Edinburgh South: Making Westminster relevant
The political landscape of Edinburgh is changing. The impact of devolution and the Holyrood Parliament on the city is difficult to miss.
Devolution has brought increased wealth and confidence to the city, but has also raised profound questions about the role of Westminster.
Edinburgh South is the smallest of the city’s constituencies and arguably the most socio-economically diverse, stretching from the very wealthy of the Grange to the very poor of Alnwickhill. Traditionally one of the most politically active areas of the city, turnout at the last election was low. Some see this as a symptom of political apathy across the nation while others suggest it reflects the irrelevance of Westminster in Scotland since devolution.
Indeed with many of the issues that often decide a general election (health, education and policing) now devolved matters it can be hard to see why the people of Scotland should be overly concerned with the Westminster elections.
However both Marilyne MacLaren of the Liberal Democrats and Gavin Brown of the Conservative Party argue for Westminster’s relevance, and are optimistic that the notional majority of around 5,000 of the incumbent MP, Labour’s Nigel Griffiths, can be overturned.
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The most commonly cited drawback to life in Edinburgh South is traffic. The constituency is bounded north and south by the proposed inner and outer cordon lines of the council’s ill-fated congestion charging scheme, which both MacLaren and Brown campaigned against.
According to Brown the people of Edinburgh overwhelmingly voted against the congestion charging proposal (almost three to one in a local referendum) because of concerns “about having another tax levied on them with no real apparent benefit.”
However, he admits “there are public transport improvements that are needed.”
Brown suggests: “We need to improve the bus network. It kind of runs like the spokes of a wheel. If you live on a main bus route you think the bus service in Edinburgh is great. If you don’t you think the bus service is appalling.”
He adds that “the bus lane system is just a nonsense” and “people don’t seem to know the rules.” The signs are too complicated, Brown exclaims, and to know the hours of operation for the bus lanes “you would actually have to stop get out your car and read the signs!”
“If the public transport system is good,” argues Brown, “people are more inclined to use it and less inclined to use their cars … we don’t need road tolls to stop traffic.”
City councils of the past have made the arguably disastrous decision simply to pour tarmac on the traditional cobbled streets of areas like Marchmont. And now Edinburgh lays claim to some of the worst roads in the country.
Brown is critical of Edinburgh Council for lacking vision. He maintains: “They need to be a bit more visionary about it and look at it that if they don’t spend a lot more money on the roads now, in five years time or ten years time we are just going to have a system that simply doesn’t run properly.” 
Although Brown advocates improving the bus service and road infrastructure he also supports other initiatives such as those favoured by MacLaren: The tramline projects one and two, and the reopening of the South Suburban Railway to passenger traffic.
She argues that “most of these rail services once they have opened have astounded people at how popular they are.”
As for the ill-fated congestion charging scheme MacLaren declares “you can’t compare London with Edinburgh.”
“Ken Livingstone in London has control over all his public transport” MacLaren exclaimed. “We don’t have control over anything and that’s kind of difficult if you are trying to get a public transport scheme as an alternative to link in with the possible congestion charging.”
As the traffic calms towards evening and daytime drunks who so merrily dance with the daytime traffic are joined by evening socialites who will likely wind up as drunk, Edinburgh’s other problems become more apparent.
Edinburgh suffers like the rest of Scotland with an undesirable reputation for binge-drinking. Indeed, the city boasts more beer pumps per head of population than any other in the UK and with Scotland’s more liberal drinking regulations the city centre’s Rose Street plays host to many English or Welsh stag and hen nights throughout the year.
Although Edinburgh is arguably less violent than other cities the problems associated with binge drinking are real.
MacLaren says the Liberal Democrats have a lot to offer the people of Edinburgh South on tackling this issue. She insists that “our policy on antisocial behaviour is very pragmatic and very sensible.”
“We came up with ABC’s, antisocial behaviour contracts, down south and for me they are a very good way of dealing with young people because it deals with the whole family.and you have to sign a contract with the young person, you are actually linking in with them to try to change their behaviour. “
As for the oft-criticised ASBOs MacLaren says: “In a sense you have failed. There is nothing else you can do if you have got to put an ASBO on an adult or a young person.”
And with binge drinking often at the root of antisocial behaviour she laments the lack of headway that is being made in tackling it. “We have to try harder at all levels; council level; Scottish Parliament level; and anything that Westminster MPs can do as well,” she says.
MacLaren maintains the solution lies in education – something with which Brown wholly agrees.
He says: “If you want to change behaviour you have got to change attitudes and the Executive’s approach tends to be just putting a few adverts on telly saying ‘don’t drink too much’.but I think that’s not going to change behaviour if the people still think it’s ok to go out and do it they are still going to do it.”
Brown suggests: “Education is at the heart of it all. You have got to try and drum into people fairly early on in life what the dangers are so that people can then make an informed choice on it.”
But he maintains that dealing with the associated violence and anti-social behaviour is the work of more beat policemen – one of his key election promises – and something that MacLaren suggests will be ineffective.
As Scotland has already instigated many of the key Lib Dem policies, MacLaren claims that some of the money raised from the party’s proposed 50 per cent tax bracket would be spent on a thousand more police officers.
But she hopes that “they are not just going to be [the] bobbies on the beat” that Brown so champions.
She says: “All the research indicates that it takes 20 years for a bobby on the beat to stop a crime.”
However MacLaren staunchly supports the idea of ring fenced “community police officers who are left in their community for two to three years.”
Problems like these leave many debating whether Edinburgh and Scotland have benefited from devolution. And with three tiers of government it is easy to see why so many people in Edinburgh South and Scotland are confused as to who is doing what.
Unsurprisingly both candidates deny suggestions that MPs are irrelevant.
MacLaren insists that “the voters, especially in this constituency are really quite wised up as to what is reserved matters and what is devolved matters. there is a recognition that the conditions in our hospitals are to do with the Scottish Parliament and the conditions in our schools and the funding of schools is to do with the Scottish Parliament.”
Arguing for a federal state of the United Kingdom, MacLa
