The Last SNP Leadership debate
The Edinburgh Reporter was invited to the last SNP leadership debate on Tuesday night, hosted jointly by the Times Scotland and Times Radio. At 8pm sharp all three candidates were lined up behind their respective podiums, miked up and ready to address the audience.
They must all be very weary after the last few weeks of the leadership race, but seemed keen to get going and answer the questions that they had probably answered many times before. But there was no mention of the Deposit Return Scheme which is beleaguering their Green colleague, Lorna Slater, no discussion of the cost of living crisis, and instead lots of talk about independence and the Gender Recognition Reform Bill (which is not in force as it was prevented from becoming law by the Westminster government exercising its powers under Section 35 of the Scotland Act for the first time) and the fall out from that and how they would deal with it. Little was mentioned and nothing asked of the candidates about the multiple resignations since Nicola Sturgeon announced her own departure only five weeks ago today.
The big issue of independence was of course key. All three believe in independence, but have different approaches to it.
Kate Forbes: “The only path is to persuade people who would vote no to vote yes.”
Humza Yousaf – “We have spent a lot of time pointing out Westminster’s failures, but people do not get inspired by talk or process.”
Ash Regan: “If we get a sustained majority Westminster may not give us a referendum. We should stop talking about referendums in parliament, start up an independence Convention who would design the Yes campaign completely separate from government.”
The debate lasted an hour and there was a further hour of discussion by a panel of journalists once the candidates had left the building, probably to make sure they had not spent a penny over the very small budget of £5,000 which was allocated to each of them during this election.
Spend Saturday at the library
This Saturday you can spend time at the Spring Fair at Blackhall between 11 and 2pm. There will activities for children, a book sale and a plant sale, with baking and knitting available for sale.
Whit a mess
Ed Hawkins posted some quite unbelievable photos of newly installed lighting columns he came across on Lauderdale Road on Twitter. The new columns have been moved at least a foot or so back towards the middle of the pavement. The reason? According to the council, vehicles kept bashing into the old ones – so this will save some damage being caused.
The conversation has run on with people questioning the council’s approach to the transport hierarchy which is supposed to put pedestrians first. It seems unlikely that anyone in a wheelchair will be able to get past either.
But worse still…. the installers have clearly thought that the dropped kerb was the ideal site for a new lamppost…
Critical Mass Cycle
On Saturday at 2pm a group of cyclists will congregate at Middle Meadow Walk to go for a cycle around town. There is a little more to it than that as the cyclists reclaim the space, get to know the city and also meet other cyclists to have some fun.
There are more than 300 Critical Mass cycles all over the world, and the one in Edinburgh is always a lot of fun with loud music and fun people. Cycling together allows children and those who might not feel safe cycling in the city to join in. There is safety in numbers and some of the participants act as marshalls to make sure that the group passes through any junctions as one vehicle.
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Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
