Last Friday, I was honoured to take part in a ceremony to install a permanent memorial to John Crawford Buchan VC who came from Alloa.

The Victoria Cross is the highest award for gallantry that a British and Commonwealth serviceman can achieve.

It is linked with acts of extreme bravery and the original document associated with the medal stated that it could only be awarded for “gallantry of the highest order”.

It is especially given to persons who, in the presence of the enemy, display the most conspicuous gallantry; a daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice; or extreme devotion to duty.

I have no doubt that 2nd Lieutenant John Crawford Buchan’s bravery on March 21, 1918, are entirely in keeping with the gallantry in the face of the enemy that is recognised in the awarding of the Victoria Cross, and makes it all the more appropriate that we remember and commemorate that sacrifice.

At the ceremony, another memorial stone was unveiled for Private John McDermond, also a recipient of the Victoria Cross and also from Alloa.

He was the first VC to be awarded to a member of the 47th Regiment at the Battle of Inkerman during the Crimean War, and the first soldier from Clackmannanshire to be given this prestigious honour.

Following a medical discharge from the Army in 1862, Pvt. McDermond returned to Alloa before moving to Glasgow where he died of Typhus, just four years later, leaving destitute a wife and two very young children, the youngest of whom was born just weeks before his death.

It’s thanks to Gloria Winfield, originally from Stirling, that the stone for Pvt. McDermond was laid.

She followed up on a report of a VC medal being found on the banks of the Thames in 2015 which she went on to trace back to Pvt. McDermond which has resulted in a lasting memorial of another son of Clackmannanshire who displayed gallantry of the highest order.

Figures released last week to the Scottish Parliament have revealed the massive damaging extent of Labour’s PFI debt legacy scandal. These toxic deals were the funding model through which Labour contracted the building of Clackmannanshire’s three high schools and many others across the country, but results in exorbitant costs that will see Clackmannanshire Council continue to pay for these buildings many times over and for decades to come.

Overall, these PFI contracts will cost Scottish local authorities a crippling £434.3million in this financial year alone. For Clackmannanshire Council, the size of Labour’s toxic debt liability is a massive £8.1m this year – a huge amount of money which could be far better be spent on local services.

Time and again, we hear Labour politicians complaining about the levels of funding allocated to local authorities despite Labour’s own shameful part in creating this expensive mess that is draining millions of pounds every year out of local service funding.

And unfortunately, there are plenty of areas these precious resources could be better spent, not least to combat the next round of damaging Tory cuts being passed down by the UK Government.