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Johnstone's View 20th June 2008

When I first arrived in the Scottish Parliament, way back in May 1999, the Conservatives were allocated office space on the first floor of the old Lothians Regional Council building near the top of the Royal Mile. It was hardly ideal, open plan, more of a wide corridor you could say, but the Conservatives were in no position to make any demands!

Worse still, that first floor was, due to the level of the street outside, only half a floor above the level of the pavement. Outside there were tourists, bagpipers and a busy junction with a light controlled crossing which made a ‘peeping’ noise every 90 seconds. With no air conditioning in the building, for the summer months at least, there was no alternative but to open the windows to let some air in, and with it the noise of the street.

In those early days, First Ministers Questions were taken at 2.30pm on a Thursday afternoon and it therefore became the norm for the disaffected or the disappointed representative group of any particular week to spend the whole of lunchtime chanting and flag waving in the street outside. This happened to be right under my open window!

The reason I mention this, and I’m sure you were beginning to wonder, is that, with monotonous regularity, it was the same chant which was repeated week in week out, it went like this: The leader/organiser of the protesting minority would shout out the question, “What do we want?” to which the assembled company would reply loudly, “More Money”. The ringleader would then shout out a second question, “When do we want it?” to which the group response was an emphatic “Now”.

In time, my weekly interest began to revolve around, not the cause or the case which had been so audibly brought to my attention, but the reasoning behind the theory that more money was the cure for every problem which Scotland was facing, or had ever faced, or was ever likely to face in the future. I just didn’t get it. Anyway, you can tell it left an indelible scar.

As a natural conservative, I have the luxury of believing, quite genuinely, that less government is better government. Not for me the endless upward spiral if increasing public expenditure while trying to pretend that money does, in fact, grow on trees and that taxation will therefore, not be required to rise accordingly. It is altogether harder for the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, who sat together in government for eight years. Having bowed to the force of this hurricane of public opinion, doubling public spending in the process, the voting public tired of their unprecedented generosity with other people’s money!

The thing about being a taxpayer is that you don’t really mind so much if you can see what you are getting for your money. You wouldn’t mind paying higher road tax if the roads were better. You might not object to paying even more income tax if so much of it wasn’t being wasted on enforcing regulations which our European neighbours seem able to ignore. You might even be happy to pay your council tax if they would come round and empty your bin every week like they used to.

Aberdeen is one of the wealthiest cities in Northern Europe. It is at the centre of a world wide oil and gas industry, making it a vital part of the United Kingdom economy yet its City Council is in financial ruin. In Aberdeenshire our council is also starved of funds but must be commended for the way they cope. The Audit of Best Value and Community Planning for Aberdeenshire Council, published by Audit Scotland this week, shows just how well they are coping in adversity but, measured per head of population, their grant aid from central government in 2008/09 will be a full 13.4 % below the Scottish average.

That means that too high a proportion of the money generated in the North East and paid by us in taxes, is being spent elsewhere and not being invested here, by our own local authority, in the infrastructure and the services which are vital to our expanding communities.  Aberdeenshire needs to be able to spend just a little more of its own taxpayers money in order to grow the local economy. And remember, it’s not only for our benefit, an expanding economy generates more wealth, more tax revenue and more resources to improve public services still further.