Well, I'm back to blogging and very happy to be here. As those of you who read my last blog (or any of my previous blogs all listed on the blogroll) know, on 12 February 2009 I was sworn in as a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the City of Glasgow - representing the Scottish National Party, the party I've been an active member of for 21 plus years. And now, of course, finally, the party of Government.
The reasons for my election halfway through the 4 year term of the Parliament are of course very sad. You can read about them by clicking here and here. I won't go into it here but suffice to say that I won't forget how I managed to get here.
I've called the blog Indygal Goes to Holyrood. No, it's not a tribute to the famous 80s band of my early youth (I say early as it's not over yet!). Indygal is the blogging name I've always used and when I went to Sri Lanka for a few months last year I wrote a new blog "Indygal in Sri Lanka". When I stood as a European candidate for the SNP I had one called "Indygal in Europe" so it makes sense ...
Blogs develop organically so it's difficult to say how this one will end up but my aim, at the moment, is to give a flavour of the kind of things an elected politician gets up to. And don't worry, I won't be moaning on about the long hours and how nobody likes politicians etc - I'll just tell you what I'm doing, what I'm thinking and what I'm trying to achieve.
It's early days but so far I'm loving it and realising it's very different to what I had thought even working at such close quarters as I did. It's definitely long hours, no doubt about it. But I've always worked long hours. I've never had the opportunity this job seems to give me to really make a difference. I had hoped to do a first week in the job diary but it's proving to be too big a piece of work so I've decided just to get started on what's happening now. I'll no doubt go back to the first week or so at some stage but there's no rush.
The reason I've decided to continue with the blog is because I do think it's important that politicians make an effort to communicate with people, particularly the ones they've been elected to represent and I'll definitely try to make the time for regular updates. Feel free to leave comments. They're now being moderated but the policy is fairly relaxed and I'll only not publish or answer a comment if there's a very good reason for it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment