Bottoms-Up Politics

Yesterday I went first to Edinburgh and then drove back down to Cauldshiels, just south of Melrose. I went to meet Nicholas Watson, the campaigner against the destruction of the wonderful landscape around Abbotsford, Walter Scott's home, where the Scottish Borders Council wanted to build around a thousand new homes. Nicholas's campaign has mushroomed into him starting the Borders Party, along with other likeminded souls, to fight for seats at the local council elections on May 3rd.

I've decided to support the Borders Party in whatever way I can in their bid to inject some real local issue and local action into our rather tired old local council politics. The situation that's developed in local government here in the Borders has become a rather stale and predictable affair. The 'ruling coalition' has been made up of Conservatives and Independents - about as bizarre as the Conservatives and the SSP ever running Sleepy Holyrood. We walked up Cauldshiels Hill, which is the site of an Iron Age, and probably a Roman signal station - the earthworks are still clearly visible. Sitting on top of the hill looking at a 360-degree panorama of the borders it brought home what a magnificent land we are lucky to live in. One that needs protecting from over zealous development and dim-witted government.

We talked about many of the issues that concerned us at the election. Tourism got a good airing – because it is central to the struggling local economy of the Borders. I told Nicholas that when we first moved to the Borders, ten years ago, I was amazed to hear the then head of the tourist board complain that there was no world class attraction for them to promote. Sitting on the top of the hill the attraction was evident all around us. The beautiful, largely unspoilt countryside is world class - in an increasingly fraught and over-populated world that is what will bring back people in substantial numbers; certainly in the numbers that our infrastructure can deal with. We talked of why the Reivers are not celebrated by the tourist board and came up with a few ideas on how we can suggest some positive things that might interest voters and make a difference.

I think that everyone standing for local councillors loves the Borders, it’s just that they seem to find difficulty in expressing it. Certainly I’ve seen nothing coming out of the council in recent years that is anything other than platitudes in this direction. The Councillors seem happy to go along with the ‘management team’ of the council, the department heads and those people who are career local government officials. We even have a Chief Executive who doesn’t even live in the Borders, that’s how much he loves it. He apparently prefers to stay in Dunbar in East Lothian.

I doubt many of you reading this blog live in the Borders and therefore don’t feel like I do. But wherever you live don’t you have a sense that local issues are more and more being subjugated to what national politicians want? While I care what is happening around the world, in Edinburgh, in London or wherever, it’s what happens in my little world-patch that truly affects my life. What any of us can affect is that which happens in our own back yard or garden. Only having got that right can we then move on to deal with next door or elsewhere. It seems to me that we’ve got it the wrong way round.

We need the Borders Party to bring back a real sense of local politics. Not politics run by the big four parties in Holyrood or London. Let’s get our own back yard organized and run in a way that we want it to be, not have it dictated from elsewhere. Of course I’m not naive enough to suggest that national politics don’t take precedent, but if we do nothing from the bottom up, we’ll continue to be ruled from the top down. I hope I can help make a bit of a difference.

For more on the Borders Party clickHERE