On the hustings trail

I think I can claim a first for this election. I'm willing to bet that no other candidate has looked up on a visit to a recycling centre and seen a Golden Eagle overhead.   It was another day, another hustings, another island. This time the island was Harris, the hustings was a political forum at the conference of Community Land Scotland, and the day - well it was wet and windy.  

In the first session of the Scottish Parliament the Land Reform Act was passed and the hope was that community buy-outs such as had happened in Assynt and Eigg would become more frequent as communities saw the potential of taking control of their own assets.

Unfortunately this hasn't really happened and the conference delegates were all clear that the Act, while well intentioned (probably), is drafted in a way that makes the buyout bid process hugely and unnecessarily complex. There will certainly be pressure in the next session to reopen and revise the Act.  

And the eagle? After the conference we were taken on visits which included the recycling centre.

It has a small, not expensive, piece of kit for turning waste cooking oil into fuel for two of the depot's vehicules. Surely one of these should be in every community (well every community with a chippy). And yes, while we were admiring this the eagle soared overhead. Sometimes campaigning is a real privilege.

ABERDEENSHIRE EDUCATION CUTS START TO BITE

The reality of the cuts being forced on Scottish councils by SNP ministers was all too apparent at Aberdeenshire Council last Thursday (24 March).

Several papers at the Education, Learning and Leisure Committee dealt with proposed policy changes intended to give effect to budget cuts voted through the Council in November and February.

On the agenda were cuts to secondary teacher numbers, the number of depute heads in some academies and the provision of fruit for primary pupils, and the extension of charging for musical instrument tuition.

The Democratic Independent group of councillors, of which I am a member, opposed these cuts at the full council meeting in November 2010 when the Council voted for budget reductions totalling almost £27 million in 2011/12. The cuts were supported by all the main parties on the Council - Liberal Democrat, Conservative and SNP.

The specific proposals at the Education, Learning and Leisure Committee covered only a small proportion of the wide ranging cuts Aberdeenshire is making in education.

The proposals on secondary school staffing will impact directly on classes, including possibly resulting in larger class sizes for S1 and S2 maths and English, and on school management at a time of change in the curriculum.

The proposals for additional charging for musical instrument tuition may result in some pupils being prevented from learning for economic reasons.

The proposal to end the provision of free fruit to P1 and P2 children three days a week was part of proposals for reducing spending on school catering.

Obviously, none of these service reductions is desirable, and no-one at the Committee pretended they were.

Take the fruit provision for example.

We know we have a considerable problem of poor diet, such as too much fat and salt, and associated health issues such as obesity.

So learning about food and healthy eating is an important part of education. Getting young children accustomed to healthy food is crucial as part of setting a pattern for later life.

Given the seriousness of the problem in Scotland, addressing this issue has to be a priority.

Not only does the individual benefit, but there are potentially significant savings to the public sector, particularly the NHS, from improvements to people's diet.

We should not therefore be reducing efforts to get young children into good eating habits.

What makes me angry is that these cuts are unnecessary.

Firstly, the Council should not have been put in the position it has been by the Scottish Government, having both its grant cut and a Council Tax freeze imposed on it.

Effectively, allowing for inflation, the Council Tax is being cut year after year. That's not financially sustainable and public services are suffering as a result.

Had the Council been allowed to decide on the level of Council Tax next year, some of the cuts to services could have been avoided. Aberdeenshire's Band D Council Tax is £1141. A one penny in the pound increase, £11.41 per year or 22 pence per week, would bring in around £1.2 million to help pay for public services.

All the cuts included on the Education, Learning and Leisure Committee's agenda last Thursday and more could have been avoided had the Council been allowed to increase the Council Tax by just a penny in the pound.

Secondly, the Council could have chosen different priorities for spending. It is still wasting money on preparatory work for the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, a project that is now simply unaffordable. Schools should come first, not grandiose and unaffordable road schemes.

But, at last Thursday's Education, Learning and Leisure Committee, all the proposed education cuts were accepted by the Committee.

A nuclear election?

Astounding news from across the North Sea!

The German state of Baden-Wurttemberg is to have a Green prime minister, the first in the history of the German Greens. In the election at the weekend the Greens doubled their vote share to just over 24%, giving it enough to lead a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats, after 58 years of rule by the conservative Christian Democrats.

So what might that mean for the Scottish elections? The Greens were riding high in the polls in Germany (although not quite as high as this) and local factors and personalities always have a bearing. But it seems that the Green surge came quite late on, proving yet again that a week is indeed a long time in politics.

A critical issue has been the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. While other parties hastily revised their opinions on nuclear power, the electorate was not fooled by such expediency. The Greens were able to point to a consistent track record on opposing nuclear power; indeed, one of the landmarks of the Greens when in the federal government was a commitment to the phasing out of nuclear power stations. Will the same factors be seen here in May?

Flip-flopping on nuclear is just as common in Scotland as well, with Labour all over the place on it and the Lib Dems in the UK Coalition harnessed to a Conservative obsession with nuclear energy. The SNP alone can be said to have at least some consistency, albeit sullied with its parallel romantic attachment to the black black oil (and coal). There are few things as critical as the security and safety of future energy supply. There are few things in politics as scarce as credibility.

Alison Johnstone is the top Green candidate for Lothian