We are reaching out to all candidates in our constituency ahead of the Scottish Parliament election on Thursday 7 May. We are sharing our Manifesto for Larkhall and asking the candidates to support our town with the challenges and opportunities ahead of us.
Michael Weatherhead is the Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate.
Click here to watch videos with the candidates who have met with us so far.
What will you do to hold organisations such as banks accountable when they make decisions that impact communities?
I recognise how banks and post offices can be absolutely hearts and hubs of communities and they don’t just serve professional services, they serve as a meeting place. It’s what this wonderful sociologist, I think she was an American called Jane Jacobs, talks about the little interactions are things that actually make well-being in a community. You need those location points and banks can sometimes be that.
I don’t know the ins and the outs of the legislation, what can be determined or not or what, but I would be interested; as I said, the day job I work very much in local economic democracy. So that’s basically trying to put the power of the economy back in the hands of the local community.
So with that sort of lens, I would want to have conversations. And certainly I know with the Liberal Democrats, they’re very much about pushing down the power to the local area.
I can tell you it is ‘Regulation 3.2 under legislation du du du du’ that would be the thing that would be changed, but one would want to look at, for example, the Community Wealth Building Act. Is there something in that which would allow, if not a regulatory requirement on the bank not to do that, to be able to apply pressure or incentives to discourage them from doing that, at the very least.
Will you strengthen Community Councils and local democracy?
Some of the people who sat on that board also sat on the community council and they weren’t terribly positive about the effectiveness of the Community Council versus what we were doing at the development trust. Now I don’t know if that’s a read across between community councils.
I’m a huge believer in things like citizens assemblies. Why? Because you’re randomly picking people to deeply deliberate on a topic. So it’s not surface level engagement, you have to deeply deliberate on it, but critically as well it’s people who are not on a journey for sort of wanting power for power’s sake, if you like.
And I’m not saying, and I’m not making any comments about anywhere in the political spectrum, but you know, it can lead to potentially that sort of a person getting into that sort of position.
And I would want a really good representative sample. On your survey, you probably did a representative sample of the population. I always just think it should be a representative sample of the local community.
If the Community Council is an effective vehicle to get that, then great. If it’s not, what way could it be improved potentially to try for that and hear all voices?
The thing that was maybe one of the criticisms I heard, even though this is all second, is that maybe it wasn’t necessarily a perfectly representative group that actually occupied that community council.
Will you support our employability project to help people into work?
I would be massively supportive. That takes me back to a job I did 20 years ago and it was with Coventry City Council and it was this incredible third sector organisation who recognised that for long term unemployed people, the first step is not: how do you do a CV, how do you sit down in front of an interview. It’s about dealing with loneliness, dealing with mental health issues, it’s dealing with what’s going on at home, because if you don’t get those things right those are precursors, they’re the necessary pre-steps to actually being able to get to that to see how do you do an interview stage.
I’m completely on board with that. And so much of the work that I’ve done over the last 20 years has been about looking at the value, the long term value of actually doing these kinds of steps. They say ‘oh benefits cost this much,’ but actually if you invest, if you invest this way, you get these longer term savings.
Of course, what’s the problem? Often the problem is that those savings come outside of the political cycle, so they’re not necessarily going to get seared in the current budget. But that doesn’t mean that those savings aren’t coming down the line. So it’s a false economy not to do that early intervention.
Will you support long-term sustainable funding for charities and voluntary groups?
You can’t imagine. So when I was the chair of that development association in Glasgow, we went through COVID and the money was just being pushed out there. And then the taps were turned off and the Scottish Government was one of our three key funders along with Glasgow City Council and the National Lottery.
We made a specific point in our community garden that there’s a gate, but it wasn’t locked, and it was a critical space for people during COVID. As is, for example, the food system. So the food service that we have, we have a veg box scheme which people pay what they can afford and it’s been really heartbreaking (since I moved to Edinburgh, I had to give up being the chair of that ’cause it can really not be if I didn’t live in the community anymore) but it is heartbreaking to have to give up on that scheme because we just couldn’t get the funding for it because more and more families, so many families, were reliant on the veg box scheme.
This marries also with my day job because I am running a charity and it’s continuous. You spend half your life looking for funding and it’s always on a short term basis.
And this is such an inefficient way, you can’t actually get on it because none of us are large enough to do it all and we shouldn’t just be doing it as one organisation. The critical skill set is to be able to as small organisations work effectively together.
But the funding set up, I can feel your pain on that as I live it on that one.
But on the development association point, we really really suffered in that post COVID squeeze; and what do you prioritise, what do you keep, and what do you have to let go? It’s really hard to know.
I’m a huge champion for that for sure because I’ve done it and I’ve been there.
Will you help to improve our parks and green spaces?
It’s totally brilliant. It also makes me think about so much talk these days about young people on digital devices and you have to get them off it – absolutely yes you do, but you have to give them an alternative as well, and that is there’s nothing better.
During lockdown, I remember I used to take my son – we didn’t go Munro bagging ’cause you weren’t allowed out of town – but we used to do park bagging. And so we just found the sort of safe pathways we could cycle around Glasgow between all the different parks, and it wasn’t always easy. It would be so much better if we had these green corridors and connection points.
Absolutely, big thumbs up for that.
Will you fight to fix our roads and pavements?
I live in Edinburgh and I’m with the Liberal Democrat branch where I live and therefore I get access to people on Edinburgh council. So I hear via them of issues that they have with roads and potholes and lack of funding.
So I understand it is very much, it is the purview of the responsibility of local authority, but of course, what could one do if I’m sitting in Holyrood. One can be looking at the arrangements that the Scottish Government is making in order to give local authorities the money to do these types of things. Again, because I’ve never been in Holyrood, I don’t know how the system works, but what one would be is the champion.
It frustrates me because so much of what’s done really, really well across the country is often at the local authority level, and I often use this in my presentation.
Transformational change is often taking place in this country at the local authority level. There is a lot of talk about housing, the housing crisis, and the need for new housing. The transformative housing process of the 50s and 60s was driven by local authorities because they had new powers: they had different types of powers to actually build, invest, borrow, etc.
That would be something I would be looking to try and be in support of in order for them to be able to just adequately meet the requirements because we just know that they’re just being cut back to the bone. That’s been a process that’s started since austerity back in 2010.
I cycle all the time. And where are the potholes? You always find the blooming potholes right next to the side of the pavement where you’re cycling. So I get it.
Do you have any final thoughts on our manifesto or Larkhall?
All power to you and congratulations on doing those surveys, it’s just so powerful.
So I just encourage you, you know, from a distance and maybe if miracles happen closer to home on the 7th of May… But keep using it because, as you said, with the example of the leisure centre, it’s always impossible until it’s not.