There is an information event for Cowal from the Better Together campaign – at 7.30pm at Dunoon Grammar School on Monday 7th October.
The event – from the campaign arguing for continued membership of the United Kingdom – will be chaired by Council Leader Dick Walsh from Dunoon, with a video presentation from Dunoon’s Rob Shorthouse – a former pupil of the school and now Director of Communications for Better Together.
The format will be a panel of three politicians, each speaking for 2 minutes on their personal views of the Union, followed by a question and answer session and a final summing up by each of the lanel members.
They are:
- Argyll and Bute MP, the Liberal Democrat Alan Reid
- Highlands and Islands MSP, Conservative Jamie McGrigor
- Labour candidate for Argyll and Bute Westminister seat in 2015, Mary Galbraith.
David Graham, of the local Better Together Cowal group, says: ‘We’re really looking forward to Better Together Cowal’s event. We know there is strong local support for our campaign and we’ve already had a really positive response.
‘However, we’re certainly not being complacent. We need everyone in Cowal who wants Scotland to stay within the United Kingdom to get involved in the campaign, and this event is a great way to learn how to do that.’
Rob Shorthouse says: ‘This campaign is so important. The decision we take next September will have implications not just for ourselves, but also for our children and the generations who follow us. We have to get it right.’
We understand that there will also be an input at the session from a representative of young Scots, with 16 year olds upwards participating in the vote next September.
Apart from the Better Together campaign itself, this event will be an interesting opportunity to see and hear first hand Labour’s next Westminster candidate for Argyll and Bute, Mary Galbraith, who is something of a surprise package.
It will be interesting to see next Monday how the audience reacts to her; and how the sitting MP, Alan Reid, deploys the experience he has now had of being a member of a parliamentary party in government.
Jamie McGrigor, always refreshingly ‘unpolitical’, is likely to be focused on his personal view of Scotland’s future.
Voters – which on this issue must be all of us – need now to take advantage of every opportunity to see, listen to and personally evaluate the cases put forwards by the proponents of both campaigns.
We each need to know what we’re doing.
