SIXTEEN-year-old Ross Pigott became the SNP’s 116,000th member yesterday. The Erskine teenager’s membership means more than 90,000 people have joined the party since the referendum in 2014.
SNP strategist Ross Colquhoun tweeted that around one in 45 people in Scotland were now members of the party.
Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon told an audience of businesswomen that Scotland would only reach its “full potential” when the “glass ceiling has been firmly broken”.
The SNP leader was outlining her party’s plans on business and the economy at the event in Glasgow yesterday, telling the women her government would back competitive business rates, and major investment in infrastructure.
“If we want to see more people in Scotland paid the Living Wage, if we want our workforce to be more representative with more roles for women, and if we want more business investment in internationalisation and innovation, then government and business need to work with a shared purpose,” she said.
“We will only reach our full potential when we are truly inclusive – when everyone has an equal opportunity to fulfill their ambitions and when the glass ceiling has been firmly broken.”
In other campaign news, the UK’s only Green MP was up in Scotland to help her colleagues north of the Border. Caroline Lucas said fracking would be “a decisive issue” at the election, and criticised the SNP’s “mealy-mouthed moratorium”.
Speaking at an anti-fracking protest in Falkirk, Lucas said: “I think fracking could well be a decisive issue for many people when they come to cast their vote, and when they look at it they will see the Greens have been opposed to fracking from the beginning.
“We haven’t got just a slightly mealy-mouthed moratorium, we haven’t got people who have just come to a ban late in the day."
Labour leader Kezia Dugdale was taking in the North East constituency with visits to Aberdeen and Arbroath where she tried her hand at making a smokie.
Labour used the day to talk about their plans to solve Scotland’s housing crisis.
"Labour will build a minimum of 60,000 affordable homes over the next five years, 45,000 of which will be council or housing association homes,” Dugdale said.
“That’s the figure that industry experts and housing charities tell us we should be aiming for and it will begin to tackle Scotland’s housing crisis. Independent experts say that will sustain nearly 50,000 jobs.”
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