Ian and I have been out of the campaign loop the past few weeks. We have done what we can but many other things have been happening to take up our time. Changed days from when we were at the centre of everything! We are literally, as I write this, just back from a few days in Dublin. We planned this visit a year ago as we were alerted to the celebrations that were taking part to commemorate the Easter Rising of 1916. We naturally assumed that the real celebrations were to be on the exact date as this fell on the same Sunday asRead More →

TRADE UNION GIANT RELEASES LEGAL OPINION ON EU REFERENDUM MEP ALYN SMITH AND CHRISTINA MCKELVIE HIGHLIGHT EU ROLE IN WORKERS’ RIGHTS Alyn Smith MEP and the SNP’s Christina McKelvie have highlighted an independent legal opinion commissioned by the Trade Union Council (TUC) that lists the workers’ rights most at risk in the event of Brexit. Michael Ford QC’s legal opinion suggests that, based on past history and extant policy documents, the rights most vulnerable to repeal are limits on working hours, protections for agency and part-time workers, and the right to collective consultation, including the right for workers’ representatives to be consulted if major changesRead More →

We will make our education system one of the best in the world with equal opportunities for all of our children. We will – •    Expand early education and childcare to 30 hours per week – this will require, by the end of the par-liament, additional investment of £500 million per year by 2021, 600 new childcare centres and 20,000 new childcare staff. •    Invest £750 million in raising attainment for all – targeting school funding where it is needed, and put-ting more resources in the hands of individual schools including £500m raised directly from local taxa-tion for investment in schools. •    Implement the NationalRead More →

With the dissolution of the Scottish Parliament on March 23 2016 came the retiral of our constituency MSP, Rob Gibson. Rob had been constituency MSP for Caithness, Sutherland & Ross since 2011 when he took the title from LibDem Jamie Stone and had been list MSP for the Highlands and Islands for eight years before that. For a constituency, indeed a region, that had been forever Liberal in all their guises, this was no mean feat and was the beginning of the changes that we would see throughout the country several years later. A long time SNP activist, he has devoted much of his lifeRead More →

Debt. It’s been a fairly topical subject in recent weeks. With The Hootsmon, revealing on March 10 that Scotland currently would have a “black hole of £15 billion”. And  on March 24 revealed that it would have been only £10 billion on March 24 if we had voted YES instead of NO on Black Thursday! So, that means according to the voice of Unionism, that Scotland has lost another £5 billion (£5,000,000,000) by staying with the “delights” of London’s Tory austerity agenda in just 18 months. But, debt, real or imagined, has been on my mind for another reason as well! I had a conversationRead More →