Festival spats, a crisis over the tattoo, high winds and fancy tartan

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jun 13, 2004 | by Vicky Allan

It seems strange that any left-leaning politician would be attracted to such a role. When I ask if she had been in favour of royalty as an idea beforehand, she answers, rather vaguely: "If you accept the job your own personal views or anything you have of that kind gets put to the back. That's the job. Part of the job is being Lord Lieutenant. And my philosophy in life is that you treat people equally, whether it's someone who comes and cleans your room or whether it's the Queen. You treat them with respect."

The problem with the provostship is that it can seem a fairly empty role, PRish and ambassadorial, its holder at times little more than the bearer of a hefty gold chain. It is, I suggest, a fairly glamorous job. "Glamorous?" she says. "How do you mean, glamorous?" Well, in the last year she has met the Queen 11 times, had tea with Billy Bragg, swapped scarves with the Dalai Lama, attended the MTV awards, bonded with the South African High Commissioner, jetted off to America for Tartan Day and worn some flashy tartan shoes. Her shoes, in fact, made minor headlines, drawing eyes downwards from her chain to her feet, and fashionista disapproval. "Women do like shoes, don't they? I mean I wouldn't say I'm as bad as some people, but I do like shoes," she replies.

She is, however, keen to get beyond the glamour. Less bothered about what the role is supposed to be than how she can use it, she sees herself as a nexus through which the city can develop and "integrate". Inclusion is her watchword, and the project through which she hopes to enable that is One City, a trust of which she is president. On coming into office she went through her invitation lists, putting the "great and the good" on to a rota, making time instead for "ordinary" people who had contributed and volunteered in their individual areas. Hinds has an igniting optimism. She gives the feeling that there is still, even in this 21st century contemporary society of supposed social isolation, the possibility of creating a thriving all-inclusive city. "I think there's a change happening actually. I just think there are far more people now interested in the area that they're living in and their community. I suppose in some ways Thatcher said that there's not such a thing as society, there's not such a thing as community, and a lot of people got disillusioned and didn't get involved."

Hinds forms her own small junction between working and middle class. She was brought up in St Mary's council estate in Dundee, her father a police officer, her mother, who initially left school with no qualifications, a teacher. She represents Muirhouse and Drylaw and lives in Drylaw - "an area that most people in the city will never go through and have certain preconceptions about". Most of the people she meets at events barely even know where it is. "You can tell they're thinking, 'Oh God, why would you want to live there?' People will ask you, which school do your children go to? My children have all gone to Broughton High School, and most of them don't even know where it is - just because they all go to private schools."