78 days to go

15 years ago today the Scottish Parliament was officially opened by the Queen.

The election to the Parliament was on the 6th of May and the intervening period was spent setting up the institution and starting on its work. I was a founder member of the Parliamentary Bureau so I was deeply involved in those activities.

The first formal group photograph was taken on the 12th of May 1999, the first formal sitting day. The SNP Members are still wearing the "Little white rose of Scotland" we always wear to take our oaths.

The photographer was my friend Robin Gillanders , one of Scotland's finest portrait photographers, and this is the image which has deliberate echoes of the picture of the signing of the "Act of Separation and Deed of Demission" by the Disruption Assembly in 1843 by David Octavious Hill, the first work in which photography was used to assist a painter.

It is strange to look at it in what seems a different political time , today being only 78 days before the referendum. Some people are no longer members and some (good colleagues) have died. But all, I know, had the interests of their constituents and Scotland at heart.

Across the independence divide that, I am sure, remains true of the present 128 members who , today, will all have spent a moment thinking about the last 15 years, about absent friends and about what lies ahead in the next 15.

(PS - if you are looking for me, I am in the bottom right, behind Winnie Ewing and Sandra White ...)