New job, new life, therefore new blog

3 April 2008

Finally, 50 days after my election, I have managed to get my new blog up and running. As anyone who's read any of my blogs will know, I LOVE writing. I've been blogging for 2 years now and it's cathartic, it allows me to speak my mind and it's my creative outlet. So I've no intentions of stopping.

Just as an aside but still on the "what's the point of blogs?" topic, when I was in Sri Lanka working last year, my (now) friend Thea arrived as the new volunteeer after about a month. She was delighted when she discovered I had a blog because she's not one for emails and phone calls home were very expensive BUT her family and friends still wanted to know what she was up to. So she told them that as she lived with me and we worked for the same organisation, if they just read my blog they'd know what kind of things she was up to! And they did! In fact, I'm pretty sure Thea's lot read it more than any of my lot!!

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. I do plan to continue blogging when I can but I want to start afresh with a new blog. For anyone who's reading this and doesn't know, I was sworn in as a Member of the Scottish Parliament on 12 February 2009. I want to achieve something with my new blog and that is I want to use it to keep in touch with people who are not normally interested in politics. I think EVERYONE should care about it because politics affects all of our lives and we all have a right to have our say.

I do, however, understand why some people are put off and I hope, in some small way, that I can dispel some of the myths and demonstrate that elected politicians are really no different to anyone else. I am also passionate about people empowering themselves and sometimes all they need is someone to tell them HOW they do that. So I HOPE the new blog will be useful, I hope it will still be interesting to my fellow politicos and more than anything, I hope I manage to actually make the time to write it :-)

Thanks to everyone who's read this blog and left comments (well, most of the commenters!) and generally encouraged me. I feel a wee bit sad saying goodbye to Indygal in Europe but as of today ...

INDYGAL GOES TO HOLYROOD