Are you like me so glad that at long last a horrible winter seems to be finally ended?
We have had a wet winter but now the sun has shone on many days. The May holiday weather was a belated touch of Spring with glorious displays of daffodils. Dare we hope for a good summer with weather which will get us out of doors?
We councillors had to contend with a very difficult budget which had an even tighter financial settlement than before. We have no choice but to balance the budget and make sure it is legal. Each year we hope the squeeze will be less and this year as before we watched the usual playing to the gallery of a minor political group followed, as usual, by capitulation and an agreement by them to support Holyrood’s budget. We were grateful, however, as it meant we had a little more money to spend on the services we provide. It still meant though a real terms reduction of 2.3% in spending. One item people found very difficult to understand was the £25.00 charge for removing garden waste. This is not a statutory duty on the council the way household refuse is. The charge had been included in the last administration budget in 2016 and the savings taken into account. The alternatives suggested to me 1. Doing away with it. This would have meant finding over £800,000 savings from other budget headings. 2. Leaving it within the Council Tax charges. This would have had 2 results, one being finding £800,000 extra savings or worse still finding this removed from our settlement from Holyrood for 2018/19. Sadly this was not a choice we could take.
If you want to know the date of specific bin collections you can find this on the council website. If you do not have access to the Internet you can access it at a library. This does not completely solve the problem as you need to be able to access a static library. Customer services is another access point their number is 01738 476476. Callers who live in villages will need their post code to get the dates.
I have been watching the progress of the A9 Co-creative process and how involved the community is. This is being looked at by other communities affected by the dualling of the A9 and they have learned from it and are hoping to be setting up liaison groups with the chosen developer. This will make the process smoother during what will be a very disruptive period.
Perth is growing but so too is the infrastructure. We should all find moving about will be better in the long term. Hopefully the pressure on housing will be reduced; the council has a commitment to build affordable social housing. This will help younger people get a start on the housing ladder.
I am more than happy to hear from anyone who has ideas or has issues they wish to raise or even want a moan at something that irritates. I can be contacted by email at AnneJarvis@pkc.gov.uk or telephone me on 01738 475030.
Anne Jarvis
Conservative Councillor

2018 has seen the Commonwealth featuring prominently in the news, sometimes for good and sometimes for less meritorious reasons. We have all been immensely proud of the success of our athletes in the Commonwealth Games in Australia, and pleased to hear confirmation that Prince Charles will succeed his mother as Head of the Commonwealth, an appointment which is not hereditary but for which there was unanimous support in favour of Prince Charles.
There are now 53 countries in the Commonwealth and it is an indication of the affection in which this country is held that Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands wish to remain British. Even some erstwhile French colonies wish they could be in the Commonwealth, Senegal being one.
More recently the scandal over the Windrush immigrants from the Caribbean has brought home to us just how vulnerable people from other cultures can be. At its height, the British Empire included a fifth of the world’s total population, and it is a source of great sadness to those families whose fathers and grandfather’s chose to serve their country in the Colonies overseas, to hear some of the younger generation being taught to vilify Colonialism. Yes of course there were some bad apples, and exploitation, but thousands of men and women devoted their live to bringing democracy, our legal system, the finest in the world, and Christianity to millions of people. Some of the Windrush immigrants had the foresight to obtain the necessary paperwork years ago, and it is deeply regrettable that those who did not should have been penalised in such an unfair way. David Blunkett a former Home Secretary comments that this unfortunate situation should be taken out of party politics, as it was under a Labour Government that the decision was made to destroy the Windrush Boarding Cards, although they were not actually destroyed until 2010.
David Blunkett had his thorn in the flesh which was of course his blindness, but like St Paul, whose thorn was never revealed to us, he rose above it superbly and is one of the fairest men you could hope to meet.
We here in the Highlands may not be so immediately involved with immigrants as those further South, but we must not forget that a leading figure here in Perthshire headed the Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the 25th anniversary of whose death was marked on 22nd April. Against considerable opposition, which included hate mail and death threats, he pursued his goal, exposing police corruption, to achieve justice for that family, and succeeded in establishing lasting changes in our legal system and police procedures, benefitting hundreds of people in the future.
Recent news tells us of claims of corruption in the Scottish Police Force. Let’s hope another figure will step forward and do battle to achieve what is right and just.
Dunkeld and Birnam Community has proved a fine example of carrying out Jesus message of caring for everyone who needs support regardless of their age or the colour of their skin, and will, I am sure, continue to lead by their example.

Anne Steuart Fothringham

When I told my husband that Scottish Water had launched a campaign to encourage us to save water his left eyebrow hot up at least half an inch. He then proceeded to give me various statistics about the amount of fresh water in Scotland including what appeared to me somewhat unlikely statistics about the amount of water in Loch Ness. I mean how can anyone be sure they have counted the water in the very underwater cavern where dear Nessie spends her days?

However, when this edition of The Bridge is published I will pop page 8 under his nose and see if his eyebrow remains arched or whether he will see fit to pop the free hippo I got at the Scottish Water stand at Institute stand in the loo.

Apparently, it reduces the amount of water we use to flush to the amount a hippo needs to bathe. All very fascinating. They also gave me a shower timer to encourage me to leap out of the shower when I am half way through shampooing my hair. However, as I pointed out to them with two teenage boys in the house my challenge lies not in getting them to get out of the shower but to stay in the shower long enough to get wet not the other way around. It turns out the boys would be a very good advert for the Scottish Water Campaign.

So, when will the swallows be back? It must be time for Spring soon. I’m fed up with the visitations of various scary animals from Siberia large and small. What on earth our lovely female Osprey thought when she returned safely on the 20th March I can only think. If she’d come back a few days earlier, she would have come back to snow in her nest for goodness sake. I must object to her being called LF15 and with this editorial am launching a campaign to give her a new name. Come on SWT – surely, we can do better than making her sound like an aeroplane? I’ve just had a quick peek at the webcam to see what she’s up to https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/things-to-do/watch-wildlifeonline/loch-of-the-lowes-webcam and the answer, just now, at this very second is … that I have no idea as she’s not on her nest. I don’t think her mate has come back yet – isn’t he supposed to come back first to get the nest ready? Honestly – what is the world coming to?

Sally Robertson