Vote Green in Glasgow Kelvin

So in Kelvin there's a whole raft of candidates; the usual suspects plus some extra...

...interestingly Niall Walker, until recently a local LibDem councillor, is standing as an independent. In some ways I like Niall, his heart's in the right place: he's a keen cyclist and fairly green minded, but he seems rather grim and dour of late when I've seen him. His posters are mostly black - perhaps the colour of mourning of his LibDem affiliation. He doesn't have a hope without a party backing him and I wonder why he's standing except as a spoiler to the LibDem campaign. Perhaps he didn't know there was going to be a Green candidate and wanted there to be an alternative to LibDem greenwash. Have to give him credit for dedication sticking to election rules - he or someone helping appears to have hand written in ballpoint pen the legal information at the bottom of his posters because it was missed when printing. (ouch)

Anyway, a few years ago (autumn 2004?), well before the scandal where the LibDem transport minister buried then ignored a public inquiry, Niall sauntered up to a Partick Farmers Market Green Party stall I was at. He was in his cycle gear and probably thought he was incognito. I must not have had my morning cup of tea that day because I laid into him hard about his party backing of the M74 and of the City Council backing the M74 extension. He told me he didn't know much about it (which admission made me positively froth at the mouth - how can a councillor not know what a huge grey-polluting monstrosity the City Council is backing?) but as I calmed down he took in my points on why it was a bad idea and an even worse use of £500million. It seems he, as many in the LibDems, simply trusted the rhetoric and judgement of their ministers and didn't always engage with their track record.

Funnily enough, not moving in lofty ministerial circles, I haven't yet met a LibDem who knows the arguments and wholeheartedly defends the M74 extension. I've met LibDem activists chatting after hustings in previous elections who are privately embarrassed by it. The SNP are likewise less than enthusiastic behind the scenes though their politicians have stuck to the pro-motorway building line in front of the public. I have my notes somewhere from a 2003 hustings where Sandra White was defending the idea of "the missing link" motorway portion. Shame that people don't pick up the fact that this "missing link" fossil of urban planning dates from the 1960s - when oil seemed never ending and the future held the prospect of everyone zooming around in freely flowing traffic with shiny cars. Even the Evening Times has a blind spot on the idiocy of this piece of motorway building - perhaps their journalists are frustrated about being stuck in congestion and simply don't believe the studies which show new motorways don't help in-town congestion. Well, the M74 extension is not just bad for the local environment, bad for the global environment, it's a HUGE waste of money: for less than half the price (current estimate £130million) you could have Crossrail in Glasgow and have a few bob left over to spend on other public transport projects (or even just repairing the existing road surface rather than building more). Why would you build it? Who would benefit? some Labour donors perhaps? who met the First Minister around the time of negotiations?