12 days to go

I spent the day on Bute undertaking a range of visits , working on the YES street stall in Rothesay in the afternoon and speaking at a public meeting in Port Bannatyne this evening.

In the morning I dropped in at the Bute Advice Centre to talk to Julie Semple who runs it. Bute Advice Centre has been through some difficult times in recent years but the organisation is now stable and the revitalised and very talented staff and volunteers deliver a range of much needed services including money and energy advice.

Earlier this year they started a food bank, after a lot of consultation and discussion about need on the island. It is funded by a social enterprise shop called "Oaisis" and the arrangement is an excellent and imaginative one.

The usage statistics are stark. Demand is rising and 50% of those who need help are disabled. The majority of those who are helped are on benefits and have been sanctioned, often for the most trivial of mistakes.

Consequently the Bute Advice Centre combines practical help with support and advice on a range of issues. No one just gets food - everyone has the opportunity to be supported in the totality of their problems. Regrettably Julie sees no end in sight in the increased demand on their services as the so called "benefit reforms" are bearing down on those in real need and making them suffer more and more. It it an obscenity that we have such poverty amid plenty and that such poverty is exacerbated by a a benefit system that is putting the squeeze on those least able to cope.

The Food Bank is of course non political and those who run it express no opinion - they just do a great job helping those who are often desperately in need. But for many its very existence is a political issue that needs a political solution.

For me this is one of the strongest arguments for independence - the creation of a country and a system which does not demonise and victimise those most in need but which supports and assists them. Presently Scotland has no power over benefits or taxation at all, and without such powers we cannot make a real and permanent difference.

At a debate in Dunoon ten days ago the Lib Dem MP for Argyll & Bute asserted that "only 1% of people use the Bute Food Bank" as if that vanquished my expressed concerns. But whilst 1% are driven to rely on food banks - the 1% who are the poorest , the most in need, the disabled - then we cannot call ourselves a just society.

We could. we should and we must do better.