IndyGal

I was watching The Politics Show on Sunday with Christie (my 15 year old niece). She was on Cartoon Network but I wrestled the remote from her. “Don’t you ever get bored with politics?” was all she could say. Anyway she soon got interested when she heard Nicola Sturgeon being introduced as “the Deputy First Minister of Scotland”.

“I know the Deputy First Minister of our country?” she gasped. Actually, she didn’t gasp. She never gasps. She’s way too cool for that. But she did sit up and take notice. “The Deputy First Minister of Scotland’s been in my house?”. (I really do hope Nicola’s not reading this.)

Anyway you know how you forget sometimes that you’re not alone and you get talking to yourself? Or to the TV? Or, as on this occasion, to your mate who’s on that TV? And I noticed Nicola was using a teeny bit of slang and heard myself saying out loud:

“FUR Nicola? FUR??? It’s FOR!!”

(You know how I’m so terribly well spoken all of the time myself.)

Anyway the point is that Christie turned to me and said “she’s Scottish *Nantie, you can understand what she’s saying so let her speak the language of the Scots”!!

Talk about being put in your place! Talk about ‘out of the mouths of babes’! And she was right - we are Scottish and why on earth would we want to lose the dialects and the accents of Scotland? Am suitably shamefaced.

Talking of being shamefaced, I haven’t quite got round to buying the card yet so this is the next best thing - it’s Nicola’s birthday today so Happy Birthday Nic! We’ll not mention figures, let’s just say she’s gone from ‘mid’ something to ‘late’ something

*Nantie - it’s an old Scots name for Auntie.

In March I had a party to formally adopt me as the Springburn candidate. Nicola Sturgeon was one of my speakers. In my own speech I announced that I was resigning … resigning myself to the fact that I would be seeing very little of one of my best and oldest (she’ll hate me for saying that) friends in the future. I knew that she would win Govan first past the post and she did. But little did I know just how much her life would change.

How could I have known then that we would win the election, Alex Salmond would become First Minister (yep, still teary over that one) and Nicola would become a government minister charged with the onerous task of transforming the health of one of Europe’s sickest nations?

In covering the appointments Alex Salmond has made to his cabinet, some journalists referred to Nicola’s role as a “backward step”. How mealy mouthed? And how far off the mark? I guess they had to find something to have a dig about. Nicola did a brilliant job of leading the opposition in the Scottish Parliament over the last four years - on that I agree with those journalists. But she made it clear from the start, that Alex Salmond would be First Minister should we win the election.

And now, at the age of 36, she is the Deputy First Minister of her nation. And she’s in charge of health for the whole of Scotland. How can that be seen as anything other than a stunning success? She has a huge task ahead of her. Scotland has some of the worst health records in the developed world. She must make a big difference in a very short period of time.

At the same time, the hopes of the Scottish Independence movement rest largely on the shoulders of Nicola and her colleagues. We have said we’re out to prove ourselves so that people support Independence. That’s a lot of pressure and a tremendous challenge but one that she will rise to as always. I think it would be a little churlish of me to make too big a fuss if I don’t see that much of her over the next few years. A backward step? No. Nicola, both in terms of her personal success and in terms of her ability to change things for the better in Scotland, has taken a huge leap forward and I, for one, am extremely proud of her.