Council Candidates

The elections to Scottish Borders Council and Midlothian Council take place on May 3rd together with the Scottish Parliament elections. Details on your local Conservative candidates is available for Midlothian here and the Borders here.

Costed, affordable and sustainable

Whether you agree with the policies outlined in the Conservative manifesto or not, at least you can now know that the policies could be implemented.

The Scotsman has commissioned Professor Arthur Midwinter, who was the adviser to the Finance Committee, to cast his eye over each party’s spending plans. His verdict on the Conservative plans is available here. Key quote: “This is quite simply the most transparent and realistic set of policy and financial proposals I have read in the lead up to the current Election, and far superior to the creative accounting and rosy assumptions in the policy statements of the other major opposition party, the SNP.”

Sadly, the report in today’s Scotsman has brought out a lot of SNP supporters who have decided to try and demonise the reputation of Professor Midwinter. Those with strong stomachs (and who are not offended by strong language) can see what I mean here.

Is it too much to ask that those who disagree with policies argue on politics, or logic, rather than cheap personal abuse?

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.

Earlston hustings

A hustings with a difference today, at the school in Earlston. The subject was the environment, and the pupils had arranged a really good mix of questions and covered a pretty wide topic comprehensively. As well as some candidates (Jeremy Purvis from the Lib Dems and Chris Ballance from the Greens were there too) there were teachers and a representative from Scottish Borders Council.

It was civilised enough, until the end when Chris blamed Mrs Thatcher for something or other. I can’t remember what, but I do wonder when people will stop blaming her for everything they dislike in the country (after all, isn’t that Tony Blair’s role in life these days?)

Small business

Unless you have a subscription to The Scotsman online, you won’t be able to read the whole article from today’s Scotsman by Peter Jones on the parties’ plans for business (if you do, it’s available here).  The final sentence though sums it up “…since the Tories are not planning a local income tax, their plan looks like the best overall deal on offer.”

Quad biking

Another manifesto launch in the seat, this time in Penicuik. Annabel Goldie and Alex Fergusson came down to a farm just outside Penicuik to launch the rural manifesto, which highlights policies such as a fundamental review of SEPA (Scottish Environmental Protection Agency), SNH (Scottish Natural Heritage) and the Forestry Commission. Also included is funding to safeguard rural schools threatened with closure, and assistance to get new entrants into farming. A copy of the manifesto is available here.

Most of the media interest was however around the photo opportunity of Annabel riding on a quad bike. Fortunately for us – and unfortunately for the assembled media – there was no shot of her falling off, driving into a wall or anything similar. They all seemed very disappointed.

Thankfully the weather was superb for the launch – unlike tonight, when Penicuik has been clouded by a very heavy mist.

Renewable energy

The lack of a balanced energy policy in Scotland, with arbitrary targets leading to huge numbers of large scale windfarms being planned or built, is one of the current Government’s greatest failings. Rather than have a broader based approach, with more emphasis on energy efficiency, smaller scale renewables and tidal as well as wind farms, it seems as if every spare corner of Scotland (and certainly this area) has been earmarked for industrial scale wind farms.

There is a very good piece on one such neglected technology, ground source energy, by Matthew Parris in today’s Times.

Conservative plans for more incentives for micro-renewables, and better energy efficiency, are available here under “Tackling climate change”

Crime wave?

Candidates don’t like to admit it, but a lot of election literature doesn’t get read and ends up in the bin pretty quickly. Some voters, though, pore over every piece of literature and are quick to spot the smallest error – which is why the process of writing and producing election literature is a lot more time consuming than many people realise.

The ultimate nightmare, then, is that after spending so much time producing a leaflet a mistake is missed by the candidate – but not by the voters. This (I assume) is what happened to my Lib Dem rival, Jeremy Purvis, unless of course he thinks the Lib Dems are creating so much extra crime they need an extra 1,000 police to deal with them. Iain Dale carries the story here.

Conservative plans for an extra 1,500 police – as well as measures on rehabilitation and tougher sentencing – are available here.

Follow that bus!

The bus taking journalists from Holyrood to Gala for the campaign launch was tailed by SNP supporters (led by Christine Grahame). A stunt in Stow, parading over the pedestrian crossing to hold up traffic on the A7, to delay the bus, was one thing, but it didn’t end there. It might be the SNP don’t have enough to do in what they reckon is one of their target seats, but to then spend a couple of hours following the bus and sitting outside the launch seemed desperate.

Why bother?

They either think the Conservatives are a threat (and, unlike the SNP, we improved our vote across the whole constituency in 2005 – theirs fell back badly) – or maybe they will do anything to get publicity. I don’t know, and to be perfectly honest, don’t really care.

This election should be about substance, not stunts.

Manifesto Launch

Today we launched the Scottish Parliament manifesto in Galashiels – usually these things are done in Edinburgh, but we wanted to make a point: that the Scottish Parliament, and the Government, have been too focussed on the central belt to the exclusion of everywhere else.

The manifesto is available to read here, but a good summary of it is available (courtesy of the BBC) here.