HELLO, does it feel like Christmas was over a month ago already? It is now under one hundred days until the local authority elections, when you will have the opportunity to decide who best to run our council for the next five years.

It is important to reflect how politically inspired the area has become over the past three years and not take this for granted.

Since 2014 we have had a referendum on Scottish independence, a UK general election, a Scottish Parliament election and an EU Referendum. 

Since the EU Referendum in June, our news has been dominated by what leaving the EU will look like.

This week it was decided by the UK Supreme Court that the Scottish Government will not be consulted on any final deal to leave Europe.

The people of Inverclyde and Scotland voted to remain in the EU.

However, it looks now that we are faced with the prospect of a hard Tory Brexit being imposed upon us to appease members of the Tory Party. But just what does a hard Brexit look like? 

The right for young people to study and work in Europe gone.

Employment rights and protection for pregnant women in the workplace gone, and now in the hands of the most right-wing government in a generation, Inverclyde businesses who export goods to Europe could face charges to do so. 

In total 80,000 jobs could be at risk by leaving the EU in such a reckless, out at any cost, manner. Although I voted to remain in the EU, the people I know that voted to go didn’t vote to leave for the above reasons and Theresa May’s Tory Government should remember that when forcing Scotland out of Europe under such terms.

Out of the four elections and referendums mentioned I voted in all four, but only got the outcome I wanted in two of them. 

I was of course delighted to cast my vote to help elect Ronnie Cowan MP and Stuart McMillan MSP, but was heartbroken at the result of the Scottish independence referendum and the day after EU referendum defeat, I think many people of my generation felt more European than they had at any other point in their life.

Therefore as we prepare to go to the polls in May it is understandable that ‘Election Fatigue’ may be kicking in. The results of the aforementioned elections weren’t the most important aspect but in actual fact it was the level of political debate, participation and the high level of voters that turned out to play their part in the democratic process.

Turnout in local council elections is historically low, however we have the opportunity to cast our vote to shape the future of the very place we live in. 

Education, roads, social care, mental health services – that’s what is on the ballot paper. 

Empowering communities across Inverclyde, protecting public services, increasing child care provision – that is what we are voting for.  

For too many years, child poverty has been a blight on Inverclyde. It is time to be ambitious, it is time to be bold, it is time to reach further than those that came before and put every resource possible into tackling and by the end of the next decade eradicating child poverty in Inverclyde. 

A tough target, a target many will say is impossible, but an ambition worth voting for.