Eun's son's petition - Please sign - Fight for respite

[rosemary]

I was going to add this earlier but got called away

Dear Friends,

Great news! It appears that the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign are now really behind the campaign! I recieved an email from Nic Bungay, the Director of Campaigns at the MDC, and this is what he said]http://you.38degrees.org.uk/p/adultrespite[/url]



Thanks everyone for your continued support!

Robert Watson

[Eun]

Thanks Rosemary for putting this up - I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

Eun

[Myrtle]

Excellent news Eun

[Eun]

Robert is having a Young Adult Council meeting on Monday at Robin House and Jackie Baillie MSP will be in attendance. She expressed an interest in helping with the campaign before the summer recess and this is her following up on that interest so we'll see how it goes. Pardon me for being so cynical but words are cheap and free - its action we need. Robert is due to be going to Rachel House on that day so the staff have agreed to take him for us, so that will save us a journey.

Eun.

[rosemary]

Keep us posted Eun

x x

[Eun]

We are going to be busy, busy, busy as a result of Rob's campaign. We're going to a meeting in the Grand Hotel in Glasgow on Saturday where the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign are going to discuss the issue of lack of respite for young adults. Going to a meeting in Dumbarton on Monday to discuss the petition Robert is raising with the Scottish Parliament and then we will be going to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh where Rob will be appearing in front of a Parliamentary Committee to raise the profile. Jackie Baillie and one of the SNP guys are going to work together to help the boys (or young men I should say). One issue we have is that we need to think of a name for the Campaign and can't come up with one. Rob was going to post on Facebook to see if anyone can come with any ideas. Just wanted to keep everybody up to date with what is happening.

Eun

[Lazydaisy]

Good luck Eun. I am sure someone will come up with a good name for the campaign.

[rosemary]

Update

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I have some positive news to report regarding the campaign for adult respite!

Myself along with a few other young adults recently managed to have a meeting with the high-profile Labour MSP Jackie Baillie. Ms Baillie is already involved with the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign as she helps organise the Cross Party Group meetings on MD that are held at the Scottish Parliament every so often, and she had already pledged her support for this campaign, but for her to come along to speak to a group of us shows that she really means what she said. She genuinely seems to want to help us, she gave us lots of useful information on how we can take the campaign to the next level. She has also agreed to work together on this issue with Jim Eadie who is an SNP MSP, so its great to see that they are willing to put their political party affiliations to one side in order to help support us with this vitally important campaign.

Ms Baillie says that the next step has to be to get me to Parliament to speak about this issue in front of the MSPs and present the petition to them so that they can all hear and see how vital this issue is, and this would also get the media involved because this would be a big news story for them to report on. She says she will make sure that this issue gets chosen to be debated at parliament so that I can present it, so now the ball has begun rolling, it wont be long before I will be heading to parliament with the petition signatures in hand.

Of course I wouldn't be a very powerful force all by myself. Although I will be doing the actual presentation to the MSPs, on the day we would want to get as many of us young adults and our families and supporters as possible to come along to the Scottish Parliament so that we could gather outside and show the Government just how much this issue means to us, and with the media involved this would really make us a much more powerful voice, which the Government will find very difficult to ignore.

We are now reaching the most important stage of the campaign so far then. When I present the petition to the Scottish Parliament the higher the number of signatures I have to show to the politicians the better, because its the only way the politicians will realise just how important an issue this is for so many people across the country, not just for one small group of disabled young adults.

So I need to ask each and every one of you to help give this petition another big push, I know we can do it because you have all responded brilliantly each time I have asked you to. So if you know anyone with a UK postcode who hasnt already signed the petition, please direct them to the following link and ask them to sign it]http://you.38degrees.org.uk/p/adultrespite[/url]

If you see people in person, talk to them on Facebook or Twitter, or send them an email to ask them to sign and share the petition... whatever method you can think of, as long as we can spread the word far and wide thats all that matters.

Thank you so much everyone for your continued support!



Robert

[Eun]

We are going to the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign's Annual Scottish conference at the Boardmore Hotel in Clydebank tomorrow afternoon where Rob will be giving a Powerpoint presentation on his petition and the respite campaign - he's been working on his speech for days so heres hoping it goes ok.

Eun

[Scally]

We are going to the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign's Annual Scottish conference at the Boardmore Hotel in Clydebank tomorrow afternoon where Rob will be giving a Powerpoint presentation on his petition and the respite campaign - he's been working on his speech for days so heres hoping it goes ok.

Eun

Good luck!