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News Editor
Many politicians have spoken out against Bolander and call for her resignation.
The Lord Provost of Glasgow is being criticised after a report shows she expensed over £8,000 on clothes and shoes.
The Daily Record reports Eva Bolander submitted receipts that show she bought the items over a 28-month period.
The figures were obtained under a Freedom of Information request and cover claims between May 2017 and August this year. Some of the expenses include a pair of £358 spectacles and £200 hat from milliner William Chambers.
Bolander – who earns £39,310 – also got her nails done 20 times and had 10 hair appointments totalling £751.
A council spokesman said the SNP councillor incurs personal expenses as she is required to represent the city at hundreds of events.
However, many spoke in opposition of her financial decisions. Glasgow Labour MSP James Kelly said that while services for the homeless in Glasgow are being cut, Bolander has been on a grotesque spending spree at the taxpayers’ expense.
“In just one trip to John Lewis she spent more on herself than what a worker being paid the national minimum wage earns in a whole week,” Kelly said. “Eva Bolander should pay back the money and resign.”
Scottish Conservative Glasgow MSP Annie Wells also disagrees with Bolander’s financial decisions, saying any politician who thinks they can claim those items on expenses is a joke and owes the people of Glasgow an “almighty apology.”
“It’s not even one or two misdemeanours – these revelations show a pattern of behaviour which will be completely unacceptable to council taxpayers in Glasgow,” Wells said.
Bolander has since said she would repay some of the money she spent on items, but she defended the claims in an email to Glasgow councillors by arguing they were “made in good faith” and each was “within the rules.”
“I am sorry about that and I am in discussion with financial services to come to an arrangement to repay the relevant expenditure,” Bolander wrote in the email.
