I’m going to apologise – I
haven’t got much to tell you this week.
Parliament rose for the
summer recess last week, but I still have a
committee meeting to attend on Friday of
this week and it’s going to be a long one.
I had thought that I would have a week or so
without having to go through to Edinburgh to
allow me to get on with the work out and
about in Central Scotland. I thought I’d be
able to take my time between meetings and
write up my notes during the day instead of
having to write them at night.
I even thought I might have a
chance to have lunch with a couple of
friends instead of eating on the move; I had
visions of having a more relaxed working
life for a couple of weeks. No such luck –
there’s been a rush of constituency case
work and a whole range of local meetings
come in – I wonder whether people waited for
recess before getting in touch?
This is, of course, my first
proper summer recess (I was only a couple of
months into the job last year), so it may be
that this is normal. Well, I won’t be
bored, that’s for sure, but since (as you’d
expect) I’m protecting the confidentiality
of my constituents and the people I’m
meeting, I can’t tell you much – very
frustrating.
I can tell you that I’ve been
made aware of something which is quite
concerning. There are changes to the
benefits system being proposed in London
where the back-payments will be limited to
three months even if the claimant is not at
fault for the delay in the decision being
made. Given that many housing benefit
claims take about nine months to get through
the system, this change could leave people
in a really horrible situation. Someone who
has lost their job already has all the
stress and the indignity of looking for
another job, trying to find their way
through the crazy benefits system to support
their family, and all the worry of trying to
survive on a lower income than the one they
had before.
These changes would mean that
six months’ rent arrears could be added to
that worry and stress. That’s a terrible
thing to add to the burden that people have
to carry. I’ll be campaigning on this issue
over the next wee while, trying to change
the minds of the Ministers in London and
looking for ways to alleviate the burden for
anyone who will be affected.
Talking about campaigning –
David Marshall MP has resigned and there’s a
bye-election been called for his seat
(Glasgow East) for the 24th of
July – a short, sharp shock of a campaign –
that, of course, means that any spare time
activists have is taken up with campaigning,
just in case I’d planned an evening off!
We’ve been out on the
doorsteps already and it’s looking good. I
have absolutely no intention of trying to
predict the result at this stage, but it
feels good this time round; we could be
about to head into another absolutely
fabulous and famous election result.
Get ready for a fine SNP
performance setting us up nicely for the
European election next year, a great result
in the forthcoming UK election, and the
referendum in 2010.
Yes, we live in interesting
times.
I’ll see about taking some
photographs of campaigning for next week’s
diary.
