New Arran candidate for North Ayrshire Council election
There are four council seats allocated to represent the Ardrossan/Arran Ward in North Ayrshire Council. At present, the only sitting councillor resident on Arran is Margie Currie, (Independent), but in the coming election a new Arran-based candidate enters the field. He is
John Bruce(SNP) who lives in Corrie, and he writes the following about his aims and his very broad experience..
In 1971 (pre-oil) my wife and I were working a full summer season in the biggest wooden hotel in the Norwegian fjords – Kvikne’s Hotel, Balestrand, Sognefjord. Stunning location. Majestic scenery. A small community idyll solely supported by regular ferries criss-crossing the fjord and faster hydrofoils from Bergen. In the summer tourist months the mail came by seaplane. We worked hard, made firm life-long friends, enjoyed our free time and picked up the language (Anne soon became singularly fluent.) Crucially, we began to make across-the-board comparisons with the Scotland that we knew then. As the season wore on we realised that our home country was faring rather badly in this comparison process. But why?
The Damascene lightening-bolt moment struck as we were coming home at the end of the season. At 7am in the railway station cafeteria in Drammen, waiting for the Oslo train, breakfast was served with late summer flowers in pewter jugs on white linen tablecloths and we were eating newly baked rolls, rundstykker, and freshly brewed filtered coffee. Quality stuff. And the questions posed themselves: ‘What’s wrong with us?’ And – ‘How do we fix it?’
Thus began a political journey of some 40 years. Previously apolitical, we joined the SNP on May 1st 1974. If we are not on Arran we are somewhere up a Norwegian fjord, which is where Kenneth Gibson MSP found us last summer and persuaded me to stand as an SNP candidate in the forthcoming local elections. The CV I presented ran as follows:
Lived in Corrie since 1985.
Born in Glasgow but moved to the new town of East Kilbride at the age of nine.
Honours degree taken at Glasgow University – Politics and Scottish History.
Career to date – Local government, libraries, hotel management, teaching.
Early retirement – (laugh, never been busier!).
Interests: my family, my friends, my library, my music, my poetry.
Politics
I have always been convinced that the challenges facing us – socially, politically and economically – as citizens of Scotland, are best addressed by a government in Scotland. In a
nutshell, this means that we as a community and a nation, take on the responsibilities required to make things happen and bring about change where it is needed, to make our society better.
I consider that Independence is the normal position of nations in the international community.
It is normal for independent nations to raise and spend their own taxes and use their own resources to benefit their citizens. It is normal for them to make treaties and alliances with other nations, again to benefit their citizens, e.g. for trade, security and monetary purposes.
At a local level, it is equally normal for communities to have empowerment through democratically elected and accountable bodies to tackle the challenges that face them directly in their localities.
