Plastic rubbish is a blight on our streets, rural areas, seas and beaches and Colin Beattie MSP is right to call for a crackdown on environmentally damaging single use plastics such as soft drinks bottles in his comment column (p31 Musselburgh Courier). What Mr Beattie did not mention is that this week, his party, aided and abetted by their co-partners, the Greens, have called for a damaging second delay on the Deposit Return Scheme, which they committed to way back in May 2020, without giving us any idea when they do hope to implement it.
Scotland's Deposit Return Scheme has been designed to tackle our throwaway culture and make it easy for us all to do the right thing. People pay a small deposit of 20p when they buy a drink in a plastic or glass bottle or metal can and when the container is returned the deposit can be reclaimed. Similar schemes are working well in other parts of the world and we should be able to draw on their experiences to get it up and running without delay for the sake of our climate and cleaning up the environment.
Local man Stuart Crawford has been selected to contest the Haddington & Lammermuir ward for the Scottish Liberal Democrats in next years Council elections
Mr Crawford has been active in local politics for many years and was instrumental in curtailing the development of Briery Bank to acceptable limits in the early 2000s. Recently he met with the police Area Commander to discuss anti-social behaviour in the ward and has been outspoken over Haddington's still-to-be-resolved traffic and parking problems. He has also expressed concerns over the proliferation of new housing without the appropriate level of investment in amenities and infrastructure.
In 1999 I founded Stuart Crawford Associates, specialising in public affairs, media communications and public relations, concentrating mainly on the Scottish Executive and Scottish Parliament with occasional forays to Westminster.
I am also a writer and journalist, with articles regularly published in the Scottish press and magazines and journals across the UK and abroad. And have appeared frequently on radio and television, including BBC Newsnight Scotland, STV's Daily Politics and Scotland Tonight programmes, BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour and Today programmes, and the BBC Daily Politics.
As the leaves turn brown and begin to tumble to the ground at the end of our Indian summer, a new pestilence descends upon us at the same time. The blight of the petrol-drive leaf blower, arguably the most useless piece of machinery invented by man, is upon us again. Blowing the leaves into a pile, noisily, during the day, and letting the wind then redistribute them again overnight, is surely one of modern society's most pointless pastimes. It is probably too much to ask that everyone abandons their blowers and return to the good old days of rake and bin, but there are other solutions. Responsible landowners have already traded in their petrol machines for the much more benign electric equivalents, thereby not only reducing noise pollution but also avoiding pumping out noxious fumes into the environment. I note that East Lothian Council regularly deploys its fleet of noisy, petrol-engined blowers in its efforts to maintain our green spaces across the county. Time for it to convert to electric models and set the example in environmental responsibility?
East Lothian Liberal Democrats
