I am so grateful to Scottish Borders Chamber of Commerce for hosting such an intesting and brilliantly testing hustings, that really made all us candidates think and work out exactly how to help the many and varied types of business in our expansive, rural constituency. A recording of the hustings is available on SBCC’s linkedin page – https://www.linkedin.com/company/scottish-borders-chamber-of-commerce/
Candidates were offered three minutes to introduce ourselves to the meeting and, as ever, I had prepared far too much material. So below is a version of my speech, points from which I talked about in more detail during questions from the floor, and points from my manifesto I also covered in more detail.
I just want to say a quick thanks to all those offering me such positive responses to my proposals to crack on with the job in Westminster and locally, and cut through the monotony of “it’s all awful and we/they can’t do anything to change things for the better or move forward.”
Our lovely constituency deserves an MP with gumption, who takes the initiative, and who has large amounts of experience campaigning and working cross-party, that is getting people in power in different political parties to do what we all need to get the causes we are championing to progress, making life better for everyone.
Vote for me, Ellie Merton, Independent, on 04 July for a realistic, positive, can-do MP – and remember to take your photographic ID with you!
My speech to Scottish Borders Chamber of Commerce, Kelso Cross Keys Hotel, Tuesday 25 June:
Hello!
I’m Ellie Merton, the only non-party, independent candidate running in this election to be your new MP.
Thank you so much for inviting me to Kelso to hear from you, the Borders business community, and I am really looking forward to understa
nding more about your specific business concerns.
You should have found a copy of my manifesto on your seats when you sat down. It centres on improving and sustaining local employment opportunities; restoring nature on land, in rivers and at sea; and lifting Borderers caught in poverty and destitution back to a place of dignity and pride in themselves.
I want to talk to you today, however, about the two headline issues that I see affecting all borders businesses equally, wherever you are based and whatever your business: two issues that also affect all residents, impacting on their ability to afford to engage, hire or buy your products and services.
The last time I was in this hotel was in December 2013. I was staying overnight before my mother’s funeral at Hundy Mundy, which was followed by a fantastic wake held in the courtyard restaurant at Floors Castle, a place that my mother had been particularly fond of.
Sadly, my short stay here at The Cross Keys was mildly traumatising. I was questioned in my bedroom upstairs by Duns police at 10pm at night because they might not let the funeral the next day go ahead until they had understood why my mother had been found dead holding her Borders Care Alarm but seemingly the alarm had not been sounded. I had been the last person to see my mum, so the police officers were interested in what I had witnessed in her final hours.
The key issue that still upsets me today about that whole incident, beyond missing my ma all day every day, is that her Care Alarm equipment had been operational and recently tested but that her copper wire landline phone had, yet again, failed.
As far as I can discern, now living in my ma’s former home, NOTHING has changed in terms of reliable communications’ connectivity in the Borders for most rural outposts like mine in the last eleven years.
And that is an absolute scandal.
Too many rural businesses around our constituency are completely hamstrung by little to no reliable broadband, or any kind of consistent, high-grade internet connectivity, even when paying through the nose for private installations. I could not care less who is allegedly responsible for upgrading our systems at present, who the funders are, the government departments here or at Westminster or who the contractors might be: all parties involved have failed, and so radical plans must immediately be implemented to rectify the situation, at speed.
As a matter of urgency, if I were elected as your MP, I would immediately seek to get called together all the heads of the telecoms industries regionally and nationally, all the infrastructure contractors including Openreach, national security advisors, Scottish Borders Council, the First Minister and the new PM, to institute an immediate six-month-long critical telecoms infrastructure repair and rebuilding plan to be completed within five years, once and for all to cable up our rural constituency, put all that cabling underground and make all of it ultra-fast. And immediately to slash in half the cost of line rental, airtime fees and business and domestic equipment hire and purchases for five years, all paid for by global telecoms industry profiteers and major shareholders.
That should help Border businesses.
The second headline issue I want to talk about is actually a national, UK-wide emergency issue.
It is the cost of fuel and energy. I have no need to remind you about the scale of fuel debt, arrears and poverty in our underpopulated, low-income area, let alone around the rest of the UK.
My solution, again, would be unsubtle and rapid.
I would seek to pull together all the heads of domestic and industrial energy providers, with the heads of oil, gas and renewables suppliers, all the devolved nations’ heads, and the new PM, to agree immediately to emergency measures, halving all domestic and industrial energy supply costs, for everyone, for the next five years, paid for by the fossil fuel extraction global conglomerates. The agreement would also pay for all renewables infrastructure installation projects including putting all power cables underground, paying for the domestic insulation and industrial emissions conversion piece, and all of that to be completed within the next five years as well.
To enable such a vast amount of highly skilled engineering and construction work to be undertaken, we would temporarily have to import most of, for example, the Portuguese workforce (it was during Storm Arwen I discovered the contracting crews slickly and efficiently repairing our Scottish powerlines with enormous care and good humour were Portuguese). But overall, we are desperate for multi-level skilled migrants from around the world to help us immediately rebuild our country, and particularly to help staff our rural businesses after 14 years of the Conservative government’s abusive and destructive austerity policies that have had such a massive impact on Scottish spending, and now the complete disaster of Conservative government implemented Brexit that is a whole new total nightmare for Scottish business.
My two plans are ambitious, yes, but we need both agreements in place and taking effect by 01 September this year, and only the most ambitious and speedy of solutions will stop so many of us in rural Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, whether businesses or just households, going under in energy and comms debt, and/or repeatedly getting cut off from the world yet again this coming winter.
I am confident we can make both radical plans happen if, collectively, we push the new Westminster government to take the lead and, for that, you need a strong, new, independent Westminster MP putting you, the constituents, first.
Vote for me, Ellie Merton, on 04 July to deliver for you the consistent prosperity you have worked so hard to achieve already.
Thank you!
