The mind boggles

Ok it's not often that things make me really angry or just shock me outright due to such blatant contradiction but...

...as I walked into the office today I was handed one of these flyers. They were also placed liberally everywhere around the office - even in the lift and in the stairwells!

City Parking is an arms length organisation to the Council and is the "leading provider of parking in Glasgow". The flyer shown in today's blip is offering discounted car parking to all Council staff and also the offer of further car parking discounts through salary sacrifice schemes.

So let's just at least try and understand the rationale for this:

1. The Council is one of the biggest employers in Scotland and, as far as I can tell, this scheme is incentivising the use of private cars for employee commuter journeys.

2. Through its Sustainable Glasgow programme the Council aims to become "one of the most sustainable cities in Europe and reduce carbon emissions by 30% within 10 years". This is in addition to its responsibilities under Scottish climate change legislation.

3. The Council is also working on subtantial programmes to improve the City's air quality and, you guessed it, the main source of air pollution in Glasgow is road traffic.

Now is it just me or am I missing something here..? Am I being overly simplistic in the way I'm looking at this..? The mind does indeed boggle.

There's some clause in my contract that says I'm not supposed to say things like this about the Council but this parking offer thing is just total nonsense! As I'm leaving on Friday there's not too much that can happen I guess - I just feel sorry for various colleagues who are doing a whole bunch of good work on sustainable transport, air quality, sustainability and climate change issues - what sort of message does this give to them, other Council staff and the public..??!!