1, 879 DAYS – 5 YEARS + 1 MONTH + 21 DAYS
since Thistle’s mismanaged Major Works Programme started on 7th January 2016
1,551 DAYS – 50 MONTHS + 29 DAYS
since 30th November 2016 when “all of the works to all of the houses in Toryglen will be complete“. Today, 1st March 2021, still incomplete, work proven to be shoddy and more importantly, dangerous and now possibly hazardous to life and limb
The new Sanctuary Housing regime promises to fix all ills. Will it and when?
“troubled landlord” – “serious failures and regulatory breaches”
“lack of transparency” – “neglected back courts and footpaths”
“lack of formal channels for residents to have their voices heard”
“customers did not trust Thistle” – “mismanaged E.ON contract”
1st March 2021 – From today in Toryglen, life as it was hitherto known, now changes. For the better or the worse? Anybody but Thistle? Mmmm, sounds good but when one jumps from a sinking ship into a lifeboat on fire and it costs a fortune to get in? Maybe not. Sanctuary Housing is now at the helm. Let’s see if it can steer a better course for Toryglen residents both tenants and owners. Sanctuary’s “Fresh Start” takeover page here.
The Thistle website has gone (but now redirected to Sanctuary Scotland), email addresses not forwarded. Certainly hope that the sign hadn’t been changed this morning as that would not be ‘essential work’ and against COVID regulations.
Non essential work. Within COVID regulations?
Why bother as Thistle staff broke all the rules when canvassing for votes
plus they got a few bob for doing it.
if not before.
NONE OF THEM WILL BE MISSED
Today, 1st March 2021, the English Sanctuary Housing behemoth swallows Thistle and all its tens of millions of pounds of property assets. For free. No cost at all. Not a bean.
Signed off by the self serving Scottish Housing Regulator who ignored Toryglen residents and simply wanted rid of the Thistle problem (a problem highlighted by residents and not picked up by the ‘soft touch’ Regulator) at any cost in a feeble attempt to mask their own profound failures in letting a mismanaged and out of control Thistle Housing to self regulate and consequently, to fiddle returns and figures.
When any form of ‘self regulation’ is sanctioned and permitted, it always, always results in self absorbed debased duplicity, corruption and fiddles. Exactly what happened in Thistle Housing.
Who watched all of this happen? Who sanctioned it and for what reason?
How does this leave Toryglen? Only time will tell but the tenants voted, beguiled by promises most believed but perhaps didn’t properly consider as others with other interests have more in the mix, much more invested and not necessarily for the betterment of residents who have made their bed and now must lie on it.
Sanctuary claims that, “More than 92 percent of Thistle tenants who voted in an independent ballot last September supported the transfer to Sanctuary”. Note, “who voted”. If only forty residents voted and thirty seven selected Sanctuary, that would be 92% of those who voted, not including the hundreds who didn’t vote at all. It is understood that many residents refused to vote, rightly or wrongly, as they were sickened by the years of fiddles and lies by Thistle and, quite simply, didn’t trust them. Thistle, as it was then, was asked to prove the vote and the actual number who voted for, as many residents claimed to have voted against, many more than Thistle claimed. Thistle, under the auspices of Sanctuary, they declined to provide any figures at all.
Great sauce but no result
On the other hand, owners who make up approximately 43% of residents have been ignored, particularly those in flats which make up the majority of Toryglen properties, who have been savaged by ridiculous, excessive and unexplained charges for years. The basis of Thistle Housing Association, the shareholders, have been completely disregarded and sidelined. So much for, ‘local housing associations managed by local people for the benefit of the community‘. Not a single one of the corrupt management and staff failures Thistle Housing employed and embraced as members of their own cult, except for about one, actually resided in Toryglen so, really, why should any of them care? They didn’t and that’s why Toryglen after twenty years of Thistle’s neglect, finds itself in the state it’s in.
Today, all of that is tossed into the flames of hypocrisy …..and lies ….and no more shareholders as Sanctuary can do what they like. Their “Customer Review Panel“? What does that mean? Simply, like Thistle, nothing at all but a toothless talking shop with no powers of shareholding. Ye’ll dae as yer telt with absolutely no further recourse. Wait ‘n see how that trick works out.
The GOOD
Congratulations to Toryglen residents for standing up to the never ending, incessant lying and bullying of Thistle Housing’s excretable management and woefully incompetent employees. Four years and more to seek answers and solutions to the unbelievable failures of Grace McColgan and her growling and currently “feeling hopeless“, Mini-Me, Daniella Sprott, the Rosa Klebb of Thistle Housing surrounded by their whimpering camp followers (some more camp than others) like her drinking buddy, the utterly mendacious Sandra McGillivray, some of whom were (and still are) all too willing to spill the beans to this blogsite when they thought it would suit their own selfish ends and get a “promotion”. (You know who you are).
They all know who they are but thanks are due. It added to Thistle’s paranoia that various spying devices which their secretive, atrocious and demented management assumed had been planted in Thistle Fort. They even spent thousands of pounds having the joint ripped apart just in case. Always consider – the best bugs are in the mind of the guilty. Maybe but underfloor structured cabling systems, all that multipair cabling, oh so susceptible to ‘manipulation’ not to mention that wee and very crap comms rack in Thistle not so far away from the entirely illegal CCTV system and not too far away from where Miss Sprott and her ‘promoted’ accomplice shredded all the dodgy documentation which the Regulator’s Statutory Managers needed but couldn’t find.
At first thought, the end of days of Thistle Housing and its long standing corruption, cronyism and nepotism, how so welcome that has to be, and its never ending greedy acolytes are now expunged from the failed Management Committee after so many years of utter and grinding failure whilst they lined their pockets and did nothing to better Toryglen other than the failed insulation works which were mandated by the Scottish Government and not by Thistle’s choice.
Thistle Housing – such a parcel of rogues!
The BAD
Principal corrupt characters:
- GRACE McCOLGAN
- DANIELLA SPROTT
- BRENDA WILSON
- JIM NAISMITH
- THOSE IGNORANT CREATURES IN THE PREVIOUS MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
A housing association which existed only for the self entitlement of its proven corrupt and incapable management and its gormless staff, all of whom, practically without exception, none of whom actually stayed in Toryglen, all of whom with a level of educational competence of an idiot.
Grace McColgan
Daniella Sprott
Jim Naismith
Brenda Wilson
THEY ONLY BOTHERED ABOUT THEMSELVES
However, “Developing a Better Community” was never their goal. Lining their pockets was their only intent. Every other housing association has bettered their areas, cleared 1950s near slum blocks and built new homes for families, young couples, those on their own and for the elderly.
You only have to journey through the likes of Castlemilk, Pollok, Househillwood, Darnley, Priesthill and so many other 1950s post war estates (or schemes, if you will) and see the difference in these areas over the past twenty years.
Click on the graphic above for more
Thistle Housing, a Gorbals based faction in Old Rutherglen Road, adjacent to Thistle Street, conned its way into Toryglen twenty years ago, promising new kitchens and bathrooms (ironically, once more promised to tenants as a lure to support Sanctuary) but after that, did nothing. Built not so much as a shed. Improved nothing other than that demanded of government as the Toryglen housing stock was so bad. Public realm full of cracking walls and crumbling backyards. Even iron palings and fences erected in the early 1950s never seen a coat of paint in sixty years.
Then from today, 1st March 2021, there’s Sanctuary, the English housing monster, gobbling up so many housing associations and seemingly treating their tenants and locked in owners like peasants although Sanctuary has to be given a chance to undo Thistle’s years of wrong.
£530,000 for gardening?
£500,000 for reports?
More than £2million in losses?
All gone and none of it explained
No problem when it’s
only Toryglen’s money
The UGLY
Daniella Sprott? Oh, she sneaked away at the end of last week as she was afraid ‘something would happen’, something orchestrated by the residents she bullied for years. Nah, it was known she intended to slither away last Friday but having been promoted to match her skills to being the head of the pencil sharpening department, she held neither value nor significance to mark her long delayed and very welcome departure. She and her shamed and already booted pal, disGrace McColgan, together with the vanished Jim Naismith, the (where did all the money go?) bookkeeper and Brenda Wilson, Thistle’s inarticulate long termer, have caused too much damage in Toryglen and ruined the residents’ association for the sake of their own greed.
Reputations at the Sanctuary hegemony will not necessarily convey precisely to Toryglen. After all, Sanctuary has promised, well, not very much at all, bearing in mind that a programme of kitchens and bathrooms replacement would have had commenced this year in any case. Window replacement? Thought that had been done. Boilers? Same as kitchens and bathrooms, for tax exempt reasons, that has to be done. Oh, the £600,000 promises for ‘improvements’? Divided amongst and around all of the backyards and public areas in Toryglen, a couple of bob per close. Maybe. Tenants sold themselves off on the cheap.
The worrying fact is that the Scottish Housing Regulator stays silent on the alleged disappearance of association funds. As does the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, the local MSP. Why? No obvious action. No response to residents’ enquiries. Is it that such a coverup of this type of malpractice is endemic in housing associations in Scotland?
As another recent example, see here regarding the malpractice at Charing X Housing Association in Glasgow. Looks something like a Thistle rerun and who worked there until recently? The mendacious Sandra McGillivray, Miss Sprott’s drinking buddy, who recently returned to Thistle displaying no shame at all for her previous dreadful and deceitful performance in Thistle when she was then forced to rapidly slink away when allegations of faked signatures on documents were revealed. Bet they didn’t know that one at Charing X HA.
For more information as to how the Scottish Housing Regulator would like you to think how they dealt with Thistle Housing, see here.
No matter how it seems, isn’t it odd that after so much proven corruption, mismanagement, faked returns to the Regulator, a corrupt Major Works Programme, millions of pounds in losses, hundreds of thousands of pounds not accounted for, the lies told about asbestos contamination and more, that no one, not a single person in Thistle was held to account. That smells. That smells bad with the stench reaching back to those who should have had oversight of Thistle.
Click here or on the graphic for Trustpilot’s ratings and comments of Sanctuary Housing. Oops!
Alas, there is more to be revealed. All possibly very interesting, more horrifying but none of it welcome.
For example:
The plague that was Thistle Housing, the evil and pestilence which has been metastasising, spreading, infecting Toryglen for years, under the bullying control of a failed self seeking, completely corrupt and vastly incapable management with local politicians who gave not the slightest toss concern for Toryglen.
They are all gone and under questionable circumstances. Why would that be?
If it wasn’t for residents’ concern and interest in the Toryglen estate, none of this would have ever happened. Thistle is and has been an utterly failed and absolutely corrupt housing association from its very inception, completely different and much lesser than all other associations whose mantra is to increase the housing stock for locals, residents, the elderly and others. Thistle built nothing other than their palatial Thistle Fort offices. Not a brick. Not a shed. Not a single house.
It took their lies and manifest incompetence during and after the failed 2016 Major Works Programme (still incomplete and disastrously collapsed into ruin) for residents to eventually ask questions they never had been challenged with before but residents met only with manufactured stories, then fibs then lies followed by the uncomfortable disclosure that, for years, the long term incompetence of Thistle.
From today, the English Sanctuary Housing takes over. Thus far, honesty is not illustrated as its prime policy. Not a good start but, hopefully this comment is completely wrong.
A change, a new and vibrant change is welcome and desired in Toryglen. Is Sanctuary up to the job or is there a hidden history as to how they managed to rip the Toryglen estate? Is there more to the assumption that the takeover was manipulated in cahoots with the Scottish Housing Regulator to rid itself of the evil that was Thistle and that other local prospective associations such as Thenue were barred from bidding?
Or is it the criminals and politicians now have the keys to the locks?
The truth will out. Eventually.
To read Sanctuary’s first and grindingly failed tasks in Toryglen, see here and here or click on either of the headings above.
Anyway, good riddance to the perversion that was Thistle Housing. It could have been so much better but McColgan, Sprott, Naismith, Wilson and so many other greedy incompetents who thought they were better than Toryglen residents, surrounded by an untrained, ignorant cultish staff who were too interested in their own selves and dishing out poor service.
Best of luck Toryglen. Seeking Sanctuary? You may need it.
GrabTheThistle: The Toryglen Residents' Blog 