/u/mg9500 has taken his speaking tour of Lanarkshire to the ancient county capital of Lanark as his pledge to get constituents talking about ideas continued. The pitch for this one was designed around local government - a topic which touches the hearts of the public and always ensures a great turnout. This was perhaps the case more so than usual as he had been the Cabinet Secretary with this responsibility during the latter part of the last parliament.

This saw a position paper being published by one of the directorates falling under this set of responsibilities. Re-election would certainly mean that this would form a cornerstone of Government policy and therefore in all likelihood be implemented. With summer weather beginning to allow the trees to truly blossom it seemed apt to allow the old faithful soapbox to make a rare campaigning appearance.

‘Thanks to everyone for gathering around today, i know that it’s warm so I promise to be as brief as I possibly can be. Those of you here of a more mature age, shall we say, will in all probability remember that before 1973 this town had its own burgh council. It ensured that decisions best placed to be taken locally were always taken by politicians, no let’s call them public servants, who genuinely knew and cared about the community that these decisions impacted. Now that system was by no means perfect but after 1995 what we saw was a distinct lack of localism in our country’s local government. In government the Greens have tried to address this - we broke up the Frankenstein’s Monster that was South Lanarkshire. That however, has still left local decisions for all of Clydesdale being made up the road in Hamilton. Now I have nothing against those councillors but through no fault of their own they have not familiarised themselves with every town and village in this part of the world. Put simply, it’s a task no one could ever accomplish.

That’s why we proposed a few weeks back to resurrect a two-tier system of local government. Placing the responsibilities that national, central government in Edinburgh should not be dealing with in the appropriate sized units for effective delivery. And yes - Lanark would get it’s own authority back, although most likely styled as a District due to the area covered in the modern day.’

At this point the lecture was interrupted as 20-30 men dressed in WW1 period clothing surrounded the stage and grabbed a microphone. Communist regalia and Cyrillic-script writing also appeared in the background.

‘We have came by orders of the Provisional Government of the People’s Socialist Republic of Alba to seize this town and land for the Commune of Lanark! Peace, bread and work!’

After a fit of somewhat hysterical laughter, the Cabinet Secretary re-took his place on top of his soap box in front of a shocked and somewhat bemused gathering.

‘No friends, we haven’t clashed with a meeting of the revolutionary re-enacting society - I checked that’s next week. This is however the picture that the opposition seems to want to paint of these reforms. They think that giving local communities more democracy is akin to Stalinist tyranny. This must stop, as we can all see, it’s beyond belief and demeans our public discourse. The swamping of our election, our airwaves and media, of this sort of fake news is the real threat to our democracy. It’s not us my responsibility to fight it - it is the responsibility of all of us as citizens of a democratic Scotland.

All of us can raise the standard of our beliefs, challenge the intellect of our proposals. If someone told you fast food was healthy I’d hope you’d have the knowledge to say no, it clearly isn’t. Stuff as basic as this, people masquerading in different ideologies under their party name but actually harbouring some deeply regressive views is also pretty basic. I urge, everyone, regardless of who you vote for to scrape beneath the surface and find the true politics of this election. But this has now gone rather off-topic, hasn’t it?

So back to local government. A key complaint in the 70s, 80s and 90s was that our system was simply too confusing and the regions and districts worked against each other. This needs not be the case, their are some perfectly integrated forms of multi-level governance such as in Italy that could be emulated here. The intermediate level of the province - a snazzy title stolen from the New World, I’ll admit - should have direct electoral participation. Many members of the electorate will want to split their votes between different parties at different levels, many no doubt already do.

That’s why a mixed system - as explained in our policy paper being handed out as we speak - works best. It also gives rural areas such as yours a much needed disproportionate amount of representation. I really do believe that this will work as intended and prevent areas suffering from new burning injustices going forward. The electoral system too sees all views, or at least most views, be represented in our local councils, them mirroring their residents more closely is dearly needed and as a unnamed supermarket always says, every little helps.

I said that I would be brief and I’m trying to think if there’s anything else I could add. Oh yes - don’t fall for the myth that only a directly elected figure can represent a community. We live in a parliamentary democracy, not a presidency. Prime Ministers all over the world represent their country well, just has Al has these past few months. Thanks for listening and be sure to vote for somebody, anybody, next week.’

Selfies were the order of the day afterwards although some were not too pleased at mg’s insistence that silly poses formed part of every gift. Their were also concerns regarding communist photobombing in a movement that is quite clearly separate from that, although thankfully the Molotov lookalike only had a bottle of water in his hand. How unauthentic!