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WHO do you trust more, your local council or the Scottish Parliament?

In my experience, the Parliament wins hands down. On a democratic mandate alone, elections attract more voters than councils, where turnout is under 40 per cent.

But opposition parties still want Holyrood powers transferred to local government.

Councils are often responsible for the decisions that anger voters most. School closures, class sizes, poor planning and potholes can be traced to the town chambers.

Problems in A&E are mainly because councils are slow to sort the community support packages needed by older, frail people. That means they stay in hospital so fewer beds are free.

That’s despite the fact that councils are better funded than Holyrood and in some areas more powerful – they can borrow to build things where the Scottish Government was denied this power by Westminster.

Don’t get me wrong - many councillors, of all parties or no party, are unsung heroes and heroines. And most council workers, from home helps to teachers to street sweepers, do a great job too.

But as institutions, councils are not as responsive to people as they could be.

The anti-SNP parties want to “devolve power from Holyrood” and had this written into the Smith Commission.

They do this to bring down our parliament – because it is popular and the vast majority of Scots want it to have greater powers.

They dearly want to ditch the council tax freeze introduced by the SNP. It has saved pensioners and working people thousands of pounds but it is condemned by Labour councillors as “centralisation”.

Labour governments from 1997 to 2007 allowed councils to hike bills by 60 per cent. That’s not the local democracy communities are crying out for. And the “centralisation” claims don’t stack up.

When Labour and the Lib Dems ran coalition governments at Holyrood, council grants were “ring fenced”, meaning they could only be spent on what Labour wanted.

Councils were delighted when the SNP dropped a lot of ring fencing in return for the council tax freeze.

For example, economic development used to be controlled by the government agency Scottish Enterprise. The SNP gave much of that responsibility to councils –together with a huge chunk of funds. The money to fight Tory welfare cuts such as the bedroom tax is largely supplied by the Scottish Government – but devolved to councils to distribute.

Some have used this freedom controversially – resulting in a ­postcode lottery where some areas get benefits denied to others.

Free school meals are a good example. The SNP have long supported them.

But many councils are less enthusiastic, along with their Labour masters in Holyrood who voted AGAINST free school meals last year. Their education spokesman Iain Gray condemned it last week.

Confusingly, leader Jim Murphy claims to support the policy. But already a Labour-controlled council, West Dunbartonshire, says it will ditch hot dinners.

Tory cuts from Westminster, which Ed Miliband says he will keep, are hurting everyone, including councils. But councils in Scotland have had a slight increase in their cash budget since 2013, compared with an eight per cent cut for ­councils in England.

The SNP are more generous to councils than to Government departments, despite the pressure caused by Tory austerity.

And the SNP’s Community Empowerment Bill will devolve control of local assets to local groups.

That is not what motivates the opposition. They want to strengthen their own tattered power base.

Labour, Lib Dem and Tory still cannot accept the SNP’s majority at Holyrood – even though it was won under a system of proportional representation, giving it a greater democratic mandate than Westminster.

These parties still control many councils, often in anti-SNP coalitions.

They want to channel money back to their cronies.

That’s not empowerment.

It’s empire building.

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