Let me start off my first column of 2018 for the News by wishing you all a Happy New Year.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and managed to catch up with family and friends during the festive period.
Now with the holidays drawing to a close it’s time to get back to work.
Looking through the diary, it’s shaping up to be another busy year both in East Kilbride and at Holyrood.
The on-going problem on the trains is still one of the issues that continues to cause anger and frustration amongst many of you and rightly so.
The 3.2% increase in fares will do nothing to ease the frustration being felt by those who rely on the ScotRail service for their daily commute.
Over the festive period, trains ran at peak times at the weekend with only two carriages and were all but full by the time they reached Hairmyres station.
This does not come as a surprise, as both myself and Linda Fabiani have repeatedly taken the Transport Minister and ScotRail to task over this ridiculous state of affairs.
EK always seems to be the first to suffer when rolling stock is needed elsewhere. Peak time trains are cancelled or running with reduced carriages with commuters crammed in like sardines.
ScotRail has recently been boasting about their new inter-city electric trains. This is scant consolation to the people of East Kilbride who are fed up being treated like cattle on a daily basis.
I will keep fighting this year to get you the service you deserve.
Another battle looming large is the fate of the HMRC office at Peel Park. There is no justification for HMRC shutting Centre 1 and moving to centralised offices in Glasgow.
The News’ Stay in EK campaign has widespread public support and I will be doing my bit along with other local politicians to try and make HMRC see sense and keep Centre 1 open.
At Holyrood, Finance secretary Derek Mackay, recently introduced us to the “NatTax”. A tax that will hit those earning over £26,000 – including nurses, primary teachers and police officers.
This increase means, once a worker’s salary hits £26,000, they will be worse off than their equivalents in England, Wales and Northern Ireland under these SNP plans.
This goes against the SNP 2016 manifesto pledge which states they would freeze the basic rate of income tax throughout parliament to protect those on low and middle income.
If they can’t be trusted to keep to one of their key promises, how can we believe anything the SNP says from now on.
Additionally, Brexit is looming large and there will be much to debate over the coming months.
As Convenor of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, my colleagues and I will be busy scrutinising much of the legislation around Bretix and how it will impact Scotland.
It will be one the most complex and debated pieces of law to be debated at the Scottish Parliament and I can assure you we will be making sure the people of Scotland are not short-changed.