By-elections and belt-tightening!

Jul 11 2008 by Roseanna Cunningham, MSP

YOU know the old saying that a week is a long time in politics? Well, since I write this on a fortnightly basis, I sometimes feel as if two weeks is a whole different country.

When I sat down to write the last column, Wendy Alexander was still leader of Labour in Scotland, David Marshall was still MP for Glasgow East, Nichol Stephen was LibDem leader and it was the Holyrood expenses vote getting media coverage.

With one flick of a switch however, all is changed and it has happened with bewildering speed.

The Labour leadership contest which promised to be the big news story of the summer has been sidelined by the farcical ongoings in Glasgow East.

The LibDems will probably be allowed to conduct their leadership contest in relative peace and quiet since the focus of everyone's interest will be in Glasgow till the vote on July 24 and thereafter will turn to the internal Labour contest.

I was first elected via a by-election in 1995. The old Perth and Kinross seat was a target for the SNP so the internal contest was – well, I was going to say 'keen' but that would be a gross understatement. A lot of people would have given their eye teeth to get selected for the seat...which makes it even more astounding that in Glasgow East, a seat that has a Labour majority of nearly 14,000, the Labour party seem to have had such difficulty coming up with someone who really wanted to stand!

Watch out now for evidence of outrageous Labour scaremongering. One area it has already been happening is with the hugely successful Free Concessionary Bus Pass which Labour claimed was under threat. In fact, it is being extended to encompass a wider group of people including those armed services veterans who have been injured in combat, a small but important gesture. Those Perth and Crieff Citylink bus trips to Oban for lunch are safe, so enjoy!

There are other things I wish we could do. Getting fuel costs down would have to be high on the list. We focus understandably on the price at the pump, but the bigger issue is the knock-on effect this is having on every other cost, particularly food. If you hang on to your till receipts it becomes starkly obvious. Prices are rising weekly, with no real expectation they will come down again.

The rise in fuel costs affects the production costs, right from the farm to the factory to the shop and no end in sight for any of it.

Perthshire farmers and shoppers are struggling and every journey becomes more and more expensive with only some communities well served enough by public transport to have a realistic alternative.

Learning to tighten our belts may be no bad thing in the long run, but a Chancellor banging on about the need to keep interest rates high to 'combat inflation' when the inflation could also be combated by a lower fuel tax take is frankly two faced.