This week, Scotland will be going to the polls, it’s election time and we will be heading to the polling station, that’s the place where we vote, to cast our vote for candidates and political parties to represent us in the Scottish Parliament. I want to tell you a little about how our government works.  You may be wondering what I’m talking about, after all Scotland is part of the United Kingdom so is there a different parliament? Well, since 1999 we have had our own Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. The head of the government is our First Minister and the Scottish parliament is where issues relating to Scotland are discussed and laws are made.  I think the system in the UK is kind of complicated but I’ll try to explain how it works.  Before I get into that I should say that Scotland had its own parliament from the 13th century till 1707 when the act of Union came into force and Scotland became part of the United Kingdom. So from that time until 1999 we did not have a parliament in Scotland at all. Well, the key concept is devolution, devolution is about transferring power from central government to local or regional governments. So in the UK, as you may know, we have the House of Commons in London which is the Central Government, often referred to as Westminster but we also have regional governments, called devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Different areas are handled by the devolved governments, for example, The Scottish Government, often referred to as Holyrood, can make laws regarding various matters concerning Scotland including education, health and transport.  These are called devolved matters. So for example, during the pandemic we and the other nations within the UK  have had slightly different rules on COVID restrictions and this is because health is a devolved issue. The Westminster parliament handles UK wide issues, issues affecting all 4 nations, such as Foreign policy, international trade, immigration and defence and these are called reserved matters.  Devolved administrations may have their own views on these but they cannot make their own laws regarding them at present. At Westminster we each have 1 elected representative we can raise issues with depending on which area we live in, these elected officials are called Members of Parliament or MPs for short.  So if I have for example an international trade related query, I can meet with my MP as this is a matter reserved for Westminster. However, if I have a query related to Education then I would meet with my MSP  because this is a devolved matter.  The difference is that where I have only 1 MP there are actually 8 MSPs I can raise my issue with! That’s because the voting system is a bit different here.  When we go to vote this week, we cast 2 votes.  1 is for a constituency MSP and the other vote is usually for a political party.  Constituency means local area and in Scotland we have 73 constituency MSPs  Votes are counted and the candidate with the highest number of votes within that constituency becomes the constituency MSP.  This is called the first past the post system. However the 2nd vote is for a party and this is calculated in a slightly different way, depending on the number of votes received, each party is allocated regional seats within a larger area.  This is a proportional system,this results in everyone in Scotland having access to 1 constituency MSP and 7 regional MSPs and you can choose who to go and speak to but if you do want to raise an issue it means you can be quite strategic about it, you can either raise it with the party you feel most closely aligned to or you can raise it with the party that cares most about that particular issue. Or you can hedge your bets and do both! A definite advantage if you wish to have your voice heard on an issue.  Thanks for listening, see you next time.