If you live in the Aberdeenshire area there is a new Aberdeen branch.

East Lothian has also been formed.

Congratulations and welcome to these groups of activists are due.

The Tay Coast branch covers North East Fife including Cupar and St. Andrews.

Go to taycoastssp.blogspot.com/ for more info.

We have been running this site for two years and it’s time for our first reader survey.

At the left hand side there are two polls, one asking why you visited the site and the other asking how you found us.

We would also like to know a bit about the direction our readers and supporters want the site to go. What do you think about the level of coverage of what we write about:

• Dundee SSP
• SSP nationally
• SSP in other areas
• local news
• national news
• international news

Do you want to see anything we are missing, should we have interviews? Do you want to send us readers letters about politics.

So far the use of the site has been pretty one way, we have posted stuff and loads of you have read it. Is there a reason barely anyone comments? Is the comment system hard to use (in which case contact us another way!)? is it because we are always right (unlikely)? Is it because you found us searching for some random phrase? We would like to know as we would prefer this to be a two way communication tool – that’s why we chose a blog for our site and unlike other local political parties, have left the comments open.

Please use the comments to let us know what you think. We have a couple of ideas for things to do already but want to get some reader feedback first before we decide what direction to go with them.

SSY fights alongside the SSP, Scotland’s Socialist Party to build a movement that will defend young people and create a future for them worth fighting for. If you agree with what we’ve said – or even just most of it! – then join SSY and help us fight against poverty and war, or leave the blog a few comments/give us love on bebo

The full story of Israel and Palestine has very little to do with Qassam Rockets fired from Gaza into Sderot as the Cartoon Papers would have us believe. The current crisis, does not have its roots in the election of Hamas in the Municipal Elections of 2005 as some of the so-called Quality Press would have us believe, certainly not in the conflict between Hamas and Fatah. This current crisis is the latest stage in an old conflict, a conflict that reaches way back, passed the Second Intifada and the First Intifada in the eighties, passed the Yom Kippur War in the 70’s, passed the six-day war in 1967 and the infamous United Nations Resolution 242. It reaches passed the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, passed the incompetent and disastrous Post WW1 British Mandate, destructive as it was. The roots of this conflict, this death and this destruction, including the bombing today of a UN run school only today, stretch way back before any of us were even born, right back to an idea that festered in the latter half of a 19th Century Europe plagued by an unspeakable anti-semitism.

Follow the link to read the entire article.

A number of people opted to go and they have set up a blog detailing the arrangement of the trip, and I imagine afterwards details of what they did.

They are planning on taking across a number of items as gift packs for people/groups they meet about the SSP and Scotland. One item that was sought after was some Burns poems in Spanish. Eventually Gerry managed to track down To a Mouse and A red red rose.