OUR SNP council group returned to Glasgow City Chambers following the summer break with four newly-elected members.

As I mentioned last week, these by-election victories are the important first step towards taking back Glasgow from an entrenched and complacent Labour administration and giving it back to the people.

First on the agenda is standing up to Glasgow City Council cuts to school transport.

Starting this term, thousands of pupils at primary and secondary school have had their bus passes taken off them because GCC now expects them to walk as much as six miles each day to get to school and back home. Most people will have heard hyperbolic stories from older generations about how easy kids have it these days – how when they were kids they’d “walk miles and miles every day” to get to school.

It seems that Glasgow Labour are intent in taking our children back into the dark ages.

The truth is that life is being made harder than ever for struggling families in Glasgow, as they are squeezed on both sides, from the UK government taking the axe to welfare and tax credits to Glasgow City Council slashing frontline services.

Take the example of single mothers with young children – maybe one at nursery and another at primary school.

Not only will many single mothers be struggling to be able to afford to work, with the cuts coming to tax credits, but they may now also have to leave as early as 7.30am to drop one child off at nursery before walking 2-3 miles to get another child to school on time.

That’s before you even consider some of the dangerous routes pupils are expected to take to school.

Over recent weeks parents and SNP colleagues have been out across Glasgow walking GCC’s suggested routes and have come across a number of horrors – roads which pass through dark underpasses, pavements barely wide enough for a mother to push a pram along, busy roads with four lanes of rush-hour traffic.

This inexplicable decision from GCC’s Labour Administration raises so many questions.

At a public meeting in the Pearce Institute in Govan, parents told of Lourdes Secondary pupils living in Govan and Ibrox who will have to walk for an over an hour to get to school, and are expected to cross congested roads, caused by widespread road works in the area.

In mid-winter will they be expected to walk this route in pitch-black, on the way home from school?

If these kids have to leave at 7.45am, when are they expected to eat a good breakfast, to prepare them for the school day?

I was pleased last week when the SNP group put it in black and white that, if they are successful in taking over the administration of Glasgow City Council in 2017, they will reverse these cuts to school transport. Our children’s educations are our most precious responsibility - instead of making cuts to education services we should be looking at the best way to invest in them.

The SNP will fight cuts to school transport tooth and nail and I hope that, putting aside party politics, GCC will see sense and reverse their cruel cuts to our children’s educations.