HERE is East Renfrewshire Council leader Jim Fletcher's latest monthly column for the Barrhead News...

Barrhead residents will be aware that the Cabinet Secretary for Education John Swinney has embarked on a campaign to improve the standards in Scottish schools.

As the best performing Education Authority in Scotland by a country mile, I invited Mr Swnney to visit East Renfrewshire to see for himself the good work that we undertake in our area. I am delighted to report that he has accepted my invitation and I am looking forward to be able to showcase the excellent improvement in Barrhead schools in particular over the period that East Renfrewshire has run these schools.

Our excellent examination results in East Renfrewshire are well known throughout the UK, but it is a constant challenge to ensure that our well educated, talented young people can access good quality jobs in the area where they live, when they leave our schools or local Colleges and Universities. Our recently signed City Deal will ensure a £44 Million Pound investment in East Renfrewshire alone, which is part of an investment of over £I Billion Pounds in the wider Glasgow conurbation area. I am confident that this huge new additional investment in our local area will generate considerable new long term employment opportunities for our young people.

Given the hard work required to protect local jobs and indeed to generate additional local employment, it was particularly disappointing to see a local SNP MSP John Mason advocate a boycott of Barrhead Travel which residents will know is one of Barrhead`s most successful companies. Barrhead Travel employs around 850 people many of whom live in Barrhead. Barrhead Travel`s “crime” in the eyes of Mr Mason was to warn of the likely negative impact on the company`s business if Scotland separated from the UK. Almost half of the company`s business is generated from south of the border and the company understandably warned of the likely loss of much of this business, if customers were unwilling to continue to place orders with what would in essence become a company based in a foreign country.

Apologists for Mr Mason have suggested his advocating of a boycott of Barrhead Travel was meant as a joke. I rather doubt that. I think his request for a boycott was a spiteful act of revenge on his part. In any event, boycotting Barrhead Travel would lose jobs in Barrhead and frankly anyone losing their job is never funny. It was good to see local politicians of all parties coming together to condemn Mr Mason`s comments, which he made on twitter. Is it really too much to ask of highly paid MSPs such as Mr Mason, that they act more responsibly and treat hard working employees of companies such as Barrhead Travel with the respect they deserve?