Hope and Despair by Neil Findlay sampler

neil findlay
performance and how she was not cutting it.
28 September To parliament for the Petitions Committee with the Scottish
Mesh Survivors Group. Dr Wael Agur was there to give evidence. A surgeon,
he was a member of the review group on mesh implants and was outstanding in
giving evidence. He came across as honest, straightforward, principled and very
credible. I don’t think I have seen a committee witness make such an impact.
Elaine Holmes and Olive McIlroy, two women disabled by mesh implants,
spoke to the petition and were superb. They exposed the scandal, hypocrisy and
contradictions of the government’s sham review. Tory MSP Jackson Carlaw, the
SNP’s Alex Neil and I worked together to support the petition.
I asked Justice Secretary Michael Matheson if there was going to be a review
of the policing of the miners’ strike in Scotland (I have been campaigning for
this since becoming an MSP). Matheson said he would make an announcement
soon, which sounds promising.
Later, I spoke to a joint meeting of the Dundee CLPs (Constituency Labour
Parties) on behalf of Richard. He won the nomination easily.
1 October I watched horrific scenes tonight on the news. There was widespread
coverage of the Spanish police using batons and violence against Catalan
Nationalists. Police have confiscated ballot boxes and provoked clashes in
many towns. The cameras caught them attacking firefighters. The referendum
is unconstitutional but the Catalan nationalist government went ahead anyway.
This issue has faded into the background as the violence became the big issue.
I tweeted condemnation of the violence and said we shouldn’t see these clashes
through the lens of the Scottish constitutional debate, and immediately got dog’s
abuse from the cybernats, who are now self-declared experts on the Spanish
constitution.
A gunman killed 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas and injured 500 more.
In her column in the Daily Record, Kezia Dugdale sniped at the lack of ideas
coming out from the leadership election and made it all about who would get
her vote. She carries little influence.
3 October The Herald today ran a horrific story saying women in Glasgow who
have miscarried a child have been getting sent home with antibiotics and told
to come back five weeks later to have the dead child removed from their body.
I really cannot take this in.
Paul Wheelhouse gave a very nervy statement on fracking today. I raised a
point of order, as it should have been Cabinet Secretary Fergus Ewing giving the
statement. We all know he would frack under his own arse and wants fracking
to go ahead. He sat at the back of the chamber throughout, very glum faced.
The announcement was not a ban but an extension of the moratorium – a decent
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