West Linton
St Mungo’s Church in West Linton organised a very good hustings event yesterday, which they seemed to think was the first to take place in the village. It was all very good tempered too, though I did detect a few jibes between Jeremy Purvis and Christine Grahame.
Although there are some things in common across the constituency, the northern end does suffer more in relation to the knock on effect of the Edinburgh property and jobs market, meaning houses are more expensive and traffic heavier. The village has already expanded massively over the past 15 years.
Among the questions – how do we tackle the transport problems around Edinburgh which affect people from the Borders who work or use services in the Capital? This is a difficult one – more park and ride schemes around the bypass are probably the only “quick” solution that can be put in place. Better public transport has its place too, both for getting to Edinburgh but also inside the City.
Although I didn’t agree with almost anything he said, I thought Graeme McIver of Solidarity came over very well – much as I might disagree with his political beliefs, he clearly believes them and as a result he spoke with a passion which you don’t hear, for example, from today’s Labour party.
Only when he threatened a 3 hour lecture on Marxist economics did things look dodgy.
