Highland News & Media
  • 6 months ago
Transcript
00:00I'm Angus MacDonald and I'm a business guy from Fort William. I've never been in politics and I stood as a Highland Councillor for Fort William and Arden American two years ago and I topped the poll, got a really big vote and then they approached me to ask if I would stand to be Member of Parliament and I thought well, I'm 61, that's a great stage in my life to do that, I've got a lot of experience so I put my name forward and that's how I ended up where I am now.
00:27Trust is an issue with people and politicians, how do you deal with that and how are you dealing with that upcoming general election?
00:35Well I've never been a politician so that's a good start and hopefully people who know me, especially in the West, will know that I've delivered on things which I've talked about as a Councillor or as a business guy.
00:49I've got the Highland Cinema, I've got the bookshop, the Highland Soap Company, so I've done a lot in Fort William and so I'm not peddling anything. Also I haven't made any commitments, I've basically said I'm a Highlander, I'm going to fight for us day in day out. So I think people will just have to trust me to do that, I've got a very successful career behind me.
01:15Young people are generally not engaged with politics as much, especially nowadays and I think the older generation are going that way too, I see that a lot when I'm going out and doing Vox Pops and asking the general public about the general election. How are you personally going to try and get them more involved?
01:31I've got quite a strong social media presence, which I'm sure you've seen, so that I think is helpful. I've been to a lot of the schools talking about entrepreneurship and business over the last couple of years, so I've got them engaged in that point of view.
01:51A lot of them know me because of my cinema and things like that, it's very popular, all the schools bring groups there. I've also got four sons, so I'm quite au fait with the young and what they're interested in, or I try and be.
02:10What would you say the young are interested in?
02:13I think they're interested in having fun and they think they want to trust people. I don't think you should be condescending to them, you don't start saying, well for you I've got this and for your parents I've got that. I think basically they're much more on it and wise than some people would give them credit for, so you just treat them as normal adults actually.
02:33People like me do look at politicians and wonder will they ever do what they say. How are you going to gain that trust and actually prove that you'll keep your promises?
02:45As I did say, I'm not going around promising everything to everybody anyway, I think it is very difficult. It's like being a super tanker, there are 650 members of parliament. I had the same issue as a Highland Councillor, it is a big beast and making changes is very difficult.
03:03But I think probably what I'd most like to achieve is to bring significant infrastructure spend to the Highlands. I think that would be my number one goal.
03:15Unlike the Scottish National Party who really have not enjoyed working with ministers and have a sort of hostile relationship, I'm actually going to be completely the opposite. I will walk in, put my arms around their shoulder and say, now how can we work together? Which I think is a very different approach.
03:35Politicians often blame one another for issues. How can we trust them if they're never going to take responsibility for anything really?
03:44I think we have had a lot of very good politicians but not recently. I think we have done spectacularly badly with the two political parties at the moment. So I think Boris Johnson and trusts have really damaged the reputation of the Tories.
04:01I think the SNP have gone from being incredibly popular 17 years ago and indeed they were like film stars in some ways and now they're the same. It's promises, promises, reviews, consultations but really not delivering.
04:21People like Charles Kennedy who was a friend of mine and a Member of Parliament for the West Coast for 33 years, there's an enormous affection for him and people did like him and really trusted him. So I just hope I'm more like him and not like the current bunch of politicians.
04:41And you know what? I wouldn't be in politics if I wasn't really hacked off of it because we're in a terrible state.
04:48And charisma does play a huge role in political popularity nowadays. You've got Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Trump for instance. What would you mark yourself out of 10 for charisma and why?
05:03Well what would you mark me out of 10 for charisma? I'm not the one to say that. Six. I'm outgoing. I think I'm fun to be with and I love to dance and I love to party and I'm a doer and I've got I think my share of friends and I'm out and about. I've got a very big number of volunteers helping me in this campaign and I guess they wouldn't if they didn't like me.
05:27So I think I'm fine actually. You tell me what you think of me. I saw you're a big dancer you just said. I love to dance. Steve was trying to get me to do, what's it called? Macarena? No, no thank you. Do you remember the Highland Hospice dancing? Strictly, Inverness Strictly. Do you think you'd be good at that?
05:52Yes so it was suggested I do the Inverness Strictly. The fact is I live almost three hours away from Inverness so I didn't do it but I thought wow that would be really good fun.
06:02Do you think voters are being swayed by people like Nigel Farage for his charisma or do you think it's down to his popularity?
06:12I think the big problem with full form is they will not have the ministers and the backup to deliver on any of this. It's quite easy to come up for sandbite. It's much more difficult to actually deliver on that. So I think the party consists of Nigel Farage and his flamboyance and probably a bunch of fairly surprising weirdo politicians.
06:40A big problem that we're seeing recently is misleading information. I see that a lot on social media with AI generated posts. Have you been affected by that personally and how do you see social media and these fake news posts affecting this general election?
06:57Yeah there was an article on an online website which talked about me donating money to the Conservative Party. What they didn't say was it was five years ago. I also gave significant funds to the Labour and Liberal Democrat Party and really I was trying to give them a chance to compete against the Scottish National Party.
07:18But I was really hacked off that they didn't ask me to get the background details and they didn't publish the full facts and I think that is appalling.
07:29The housing market is particularly bad at the moment. We're seeing young people really struggling to rent, far less buy a property and get onto that housing ladder. How is that going to change and is it going to change at all, especially here in the Highlands?
07:42Well I think one of the things is for major infrastructure projects you need to provide housing for the staff. So if you build a care home and you know you're going to need 40 staff there then you need to provide accommodation for 40 staff and that was always the way.
07:58There was always doctors staff, there was nurses accommodation provided as part of the job. There was a policeman's house, there was a teacher's house in every village and we got away from that. Basically a lot of those properties had been sold and that was a big mistake.
08:15And the same goes in rural Scotland. So you had the Hydro Board when the big hydro dams were built or the Forestry Commission or the British Aluminium Company. You know they all provided housing in a major way for the workers and that has stopped. So basically we need to move back to that and that would provide a lot of accommodation.
08:36We are seeing the situation really only get worse. It's difficult to see light at the end of the tunnel sometimes. How is this situation with building developments going to impact our green spaces in the meantime and could that have a detrimental impact on our green spaces in the Highlands?
08:53Well we need a lot more property available and the answer is we need to build it. Now of course brownfield sites you know X factories or things like that are a brilliant idea. It brings the housing to the centre of the town and that must be right because you don't want to keep building in the suburbs. You want to make the most of brownfield sites in the middle of the town. So I would say that's the number one thing.
09:20If you build outside, well the other thing is to build up. So in the centre of town, build five storey buildings. Don't build two storey buildings because you need the density and it's much cheaper to build per flat for example.
09:36In terms of that and in terms of I think tourism as well because we see Airbnbs being quite prominent here in the Highlands and I think that is contributing in my opinion to the housing crisis because rather than staying in hotels for instance where it is kind of a mass building, people are having whole properties that could be used as homes locally. Do you think that is an issue?
09:59Well it's clearly an issue and in some areas for example Plockton or some of the seaside resorts there is a real problem with it and I think probably 30% of all the properties are now holiday accommodation. That said there's a lot of people who are now making a bit of a living which they weren't before from having say pods or renting out a room or something like that and I think that's made a big difference to the quality of life of people who have got one.
10:25So there is a sort of medium there. There is a sort of second home tax which is now twice what the original council tax was and I think on the face of it that was a good idea because it makes people think twice before having a second home. So I think people are very well aware of it and I think we're at a peak now. I think there will be less of a problem in a year or two time.
10:51Do you think there should be some sort of legislation for instance for people buying homes here that aren't necessarily living here and coming here for quick holiday vacations rather than people locally that want to buy? Do you think it's putting up the property prices and the demand? How do you think that's affecting people locally?
11:11I don't think you can do that. I just don't think it will work. I mean if you ask a doctor to come and work here and he discovers he's got to pay a great deal more for it because he's not local or if my sister moves up from the south and she wants to live here you can't charge her a premium price. I hate to say it I just don't think that will work. It's a nice idea but not practical.
11:31Do you think sometimes the Highlands is overly concentrated on tourism? How do you think that we can balance that out?
11:38Tourism in the Highlands is a big issue and I should know because my businesses are entirely tourist based. The problem about it is it's a short season. Not so much in Inverness itself but across the Highlands is a short season. So basically our season is from Easter through to the end of September and that's probably when 90% of the tourist revenue is generated.
11:59But our infrastructure is too small. The roads are too small. The medical system is too small. You know the island of Skye gets a million tourists a year. So it has huge implications and we don't have the infrastructure for that. Particularly things like camper vans which are big, they take up all the space on the ferries and there isn't the capacity on the roads to handle them.
12:21What would you put in place to kind of restrict that or not restrict it but balance it?
12:27I think if we're going to decide that we're a Highland economy we need to move a bit more upmarket. So we should have better quality hotels for example and fantastic camping sites and just lift the level up.
12:41So instead of the average income being say £40 per night per visitor we can increase that. So that means it wouldn't be the same congestion and yet the income coming into the locals who are surviving on tourist revenue would be as high. So I think we want to get away from dumbing down and instead be more and more upmarket as an offering.
13:06What do you think needs to change to encourage more people to register to vote and to really get involved with politics and be more aware?
13:14Australia it is compulsory to vote and I would certainly like it to be compulsory to vote. Because basically if you're not voting you're letting other people make the decisions in your life for you. And I think if we're paying our taxes and we're living here we should also be responsible for choosing the people who are going to make the laws that impact us.
13:34Why do you think people have stopped voting? Especially with the younger generation there is that lack of trust and lack of viewing politicians as people that are going to make change. So do you think there's all the more say and less do?
13:49Well hopefully if we have a bunch of politicians who are running the country well for five years not letting people down are high quality individuals respected that should make a very big difference. So maybe we'll be sitting here in a few years time and you'll be saying well 80% of kids are now registered to vote and we'll go well we know why that is.
14:11And what kind of core changes do you see on a day to day as a Highlander that you want to change in the Highlands?
14:41It should be worth many hundreds of millions of pounds a year. So we're bearing the industrialisation of the Highlands but we're not getting the money. And I think we should be charging say the turbine developers or the pump storage developers 5% of revenue and that would be enormously beneficial.
15:00Because at the moment the turbines are made in say Denmark, America, Germany. They are owned by infrastructure funds and international utilities but the Highlands isn't getting the benefit and that cannot be right.
15:12What do you think of education today?
15:15Well interestingly I had an 8 year old and an 11 year old niece and nephew come across from the States and I said to the 8 year old I said what's your favourite subject? And she said oh I major in engineering. I went what you major in engineering age 8? And she said yes.
15:31So I turned to the boy and I said what are you majoring in? He said oh I major in coding. And anyway it transpired that these kids choose a subject quite early on and they get real detail on those subjects.
15:45And I really think that we should be looking at that sort of thing because my children do colouring in when they're little. You know they don't do engineering.
15:54And the second thing is there's study week. You know when the kids are sent home for studying week it's a real issue because especially if they're boys they don't work well at home and their parents are away at work.
16:07So in fact it just becomes a holiday for a week and that is the key week before their exams. So I really think that should be abolished.