Quiet and
contemplative
It’s been quite a quiet week, and
it marks two years since the election in 2007 which made the SNP the
largest party in Scotland,
so I’ve been thinking back over the first half of the first term of
the first SNP Government. It’s been quite a time.
We’ve made a few changes to the
body politic in Scotland, a
few major changes, and we’ve made Scotland better. As a result of
our time in office the major party after every future election will
have to consider trying to govern on its own – whether or not they
have a majority. The idea that we would always have coalition
administrations in Scotland has been laid to rest by this Government
– not only have we governed from the position of a minority, we’ve
made a fair success of it.
From the Council Tax freeze through
Business Rates cuts and a lowering of the cost of prescriptions to
the lowest ever class sizes and the Saltire Prize, we’ve changed the
way people view government and we’ve changed the way in which
government is done here.
With the imagination and creativity
of our Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries bolstered by the excellence
of our backbenchers (obviously), we’ve made
Scotland better. We’re halfway
through our first term and we’ve still got bundles and bundles of
energy to pile into government. In contrast, our opposition look
tired and unimaginative, grey around the gills and struggling to
keep up. We’re in fine fettle and we’re setting ourselves up to
make even more of an impact over the next two years.
We’ve got a couple of tests of
public opinion coming up soon, so we’ll have a chance to see whether
the people agree with my judgement. There’s the European election
on June 4th and there’s the
Westminster election sometime
before June next year. I was at my friend’s adoption meeting on
Saturday – Claire Adamson is one of our Westminster candidates and
she’ll shake them up when she gets elected – she’s a strong and
determined woman and she’ll make a difference. Aileen McLeod, one
of our Euro candidates was also there, supporting her colleague
while she has her own campaign to run. It’ll be good to see both of
these women elected.
Last night we had a wee party to
thank our staff for all the hard work they do for us. They’re great
people and work very hard, without them we’d be unable to do our
jobs.
Something I omitted last week was
the visit to Hamilton Rugby Club for the sevens – what a game that
is, the speed it’s played at, the fact it never seems to pause, the
skill of all the players, fantastic! I’d recommend to anyone that
they go watch sevens if they have a chance.
I’ve also been sent some photos of
Summerlee, so I’ve added them. It’s a bit of a short diary this
week, so I hope the photos make up for it a bit. I’m off home now
to nurse my wee sore throat.
The RAF were in
Parliament yesterday and were offering details of their careers.
