Interview with Cllr. George Carr, Scottish Conservative candidate in Mearns, Aberdeenshire

 Interview with Cllr. George Carr, Scottish Conservative candidate in Mearns, Aberdeenshire

• Why a Scottish Conservative candidate in Mearns?

I suppose the Conservative Party stands for certain values, it is a party of aspiration, we are people who want to do things for themselves, we don’t want the government to be controlling everything and spending everything on your behalf. People that vote Conservative will be looking for a councillor, a representative who is going to be careful with the finances of the council and who doesn’t want to see money wasted in all sorts of projects. We tend to focus more on where that money is generated, which is businesses and individuals, and to spend the money wisely and carefully rather than being used to subsidise all types of projects that people in general might wish for but those who are actually paying through taxation disagree. 

• What are the main issues you prioritise in this campaign?

We are seeing reduced budgets from the Scottish government, they are not generating wealth through the wider economy and police, fire and councils are all suffering at the moment because they’re not seeing their budgets being increased. We’ve seen the cut of significant amounts of the budget last term and we’re likely to have to see some more cuts this next term. We need to spend that money more appropriately on just the priorities: making sure the grass is cut, the roads are repaired, we don’t have potholes, our infrastructure is up to standard and also making sure the schools have the resources they require and our services are addequately funded and maintained.

• Why are the Scottish Conservatives the best alternative to the other parties in your area?

The Scottish Conservatives are the party of aspiration, it’s the party of the people who are prepared to go out there and do well and want the money from the country to flourish, because that’s the way we generate the resources to spend in all the things we wish public money to be spent on. We encourage the brightest and the best and we give them the opportunity to keep a bit of the money that they earn through the businesses or whatever, they’ll invest it and create jobs. Currently we’ve got higher taxation than England, we seem to want to spend a lot more than England in all sorts of projects, but there’s very little emphasis on generating that wealth in Scotland. The Conservatives in general we tend to focus on income and wealth generation and job creation, growing the Scottish economy. The Scottish government have not succeeded in advancing Scottish education, they do not want comparisons with other countries, they have closed down a lot of benchmarking that would highlight how good or otherwise Scottish education is. At the moment it’s not doing as well as it should be, and there’s no way of comparing the standards of education unless you’re prepared to open up your system to international scrutiny.