My name is Tony Gurney and I’m a councillor for Ardrossan.

I also serve on North Ayrshire Council’s cabinet where I have the Economy and Climate Change portfolio.

May I thank the paper for giving me the space to write this column and I hope that you find it interesting.

I’m aware that the paper doesn’t want to go too deeply into political matters, preferring instead to stick to local issues.

Whilst I understand the approach it’s going to be rather tricky to stay away from politics because, of course, politics affects everything that we do.

Politics is not about three suits shouting at each other on television.

Instead, it’s about how societies choose to work.

For example, politics is about whether your children have good schools, or whether older people have decent social care, and politics is about the potholes in the road and how soon they can be fixed.

Politics isn’t something that happens to other people.

It’s about our communities.

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So I’m hopeful that this column can interest more people what goes on in their community.

That it can both inspire and inform everyone of the decisions that must be made and, inevitably, the compromises that will occur.

So here is an example. Just a couple of weeks ago the North Ayrshire Council SNP cabinet approved £4million of new spending.

Why? Because our community is in crisis. We have an energy crisis, a food crisis, and a poverty crisis.

For each of those we have allocated funds to address the problems.

We have allocated over £2,000,000 to help people through this energy crisis.

We have allocated half a million pounds to ensure that our food larders stay stocked so that the poorest in our community do not go hungry.

And because we have a child poverty crisis, we have also extended the Scottish Government’s Child Bridging Payment of £130 by adding another £100 for each and every child.

I mention this not to boast but to point out that a compromise has been made. £4 million is a lot of money, but it’s not enough.

Local services are expected to step in and mitigate against the issues caused by Westminster choices and we will keep trying to do that, but in the end our finances are limited and we can never do all that we want.

All we can hope is that when we make those choices we make the best ones for everyone in North Ayrshire.