprott, the “ah’m no technical” Operations Manager (failed) now sidelined in to a position whereby she has to undo all of the fiddles and errors discovered by the Regulator, failures that she, in cahoots with Mrs McColgan caused in the first place. Then there’s the bookkeeper, Jim Naismith, who put his mark to the loss of millions of pounds whilst he was being bullied by the gruesome twosome.
The wages for failure in Thistle are surely huge. Why are these people still in place? The question has been asked on numerous occasions but always without reply or explanation. It’s like giving a murderer a gun.
The ghost of Christmas present is that Thistle Housing is now a fire sale as the Regulator attempts to shovel it onto another association as quickly as possible so that Toryglen can, for once, be managed by those who actually know how to run a housing association for the benefit of its residents.
Meantime, Thistle’s self serving management, their (previous) all pals management committee and, alas, some of their inept staff, have demonstrated their lack of vision, accept no responsibility for the impending demise of Thistle Housing Association, fingers point everywhere in futile attempts to blame everything and everyone else for their utter failure even although their misdemeanours and woeful lack of ability have been underlined by the Scottish Housing Regulator and even Thistle’s bought in interim Director whose evidence based investigations have condemned the practices adopted by Thistle for years. The rot worsened as Thistle’s management and committee refused assistance from Association shareholders and residents, they threw out any engagement with those who offered help.
Perhaps some of the slides and graphics in this post might persuade them that in the case of the ghost of Christmas yet to come, another direction could have been successful and where the culpability for the failures of Thistle truly lies. Then again, it’s Thistle, so probably not. It was always someone else’s fault.
Will this scandal be rectified by next Christmas? Who knows. That is the very question Toryglen residents have been asking every Christmas since 2016.
GrabTheThistle: The Toryglen Residents' Blog 