Holyrood Climate Change bill is good news....

The new climate change bill announced today in the Scottish Parliament is astonishing for its vision and willingness to put environmental issues at the forefront of everything we do. No, not a quote from a SNP press release but what I think about this SNP proposal. There is no issue more important for our society and on this one, I have to say, no matter how hard it is to type these words, the SNP have shown some real leadership. Infact, so much so, that at a gathering of "green and environmentalist" journalists this week the complaint was "what are we going to do now because the SNP have rolled over and given us all we wanted"! Who said politics was about giving the people what they wanted.

There are 3 things that flow form this however , that are crucial to understand

1. That word s are easy, making it happen will be what matters and having set high standards, the SNP will be judged by high standards
2. This needs to be embedded in all parts of political life, so, for example, where class sizes of 18 can be achieved by the redrawing of catchments rather than the building of new classrooms, that should happen, no matter how unpopular that is locally
3. the Bills objectives will only be achieved by radical changes in our lifestyles. that needs modelling by Government and unpopular choices. especially over cars and road building. Are the SNP brave enough to be unpopular now for a better time to come... Their track record so far would suggest otherwise, but we shall see.