I cried today

I cried today on the way home from work. I had BBC Radio 4 on as I usually do and Evan Davis, whose abilities to head up this news show I regularly whinge about to my friend Ryan Morrison, bumbled even more than usual through a piece in which his total lack of grasp of the state of Scottish current affairs was laid bare for all to hear but thankfully not see.

I came in and thought I'd write a blog and I've done a few of those in my time - but the subject of the last blog 3 years ago hadn't turned out well, and I cried again (it's the one under this!)

I had dinner and tried to write it again but the words wouldn't come and I cried again so I went out for a walk along the Clyde to the bridge before the Squinty bridge and back again and that cleared my head a little.

5 years ago today Scotland went to the polls and a few days before that I had perhaps rashly said to David Linden and Alison Thewliss (now both MPs): "I could help with that" and found my self standing beside a hastily drawn up plan of polling places in Shettleston constituency sending strangers all over the east end of Glasgow to stand outside Primary and Secondary Schools whose names I had only just learnt and whose locations were a little bit vague to say the least. I don't think I lost anyone although I'm pretty sure some people were away for a little longer than they and I had intended! 10pm and I was in the Emirates and the excitement was electric. I was so ecstatic at having been asked to go to the count (yes I cried at that time too - I do it a lot as my friends know). The the first result came in - I think it was Clackmannanshire - and it was a no and the game was a bogey from then on in.

But fast forward to the present and where stand we now? My good friend Maggie Lennon and I have both agreed that there's a lot of anecdotal evidence of people moving, often surprisingly, from No to Yes, and when Sarah Smith alluded to this in an excellent piece on Radio 4 the other week (Evan Davis take note - listen to it) and I thought of my own friends and acquaintances who have changed their minds on the subject recently, often in a dramatic manner but sometimes quietly but confidently, I felt much happier.

It's not been shown up in the opinion polls to any large extent, although I read earlier in the week the good BBC favourite Professor Curtice (yes him with the British Empire gong) point out a definite move to Yes in Remain voters and Yes is averaging 49% now, but having read a bit about the flux the polls are in I'm not as worried about that as I thought I might be.

So I've stopped crying now, though I'm pretty sure I may well shed a tear tomorrow morning when I stumble across a certain Facebook memory posted by my daughter 5 years ago.

So many people have come on this journey that although I can't imagine we'll match the 99% vote in Norway for their independence (and how badly did that end....not!) I am very confident that once the starting pistol is fired, and we're closer than ever to that, the end result will be a resounding Yes vote and not for the first time I'll quote the words of someone who inspired me many years ago, Winnie Ewing: "Stop the world - Scotland wants to get on!"

I'm voting RISE on 5 May

I suppose a GP may seem an unlikely convert to left wing politics but it's no "Paul on the road to Damascus" moment that's led me to leave the SNP and join and campaign for Rise - Scotland's new left alliance.

After leaving the SNP largely due to personal circumstances in the late 1990s I spent the next 10 years outside a political party. I voted at every election, sometimes for the SNP and sometimes not - I voted SSP in the 2003 Holyrood elections for instance and my vote was just one of thousands that delivered the so-called "rainbow Parliament" that promised much but in the end delivered little.

In 2007, just before the Holyrood elections I re-joined the SNP, believing that in doing so I was moving the cause of Scottish independence, in which I have always believed, a little further forward.

But it was the referendum campaign of 2014 which made me realise, in large part due to the activities of Radical Independence, the Common Weal and many other disparate organisations, that another Scotland was indeed possible. The visions of social justice and the narrowing of the wealth inequality gap were what empowered me and thousands of others to participate in what became truly a mass movement. One which in the end, despite the powerful array of the British state, with its monarchy and unelected elite, the broadcasting oragnisations and the Scottish press, came close to achieving our aim.

Like many others after the referendum I threw myself into the SNP again, serving as an office-bearer and doing my bit to help achieve what became the 2015 General Election landslide. Like many others, thousands of whom joined the SNP, the Greens and the SSP, most of them joining a political party for the first time in their lives, we thought that surely independence was just round the corner.

But a gradual realisation dawned on me that the policies espoused by the SNP were fairly timid, and under proper scrutiny the record of the SNP in government demonstrated a total failure when it came to narrowing the huge gaps between rich and poor, healthy and ill, employed and unemployed, that unnecessarily blight our nation. Don't get me wrong - they have delivered on many issues, and the abolition of  prescription charges (first proposed by the SSP in the rainbow Parliament), the building of a new hospital in Glasgow, the abolition of road tolls and hospital parking charges in all but three sites, and the start of a social housing programme are indeed achievements.

But laterally, and in particular as this election campaign has progressed, it seems to me that the SNP campaign has been more about retaining power than utilising that power to change Scotland in a substantive manner.

The tinkering round the edges of the Council tax was the last straw and if anyone seriously believes that making me pay £30 a month more in Council tax is real wealth redistribution they are kidding themselves.

There is so much more that could and should be done and if you haven't already seen it the RISE manifesto sets out some of the details.

The endless bleating of #bothvotessnp by SNP activists in response to any argument to the contrary is increasingly sounding like something out of George Orwell's "Animal Farm".

Have a look at the policies for yourself - ask some questions - look at the polls, every single one of which has demonstrated that the SNP are pretty much certain to achieve a majority on the constituency vote. Now think how much stronger that government and indeed Parliament would be with some Green or RISE MSPs to give it a radical and cutting edge!