2024 – Page 4 – One-legged woman speaks

BEHIND TENEMENT CURTAINS

50 years ago the greatest MP Scotland never had wrote about the children in darkness who with formal education and opportunity might become the world beating engineers, the discoverers of the cure for cancer, the scientists, the pioneers, the saviours. He recognised that our wee country with its comprehensive education free for all had the potential to construct a nation confident and capable, were we not hobbled by those with ill intent.

Those were the days when councils the length and breadth of Scotland, regardless of political hue, believed in the transformational motivational power of education.

That self same political stalwart led the UCS sit in and inspired a few generations – he blazed that trail proving that people power counts for very much.

The most lauded speech in Scottish political history remains his words about the rat race. And it is well past time that those words echoed around Scotland’s schools, playing fields, pubs and clubs once more.

I’m forced to write these words tonight especially as today Glasgow City Council took a decision to reduce by almost 200 the numbers of teachers employed within the city of Glasgow. This folly arises in the midst of misdirected attempts to convince that somehow the attainment gap has shrunk and the FFM fulfilled a legacy designed to raise her profile.

In truth, we know that poverty is the greatest driver of inequality and we know too that education is one route out of poverty. Instead of cutting teacher numbers, our government should increase and motivate our educators, including those recently retired who may feel determined to remain in the game. An educated population is a motivated and engaged population who break down the barriers, breach the walls and construct the case for knowledge. That is power. That power will free our country. If not, the rat race will resume.

#INDYFIRST #FREE ADVICE

FREE ADVICE – COS FREE LUNCHES ARE TAXABLE.

Now and again lawyers get a bit carried away and blurt out free advice, sometimes in person, could be in the pub, on Twitter or even on the radio. How 20th century. Such advice has been known to extend beyond the parameters of recipes for cocktails and disputes as to slices or wedges. There’s been lawyers letters about stovies ingredients and challenges as to the date when stovies season commences. Don’t get me started on haggis husbandry.

You can even find benevolence in the production of a wish list available to all Independence supporting FMs and MSPs. I found one such recently so it’s replicated here. I call it the route to the restoration of competent government and the pathway to Scottish destiny. You maybe have a different title.

I start at the beginning – with unity – Scotland was promised a Constitutional Convention on 30 Jan 2020 – it’s long overdue and could be created today. The FM can appoint Joanna Cherry KC as Chair and authorise her to issue invitations to all political and civic leaders to assemble in Edinburgh this weekend. Whyever not?

Next – poverty is the greatest driver of that which blights Scotland most – inequality. Address housing and the cost of energy; those efforts alone will be transformational. A national house building corporation and a national energy company. No more damp sub standard homes, no rough sleepers, a one stop shop for all seeking sustenance, welfare advice, health care and pastoral support. Universal Basic Income. The right to a safe warm home. No need to gaze ashore from our oil rigs to food banks baby banks and school clothing banks. No more reverse wind auctions and no Fifers gazing at immobile turbines in Methil.

Universal free meals from nursery to primary and secondary school into college and Uni – Bairns, not Bombs. End of. Community gardens and kitchens with grandads teaching how to delve and plant and grannies making dough balls and scones.

Scotland needs a Poverty Tsar with knowledge and experience – listen and learn from the Darren McGarveys and Leanne Tervits – break the cycle, bring hope and transform individual and community destinies.

And as we fear this year’s drugs, alcohol and suicide figures, may we heed the Annemarie Wards and James Dochertys who warn and advise with knowledge and integrity.

When, not if, Scotland’s people stand as one and determine to write Scotland’s Story of hope, determination, courage and fairness, then we will become the nation we deserve to be. All hands on deck. Everyone counts, or nobody counts. IndyFirst.

SCOTLAND WILL FLOURISH

✍️ SAVE GRANGEMOUTH OIL REFINERY: SIGN PETITION

If you agree that the Scottish and UK Governments must intervene to ensure the Grangemouth Oil Refinery is saved then sign our petition today 👇#ALBAforIndependence https://t.co/eZc9udYkLW
— ALBA Party (@AlbaParty) February 6, 2024

How often these words have sprung to mind in recent years. Today we consider Grangemouth, a thriving port town founded almost 300 years ago, booming from the days of the Carron ironworks and a conduit for exports abroad from Walter Alexander’s, the world’s biggest bus building company. Nearby Kincardine with its historic linen industry trading with Europe hundreds of years before the construction of the Kincardine bridge with its swinging central span.

And today we enjoy the sight of the now internationally renowned Kelpies representing the lineage of the heavy horse of Scottish industry and economy. We recall the wagons and the courtships that shaped our industrial heartlands.

Oil was discovered in the North Sea in 1969. It brought prosperity to some Scots many of whom have toiled in the works at Grangemouth and related industries nearby. Scotland is amongst the top 25 oil producers of the world. Scotland must retain its refinery at Grangemouth.

If the Grangemouth refinery is allowed to close this will comprise deindustrialisation on a massive scale. There will be third world oil producing nations with independent refining capacity when we have none. Westminster will ensure that Scotland’s oil goes south to be refined and sold back to us. English and foreign interests will benefit. Once more the people of Scotland will lose.

It is time, Scotland. We have to make a stand. Or we will see Grangemouth no more, Falkirk no more, Kincardine no more, Clackmannan no more. Scotland no more ?

There has never been a greater need to reap our own harvest and ring our own till.

Let us get independence done, take control of our own resources and Scotland will flourish.

THE BIG C

I’m sorry that King Charles has cancer, just as I would feel sad for anyone with such a diagnosis; the uncertainty and fear it brings are horrible to navigate.

However, the King will not suffer the frustration of waiting lists, competing priorities, hours sitting in cubicles in reusable and reused hospital gowns without ties or dignity.

His diagnosis is swift as will his treatment be. He won’t wait months for tests and scans and results.

The King won’t complete a benefit application form or plead with employers for time off on full pay.

The King isn’t self-employed so has no need to take his dictaphone into his ward or reply on his phone to his work emails.

I look forward to the day when in an independent Republic of Scotland the medical treatment, financial and wellbeing support for all is worthy of the royal hallmark. Nothing less will do in a civilised fair modern thinking society.

WOMEN MATTER

Events narrated below occurred in the early years of my career; the decision was considered significant, ground – breaking and the mark of a developing respectful society where women’s rights mattered very much.

For the sake of decency and equality in Scotland recent events and litigation must lead to the renewal of that respect agenda – where we agree as a civilised society that traumatised women deserve compassion, care and understanding. Otherwise, our rights are too fragile especially in the face of oppressive and discourteous language and behaviour. #WomenDidnaeWheesht.

Judges rule on rape within marriage

16th March 1989

HERALD AND TIMES ARCHIVE

A HISTORIC ruling that a husband can be charged with raping his wife even if the couple were still living together, was upheld yesterday by three Judges in the Court of Crimimal Appeal.

Lord Emslie, the Lord Justice General, said he did not believe it had ever been the law of Scotland that a woman in marriage surrendered herself to the prospect of of violation by force against her will.

The court was hearing an appeal by a husband due to stand trial at the High Court in Stirling next month on a charge of raping his wife. He lodged the appeal after Lord Mayfield decided that the charge was competent under Scots law.

It is the first time a charge of its kind has been brought, although in two other Scottish cases in the 1980s, husbands have been charged with raping their wives when the couple were living apart.

Mr Peter Vandore, QC, defence counsel, tried to persuade the Appeal Court yesterday that the law as stated by Baron Hume in 1796, that a husband could not rape his wife, was still valid, despite changing social conditions.

Mr Vandore told the court: ”I am not suggesting that there is any right in every married Scotsman to have sexual relations with his wife when he wants and whatever his wife’s feelings might be. It is accepted that a husband has no such right.

”Apart from anything else, if he overcomes his wife’s reluctance by

force he could be charged with assault. If his sexual demands are excessive, he may find himself divorced for unreasonable behaviour.

”Equally, a wife has no absolute right to say no whenever she wants.

A total lack of sexual interest or a minimal interest may again be the subject of a divorce action.”

Mr Vandore said this was not a situation where the rights of the husband or the wife were paramount. There might be other much more important interests such as the family unit, children and society as a whole.

In a case where a question of rape arose between a cohabiting husband and wife, the relationship was one which the law had an interest to protect.

The real question was whether or not the courts should intrude into the intimate personal relations of marriage. The difficulties in bringing a rape charge against a husband were too appalling to contemplate.

”If a charge of this nature is held to be relevant, it is more likely to break marriages than to help them in any way,” argued Mr Vandore.

If it was felt the law should be changed, that was a matter for Parliament.

Mr Alan Rodger, QC, Solicitor-General for Scotland, said the rule that a man could not be charged with raping his wife had to be read against the background of the status of women and the law of marriage when it was made — at the end of the eighteenth century.

In the modern understanding of marriage, a wife had a right to say no to intercourse. ”If that is correct then it does indicate that there is

no such thing as an irrevocable submission to intercourse in all circumstances by the mere fact of marriage.”

Mr Rodger agreed that in a case where the couple were living together it might be hard for the Crown to establish that consent had been withdrawn. But where the Crown proved as a matter of fact that the wife did not consent, all the elements of rape were present — intercourse, force and lack of consent.

”What stands between the law holding that to be rape is simply this fiction — and it is nothing more than a fiction — that a wife has consented irrevocably to intercourse. No such proposition would stand examination today.”

The key was not whether the couple had separated, but simply whether consent had been withdrawn. ”It is that simple. If the wife was not consenting as a matter of fact, and a husband has intercourse with her by force, then that is rape.”

Wooden ships and iron (wo)men

After the General Election of 2015 I didn’t need a set of tarot cards to predict Scotland’s future; I’d lived through the Free in 93 days, as an SNP councillor, one of three in Clackmannanshire – back in the days when that role was not a wise career move.

Once it was noted, despite the 56/59 surge, that there was no mass protesting at Westminster and neither the FM nor Westminster leader had a strategy to lead our country to Independence the outcome for the party was clear. A pretence from my own MP and MSP that we’d to trust Nicola because she had a plan – she was on it – has become as offensive as it is embarrassing – to the extent where I need to delete a few Facebook albums of pics from 2016 when I proclaimed to be with Nicola, fingers crossed behind my back.

Carrots dangled from the front page of The National every few weeks, including the belter in January 2020 about the Constitutional Convention exclusively revealed – we’re still waiting. Why are we still waiting?

From January to March 2020 we watched political intrigue in criminal proceedings and a pandemic unfold; we learned that pandemic preparedness in Scotland was sketchy – even though the then FM had in her previous existence as the Cabinet Secretary for Health trained and prepared for this. We learned a lot.

We saw that courts and children’s panels had not done their homework; staff in courts had no supplies of hand wash or masks. There was no system to alert people who might have come into contact with one who’d come down with the virus. Courts just had cleaners who wiped down door handles and light switches at night.

Hospitals and health centres were not prepared. They simply closed their doors. We learned that in some hospitals there were no non-covid wards – twice my now late Dad who never had covid was in wards in Larbert with covid patients.

We saw that prisons were not prepared – again neither masks nor hand wash, simple but absent measures. Staff sought masks they sourced in the workshops, because their bosses on six figures hadn’t bothered to stock up.

We saw that staff were poorly trained – Dad came home from hospital twice supported by ambulance men who had neither masks nor gloves. One such was from a private ambulance service – that thing the NHS says it doesn’t use. He was meant to have a Macmillan nurse and a hospice nurse. Not only had he neither of those – he didn’t have an allocated consultant despite the fact of a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Children whose parents lived apart became subject to guidance from the courts and Children’s Minister who said family contact should occur face to face; no such arrangements for children in care – those children ‘saw’ family by FaceTime and communicated by email. Social workers didn’t facilitate contact and family centres closed down for months without end.

Schools were open for the children of key workers; teachers were glorified childminders and exam results were fiddled for teenagers who lost two years of education but we decided to pretend they were still smart enough to qualify for uni – self identification run riot.

Friends employed in care homes messaged me daily and called, in tears, afraid and anxious, because patients were discharged from hospital to care home without testing and politicians, MPs and MSPs, knew this and turned a blind eye.

And we learn today that our FM and those around her who promised transparency, accountability and honesty wiped their phones daily. This is not a surprise. It’s just another clicky pen moment – a signal that our governance is amateur, privileged, unaccountable and way below the standards set by those who founded and drove Scotland’s independence movement.

The Sturgeon Years have been a dreadful charade, from windows painted on ferries, to men in frocks running women’s services as feminists are defenestrated for standing up for the rights of women and girls – let’s set sail for better days where our politics are honest, our values real and we can speak the truth without fear or favour.

The green, green grass of home

I wrote this more than 4 years ago; some predictions were right and some praise misplaced.

The green green grass of home

Little is more precious than a comfortable, safe home, but for too long our prisons have mainly been populated by those deprived of such. Smart researchers say that the chances of becoming imprisoned increase exponentially with experience of abuse, family breakdown, the care environment, or when, as the result of any such haphazard events or mishaps, our existences descend into alcoholism or drug misuse. Naturally poverty and deprivation are staging posts on the way to the BarL just as surely as money, power and Eton pave the way to Number 10 or 11.

Professional duties require that the identities of those of whom I speak have been confuddled, but the core remains accurate. Think of a teenaged youth, parents separated leaving grandparents to pick up the pieces. It’s not so hard to get in with the wrong crowd, deface oneself with a couple of home made tattoos, learn how to knock back the drink with the bravado of the Jock, then realisation dawns of the ability to shoplift for Scotland with apparent impunity and a dogged, imagined cloak of invisibility. Theft and sale of bottles of Benylin, razor blades, jars of coffee. Picture then a scabby police cell, with a striped flock mattress, stinking to high heaven, perched upon a wooden block, racks of minging woollen blankets, not dissimilar to those featuring in H blocks, moving all by themselves. A toilet devoid of lid or seat, with the flush outside in the corridor, to be operated by the police officer upon his occasional check. No free sanitary provisions, television, iPad or phone and believe you me you wouldn’t be happy dining on the fare available there. That’s my baptism as a trainee lawyer in central Scotland three decades ago.

Consider the elderly, shuffling and bowed lady, incarcerated and institutionalised periodically throughout her life, never having a stable, happy home for even a few months at a time, rarely having her own front door, let alone a secure, guaranteed income, deprived of the warmth of a quiet, private hearth; little wonder her descent by weary stages through alcoholism to a dreadful addiction to meths; she could remove from the insides of her cheeks a substance that resembled chewing gum. She’d have been a victim of dreadful abuse as a child and in her adult years; the manner in which our society treated her, over 50 odd years, comprised abuse of the basest type. Her world was horror and her country nailed her to the wall.

I knew a young man, not a client of mine, convicted of a murder he did not commit. He is dead now. During his trial, the presiding Judge found it impossible to believe that our man had to share a pair of trainers with his flatmate. I found it impossible to believe that in this land of plenty that is how our people have been required to survive, but I know that this is true. Oil rigs and food banks, was ever a country so cursed?

And let us not forget the chicken run; wrong to say so but probably almost the only use to which the Daily Record might nowadays be put. Picture that scene. If you were a fellow from Glasgow or Edinburgh you’d be reasonably safe; but, were you a teuchter from that well known Heilan Hame in Clackmannanshire, your number was up. Now, you might laugh, but what if the prisoner was your son, brother, friend, neighbour?

I started to write this thinking of days of yore, believing that in Scotland, we’re creating a new dawn with presumptions against short sentences, because we know they don’t work; we favour restorative justice and community based disposals. We’re talking like civilised, knowledgeable adults about helping people to heal from the damage of adverse childhood experiences; we’re beginning to say that drug addiction, as well as alcoholism, is an illness, a curse, not of itself a crime. We’re hoping that wherever possible, practical and safe, women, mothers, won’t be locked up any more. Children won’t go into ‘care’ because the Mums aren’t around. And this great progress has come about in large measure as the result of policies proposed or supported by the SNP, there being a recognition that social justice is key to repairing the neglect our country endured at least for decades, including those days when Jack McConnell sent a few million pounds in used fivers back to Westminster because he couldn’t find anything to spend it upon. A couple of hospitals, some schools, maybe a handful of health and leisure centres, and Uni fees for a few thousand youngsters would have been a good start. But I digress a little. It’s unavoidable sometimes.

In olden days we used to hang them high, then we transported those who stole a loaf or a sheep, then we amputated families by imposing long prison sentences so children grew up not knowing their parents; but thankfully now we are starting to teach how to heal, though we’re not quite there yet. But a warning – if we don’t rediscover the national spine very soon indeed, I predict a rapid descent into oblivion. Scotland’s great strides forwards onto a world stage and her securing priorities in health, education, a respect agenda in welfare, these and more will be jeopardised if we lie down and permit Westminster to park its boot firmly upon our neck again in a few short months.

Thirled to that Westminster master, we continue to punish those who are poor, for the sin of being poor. I know this, because the theft of food, subsistence crime is the politically correct term, continues to be prosecuted. Sheriffs ask to know why Universal Credit is paid late, in arrears, and at a mindbogglingly low rate. Of course after several weeks of living on fresh air, using up food bank vouchers, desperation, despair and hopelessness become ingrained and I would imagine that the comparative solace of a prison cell and three square a day would comprise welcome respite for many. I’d hopes these days were consigned to the past. However, it is now known that when we ‘Brexit’ martial law is a distinct possibility. Are we then going to be subjected to curfews imposed by the military? Will soldiers ration our food shopping and patrol empty supermarkets? Will there be barbed wire around Trevelyan’s cornfields ? Will they be secured by men in camouflage gear with painted faces, bandannas and chanting, like Sammy Wilson did in the Commons today, that we should ‘get to the chippy?’ It’s not so far removed from reality to think of prison ships in the bay these days given that they had prison ships in England in the 1970s and again in the late 1990s – are the hairs on the back of your neck up on end yet?

When we are beginning to starve, and the stockpiles those of us wealthy enough to create have dwindled, or the poorest are so hungry that they’re looting, stealing, ransacking, are we all going to jail or to hell? Blue passports, eh? Taking back control?

And if there is martial law, will there be lists of undesirables to be rounded up and interned? Will the troops start to clear the streets of the homeless and the rough sleepers, like they do for Royal weddings? Will there be bonfires of belongings of those deemed less worthy? Will vagrancy be a criminal offence again? Punishable by hard labour? Am I already deemed a subversive? Are you?

Will our Scottish Parliament, our Scottish Government, exist for long after Brexit? Will those be suspended, like Stormont? Will our First Minister be under house arrest? And will our jails, instead of becoming civilised places striving for rehabilitation, risk assessment and eventual re-integration become like the madhouses of old ? Populated by those who ought to be deemed political prisoners but who will yearn, like the Catalans do now, for international recognition and justice?

Scotland cannot continue to gaze, like a coward, upon a deaf, robotic jailor, a guard, a sad old padre, and four grey walls. There’s a whole world of opportunity, equality, hope and prosperity just beyond those gates – the solution is within our hearts, our minds and our grasp. It takes but one leap. The old home town will look the same, and to paraphrase the greatest of men, let us have faith in and harness Scotland’s hidden powers, the present’s theirs and all the past and the future will be ours! Alba gu brath!

BUTTERFLIES, BROKEN UPON THE WHEEL

BUTTERFLIES BROKEN UPON THE WHEEL

A few days before the 2014 referendum, Robin McAlpine wrote “The British state has sent its big guns to Scotland and found them overwhelmed by a movement of a thousand butterflies.”

On the eve of the referendum Tommy Sheridan addressed thousands of optimistic Scots in George Square – “ Scotland may have only 40 years of oil left; Westminster has only 40 hours.”

Had the butterflies succeeded in dodging the impact of the big clunking fist and its pugilistic companions, what different a Scotland might we have created.

We’d hoped for a compassionate country addressing poverty and inequality, encouraging and supporting all, with access to the best of services, from cradle to grave. A country where we could right the wrongs of centuries of unnecessary hardship and deprivation for too many. A nation participating on the world stage as an equal partner, peace loving, warm and egalitarian, welcoming and a positive force. Freedom come all ye, pal, neebs, hen – we’re aw Jock Tamson’s bairns not being reserved only for Hogmanay toasts.

Today approaching the tenth anniversary of those times we hear evidence of the flawed ideology which has taken root in all of our institutions – when a woman in her 60s is denied support assisting her recovery from sexual assault, because she requested assurances on single sex provision.

This revelation follows hot on the heels of the publication of the consultation on conversion practice which if passed would criminalise and lead to the imprisonment of concerned parents.

Days earlier was evidence in a Scottish Parliamentary Committee to the effect that the risks inherent in enabling male offenders to be housed with females can be acceptable – acceptable to whom ? For sure not the women who expected to serve a sentence alongside only other women or the female officers disinclined to search a male prisoner.

Add into the mix confusion and for some also fear on transgender guidance in hospitals and schools and it’s easy to see how a democratic grassroots movement can be made to become divided and turn upon itself.

Less than competent government on innumerable issues including health, transport, education and all the madcap ‘green’ policies cost us fortunes with at best negligible meaningful returns; at worst the amounts squandered are eye watering, counted in terms of numbers of laptops, bikes, school uniforms and school meals which could have otherwise been funded. Meantime fuel bills rocket, food bills scare, drugs and alcohol deaths continue to increase and mental health provisions, including rehab services, are sorely lacking. No wonder there’s talk of infiltration and bad faith.

Scotland doesn’t need persuaded to support independence; Scotland cannot afford the alternative.

Scotland needs a government of inspired, inspirational, driven leaders, visionaries in tune with the needs and aspirations of our people. Not fools captured by dangerous ill conceived practice.

It is clear to all that despite setbacks and poor governance support for our country’s independence remains at least at 50%; this is why there is unremitting diversion of offshore resources south, manipulation of statistics by GERS, blatant purloining via the instability arising from the Freeports fiasco and the refusal to consider for Scotland the provisions gained for Northern Ireland following Brexit. It is why the British presence in our cities increases. It is why there is ridicule of Scottish efforts to create and maintain international connections and friendships.

Scotland’s problem is that elected independence supporting politicians mainly currently fear, suspect or do not understand the process of converting clamour for the cause into delivery of the objective. Exceptions do apply, but self interest and party political issues cloud judgement. There the people can help and politicians who wish to reflect their views must listen or haud their wheesht.

Westminster maintains its imperial control over Scotland because we are ill-served by representatives able and willing to challenge this. We ought no longer to give consent to government by Westminster and should demand that our political candidates represent our wishes and interest – that will come with a campaign providing for one independence supporting candidate in every constituency. With that, Independence supporting victors will be in the majority as will be the popular vote. That’s internationally recognised as a mandate justifying negotiations on the independence settlement, the divorce if you like. Recognition that regaining independence will come from all efforts, cross party and no party, is fundamental.

I hear that many around Scotland fear that politicians may suffer from self-interest; apparently there are moves afoot to create a citizens’ party, a scheme rebellion, involving mass voter registration. Door chapping and street stalls by the ordinary people of this country, not the elite – just the majority who have been silent for too long; the folk who answer appeals online for donations to baby banks, food banks, school clothing banks or a whip-round for an electric blanket or a sleeping bag for a pensioner sitting shivering in her house in Fife within sight of a windfarm but too feart to turn on the heating.

That movement populated by those with the most to gain from our country’s freedom, linked with a national surge, a petition, declaring our intention to become a free country once more, supported by political parties united in their determination to deliver that independent status – that is how Scotland will take her place between Saudi Arabia and Senegal – and not a moment too soon.

Butterflies signify hope, reincarnation and the tender aspirations of something indescribably precious. The women, the men and the children of Scotland deserve those aspirations and thought. Their dreams and values have been fractured but with common cause and purpose can heal, thrive and overcome. Those wings can fly again. Let’s make it happen.

CALEDONIA DREAMING

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray;

I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day.

I’d be safe and warm if….

Kenny MacAskill MP spells out often in the plainest of terms that Scotland is a net exporter of energy; he provides official statistics on oil, gas, renewables, the jiggery pokery that is the UK deal whereby resources are diverted south and Scotland will become the only oil producing country without its own refinery – say, what ?

I’ve a friend in Abu Dhabi who relocated to a former desert rejuvenated by oil into becoming a successful prosperous country whereas his country of birth, Scotland, discovered oil and became a desert. Another first for us plucky rebels.

10,000 children in care in Scotland remain failed by a government with skewed priorities and funding pledges. Many will, without real care and dedicated support, suffer unnecessary hardships including homelessness, poor attainment and reduced life chances; for some early death.

Hospital waiting lists grow; ambulances for emergencies can take 11 hours to arrive and are backed up in hospital car parks as beds remain blocked more than they were 10 years ago when pledges to reduce blocking were delivered.

Arguments abound on our Scottish education system with constant battles about CfE in this wee country which for hundreds of years was amongst the best educated in the world ! In the days of Sir William Wallace we had European exchanges which are now hibernating as the result of Brexit and, worse, by the inability of our reps in Holyrood to do better.

Our justice system, again once the envy of the world, is tainted; we continue to hold on remand thousands more than other comparable countries; we jail too many more, mainly from our schemes, young men brutalised and traumatised by family breakdown, abuse and poverty. Little changes are underway for our female prisoners but while the trans rights issue blights common sense and safety and permits trans identifying males in prison beside women terrorised by men there remains much work for our vociferous female campaigners to do.

Every single citizen of Scotland can do better than this; each of us can contribute to the blueprint of the country we must become. We all have hopes and dreams ; capturing those dreams and turning them into reality – now that’s the challenge.

So if you can just imagine for a moment that you were for just one day a hero. The one who could not only rewrite history but also create the future – make it happen. What would it be? House building? Cheap gas and electric? Universal Basic Income ? School trips to Brussels and Paris and Rome ? The floor is yours – write the dream because the leaves won’t always be brown and soon the sky will be blue. Let’s be ready this time.

No Mummy’s Kisses, No Daddy’s Smiles

No Mummy’s Kisses, and No Daddy’s Smiles

It was the classic horrible tearjerker of Scottish Hogmanays and house parties in the 60s. How grim that today long after the passing of the Alexander Brothers there remain thousands of ‘Nobody’s Children’ in Scotland.

Many like me have spent a lifetime hoping for transformational change; the announcement by the former FM of the Independent Care Review was most welcome. The apparent failure on the part of the Scottish Government to provide sufficient resources, including funding and personnel, to deliver The Promise which was the result of that review is at best pitiful and at worst suggests that for some at least this may have been a vanity project.

This is simply unacceptable, especially in a land of plenty where in recent years political priorities have been at times highly questionable.

£60 odd million was squandered on DRS; HPMAs – who knows the waste there thus far? The reverse wind auction ? Nobody mention GRR for beyond the hundreds of thousands of pounds of legal expense there has been immeasurable cost across all areas for writing and implementing guidance which is not lawful and will have to be reviewed. I include in this the horrendous Transgender Guidance for Prisons, Hospitals and Schools.

Experts most especially those who spent time in foster care or were adopted gave of themselves in The Promise; testimony and research were invaluable in providing a blueprint for change. Its delivery cannot be allowed to slip because those who are in the care system now deserve our full urgent attention and care. They are innocents and if our Scottish society cannot prioritise the needs of vulnerable children and secure their futures then this country is not fit for the 21st century, let alone to drive for the independence we so desperately need.

£80 billion of revenue will be generated from our North Sea resources in the next handful of years. If The Promise is not delivered millions will be spent on dealing with the adversities which arise from family breakdown, poverty, poor outcomes, trauma, homelessness, criminality, addictions and loss of prospects, ill health and premature death. These are the characteristics of a life in care – not because it is pre determined but because there is a lack of political will to create the transformational change needed in Scotland.

There is a shortage of children’s social workers in Scotland; Councils are paying through the nose for agency workers; record numbers of babies are born of mothers addicted to drugs; the Children’s Hearing system introduced as the results of the work of Lord Kilbrandon has laudable worthwhile aims, but changes of personnel, lack of continuity and drift when there are unclear plans for children’s futures mean that too many of our young people live in a legal limbo. The system is in a crisis from which it will not escape until there is secure guaranteed funding and an agreement from all political parties that children’s needs are the overwhelming priority.

Children in Clackmannanshire who cannot stay safely at home currently face the prospect of a foster ‘placement’ some three hours drive from home, inevitably leading to a change of school and the diminution of contact with family and friends.

And so I return to where I began – to ‘brothers’ – The Promise understood and promoted the notion that siblings stay together if they have to leave home, and if they cannot stay together they must see each other often. Despite this aim, there remain hundreds of children in care in Scotland today who miss their brothers and sisters dearly, haven’t seen them for months, who aren’t sure when they will meet again and who have to write out their views for a Children’s panel to discuss and a social worker to implement ‘family time’ – will it be weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually? Might there be adoption by different new sets of parents with no guaranteed post adoption sibling contact ?

In common with every lawyer colleague I ever had, every social worker and Sheriff I have ever worked with, or opposed, I hope that Humza Yousaf can find the funding, the resources and the support to implement The Promise in full – so that each of Scotland’s children can say – I’m just like all the other kids – there’ll be a home for me.