November 2007

Published on Thu 29th Nov 2007

They say that, the older you get, the quicker time passes. But I didn't altogether expect November to have disappeared in a flash. Hopefully, it is only because so much has been happening.

Aside from the usual meetings in Brussels and Strasbourg, I've seen a fair amount of Scotland. This has included seafood processing in Dingwall, a pig farm in Nairn, the Poppy Day launch in Inverness, the inaugural meeting of the Scottish Islands Federation in Mull and a primary school in Ayrshire.

There have been numerous events in Edinburgh, too - I think about seven in all, ranging from a debate in Heriot Watt University, through the European Movement AGM to a St Andrew's Night celebration of Scotland's history.

And we have had plenty of visitors to the Parliament in the course of the month - students from Ullapool High School and Stirling University, a Swedish charity, Canadian Parliamentarians, the CBI and the Industry and Parliament Trust.

Then, too, there were people with particular issues to discuss, including fishermen from Mallaig, representatives of Friends of the Earth and the Shark Alliance, tenants from Cumbernauld as, also, other constituents concerned about both social housing and cancer care.

Of course, all this has been fitted around the usual committees and full meetings of the Parliament both in Brussels and in Strasbourg. Most topically, the Fisheries Committee has been dealing with the problem of discards. In the Regional Development Committee the concentration has been on the question of territorial cohesion and the criteria for European funding after 2013. One of my concerns here is with ways of ironing out differences within regions as well as between them, so that we can get rid of black spots in what are otherwise prosperous areas.

As to the full Parliament, a whole raft of issues has been under discussion, from soil protection through aviations emissions to Economic Partnership Agreements with developing countries.

And, too, we have given our approval to the Charter of Fundamental Rights. I am only sorry that the UK has opted out of this, mainly because of what I think is a mistaken understanding of the effects it would have on our own domestic law.

I am not quite sure how but, amongst all this, I have actually begun to make a start on my Christmas shopping.