It looks like I was a bit over-optimistic when I said “I’d expect that the very first Council agenda will set out a plan, budget and designated lead officer for each of these pledges”.

The meeting will do no such thing. It will note a report on the result of the elections (which currently still lists Liam Hainey as one of the councillors in my ward, Langside, despite the sudden discovery of some extra ballots). It will approve some standing orders.

It will approve some Committees – including the new Public Petitions Committee and also the Sustainability and the Environment Policy Development Committee, which, given Labour’s commitment to “make Glasgow the most sustainable city in Europe” is going to need members who are not easily defeated. There are, incidentally, twenty Committees in the Council, not including the Executive Committee. I have no idea if that is a lot or not, but since I’d bothered to count them, I thought I might as well tell you the total.

Once they’ve got through all of this as well as a Scheme of Delegated Functions, Standing Orders on Contracts and some Financial Regulations, then they need to appoint a Depute Lord Provost, a Leader, a Depute Leader and some Baillies. (A Baillie, I have just learned from Wikipedia, is someone who provides support to the Lord Provost).

And then will they get on with planning to implement the 100 pledges?

No. Then they need to approve the minutes of the previous meeting, discuss a scheme of Members’ Allowances, appoint Committees and approve the Council’s schedule of meetings. After which, no doubt replete with tea and digestives, they will toddle home.

Fair enough, we’ve only just had the elections and the Council does need to get its structures up and running. But with 100 pledges to implement, we’re going to need to see some strategic action soon. Watch this space…

Not for any strategic reasons, not because I saw it as a stepping stone to independence, but simply because I live in Glasgow, and it often makes me sad. Although I love its parks and ponds, there is so much else wrong with the city, and its decades-old Labour council seemed to have few ideas left for tackling it all.

Or does it? The fact is, Labour got in, against the expectations of just about everybody, possibly including themselves. They’re all we’ve got to work with, so I thought I ought to familiarise myself with their plans. What was actually in the Labour manifesto for Glasgow?

I found some surprises, but they are hidden: the top ten of Labour’s 100 pledges is exactly as I feared. Number 1 is the council tax freeze: hardly an inspirational start, given that it’s somebody else’s policy that Labour only converted to late in the day.

The manifesto continues with a lot of opposing this, campaigning for that and very little in the way of actual proposals that a city council can implement. Number six is the rather non-specific “Support the people of Glasgow when others walk away” while number seven is a statement of belief in bus regulation. But I don’t care what my local council believes, I want to know what it will actually do.

Number nine, and we’re on dog crap already, closely followed by litter. My heart was sinking, my upper lip was curling in contempt. But then I read on.

Promise number 11 pledges to make Glasgow a Co-operative Council, setting targets for co-operative start-up businesses, while number 12 is to introduce community budgeting. These are potentially transformative policies: and there’s more.

Pledge number 33 is to create a “happy hour” of free football for under-16s at all Council 5-a-side venues: a great recognition of the need to provide facilities for young people and of the impact of sport on physical and mental health. Though I don’t know how many 5-a-sde facilities the Council actually owns: if all but one have been sold off to Tesco, then I retract my enthusiasm.

On children and young people, there’s a promise of ten new family learning centres and the astonishing pledge that “Labour will rebuild or refurbish your local primary school”. What, all of them? Whether they need it or not? How much is this costing?

Other surprisingly welcome pledges include a promise to replace derelict land with greenspace across the city, build 3,500 new homes, establish a Factoring Commission for tenants, develop a network of charging points for electric cars and introduce a Smart Card across all forms of public transport.

And, cue a chorus of Hosannahs and a flock of bugling angels, “Labour will revamp and completely refurbish George Square”. Thank Christ. George Square is a dump, and I will happily report for revamping and refurbishing duty with a shovel and a song in my heart, on any day Gordon Matheson cares to name.

And then there are the properly ambitious pledges, the ones that made me go, “Really? Has anybody senior read this?”

Such as “Labour will make Glasgow the most sustainable city in Europe”. Or “Labour will make Glasgow a wireless city, providing a free wi-fi network across the city”.

And, inevitably, the utterly meaningless ones, like “Labour will tackle Glasgow’s health inequalities”. Sadly, there is not much detail on, you know, how.

However, it’s a lot better than I’d expected, and what’s fascinating is that the anodyne, party political shouty pledges are all at the start, while the interesting, thoughtful suggestions only start to appear later on. I like to think that, while the party leadership’s attention was focused on the all-important top 10, some upbeat backroom staff sneaked in a few innovative ideas towards the end.

The whole manifesto does prompt more questions than it answers. Primarily, where’s the costed version of this? But also, when we will see a timescale for introducing all of these new measures? I’d expect that the very first Council agenda will set out a plan, budget and designated lead officer for each of these pledges. I’ll be watching Council meetings with a great deal of interest over the next few months.

It’s easy to be cynical about Glasgow politics. All too often, Glasgow politicians make it so. But let’s be hopeful. Maybe this time we really will see Glasgow flourish.

I’ve been thinking a lot about perspective this weekend, because several people appear to have lost theirs. Not least the Rangers fans who I ran past in the park yesterday, as they assembled before their march to Hampden. They were protesting against the SFA’s punishment of their team. I don’t think about much when I’m running – mostly I daydream about sitting down at the end with a big cake – but yesterday I couldn’t help thinking, “That’s what you’re upset about? Your team has been taken for a ride by its owners, treated as a stock market plaything by the people in suits that run global football and encouraged to develop a roster of lavishly overpaid players who couldn’t possibly merit their wages, and you’re protesting at the SFA?”

I do have sympathy for Rangers supporters. It would be a lie to say that I’m a football fan – I go to perhaps one game every three years, and I’d struggle to name more than four of my team’s players. But I come from a family that is built on a love of Hearts. My dad and his siblings were raised within sight of Tynecastle, and our blood runs maroon to this day (with the exception of a couple of inexplicably Hibs-leaning cousins, about whom we speak only in whispers). I remember the distress of the Robinson years and the horrible suspicion that the team would not survive the loss of our stadium which looked extremely likely in the pre-Romanov days. I know that football is about family, identity and emotion just as much as it is about scoring goals. But those Rangers fans who marched on Hampden yesterday must surely know in their souls that they are directing their anger at the wrong people.

And they are not the only ones who have lost perspective this weekend. Today, I woke up to the news that some muppet on an unofficial Labour Facebook page has expressed the wish that Alex Salmond’s dad will die soon. To his enormous credit, the 90-year old Salmond Senior dealt with it magnificently, saying “”This person is in for a disappointment – there’s no way I’m pegging out before the Cup Final”, adding “”In any case, I survived the war so I can survive the comments of some nyaff on the Internet“. Masterful – you can see where his son gets his nous.

Sadly, whoever is currently on duty at the SNP press desk was less measured, calling for Johann Lamont and Anas Sarwar to “immediately resign from this website, which should also be shut down.”. Is that all? Are you sure the entire party shouldn’t also close itself down, perhaps torching its headquarters for good measure? And how do you resign from a website, anyway?

Sometimes it’s important to get angry. Sometime’s it’s better to stay calm. But in all circumstances, perspective is vital. I guess I did learn something in art, after all.