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.

Interview with Daniel Hampsey, Scottish Conservative candidate in Dunoon, Argyll & Bute

Interview with Daniel Hampsey, Scottish Conservative candidate in Dunoon, Argyll & Bute

• Why a Conservative candidate in Dunoon?

I believe the Scottish Conservatives are the party of local government. We believe in strong local governments that are the representatives of local people and really use our powers for the better of people. I think in comparison to other parties in Scotland, we’ve seen centralisation under the SNP, local powers have been removed from local governments and sent to Holyrood. We don’t believe in that, we believe in local government and giving our local people a strong voice, trying to benefit our locals. We also believe of course in the responsibility of our council to work well on a decent budget, despite budget cuts from the Scottish Government; but really ensuring there’s a responsibility in the council and at the same time providing those council’s services to the best standard possible.

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

That’s something that will go in my second leaflet in a couple of weeks. I’ve got a 5 point plan, 5 priorities that they could benefit Dunoon. The first one would be for me transport, which is a huge issue for Dunoon. We live in a very rural area, where to get to the mainlands such as Inverclyde or Glasgow you need to get ferries, and ferries are being a huge issue in Dunoon, we’ve seen over a decade of poor ferry services provided by central government, and that is really taking a toll on our local people, unable to access education and jobs and also on our tourism. 

The second one would be education. We believe in getting back to full-time face to face education and looking for our local recovery and supporting people’s needs and aspirations to the best extent after the pandemic which has hit our students quite significantly. That falls onto health.

Health of course is probably one of the biggest things the pandemic has affected, and COVID of course the cause for that, but it’s now taking a toll in other health services such as face to face appointments. During the pandemic we had online meetings which are a digital barrier, specially with our elderly people who had more trouble to access online health.

The roads of course as well. Roads are something the local government is fully responsible for and being in a rural area they’re important and in comparison with other councils I would say that we have done a better job but at the same time there’s still a lot of work to get done. 

But of course I think the main thing would be economic development, supporting our local businesses financially and actually trying to take advantage of Dunoon’s unique points, one of the main things I would say is tourism. We’re really trying to push that to ensure more tourism and more staycation as we’ve seen during the pandemic. 

• Why are the Scottish Conservatives the best alternative to the SNP and Labour?

As I said in the first one, I believe the Scottish Conservatives are the main party for local government, we really stand up for that local power and local people. In recent years, the SNP have centralised a lot of local government powers. In a wider perspective, before 2013 the police was more regionalised such as Strathclyde Police but the SNP stopped that; the benefit of local government is that we understand the locals and the opportunities that they have and we understand the specific needs in that council area, and it’s something that central government simply cannot understand, because the people that know what needs to get done in our communities is the people that ultimately live here and experience different issues. Obviously the Scottish Conservatives have been, in terms of an alternative, in coalition in Argyll & Bute for the past 5 years doing a great job. We are definitely the best party for local government.

Interview with Shane Painter, Scottish Conservative candidate in George Street & Harbour, Aberdeen

Interview with Shane Painter, Scottish Conservative candidate in George Street & Harbour, Aberdeen

• Why a Scottish Conservative candidate in George Street & Harbour?

We’re fortunate enough to have elected a Scottish Conservative (councillor) in George Street and Harbour in 2017 and I think the work my predecessor has done is absolutely incredible and it shows the strength of what Conservatives can do in the local area. We’re fortunate enough in Aberdeen to be in administration and having a councillor in that administration that’s been incredibly beneficial. We’ve got currently a 150 million pounds master plan which will regenerate our beach area and the city centre to make them a place that’s fit for the 21st century and will bring it into the modern world. Across Britain the high streets are struggling and we’ve got tons of problems the pandemic brought us, being in the administration has given us that voice to fix what we want to. I think there’s so much that local councillors can do and we recognise that George Street and Harbour is not by any means a typical Conservative area. It’s a city centre ward, it’s not particularly an affluent area in comparison to any other areas of the city, so we don’t take any votes for granted and I recognise there’s a lot of work to do to get people out to vote; but having a voice in the administration for the local area is just beneficial and being in the administration makes our voice louder and stronger. 

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

We recently had a vote in the council here to pedestrianise the main high street, and speaking with members of the public, speaking with business leaders; we recognised this is the way to go forward. We have to do something new to rejuvenate our high streets to bring people back and we believe that after speaking with so many different stakeholders, the pedestrianisation is the right way to do it. We have to absolutely get it right so the pedestrianisation doesn’t exclude people and we have to listen to perfectly legitimate concerns of those who might not be able to, and we have to make sure that they can still access like anyone else. Pedestrianisation is building back from the pandemic and doing something new, that’s going to make a critical part (of the campaign) but beyond that George Street and Harbour is not one of the most affluent areas of the city. 

The ward has lower income brackets compared to some other areas. The poverty rate is higher and we’ve got higher levels of anti-social behaviour, so tackling that and how we go about it in a way that will encompass multiple different organisations and that the council can’t do on its own, that is going to play a critical role as well, fighting for a cleaner city centre that is attractive to people. 

And of course we had the pandemic, and we’ve got to focus on recovery from that and how we can support schools, local communities, our NHS, etc.

• Why are the Scottish Conservatives the best alternative to the SNP and Labour?

I’ll start with Labour first. The coalition that has been on Aberdeen City Council since 2017 has been a Conservative-Labour one, with some independents. On paper, that doesn’t sound like it should work, it sounds like the parties can’t work together, but what we’ve done and what’s happened is that we’ve worked with Labour and we’ve put aside our differences, we’ve used those differences to work together for the benefit of the city and the area as a whole. The administration’s budget for the next year is a proof of how when the left and the right come together and work together they can produce something quite positive. In the last budget, we’ve got 1 million pound fuel poverty fund to help those who had been left behind by the Scottish Government. We’ve managed to protect our schools and our young people from SNP cuts, because the SNP have cut budgets across Scotland for no obvious reason. We’ve worked well with Labour and I’m sure it’s something that we’ll consider doing in the future depending on how the election goes. 

The SNP is still focused on a divisive second referendum, and there are more important things, everyone recognises that. People’s priorities are not the same as they were in 2014. They want an administration that is focused on them and their concerns, and at the moment that’s just not independence. When it comes to the SNP, outside of their rhetoric around independence, they’ve got no ideas. They unfortunately lost the bill on pedestrianisation by 1 and that was led by the Liberal Democrats and them. They want to hold Aberdeen back, they want to hold it in the past. We’re not living in 30-40 years ago when this was a prosperous area, things have changed, shopping habits have changed and we have to change with it; otherwise we’ll just have managed decline. The SNP have no ideas, it’s just holding us back, it’s not moving anywhere and it’s just going to be the detriment to us all if the SNP gets into administration here.