Aberdeenshire has just had one of the worst winters in recent years but not by any means that rare an event for them.
In February 2025, by a vote of 43 to 21 the council voted for a budget including it its appendices a plan to remove 1 200 out of 2 100 grit bins.
From the minute on page 39:
Winter Maintenance Fund – Allocated for unexpected winter and emergency operations. The existing revenue budget is based on a mild winter scenario, meaning additional funding may be required in harsher conditions, however the reserve was drawn down in 2023/24 and not replenished as part of the 2024/25 budget setting, there is no proposal to replenish as part of the 2025/26 budget setting.
The main opposition (SNP group) proposed an alternative fully-costed budget that would have avoided this and other “draconian” cuts, but it was not adopted.
The vote on the grit bin removals (technically, the decision not to refill grit bins that fail current risk-based assessment criteria, leading to removal of around 1,200 out of over 2,100 bins) was not a standalone item but part of the overall Aberdeenshire Council Revenue Budget for 2025/26 (and medium-term financial strategy) approved at the Full Council meeting on 27 February 2025.
Source:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://aberdeenshire.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s30329/2025%2002%2027%20OppositionBudget.pdf
Talking-up Scotland 
I can confirm it’s been dire this week. No deliveries, no post and no trips to the shops. Plenty time to surf the blogs though!
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Sounds like they don’t care, what about emergency services, care services, people who live alone etc. The unionist Britnat council do not care. SNP bad fodder for the Britnat media.
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Tractors have been out clearing snow. Aberdeen council’s employees were emailed to go out and clear the snow,
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More costly, and besides the point. Typical tactics, waste more council money when the solution was more simple. Was it council employees, or private contractors? Hmm…
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Its what you get when English unionist party headquarters take control of your councils.
Imagine if SNP took control of English councils…well they’d be better off for sure.
When politicians, local or national, based in and controlled by another country, take control of your councils or parliament, it could hardly be anything else but colonisation.
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I am a Glasgow resident and we have local grit bins which were refilled before the winter and I have gritted sections of local footways that ice-up every winter. These are not huge sections and gritting does not take very long.
Yet, echoing the shock horror weather stories of the media, we have Glasgow residents on local message boards ‘slamming’ the council for not having grit bins or having gritted the footways. When it is pointed out that there are grit bins and that residents have a responsibility to make the footway near their houses safe, there are the angry responses, ‘What do we pay Council Tax for?’, ‘Why should I grit the streets’, ‘It is Council corruption’, it is that SNP/Green eejits making sure immigrant, gay, trans, lesbian, feminist, single parents on welfare’ are OK.
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