Welcome to your Full Scottish, live from our Cowcaddens studio in Glasgow.
Full Scottish programme starts at 12:00 on Sunday 21st October 2018
On a very full Full Scottish this week, Corri Wilson is joined by guests, John Finnie MSP and Cllr Mhairi Hunter.
This weekend welcomes the Scottish Green Party Conference to Glasgow. As Scotland’s 4th party, they form part of the majority for independence in the Scottish parliament. We look at some of their policies and their contribution to the debate on Scotland’s future.
International Teachers day is coming up and the Greens have passed a motion at their conference in support of Scottish teacher’s pay claim. It also emerged this week that the Scottish Government had withdrawn educational materials on Palestine and Israel, raising questions about how is it possible to get to reach a peace settlement and 2 state solution if even teaching it at school has become contentious.
When Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman took office there was much talk about his reformist agenda, but has that been a smokescreen for another despot who believes he can do whatever he decrees without question. How complicit are the international community who have been happy to turn a blind eye in exchange for arms sales and cheap oil. Will the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi change anything?
First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has received international praise for refusing to participate in a BBC event which risks normalising far right and racist views. Bannon and his disciples have been able to spread their pernicious hatred using targeted social media advertising which Facebook has struggled to get to grips with. Will their appointment of Nick Clegg to a senior PR roll be more than just PR or is he their to say sorry for their past failings, perhaps in an amusing video.
Facebook’s connection to Cambridge Analytica and the Brexit Leave campaign are raising questions about why there has been no police investigation of the breaches of electoral law as 700,000 people marched in London to campaign for a second EU referendum – The People’s Vote campaign.
As women council workers are planning to go on strike and the closure of Winter Gardens on Glasgow Green was announced last week, we ask why Glasgow’s SNP administration has not managed to reverse decades of Labour party administration falings, after all, they have been in power for 17 months. And what about the record of the trade unions in the equal pay dispute?
No mad cow jokes, as BSE is discovered on an Aberdeenshire farm, we consider the implications.
And Finally, Netty’s Tree on Eriskay has be named Scotland’s Tree of the Year. Let’s get Scotland behind the campaign to see it named as European Tree of the Year.
Like we said a very full Full Scottish.
John Finnie
John Finnie is the Green MSP for the Highlands and Islands region. He is the Scottish Green Party spokesperson on Justice, Transport, Tourism and Rural & Island Communities and serves on the Justice Committee, the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing, and the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee of the Scottish Parliament. John is a member of Amnesty International and Scottish CND, and a fan of traditional Scottish music and Hearts FC. He lives in Inverness.
John was born and brought up at Clunes, nr Fort William, attended Achnacarry Primary and Lochaber and Oban High Schools and worked at a variety of jobs before joining the police in Leith in 1976. During a 30 year police career, John served in Leith, at the single-officer station at Kirkhill, was a dog-handler and spent the last 14 years of his service as a full-time elected official of the Scottish Police Federation, retiring in 2006.
In 2007 John was elected as the Scottish National Party (SNP) Councillor for Inverness Ness-side Ward on Highland Council and shortly thereafter was elected as Leader of the 17 strong SNP Council Group. At the Scottish National Party’s October 2012 Conference the Party voted to overturn its long-standing opposition to membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and, following this decision John resigned from the SNP designating himself ‘Independent’.
In October 2014, John joined the Scottish Green Party advising that, although he was remaining an Independent MSP, in the interests of openness and transparency he expects in public service, he was making his membership known.
Mhairi Hunter
Mhairi Hunter lives in the Southside and has been an SNP councillor for Southside Central since 2012. She also works part time for Nicola Sturgeon MSP and cares for her elderly father. Mhairi is the SNP spokesperson on health & social care and is a member of the board of Glasgow’s Health & Social Care Partnership.