Interview with Cllr. Glen Reid, SNP candidate in East Garioch, Aberdeenshire

 Interview with Cllr. Glen Reid, SNP candidate in East Garioch, Aberdeenshire

• Why an SNP candidate in East Garioch?

I’m standing to be reelected, I was elected in 2017. The reason I stood for the Scottish National Party is because my lifelong commitment is Scottish independence and also because I’m really involved in the community, and this is local politics. We need to improve all the facilities we have to make people’s lives better. I want to effect positive change and improve all the communities I represent.

• What are the main issues you want to prioritise?

East Garioch is a relatively rural constituency, so first of all we have rural connectivity problems. There’s a very poor bus service, so what I’m trying to do is to connect it with active travel pass for young people, people that don’t have cars; so they can actively get around the ward without having to depend with a basically non-existent bus service.

We should be getting a path from Kintore to Blackburn and I’m campaigning for a path from Kintore to Kemnay. Although Kintore is the biggest town, our children are educated in a smaller town which is five miles away, all the leisure facilities are there, so they can’t actually independently access this without having to ask their parents. I want to enable people to get around the ward, get them safe spaces to cycle; one of my main priorities is to make sure that the ward is more connected and people can move around, and also that it’s better for the environment.

There’s poverty in the area, and post-COVID we need to make sure there’s proper support in place for people, I’m sure it’s the same across communities across the world; they’re struggling to come back. We have inadequate youth sport’s facilities, so I’m campaigning for that in one town in particular. We also have speeding problems across the community as well, I’m trying to put in place traffic habits that are better around schools. Again, it’s trying to make our community safer, more connected and trying to deliver for people.

• Why is the SNP the best alternative to the other parties in your area?

We’re currently under an administration of Conservatives and LibDems with some independents. We’ve seen what they’ve done for the last five years and it’s not been good, in my opinion they’re not doing enough. The roads are littered with bottles, we don’t have the proper investment, we’re not putting enough money into active travel, etc. We have an SNP Scottish government and generally we stick to the left, we’re not extreme left or anything, but we want to make sure that we equalise society, in balances between rich and poor. We want to give people the opportunity to do different things, making sure that every child in Scotland gets a baby box when they’re born. As we are a left wing party we want to look after people and educate people properly, making sure that everyone has a good start in life. Under the Westminster government and also under the Conservative administration we face real austerity, and there’s not enough beeing done as well. I don’t know what is like in Spain, but we’ve had severe weather incidences (horrendous storms, floods, etc); I have been campaigning to get flood defences put in, and succeeded in two places in the ward. When we’ve had the storms the council hasn’t done enough.