Lots of Parliament Work

Last weekend Kathrin came to visit. On Thursday she joined us at the pubs after class after spending the day in Inverness. On Friday she had lunch with us at the Parliament and I gave her a quick tour. Friday night Kathrin made us spaetzle and it was delicious. It's definitely my favorite German food. On Saturday Julianne and I went with Kathrin to the Scotch Whiskey experience on the Royal Mile. It was kind of like a Disney ride. You sat in a barrel that went around a track walking you through all the steps of making whiskey. On Saturday night we watched Hocus Pocus in honor of Halloween and ate gluten free brownies. On Sunday, after Kathrin left, Julianne and I went Halloween costume shopping and ended up coming back with chocolate instead. We are celebrating Halloween with all the interns this weekend.

On Wednesday for Halloween, Julianne and I met up with another intern, Laurel, and we went to the Royal Mile. We bought 50p witches hats from Tesco's and went to see a pagan fire parade. It was interesting and kind of spooky. They burned a bunch of fire and people dressed in pagan costumes came up to people in the crowd and screamed in their face.

A typical day consists of me waking up, making a chicken and cheese sandwich to bring to work for lunch and drinking a cup of coffee. I get dressed in my business clothes, which is usually a black high waisted skirt, black tights, black oxford shoes, and a tank top and a cardigan. Then I bundle up in my coat, hat, gloves, and scarf. I walk to work up London road, through a side street, and to the Parliament building. I use my special parliament badge to get in the side door and then go to my office. I sit at my desk, check my Facebook and email, and get started on whatever tasks I have for the day. Usually that consists of checking BBC News a lot, writing motions or briefs, and occasionally getting tea. At 12 all the interns meet up to get lunch in the cafeteria together. I usually buy a Cadbury bar as well. Then I continue working on tasks until around 5 when I go home. I then usually cook, clean, check my Facebook, go grocery shopping, or do whatever we're doing that night if we meet up with the other interns. Thursdays are long days. We work, go to class, and then go to a pub. I usually leave around 8:45 and get back around 10:30. It's fun though. 

It's starting to get dark around 4. Everyone warned me that would happen, but I didn't realize how hard it is. I rarely ever see daylight because I work through the few hours that it exists. 7 pm feels like 10. It is definitely an adjustment. And also, I didn't realize how cold it would be. I still don't understand how it gets so cold. In my coat, scarf, gloves, and hat I still am shivering walking around Edinburgh.

I still love it though. It's really fun and Edinburgh's such a great city.

    Over the past two weeks I've written two motions. One was about a famous explorer supporting tourism in my MSPs area. My MSP represents the West of Scotland. This area used to be very prosperous due to all the factories it had, but a lot of the work done there has now become obsolete and unemployment is very high. My MSP is trying to promote tourism in his area to help the economy. I also wrote another newsletter this week that my MSP will distribute to his constituents. 

    My favorite task so far was writing a column for a newspaper. It was a five hundred word weekly column about ‘A Week in the Life of an MSP’. I got to write from the perspective of my MSP about the meetings he attended, the events he went to, and the speeches he made that week. It was really fun and I hope that I get to write the column again in the future. 

    One of the speeches my MSP made this week was about scouting youth organisations. I wrote up a brief about scouting in his area for his speech. When he sent me his speech to edit, I noticed he used some topics from the brief that I included, which was cool to see. 

    We went to First Minister’s Questions again last week. I was glad we got to go because I was curious to see what it would be like the week after both the SNP conference and the agreement reached about the referendum in 2014. (Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland and David Cameron the Prime Minister of the UK agreed a couple weeks ago that the referendum would be one question and have to take place before the end of 2014). Some of my favorite parts of FMQs this week were when the party leaders insulted each other using American presidents' and American president candidates' slip ups. Alex Salmond called the Conservative Party leader Mitt Romney because of a statement she made disregarding 88 per cent of Scottish people. 

    One thing I also really like about work is how updated I stay on current events. I get emails every day with press releases from other offices about events happening in the political world. Also, I read BBC every morning and my MSPs local news websites to stay updated on important news in Scotland. To give myself a break when I am working on long tasks, I will also check world news. I am glad I get the chance to be exposed to and read so much about current events. 

I started off this week working on distribution lists for my MSP. Which are basically just excel spreadsheets of contact information. The end of last week and the beginning of this week were spent packing up, moving, and unpacking my MSP’s office. We moved from the third floor to an almost identical office on the fourth floor with a slightly worse view. Because the two MSPs quit the SNP recently, they decided on principle that their offices could not be in between two SNP offices, so quite a few MSPs had to shuffle around offices.

I also wrote another motion this week. This one was about a new housing development in Kilwinning. Party loyalty is a lot stronger here than I expected it to be. In fact, the motion I wrote ended up getting attempted amendments from the Labour Party saying how their party was the one that initiated the housing project.

On Tuesday I watched the Labour Party led debate which made a motion to have an inquiry about Alex Salmond lying about seeking legal advice about whether or not Scotland would join the European Union if it became an independent state. It was very vicious and had a lot of yelling. All parties were arguing about the accusations that Alex Salmond, who was not actually present at the debate, lied about both EU membership and whether or not Scotland had to join the Euro. While the Labour Party and Conservative Party, who did most of the opposition arguing, had a valid point that Alex Salmond should not have lied, the SNP had good arguments to counter them as well as point to EU legislation stating they would not have to join the Euro. My MSP also made a speech, which was fun to watch. It got repetitive after a while though, but it was very interesting to watch. The opposition also made the good point that Scotland needs to be informed on all issues, good or bad, in order to make the best decision possible for Scotland when they vote on the referendum, and that requires them not being lied to. However, the SNP made good counter points explaining their actions as well as pointing out what they are doing for Scotland. It was clear that the party lines were drawn very distinctly and that the Labour Party and the SNP, despite their relative closeness on the political ideology spectrum, strongly disliked each other, and surprisingly the Labour and Conservative Parties were teaming up against the SNP majority.

On Thursday I wrote several briefs. Now that I have figured out how to write them, I like writing briefs. The first one I did was on the Institute of Directors, a group that helps directors and also lobbies for their issues. My MSP is attended a debate at their conference on Friday and he needed a brief of what their political views were on some issues. The Institute of Directors was very anti taxes and anti regulation as well as pro private sector growth and pro business. My MSP asked for additional briefs on two topics that I mentioned in the first brief. So I wrote two short briefs, one about 4G coming to the UK for the first time this past week and the other about the Air Passenger Duty. The Air Passenger Duty is a tax on passengers on flights that is reducing the number of people travelling to Scotland, which is affecting their tourism industry.

I tried to show initiative my first week back by creating a newsletter for my MSP for the month of October. This has turned into a drawn out two week project that required me constantly looking for another thing to write about. Once I finally finished the newsletter today we had to do labels and envelopes. Yesterday we had to copy and paste about 300 address from an excel spreadsheet onto a label printer sheet. Then today we labelled and stamped several hundred envelopes. After printing all the newsletters, we tried to use a machine to fold and stuff the envelopes for us. Unfortunately it was broken and it ended up eating and shredding several of our envelopes and newsletters. So we ended up folding and stuffing and sealing the envelopes manually.

Earlier this week I also faxed my absentee ballot in! It's very nice to be back and get settled in Edinburgh.

It's fun working in the parliament and keeping up with politics and making jokes about the Labour Party.

Hope your Halloweens were fun!

Current favorite song: "Below My Feet" by Mumford & Sons