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Wearing it pink
I was invited to join
forces with Breast Cancer Campaign to raise awareness of its award
winning fundraising event, wear it pink, on Friday 30 October 2009.
People in schools, colleges and businesses throughout the country will
be wearing something pink and each will donate £2 to help fund
innovative world-class breast cancer research. I'm glad to have a chance
to make a difference.
One in nine women will experience breast cancer during their lifetime
and looking for ways to improve treatments and ways to improve survival
rates seems to me to be a good thing to support.
More than 4,000 women in Scotland are diagnosed with breast cancer every
year and the Breast Cancer Campaign funds research - 106 projects worth
£15 million - to look for treatments for the most common cancer in the
UK. Visit www.wearitpink.co.uk or www.breastcancercampaign.org if you
want to know more.
There was sad news this week with the death of Bill Speirs, former
General Secretary of the STUC. He spent 27 years working for the Trade
Union umbrella body, retiring as a result of health problems in 2006.
During Bill's time at the helm, like Campbell Christie before him, the
STUC made a serious and substantial contribution to Scottish political
life. It was in large part due to the influence of these two men that
union pressure in favour of a Scottish Parliament was maintained.
It was ironic, I suppose, that Bill went to work at the STUC in the same
year that Margaret Thatcher came to power - it would be difficult to
find two people with a greater distance between their political
ideologies. He was the STUC front man on the campaign against the poll
tax and he was right at the forefront of Scotland United - both policy
areas where he disagreed with the Labour party but held true to his
convictions and argued his position.
What would we give now for another man like Bill? His funeral was on
Thursday and it was fitting that so many people made the effort to get
there. It was particularly fitting that so many MSPs made the journey
there - if Bill hadn't done what he'd done we might not be in Parliament |
