Week beginning 14th March 2005
Well, after a weekend of SNP Conferencing in
Dundee, back to work on Monday. Smashing afternoon at Dalziell High
School in Motherwell. The Parliament’s Outreach Education Service has
been doing some work with the third year pupils there, helped by John
Swinburne MSP from the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party – John is a
former pupil of Dalziell and was keeping us amused with tales of what
the school was like when he was a lad.
The pupils ran a debate on Smoking – 4 in
each ‘Party’ team, with an MSP to help them in the background (not that
they needed any!). They were excellent, and I’m sure that they not only
used some of the speech contributions from individual MSPs, but also
picked up on their mannerisms; the lad that did the Tory Group’s Brian
Monteith MSP was hilarious and when the lass representing the SSP made
her contribution I thought it was Carolyn Leckie MSP herself – Carolyn
was there and almost falling off her chair she was laughing so much. It
was a lad who did the SNP contribution, so I was spared the Rory Bremner
treatment, but it did remind me of a Youth Parliament event in Aberdeen
some time ago when my colleague Stewart Stevenson and I did a training
session on public speaking: At the feedback plenary session, the lad and
lass from our workshop decided to do it in the style of Stevenson and
Fabiani – oh dear! To see ourselves as others see us right enough.
Off to the office in Edinburgh at night
after going through some constituency cases in Motherwell office with
Davie; health service mainly again - cancelled ops, long waits to see a
consultant – we keep being told it’s getting better, but it doesn’t feel
that way for many of the people we see. Another big issue just now which
is generating lots of letters from constituents is of course the
proposed changes to pension schemes for public sector workers – some of
the parliament staff are going on strike over this next Wednesday.
Tuesday breakfast meetings with colleagues
to talk about the housing debate on Wednesday afternoon and then off to
Perth with another couple of members of the Communities Committee to
take pre-legislative soundings from Perth Council about the forthcoming
housing bill on the private housing sector. Really interesting meeting –
every area has their own problems, Perth a mix of urban and rural. It’s
always best to hear from those at the sharp end; theory is fine but
practice is often very different.
Scooted back to Auld Reekie, checked the
email and then down the road to watch episode 2 of The Gathering Place.
My good mates Roseanna Cunningham and Rob Gibson fed me pizza and red
wine and we all watched it together. Interesting, and took me back a
bit. I’d forgotten just how straining some of that time was – next
episode on Thursday.
Communities Committee on Wednesday morning –
Housing Bill and Tetra Masts. I missed the Tetra Mast section as for
some reason I felt really not well. I should of course add here that it
was nothing to do with the night before – one glass of wine only!
Housing Debate in the afternoon though so had to buck up fast. The
Executive were applauding themselves for their recently announced
housing initiatives. Some of it is good stuff, I can’t and wouldn’t deny
that, but again, theory and practice are very different things and it is
all very well making big announcements – you have to make sure
everything is in place to allow things to happen. Water and sewage
infrastructure is a case in point. I worry that the Executive is being
over simplistic about, for example, the contention that if you demolish
houses on a site and then do a newbuild the infrastructure is already
there. Yes, perhaps, but up to the required standard for nowadays? Not
necessarily. Systems have been running at over-capacity for years and
will require to be upgraded – hold-ups and costs. I also think there is
an over-emphasis on home ownership, the justification being that this
will take the heat out of the social rented market. Well, yes, but if
you build enough social rented houses for those who would like to rent
then the heat will be taken out of the home ownership market, and young
people who can barely afford to buy won’t have to just so that they have
a home!
Who remembers Pinky and Perky? I loved that
show when I was a child, and it made me laugh during the Housing debate
when the Tory spokesperson referred to Tricia Marwick and I as the
“Pinky and Perky of the SNP front bench” – well Bill Aitken, I can think
of a few puppets/muppets who remind me of you! You just wait.
Catching up on constituency work in the
evening – voluntary sector groups in East Kilbride feeling under
pressure because of cuts in funding. Visits to schedule to get an idea
of exactly what the problems are.
Conservative Party sponsored Education
Debate on Thursday morning prior to First Minister’s Question Time at
12.00 noon. Waiting Times – again, the reality that patients face being
very different from the rhetoric. One of the issues in Lanarkshire that
I have been recently told of, for example, is that there are no
specialist nurses for those suffering from Parkinsons Disease. This
seemingly results in long waiting times for diagnosis and treatment. I
understand that early diagnosis of Parkinsons can alleviate the effects
of the condition, so Davie is investigating that this week.
The Parliament is marking Commonwealth Day
today, so attended a meeting of the Cross Party Group on International
Development, guest speaker being Don McKinnon from New Zealand,
Secretary General of the Commonwealth. I’ve heard Mr. McKinnon before
and he really is a very interesting speaker who clearly values the work
of his organisation. He was at pains to point out that there has been no
British Commonwealth since 1949 and that the Commonwealth is a grouping
of 53 equal countries with shared values, from Antigua to Zambia,
showing diversity of peoples who have the ability to create consensus –
no voting, the discussions carry on until there is agreement, with
sometimes exceptions being noted when stalemate is reached. I certainly
believe that international dialogue in a forum such as this contributes
greatly to mutual understanding – there is not always the ability to
iron out disagreements of course, and the shared values are not always
shared – Zimbabwe, for example, is no longer a member, and there have
been suspensions of countries at times – Pakistan, Fiji.
A Debate on the Commonwealth took place at
5.00 pm, led by Margaret Ewing who recently took part in a Commonwealth
Parliamentary Association visit, along with other Parliament members, to
South Africa and Malawi. All parliamentarians of Commonwealth countries
are automatically members of the CPA, and Margaret is the SNP nominee to
the CPA Committee in Holyrood. She and the other members of the
delegation have produced a really interesting report on their visit
making recommendations as to how Scotland can assist in building the
capacity of Malawi in particular – skills training, building links
between schools and colleges, universities and hospitals for example.
This is a report well worth reading and will shortly be on the
Parliament website.
Off home to watch episode 3 of The Gathering
Place – still reserving judgement until I’ve seen episode 4 next Tuesday
– full report next week I guess.
I’m going to be out all day locally on
Saturday and some of Sunday doing house visits, and visiting
organisations in the constituency, so a day at the computer on Friday,
with two very welcome interruptions. The first was from a research
fellow at Glasgow University who interviewed me about my views on how we
should deal with unaccompanied juvenile asylum seekers – as I have said
before, more common than we would imagine. His research will be
published towards the end of the year. My main event of the day was with
the Musselburgh Twinning Association – a very active organisation who
were holding a women’s conference with delegates from their twin towns
in the Czech Republic, France and Italy, and were visiting the
Parliament for the day. Although they are not from my neck of the woods
they had asked me some time ago to talk with them in my role as Convener
of the Refugee and Asylum Cross-Party Group. So, of course the
discussion was around issues of immigration and asylum and the variances
of treatment amongst European countries. It’s always strange addressing
a large group of people when there are translators present for those who
don’t speak English – I hope nothing suffered too much in the
translation!
When I got back to my desk Morag was
giggling away to herself about a misunderstanding between our office and
one of the small rural primary schools in South Lanarkshire. They had
asked me to speak to the pupils sometime in June – we thought they were
visiting Edinburgh, but actually they wanted me to visit them; so great
confusion ensued with Morag asking them to give names of everyone to be
present, insisting that there must be an adult present for every ten
children etc. and the poor teacher feeling obliged to even give us
details of the dinner lady! Thankfully, the penny dropped and no
security required for me to visit them. I’m looking forward to it.
Linda Fabiani
