A few days after Parliament had closed down for the Party Conference season the Prime Minister announced the complete abandonment of any serious attempt to address the Climate Change emergency. It’s not hard to work out why he chose not to make these announcements during parliamentary “term time” when he could have been dragged in front of MPs to justify his U-Turn. The Tories have obviously decided to fight the next election on a Donald Trump style manifesto that flies in the face of all reputable scientific thinking and is happy to let future generations pay the price of their selfish irresponsibility.
I’ve written again to the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Transport asking her to agree to meet me and community representatives to start looking for a solution to the deadlock over the closed Rights of Way over the Levenmouth Rail Link. I’m convinced that when the Scottish Government (via Transport Scotland), Fife Council and Network Rail really listen to local people and understand the immense anger caused by the closure of these ancient Rights of Way they will all agree it’s time to sit down and find a way to fix the problem rather than everybody saying it’s up to someone else.
Up till now we’ve always been told that local Councillors were unanimous in their support for a safe crossing at Doubledykes but a debate and vote in the Council Chamber last week raises serious doubts about just how real this support is. Local SNP Councillors had asked the Council to get senior independent legal advice on which if any of these routes qualifies as a Right of Way. This is a critical question, and you might have thought that since the Council is legally responsible for protecting Rights of Way against unlawful closure it would have been useful for them to have the best possible legal opinion as to the exact status of these crossings. Shockingly the request was rejected after the usual coalition of Labour, Tory and Lib Dem Councillors clubbed together to vote against it. They seem to have been taken in by the ludicrous argument from one of Labour’s most senior Councillors who didn’t know the difference between getting legal advice and launching a full scale challenge in the Court of Session.
I nearly choked on my coffee when I read in the “Gazette” and “Mail” recently that a Fife Lib Dem Councillor was concerned about possible increases at the top ends of the Council Tax bands and that he was blaming this on the SNP Scottish Government. He seems to have forgotten that everyone in Fife is already paying too much Council Tax this year because Councillors voted for an entirely unnecessary 5% increase during this year’s budget meeting. The political balance of the Council is so fine that even if the Lib Dems had abstained the SNP’s alternative budget would have been carried and there would have been no Council Tax increase. The increase went ahead because every Lib Dem and Labour councillor voted with the Tories to force it through.