The meaningless lexicon of marketing has been scraped clean in civic Scotland's latest attempt to justify another spurious branding exercise. All the usual dismal phrases are there: "key sectors"; a "driver" and even a couple of "growth sectors". The design uses a "strong geometric typeface". Of course it does. They are the words that signal we poor idiot punters are about to be shafted yet again by the residents of Tammany Hall. It was revealed last week that Glasgow city council has committed £500,000 to rolling out another utterly vapid and empty slogan. Ever since the city unveiled its Glasgow's Miles Better slogan in the 1980s, it has never stopped congratulating itself and now thinks it's a global leader at this sort of thing. And so, the city woke on Friday to the news that half a million of their money has been spent on this: "People Make Glasgow."

Other organisations have a marketing department where they book adverts, draw a few designs and make up surveys. Most of them tend to be people who couldn't make it on to journalism courses. Here, though, we spend millions of pounds annually on a vast job creation scheme for these people and call it the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau. Then we give them lots of public poppy to go into their pods and come up with a slogan that tells the world that people make the city. Next they'll be telling us that bricks make buildings and that wheels go on cars.

Currently in Glasgow there are areas where nine out of 10 adults are on benefits and where we top European statistics charts for heart disease and knife crime. It was also announced that public sector workers will receive a 1% pay rise, their first in three years, and that they are preparing to strike. Meanwhile, it was being revealed that one of Glasgow's former alumni, Lord Smith of Kelvin was among a glut of senior executives at the Green Investment Bank who trousered six-figure sums for helping this daft and unnecessary institution to a £6m loss in its first year.

Millions of public sector jobs are to be cut and thousands of families are calculating whether it's to be one bar or two on the electric fire this winter. Not to worry, though: Glasgow has spent £500,000 telling the world that people make it. Who decided that this was necessary? Gordon Matheson is Glasgow's council chief who, earlier this year, summarily cancelled all the designs for the city's iconic George Square without anything resembling a clear explanation. Yet a couple of them would have adequately repaired the wanton vandalism to which the city fathers (and mothers) have subjected this once grand space.

Mr Matheson, an affable chap, had this to say about the new slogan: "Glasgow is a warm, welcoming and genuinely friendly city, because the people are. We're an ambitious, inventive and entrepreneurial city, because the people are. And we're a down to earth, to the point, no nonsense city, because the people are." The strategy now becomes clear: tell the scum they're just pure brilliant by the way and perhaps they'll fail to notice that hundreds of thousands of pounds of their money has been swiped to keep their marketing executives in John Lewis suits, fruit smoothies and bonuses for another few years.

Maintaining the confidence trick being played on the punters was Stuart Patrick, the chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. He said: "It's fitting the new brand has been delivered with the help of the people of the city, as we couldn't agree more that the main selling points for attracting business and investment are Glaswegians and their skills." Total mince. The new brand was not delivered with the help of the people of the city because only about 67 people were in on the wheeze.

If the people did actually have any say in this charade they would have come up with something a bit more down to earth, to the point and no nonsense than People Make Effin Glasgow. Here are a few suggestions that are a bit more germane and appurtenant. They are intended to convey boundless optimism and sanguinity in the face of a rank amateur city council that has done nothing to eradicate poverty and deprivation in this city.

You Couldnae Make It Up – this slogan is a succinct portrayal of the people's good-natured suffering as yet another council scheme goes tits up and over-budget. The gentle narrative is a paradigm of specific key outcomes.

Gettae – this admittedly peremptory abjuration nevertheless emerged following strategic encounters with scientifically chosen focus groups. It is intended to convey the Glaswegian's well known and much loved cynicism in the face of bullshit by the body politic. A four-lettered profanity, "fuck" is merely inferred to add a sense of urgency and colour. It has poise and drama.

Aye right – this charming epithet emerged following an exercise when a questionnaire was sent to all of Glasgow's 750,000 residents asking them to choose from a list of possible slogans. The 71 people who responded showed that there was great enthusiasm for a motto that would be vibrant and outcome-driven. Happily it also re-claims an authentic Glaswegian phrase which itself had been hijacked by the beards-and-sandals brigade at the city's literary festival.

As befits the native generosity of spirit of Glaswegians, I'd also like to propose a slogan for our neighbours in Edinburgh. For they, too, have been tormented by deeply inappropriate sloganeering. At the end of last year, Edinburgh's marketing people spent £122,000 to emerge with: "Incredinburgh", which resembles the noise the locals make when they have failed to dodge their turn for a round of drinks. It is the worst civic slogan since Pompeii's notorious "We're On Fire".

And so, in a spirit of civic fraternity, I give my Edinburgh chums a motto which I think is a wee bit recherché, not to mention counter-intuitive. It's simply: Edinburgh: You Can Take It With You.