Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson visits Biggar

And the Tory supremo claimed towns across the country ‘would kill’ for a vibrant high street like Biggar’s.

The pair were promoting a series of policies to residents – with the main one being a commitment to providing better broadband services for rural Clydesdale.

Ruth said: “For us it is important that people living in rural towns across Scotland don’t get short changed.

“If we are going to secure jobs which are so vital for rural areas we have to give them the infrastructure to do that.

“We need a better broadband system across the country and not just done on a patchwork basis which only benefits towns and cities.

“I’ve been the length and breadth of the country during this campaign and I know there are towns across Scotland that would kill to have such a vibrant high street like Biggar.

“We have to support these small businesses as best we can.”

Recent opinion polls have put the SNP and the Tories neck-and-neck on 34 per cent in the race to secure the seat at next month’s election.
But despite the tight race, David is looking forward to the next four weeks of campaigning.

“We have been getting out and speaking about local issues,” he said.

“As well as the issue of better broadband we have also been campaigning against any further windfarm developments here.

“We also want to make sure people living here have better transport links to our major towns and cities.

“We have to make sure we have better bus services such as those going from the Douglas Valley to Hamilton and Biggar to Edinburgh.

“These are the issues that people want to see tackled and we will do that.”

* The other candidates in the race to become the MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale are Labour’s Archie Dryburgh, Emma Harper for the SNP, Jody Jamieson from the Scottish Greens, Amanda Kubie for the Liberal Democrats and Kevin Newton of UKIP.

The General Election itself takes place on Thursday, May 7. See Pages 15-17.