Alastair Ross

Thank you to everyone who voted for me and who have successfully returned me as one of your four councillors in Huntly, Strathbogie & Howe of Alford.

Both Moira Ingleby (Con) and Joanna Strathdee (SNP) were also returned for a further term, and we are now joined by John Latham (Independent).

I feel sure that I speak for all four of us when I say that we will continue to work together to protect and promote the interests of all of the people who live in this ward.

Thank you again for your generous support.

I’d like to say thank you to the huge number of people that I and my team have spoken with over the past few weeks.

It is a privilege to have represented you over the past five years and, with your support, I hope I may be privileged once again to continue serving you for a further term.

What has impressed me, as it always does, is the human warmth and respect shown to all candidates at the door irrespective of any party political alleigance. It is a tremendous pleasure listening to you all on the doorsteps and hearing your personal stories. As ever I have picked up some pieces of casework and will pursue those for each of you in the coming days.

I remain committed to putting you first above any party line, and indeed I would expect the same of any true Liberal.

People come first and must firmly stay there.

I notice a BBC news item about further improvements in broadband speeds in Aberdeen City.

Whilst it’s good to know that faster broadband is rolling out across the country it remains true that many rural settlements are still being neglected and struggle to get any usable access to broadband.

In our cities the economics of boadband make it commercially attractive for business to invest and the demands of bigger business can often drive improvement for all. In our smaller and more remote communities commercial viability of broadband is absent or marginal at best.

It is those communities that deserve government support to overcome the investment hurdles that stand in the way of a decent broadband experience. There is an ever growing divide between the digitally wealthy in our cities and our many digital paupers in the hinterlands.

We need a much greater determination to deliver real equality of access to what has already become an essential component of a modern competitive trading existence.

Liberal Democrats have always been, and will continue to be, opposed to a centralised database that allows government to monitor your internet activity at will.

That is not going to happen under these proposals and never will happen in a government that includes the Liberal Democrats.

The proposals being considered would simply update the current rules – which allow the police in criminal investigations to find out who was contacted and when – to cover new forms of technology that didn’t even exist when the original laws were made, like Skype.

What this will not do is allow the government, or the police, or any other agencies, to read your emails and Facebook messages (or any other social media for that matter) at will. The content of your communications is currently, and will always be, protected by tough rules that mean a warrant is needed before any interception could take place.

Our party has a proud history of defending civil liberties which has continued in this Coalition Government.

We’ve scrapped ID cards, ended child detention for immigration purposes, stopped indefinite retention of innocent peoples’ DNA, restored the right to protest in Parliament Square, scrapped control orders and ended 28-day detention without charge – to name but a few!

And as long as Liberal Democrats are in Government we will continue to fight for everyday freedoms that our party has long held dear.

A year after the draft Local Development Plan was sent off to Scottish Ministers they have finally sent back their comments and corrections. You might ask why it has taken a year when the Scottish Government is constantly haranguing local authorities to speed up the planning process.

The comments and changes that have come back are binding.

After an extensive process of local consultation by the council including the Main Issues Report, public comments, the first and second drafts and more public comments, examination by local councillors with local knowledge and extensive debate in the Council you might be forgiven for thinking that the plan would be fairly robust.

Apparently we are wrong. Like schoolchildren we must send our homework off to Edinburgh for correction. And after far too long back comes our homework covered in red ink and corrections.

To be fair Scottish Ministers have approved most of the major policy statements. But they have also been tinkering at the edges and it’s hard to see on what basis they can justify their changes. Here are a couple of puzzlers just to get going:

1. Alford site R4 has long been an aspiration for a car park for the Kingsford Hall. Residents on Kingsford Road know the parking nightmare that comes with each event in the hall. Yet Scottish Ministers have decided that it is not needed and have de-allocated the site to make it available for other potential uses. The community council has often had discussions about ways of pushing that plan forward – as recently as the March 2012 meeting. When did you last see a Scottish Minister at the community council? Thought so!
2. In Kennethmont they have decided to extend an already generous land allocation in order to help secure the future of the school. Yet in Tough they have decided to remove the proposed land allocation because there are no shops or other community facilities there. Kennethmont has no shop. Tough has no shop. Kennethmont has a school. Tough has a school. It seems to me that there are different standards being applied and it’s not at all clear why.

The good news is that Councillors of all parties appear to be united. This is the last time this kind of travesty should be allowed. We will be taking it up with the minister and there are clear indications that many chief planning officers across Scotland are equally flabbergasted by this extraordinary and ill informed tinkering with our local development plan.

Meantime we are obliged to accept the headmasters correction of our work.

It’s an old mantra and it is true today as it ever was. The right place to take any decision is as near as possible to the place where it will affect. Decision takers in Edinburgh are just as remote as decision takers in London or Brussels. These local decisions must be returned to the Council and perhaps even closer to the ground than that.

So now we have the great referendum debate.

The SNP want to include 16 and 17 year olds who, they clearly calculate, are more likely to vote with the nationalist fervour of youth – especially as they are to get lessons in Scottishness and every school now has its Saltire courtesy of the Scottish Government. The SNP also want to set the date at a time when there will be another upsurge in Scottish national euphoria with the commonwealth games in Glasgow as well as the second homecoming.

It’s all very transparent: “lets arrange it as much in our favour as possible” seems to be the rule. But what government didn’t do that? Labour and Tory governments down the years have done their best to choose general election dates in their favour. It’s human nature to look for advantage so Salmond’s choice of date is totally unsurprising.

What is totally unacceptable is attempting to gerrymander the electorate by including 16 and 17 year olds.

Whether Salmond gets his way remains to be seen. But whatever happens he now has his next move lined up. If he is thwarted on the date he’ll claim it was undemocratic, and if he gets his way he’ll claim it underpins his legitimacy.

The challenge now is to establish a referendum that is fair, is decisive, and is not unduly dominated by short term euphoria.

If Scotland chooses independence let it be arrived at soberly and advisedly after careful thought, not after a few weeks of flag waving and cheering of our own athletes.

What it all tells me is that the SNP hope you will make an emotional decision not a rational decision.

The opposition think they can win the economic argument by just wailing about cuts on behalf of their public sector union paymasters. They give no credible alternatives for what they would do about Britain’s economic crisis.

What they also like to ignore is some of the changes that are being made towards making this country fairer. Here is a list of cuts Liberal are talking about because they are mostly happening through Lib Dem action and pressure.

• The CUT from £250,000 to £50,000 in the maximum annual pension contribution to receive tax relief – clawing back a staggering £4,000,000,000 (£4bn) that Labour was giving to the rich.
• The CUT in bank profits with a new tax raising £2.5 bn a year.
• The CUT in regional disparity through the £2.4 bn regional growth fund.
• The CUT in tax paid by ordinary people with the basic tax threshold raised to £8,105 by next April from £6475 in 2010/11 – and no more 10p tax rate fiascos.
• The CUT in the 40% tax threshold meaning the better off pay more.
• The CUT in money that Labour allowed people to make in Capital Gains with the tax rate rising from 18% to 28%.
• The CUT in pensioner poverty with a triple lock guarantee of rises and the biggest ever cash rise coming in April 2012. No more 75p-per-week insults.
• The CUT in the gap between rich and poor through the VAT rise. Remember those who spend most pay most and the basic costs of living don’t have standard rate VAT.
• The CUT in benefit fraud with new resources being brought in.
• The CUT in tax evasion by the rich with £900m of extra resource.
• The CUT in education disadvantage for poorer children through the Pupil Premium.
• The CUT in the amount per month students will have to pay back after graduation and a higher threshold before they start paying anything.

Remember, the last government didn’t deliver these changes in their 13 years of government and voted AGAINST them in this government. Lib Dems in parliament are pushing a real fairness agenda.

By the way, just for good measure we also CUT Tory plans to increase the Inheritance Tax threshold from £350,000 to £1,000,000!

I am delighted to see that Huntly has been selected as one of 47 communities across Scotland which are to receive next generation broadband.

Broadband access is a major issue throughout rural Scotland. Too often we see further investment in major cities while the rural majority get left behind. So it is very gratifying to see that Huntly (along with Banchory, Culter, Peterhead, Portlethen, Kintore, Lossiemouth, and Bucksburn) is going to receive a major upgrade in broadband service.

Lets hope this is a harbinger of good things to come for even more settlements across Aberdeenshire.

There is a new e-petition to End Legal Loan Sharking.

You can sign up on the Governments e-petitions website by clicking the link above.

I decided to sign it as I am very concerned about the extraordinary rates of interest being charged by the so-called payday loans companies.

Many of you will have seen TV advertisements for short term payday loans. Check out the APR that appears in the small print at the bottom of the screen. One that I checked out this morning (November 14) quotes “Representative APR 4124%”.

By comparison, credit cards are quoting rates around 15 – 30% with a few somewhat higher than that. The dearest I found in a quick trawl was nearly 50% – still nearly 80 times less expensive than a payday loan.

One website quoted Representative APR 4124%

The petition calls on Government to introduce caps on the total cost of credit, so that British consumers get the same protection from payday lenders, home credit companies and hire purchase agreement providers as enjoyed by others across the world. Given the evidence of growing numbers of UK consumers getting into debt as a result of these forms of credit we call on the UK Parliament to act on this matter before Christmas in order to defend British consumers from the legal loan shark industry.

North East Liberal Democrat MPs today welcomed the news that Scottish and Southern Energy and Shell had entered into a joint development agreement to develop a carbon capture and storage project on their at the Peterhead plant in Aberdeenshire. The news comes soon after the decision not to progress the CCS project at Longannet in Fife. They called on the UK Government to get behind the project.

The Peterhead project is dependent on funding from both the EU and from the UK Government (details below). The project will build on pre-FEED studies already carried out by Shell at Longannet and SSE and Shell are confident that, funding permitting, the Peterhead project can be accelerated to begin a full FEED study in mid 2012.

Sir Robert Smith MP, member of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change and MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine said:

“I have written to Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, to highlight the advantages of the Peterhead project. The North East of Scotland is perfectly placed geographically for ease of transport of the CO2 to the North Sea fields and the region can also draw on the vast expertise and experience of the Aberdeenshire Oil and Gas industry. This is an opportunity for both Scotland and the UK to take a lead in this exciting and rapidly developing industry.”

“With gas likely to play an increasingly important role in the UK’s energy mix, it is essential that CCS is tested on gas-fired power stations.”

Malcolm Bruce, MP for Gordon who is vice chair of the Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group, PRASEG added:

“The consortium’s announcement today is clearly welcome both for Aberdeenshire and Scotland. CCS is an extremely cost effective way to reduce emissions and presents a huge opportunity for UK technological leadership, bringing prosperity, growth and jobs in the low carbon economy. However, we must learn the lessons from Longannet and I urge both Governments to work together to ensure that a streamlined funding and construction process is put in place to deliver the commitment to the project as smoothly and swiftly as possible.”

NOTES:

The agreement will enable the project to accelerate a programme of pre-FEED (Front-End Engineering Design) studies, with the intention that the project will be in a position to begin a full FEED study in the second half of 2012, subject to progress with funding proposals submitted under the EU’s NER300 process and developments in the UK’s CCS demonstration programme.

The project aims to design and develop a full chain, post-combustion CCS facility which will be capable of capturing CO2 from one 385 MW combined cycle gas turbine unit at SSE’s Peterhead Power Station. It is planned that the CO2 will then be transported to the Shell operated Goldeneye gas field in the North Sea using, as far as possible, existing infrastructure

SSE will lead on all aspects of the capture plant at Peterhead, including initial compression and dehydration; with Shell examining all other aspects, including onshore and offshore transportation and storage.

In May 2011, the UK government announced that the Peterhead project was one of seven UK CCS applications to the European Investment Bank for consideration in the EU’s NER (New Entrant Reserve) scheme to support CCS and renewable energy projects across the EU. Up to three such projects may be supported per Member State. A decision has recently been taken not to proceed with the CCS project proposed for the coal-fired power station at Longannet in Fife, which had been one of the seven UK CCS applications.