From the Campaign Trail - Local Campaigner John Knox Blogs from the Liberton Gilmerton By-Election

4.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 26th Jul 2010

I approach this campaign a little like David approached Goliath. The Labour Party, who gained most votes in this ward at the recent election, is now calling on someone to challenge its might in Liberton/Gilmerton.

So it's going to be a bit of a challenge. But I've looked out my sling and gathered a few stones from the bottom of the garden. In these terrible economic times due to Labour's recession, The Liberal Democrats actually have quite a good tale to tell here in Edinburgh.

Lib Dem councillors have also shown a bit of leadership - not common these days - over the trams, the school mergers programme and the building of new council houses. They have kept their nerve and, in the end, Edinburgh will be better for it.

Last week Conor Snowden, one of the four councillors for Liberton/Gilmerton, took me on a quick tour of what is going on in the ward. We saw the new community centre in Burdiehouse , the extension to the primary school there and the site of the first 99 new council houses. We visited the new care home being built in Inch Park, and the new sports pavilion, and the flood prevention scheme. What we couldn't see were the invisible changes - the rising attainment levels in the schools, the falling crime rate, the increases in care provided to old people in their own homes.

Conor is my agent and mentor in this by-election that no one really wants. My friend of 15 years or more, Fred Mackintosh, did not want to lose by 316 votes to Labour's Ian Murray at the general election. Ian Murray, I'm sure, is sorry to have to resign as a councillor to go off to Westminster. The council could well do without the expense and trouble of organising a by-election when there are already three councillors from this ward and a little over 18 months to go before there will be a full council election anyway. But, hey, this is democracy, a tiresome system of government but the best.

Like most Liberal Democrats I'm really a bit of an Independent. I guess it's the same for members of every party. But very soon you come to realise that you can only achieve anything by being part of a team. So when the team suggested I take on this by-election campaign, I was suddenly aware - like a half-asleep footballer at some stadium in South Africa - that the ball was being passed to me.

The first thing I did on finding out I was being pushed into the front line was to learn a little about the ward I've lived in for the last seven years. It's amazing how little we know about the places in which we live - and this despite delivering countless leaflets in various parts of the neighbourhood during Fred's general election campaign. But actually, this is a large place, 13,000 homes, 33,000 people, it's as big as a reasonably sized town.

I decided to make a couple of cycling expeditions to all parts of the ward, none very far from home. Many started as council estates, built just off the four main roads that radiate from Cameron Toll and pass though The Inch, where I live, before heading out the city by-pass. Other areas are new build and then there is the 30's housing in Liberton. A real mixed community.

Reading about the area in the council's official ward profile the statistics make sad reading. There are "pockets where deprivation is within the worst 5 per cent of deprived areas in all of Scotland," I read. These are the areas that take the Liberton/Gilmerton ward below the Scottish average in employment, housing, health, crime and education.

Growing more alarmed, I read that 20 per cent of people across the ward have a limiting illness, only 64 per cent of those of working age are economically active and a third have no qualifications. The figures will much worse in some areas than others.

But I was wrong. And the council profile - though written in 2006 - was wrong too. My cycle rides took me though pleasant streets, past large green areas with the grass neatly cut and the trees blowing in the wind, though newly built estates with houses where flower baskets hung from the porches and new cars stood in the driveways. There was hardly any litter. New schools and community centres glistened on many a corner. Arthur's Seat and the Pentland Hills graced the skyline and everyone had a panoramic view of the city below them.

My, I thought, a lot has changed in four years or perhaps the statistics and perception are both right. But good communities and happy lives are not built with just bricks. And the future does just not just depend on the past but on the present.

There are tell-tale signs that problems lie beneath the surface. Behind every nice street, there is a poorer street. Beside all the well-kept gardens there are one or two middens. I wonder why there are so many CCTV watch-towers. Why is it all so quiet at 10 o'clock in the morning, and in the middle of the school holidays ? The rows of local shops have their metal shutters down. Neither the newsagent nor the Mace shop sell fresh fruit or vegetables.

How are the public spending cuts going to hit places like these ? That's the question I puzzled over as I whizzed down the hill from the top of the ward back to the Inch.

At the council level, the challenge is to find ways of saving another £45m from the budget without cutting services like schools, social work, the police, dust bin collection and recycling and even grass cutting on hill-top estates. We have to fix a problem brought upon us by the bankers and financial regulators. Yes, it is unfair that the rest of us have to pay for their folly. But the nation's debts have to be repaid. And hopefully better times will follow in due course.

Even though the cuts are forced upon us, they are at least a chance to rethink how we provide local services. Some good may come of it all. If anyone has any better suggestions, even other political parties, let me know.

So, let the campaign begin. Further dispatches from the front will follow. The task now is to go out and meet the people of the ward, not just look at their houses and their services. No doubt I will learn a lot between now and September 9th.