A CANDIDATE for Reform UK compared parking issues in Edinburgh to the Gaza Strip, it has been revealed.
Grant Lidster has been slammed after claiming residents living in Gorgie faced a “similar sort of nightmare” over parking, the Daily Record reports.
Lidster is standing in next month’s Colinton/Fairmilehead by-election and made the comments in November last year.
Parking charged had been extended to the Gorgie area as part of a bid to make it easier for residents to get spaces nearer their homes.
However, locals on Westfield Street, which is on the edge of the controlled parking zone complained of fewer spaces for residents.
In a written submission to Edinburgh Council, Lidster wrote: “Our normal daily lives with adequate parking spaces have changed dramatically and has been totally transformed and completely intruded upon by an invasion of mostly static ‘nuisance parkers’.”
Giving oral evidence to a council committee, he said: “It’s now turned into a street of hell. It’s like the Gorgie Strip, we call it, rather than the Gaza Strip.
“It’s the Gaza Strip that gets all the headlines – this is a Gorgie Strip and it’s a similar sort of nightmare, you know, hitting the news headlines.”
Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater (below) was among those to criticise Lidster, saying “I hope Reform condemn these comments and denounce this candidate”.
During the meeting, Scott Arthur, a Labour councillor at the time, said: “You compared the situation to Gaza and I think probably right now that’s probably not the best comparison to make. “But I know you didn’t mean any harm by it.”
Lidster replied and said: “I wasn’t meaning the history. I was just meaning the headline that says the Gaza Strip. We’ve got a Gorgie Strip.”
He added: “Nothing in relation to what is happening in Gaza.”
Labour MSP Daniel Johnson meanwhile described the comments as “insultingly crass or simply disconnected from reality” and that it was “most likely a desperate attempt to get noticed by saying something controversial”.
The Scottish Tories said the comments were “ill-judged”.
The National has approached Reform UK for comment.
