Thistle Housing in Fire Sale – GOING CHEAP!

1,463 DAYS – FOUR YEARS + 2 DAYS
since Thistle’s mismanaged Major Works Programme started on 7th January 2016
1,135 DAYS – THREE YEARS + 1 MONTH + 10 DAYS
since 30th November 2016 when “all of the works to all of the houses in Toryglen will be complete“. Today, 9th January 2020, still incomplete, work proven to be shoddy and more importantly, dangerous and now possibly hazardous to life and limb

At last, the powers that be in Housing in Scotland have decided that Thistle Housing Association is a lost cause, corrupted by inept and self seeking management individuals and their cronies over a period stretching back years involving “serious and historic failures“.

Thistle’s nineteen year tenure of the Toryglen estate since January 2001 has now been proven to have been riven with personal self interest and an unbelievable lack of management and administrative ability highlighted in particular and latterly by the massive failure of the latest Major Works Programme now 1,135 days late, incomplete, dangerous and pretty much requires to be redone, all underlined by the eventual and deserved dismissal of the haughty and far from capable Director, Grace McColgan and her band of never changing, ineffectual compliant committee members.

Thistle Housing, late yesterday, appended this on their new website, the website which they were forced by residents to publish.

Thistle Housing is now to be disposed of quickly to any bidder as it is incapable of running itself. In other words, the management have been unveiled as derelict and useless. Meanwhile the money drains from Thistle’s emptying coffers as losses mount at an alarming rate.

You can read the content and make up your own mind but it has to be said that after the poison aimed at Toryglen residents (and this wee blog site) by Thistle’s inept and twisted management, residents have been correct time after time whereas Thistle’s crooked management have simply turned a blind eye, denied that they were at fault, blamed everything and everyone else, refused to accept any responsibility whatsoever whilst digging an ever deeper hole for themselves, dragging the Association’s staff into darkness with them.

With such a catalogue of profound failures over so many years, why on earth are these proven incompetents still in position being paid over generous and clearly undeserved salaries?

The website announcement is evidently not written by anyone in Thistle Housing, certainly not by the third rate, worthless, money grabbing incumbents such as Daniella Sprott the failed “ah’m no technical” Operations Manager, the bullied bookkeeper Jim Naismith or the serial committee member/vice chairperson, the blessed Brenda Wilson. It is, however, an indictment of utter failure by those who so many in Toryglen held as trustworthy but, at the end of the day, were and are snake oil salesmen, blindingly incapable and have brought Thistle Housing Association to ruin.

It’s a pity that Sprott, Naismith and previously, McColgan with her band of ever so pally lapdog committee members supposedly headed by her drinking pal, the unexplained Patricia Jamieson (now booted) and now, risen from the depths yet again, Brenda Wilson, were so full of themselves that they considered nothing for the ordinary staff members. It could all have been so different had only Thistle’s selfish management engaged with Toryglen residents but no. Their arrogance and sheer lack of ability forbade that.

As mentioned in this blog entry of 7 January 2020, hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent (or maybe squandered) on investigations and reviews into the botched and dangerous chimneys and roofs, the damp ridden Rockwool insulation, cracking render/roughcast, the misplaced gutters, the deliberate, amateurish and illegal attempts to conceal asbestos contamination in attics, flimsy, rattling window cills and latterly, the Arneil Johnston residents’ opinion poll on Thistle’s future. All results of all these investigations were due, at the latest, by the end of October 2019. However, all that has been witnessed so far is silence, not a shred of information. Where did all that loot go and where are the results of the expensive investigations?

Residents were promised that they would be kept advised of Thistle’s increasingly tenuous future and the progress with regards to the rectification works desperately required, particularly in tenement blocks. In the words of Bob McGuire, the expensive interim Director on hire from Savills, the information “would be shared with residents“. The result? Silence and not a lot of “sharing“. Still the ethos of secrecy prevails within Thistle Housing even as it undergoes its death throes.

It is understood that Mr McGuire has been spending his two days a week at Thistle (at a reported cost of £2,000 per week, nice wee job for a pensioner), rearranging the filing cabinets into neat alphabetic order and ensuring Miss Sprott is on top of her new job of sharpening pencils. He surely has noticed obvious gaps in the amount of paperwork which apparently has vanished for some inexplicable reason as well as emails which can no longer be traced. It is understood that there have been several occurrences of significant shredding in Thistle Fort over the past year or so. If that is the case, one wonders why, what has been concealed and  for what reasons?

For an abbreviated list of unanswered questions and situations put to Savills’ Bob McGuire regarding the many so called investigations, click on the following: 191116_questions_to_bob_mcguire or within a previous blog post here. There are, of course, so many more questions (some going back as much as three years) which Thistle has simply ignored and, thus far, Mr McGuire, despite his personal promises, has subsequently refused to answer. The gravy train, at the reputed two grand every week, continues to lurch forever onward.

Exactly as published on Thistle’s website

Read it a few times. The more it is read, the worse the situation becomes, the more of a long term failure that is Thistle becomes even more apparent.

The Scottish Housing Regulator’s latest Thistle Housing Engagement Plan, as at 1 November 2019, can be read here.