Farmer’s Markets

Each month a farmers’ market is held in Banff and I am an enthusiastic visitor. Saturday I was cook and it presented a chance to shop for high quality local produce. So my steak came from a local field. After some discussion a stallholder guided me towards a variety of potato waxy enough to make ‘rosti’. Organic purple basil caught my eye. And the single fresh carrot, onion and tomato I needed completed my basket. And the total bill for one – my wife’s away looking after her mother for a few weeks – less than £5 for a ‘luxury’ meal.

My question to a witness who was before Parliament’s Rural Development Committee revealed that I am now in a minority in being able to prepare a meal from raw ingredients. So thanks to the Boy Scouts all these years ago! But if I buy a ‘ready meal’ from a supermarket I don’t know where the ingredients have come from, can’t control their quality and probably pay more. So supporting the local farmers’ market is good for them and good for me.

So it’s very disappointing to learn that plans to extend farmers’ markets into Peterhead may be stalled. Re-development of central Peterhead has taken some time and even included the provision of power points installed precisely to enable street stalls. But farmers’ market representatives have been met with an official’s comment that their stalls might damage the new stonework. So the next farmers’ market is now likely to be in Inverurie and not Peterhead. Time to get a grip methinks.

Asbestosis

At their request I met with the Clydeside Action on Asbestos group. Not an obvious interest for a North-East MSP one might think. But in fact some six people from Banff & Buchan die each year from the effects of asbestosis, the horrible disease that kills many who have been exposed to its dust.

The group has been petitioning Parliament for fair and speedy compensation from previous employers of asbestos victims. And the Justice Committee of which I am a member has been given the responsibility by our Public Petitions Committee to respond to the Clydeside group’s petition.

This well illustrates a key difference between Westminster, where petitions are merely placed in a sack behind the Speaker’s chair, and the Scottish Parliament where we genuinely engage with the public who have submitted nearly 400 petitions so far.

So when Banff’s Chalmers Hospital petitioners visit Parliament shortly to lodge their petition they can be confident of a serious hearing.