I made it on to the front page of the Evening Times a couple of months ago.

Now, that’s not always something that a politician wants to say, but in this case, it was a good reason.

I sit on the council’s environment committee and we’d proposed introducing a road user charging scheme to Glasgow’s city centre. We knew our proposal might not be popular with everyone. But we were already asking busses to lower their emissions, and this seemed the obvious next step.

Thousands of cars drive around the city centre every day. And there is a cost to this. But it’s not borne by the people driving.

It’s borne by people sitting on buses crawling down Union Street, by the cyclists navigating through the traffic, and by people with chronic health problems, whose health is made worse, or whose lives are shortened, by air pollution.

These tend to be the more disadvantaged in our society, so it’s not fair that these people pay for car users’ convenience. If we charged people to drive into the city centre, that would share the costs more fairly.

We know from the experience of London that it will cut down on cars, allow busses and other traffic to move more freely, and make space for pedestrians and cyclists.

It can be good for business too. If people are walking around, they are more likely to pop into shops, to use cafes and restaurants – a well needed boost to our city centre businesses.

Sadly, my joy at making the front page was short lived. The council administration rejected our proposal. They chose to drop our proposals for road user charging.

There are hard choices to make in politics. It can seem easier just to drop the difficult decisions. But for the health of our city, and for our environment, we need to make bold choices, to do the difficult thing.

So I’ll keep arguing for road user charging. And maybe, one day, I’ll make it on to the front page of the Evening Times again.