Since the election last May, Jim Parker has continued to fly the flag and smile the SSCUP smile on doorsteps (320 at the last count) all over Fife. He writes to local media and has letters and comments regularly printed. He reminds those he meets that our party, the SSCUP has not gone away, and actively encourages people to become members.

He believes that our defining policy, the one John was elected on five years ago, should remain central to our political objectives.Other policies are needed to offer unity of focus, but primarily the SSCUP was founded on getting a better pension for those in retirement.To date that has not happened, and Jim and others like him, will continue to canvass until it does becomes a reality.

Jim Parker is 69. He is married with four grown-up children. Educated at Freuchie Primary school and Bell-Baxter Senior Secondary School in Cupar, he went on to study at Heriot-Watt University.

He has spent fifty years working in the mining industry, 30 years with the National Coal Board as miner, surveyor and manager,and a further 20 years as Consultant Engineer providing technical and financial assistance to mining and civil engineering projects in the UK and overseas.
(Australia;Philippines;Indonesia;China;Nigeria;Canada)

"Although I retired four years ago, I am still involved in my longstanding wish to see a rejuvenated mining industry in Britain, especially Scotland. To that end I am the 'leading light' in a consortium of mineworkers and businessmen, which continues to work for the re-opening of several collieries in Fife and Lothians."

*There will be  more about Jim and his interest in the mining industry in our first SS CUP on-line magazine.