On the weekend of the 6th and 7th of September, NA's MSYP's Member made their way to Hamilton, South Lanarkshire for the Scottish Youth Parliament’s (SYP) Autumn National Sitting.

Around 100 young people from across Scotland attended the first National Sitting of the 2008/9 session.

As we arrived and received our agenda for the weekend we were intrigued to find out what the 10am ‘Wake Up Call’ slot had in store. As we entered South Lanarkshire Council’s impressive headquarters we were greeted by two rather loud pipers. How the Queen copes with this in the morning I will never know!

After a short welcome from SYP’s Chair, Kieran Collins, South Lanarkshire Councils Spokesperson for Young People, Councillor Jackie Burns and Danny McGill of South Lanarkshire Youth Council, the council chambers was transformed into a courtroom, complete with a rather unusual looking judge. This strange transformation was to provide the backdrop for a presentation and debate on the Youth Offending Framework. Gary Westwater of a group called Includem, who work with 300 young offenders across Scotland but particularly at Polmont Young Offenders Institution, started his presentation by stating the shocking fact that Scotland locks up more young people than any other country in Europe. He then gave reasons for why young people break the law including anti-social peers, social and economic factors and social exclusion including exclusion from school. He said that the main thing Includem tries to do is improve the trust and respect that young offenders have for adults, particularly their parents. After this informative presentation there was a long debate on how best to help young offenders and try to stop young people offending in the first place. The overall consensus was that young people need to regain pride in their community and environment and the media need to try and improve the image of young people by focussing on the positive aspects of youth culture rather than the negatives.

Following a short break Kris Sinclair MSYP for Paisley South proposed the motion that ‘the SYP should get more involved in addressing knife crime in Scotland.’ We were then informed that the number of knife crimes in Scotland are actually dropping but the number of young people involved in knife crime is rising. A short debate on knife crime and whether we should get more involved ensued followed by a vote on the motion which was passed with 66% of MSYP’s voting yes, 22% voting no and 12% abstaining.

Following this was a number of presentations by innovative projects across South Lanarkshire. These included ‘Youthbike’, which is a group which teaches young people about motorbikes. They are shown how to maintain them, paint them and construct them. Each year this group competes in a competition in Lincoln where they show off the bikes they have created and last year ‘Youthbike’ won the competition.

One other group was ‘Core Connex’ which is a group which focuses on multimedia projects such as web design, making films and creating social networking sites. These projects are all aimed at young people who are interested in being creative and working with computers.

Shortly after this the meeting was closed for the day and arrangements were made to visit the Universal Connections Centre in East Kilbride. This is a busy youth centre in East Kilbride town centre. A meal and entertainment was provided as well as tours of the facilities.

Sunday was again filled with debates, votes and presentations. The first of which was a ‘Micro-debate’ on the motion, ‘Should all leisure activities be free for all young people in Scotland?’ Interestingly, 56% voted no to this motion with 33% voting yes and 11% abstaining.

The second presentation was the Rural Schools Consultation. This was basically weighing up the options of the Government’s Rural Schools Bill and creating some kind of response to this bill. The debate was

Last Saturday , 10th of May, Scott McMurray MSYP, Erin Mackenzie of North Ayrshire Youth Council and Aimee Middleton of Arran Youth Forum took part in the Transport, Environment & Rural Affairs committee campaign day. It took place on Arran outside the Co-op supermarket in Brodick where signatures were collected to join a national petition to get Free Travel For Under 25's. On the day we collected around 300 signatures.
Today, 20th of May, Laura McCulloch went to Greenwood Academy to continue the petition and collected another 100 signatures.
Throughout Scotland we have already collected over 1000 signatures and with ours on top it will bring us much closer to our target of 2000 signatures!!!

If you want to find out more Scott will be on WestSound tommorrow morning!

The Lamlash Youth Centre on the Isle Of Arran is due to be demolished without a suitable replacement being provided. There is now an online petition to keep this vital facility. It would be really helpful if everyone can sign the petition especially if they use the centre.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/t...

Thanks