Some of you may have already picked this up via the North Lanarkshire Council website and Votewise, but if you haven't, there's a council by-election in my ward and I'm running in it. I brushed the dust off the rosettes and cable ties today and started the campaigning in earnest today.
Why am I running? A number of reasons. Health is not going away as an issue and there are big things happening right now, which will affect us for the next generation. Depending on which way things fall,it will either be very much better or very much worse. I'll be talking about these things in the next few days. Secondly, there are a lot of things happening in our area right now that are going to be extremely bad for public health. At the moment our council are attempting to build a school on an old town dump,they have allowed a company to dig an enormous hole in another dump at the top of town and it is open to the sky and they have just passed a planning application for an incinerator in Greengairs, just beside the super dump that the Scottish Environmental Protection Ageny is never away from. Basically, things are rubbish in Coatbridge, both metaphorically and literally, and it needs to change.
But there's a deeper reason for this. It is time for a new way of doing politics in this country. We are seeing the same old tired faces, the same names, seats passing from father to son. Politics needs re-invigorated with some fresh blood and fresh ideas. Politicians need to have to do more to hold onto their seats; they should not be a sinecure for the party on high to bestow on loyal members. We have proportional representation in Scotland; give it time and local politics should be like Australia's, where local councillors tend to be independents rather than party animals. I'm in the minority just now, but in ten, fifteen years people like me will be the norm. We will compete. We will go round doors. We will know the people in our area. And we will be directly accountable to them; our loyalties will not be split between party and constituents. That's the future and it's time to embrace it.
