When I last wrote my Glasgow Times column, the SNP-Green coalition in the city council had just conspired to produce yet another budget which has imposed cuts on vital services as well as delivering a 10% rise in council tax bills over the next three years.

In other words, Glaswegians will continue to pay more and get less.

To witness the self-satisfied and near smug looks on the faces of SNP and Green councillors, you would think their budget had just delivered a promise of Golden Tickets for all.

Well, we know how that turned out for some in Glasgow recently…

Why they would take any satisfaction in signing off on a budget that condemns Glasgow residents, businesses, and pupils to further financial pain and economic uncertainty is beyond me.

Then again, we must remember how much damage the SNP-Green government in Edinburgh has done to our local authorities like Glasgow City Council.

These are the same people who never tire of jumping up and down on a trampoline of grievance and complaining about how the Westminster government is apparently stealing power from the Scottish Parliament, when they continue to treat local government, properly devolved power, with utter contempt.

They have robbed councils of authority in order to centralise decision-making away from local communities and in order to pay for their own pet projects while wasting hundreds of millions of pounds in the process.

Hundreds of millions that means local councils have to bear the brunt of this failure and find cuts to vital services, notably our children’s education.

The much-trumpeted Verity House Agreement which the SNP insisted would respect and reward the role of local government has already been trashed by Humza Yousaf

and for the most political of motives.

In a desperate bid to get a much-needed cheer at his party’s conference in October last year, he announced a council tax freeze without, it would seem, bothering to consult anyone; certainly not any of the country’s 32 local authorities.

The, conveniently found, additional £147 million found by the SNP to finance this – which is still not enough to mitigate against their savage yearly cuts – also has conditions attached to it; with other funds threatened to be withheld if councils have the audacity to deny Mr Yousaf his moment in the limelight.

Such is the despair among local authority leaders that some are even pleading with the UK Government to bypass the SNP Government and deliver funds to them directly.

This sorry state of affairs is all occurring on the SNP-Green government’s watch. An administration whose Modus Operandi is to condemn others for apparently talking Scotland down in their eyes.

When we delve into the finer print, what does this mean for this city? As we enjoy the SNP-Greens one-year-only council tax freeze, we can spend it on paying for another increase in bulk uplift charges, additional brown bin charges, Low Emission Zone fines and the increase in parking charges at weekends and evenings (another blow to our already battered city centre night-time economy).

Perhaps worst of all, as a former headteacher, I note the intention to cut as many as 400 teaching jobs at a time when attainment figure among our poorest children are as bad as they have been.

It is the youngest and most vulnerable in our city who are being asked to pay for Mr Yousaf’s attempts for cheap headlines and the SNP-Greens attack on local government.

That is the most damning indictment on this rotten and disastrous double act.