AND, with that, the summer break comes to a close, the schools are on the cusp of a new year and the political cycle of the City Council resumes. I hope you all enjoyed that rarest of things, a prolonged spell of warm, sunny weather.

Behind the scenes the work of the council has continued unabated. The dismantlement of the School of Art remains on schedule and I hope the £5million Scottish Government aid package to affected businesses has brought some relief.

Council officers have begun sourcing the funds for the Equal Pay compensation bill and we remain committed to an agreed settlement figure with staff representatives by the close of 2018.

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The summer again brought to the fore the depressingly familiar issue of behaviour at, and impact of, parades in the city. We clearly have an issue and I restate my intention to push to the limits the powers local government has in this area to address that.

The last few weeks have also thrown up some real stark contrasts in Glasgow. On Sunday we said farewell to the inaugural European Championships.

The city welcomed athletes and visitors from across Europe, we were the focus of sporting attention, an estimated one billion television viewers saw Glasgow put on its best face and we cemented a solid relationship with our co-hosts in Berlin. (A personal highlight was the experience of a car-free George Square, an issue the City Government will return to in the very near future.)

With Brexit ever closer on the horizon, I’ve written previously in this column of the need for Glasgow to maintain its international outlook and reputation. I couldn’t be more proud of the way in which the city embraced our friends from across Europe. It’s who we are. People make Glasgow and our people made the Championships the success they have been.

Contrast this, however, with the way in which the Home Office and its private sector contractors Serco have sought to treat vulnerable people who have fled some of the world’s worst trouble spots for the sanctuary of our city.

I am equally proud of how many Glaswegians reacted with both outrage and compassion when it emerged Serco had planned to dump over 300 hundred asylum seekers onto our streets and leave the city council and the third sector to deal with the fallout the UK Government’s lock change policy would create.

We will not stand by and allow the Home Office, or indeed Serco, to abuse the value system we have here in Scotland. Glasgow has been the only Scots local authority involved in the asylum dispersal programme for almost 20 years. Those who have settled here have changed for the better the face of Glasgow and shown how multi-culturalism can flourish.

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Our asylum experience is markedly different from many other UK areas. And so we will not leave people facing destitution without assistance, without services. We will not allow a crisis, not of our making and which runs against our approach to asylum, to unfold on our streets.

Last week, myself and senior council officers with years of experience in frontline working with asylum seekers and refugees met with Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes to make this point abundantly clear. It was disappointing she could not commit to ending the policy but she left Glasgow in no doubt as to our position.

One major concession conceded to the council was an assurance to provide us with the data of those within the asylum system and based in Glasgow. Incredible as it seems, there is no requirement to provide us with details of who the Home Office planned to dump onto the streets or, for that matter, what their status was. This can assist us in directing asylum seekers to advocacy and legal services to continue their fight for refugee status and plan ahead for normality.

Along the way, my office has had to contend with abusive correspondence through to the fallout from grandstanding and crass political opportunism. But we won’t be derailed from doing what is difficult and complex but what is also right.