The video above explains why I am re-writing my book. However, before doing so, I wanted to allow you to read what was written as a first draft of the chapters. See below for Chapter One.
Politics engulfs the life of every citizen on planet Earth. However, most Scottish citizens need to learn the difference between social policies devolved to the Scottish Parliament and those reserved for Westminster. Furthermore, most citizens have yet to care or have given up hope in both parliaments.
17 April 2007—the year the journey started. I don’t regret joining the SNP in 2007. My second undergraduate degree, MSc, volunteering with Globel Vision International, and numerous memberships with third-sector organisations are directly inherent to my SNP membership. However, SNP membership is the primary reason I lack a professional identity. I joined the SNP because I believed in 2007, which I think is true now. Scotland should be an independent country. However, over the past seventeen years, I have realised that independence is for nothing if citizens are not empowered. If citizens lack hope, communities become nothing more than industrial, capitalist ghost towns with the sole purpose of serving only shareholders, with no regard for stakeholders. Then why rock the boat?
2014 was the year I decided to return to education and find employment in social policy (see chapters three and four, respectively). I have ten years of experience in social policy, but I need help finding paid employment, which lowers my professional identity. In any other field of employment, ten years would demand legitimacy and respect. However, citizens who are experts by experience, including myself, are provided legitimacy only when the Scottish government wants to bring forward a new act of parliament or strengthen an act that has become outdated. This process is unacceptable, unsustainable, and intolerable. The process of lived experience boards is a two-tier system—citizens who contribute to growth in society and citizens who are supported by growth in society. Note the oxymoron. Growth in the UK/Scottish economy has stalled. Cuts to vital services give that perception. Objectively, GDP growth has been steady. Steady growth results in budget cuts. Illogical? Undebatable, budget cuts lower capacity and resources. I argue, therefore, that citizens cannot be supported in improving their well-being because the state lacks the capacity and resources (see Chapter Seven).
Chapter four, Employment, outlines my contributions to lived experience boards since 2014. The pivot here is on two expected acts of the Scottish Government. The Human Rights Integration (Scotland) Act 2026 and the Learning Disability, Autism, Neurodiversity (LDAN) (Scotland) Act 2026. The latter I have little experience. However, the LDAN bill is essential on a personal level for two reasons. Reason one: I am altruistic, more so than most citizens. I care greatly about the well-being of all citizens and how social policy correlates with citizenship well-being. The essential point is that evidence highlights that autistic citizens are more caring than neurotypical citizens. Additionally, autistic citizens talk more in statements. I am not suggesting I am autistic. However, I was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma – a cancerous brain tumour – at the age of four. A reasonable conclusion is that my brain is not neurotypical. Take this book for example. I am conveying my reasons for lacking a subjective well-being premium – I feel underemployed, undervalued, and not given the legitimacy I deserve. I have, however, chosen to convey a personal grievance through societal content, social policy, and the well-being of others. Furthermore, Chapters one to six are written in statements. I write in statements – as if my subjective opinion is a fact.
My opinions are not facts. What is a point other than an opinion that has been given legitimacy via an act of parliament or agreed upon as a social norm? My second reason for having a vested interest in the LDAN Bill/Act is that the Scottish Government will legitimise both the Human Rights and LDAN Act by 2026. But is legitimacy not subjective? What if both Acts fail to secure dignity for rights holders? What then? Because rights holders in question are some of the most vulnerable citizens in society. I strongly suggest that despite the legal guarantees set out in the Human Rights Integration (Scotland) Act 2026, the most vulnerable citizens don’t have civil liberties or the resources or capacity to set up a civil disobedience movement to gain their civil rights, better known as dignity.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Admirable sentiment but a work of fiction. In 2024, human beings are not born free and equal in dignity or rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a work of fictional political philosophy. In philosophy terminology, the premise of Article 1 is false. Philosophical essays start with a conclusion and attempt to prove the conclusion by demonstrating that each premise is correct. For example:
Socrates has two eyes.
Humans have two eyes.
Socrates has two feet.
Humans have two feet.
Socrates has two hands.
Humans have two hands.
Socrates must be human.
There is no evidence to prove Socrates was anything more than writings in Plato’s journals. Perhaps that is why the Open University teaches it to undergraduates. The maxim, however, is a matter of place and path dependency. In Socrates’ time, the premises may have held. In contemporary Scotland, the assumption is as false as Article 1.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm for lived experience boards, I contribute to them for three reasons: 1. It keeps my skills ticking over. 2. I am networking for a purpose. 3. Peer-to-peer knowledge exchange can be a source of empowerment. When provided with the opportunity of sitting on the Scottish government’s human rights Lived experience board in 2022/23, I had to accept. However, I accepted because I wanted to listen and learn. If COVID-19 provided any valuable insight, the state failed the vulnerable rights holders not because of COVID-19 but because of an institutional design flaw. Chapter Five on the Social Enterprise/framework, Chapter Seven, discourse: What Society Missed, discusses possible mitigation methods.
Lived experience boards are designed to promote and develop acts of parliament or improve learning outcomes/frameworks. There is no debate. They achieve their desired outcome. Citizens/rights holders will have a subjective well-being premium for the board’s life cycle. The main reason for this subjective well-being premium is a sense of diversity, inclusion and belonging within the board. Rightsholders are placed on a pedestal, empowered by the belief of contributing to the government’s social policy. Concluding the board’s life cycle, however, the sense of belonging and empowerment has evaporated. Hope is replaced with anxiety. Altruism is replaced with egotistical thoughts. Thoughts like, was board membership the best opportunity cost? Can the board experience be used to find paid employment? The feeling of being back at the day job. The sense of being under-employed, under-valued, and unable to find a professional identity to satisfy a subjective void – the feeling of having zero legacies.
I dislike and admire lived experience boards equally, perhaps because I have too many expectations regarding my possible career prospects. Possibly, lived experience boards are a tool for achieving an outcome. Furthermore, citizens who are experts by experience are probably discarded as an afterthought on completion of the board, as citizens with lived experience were never endogenous to a system designed to produce an outcome. What gets measured gets done – that’s what they say in business schools. Well, I guess the well-being of rights holders is not measured.
Readers, please don’t get the wrong idea. This chapter is not about any objective grievance relating to lived experience boards. What I have said is entirely subjective. However, a colleague who sat on the People Powered Health and Well-being reference group echoes my opinions (see chapter four). There is also academic evidence provided by ‘Cool Music: A Bottom-up ‘Music Intervention for Hard-to-reach Young People in Scotland’, which shows short-term projects can result in well-being issues for staff and clients. To prevent misreading, I believe lived experience boards must be phased out and replaced by community councils and reference groups taking a more active role in community and citizen empowerment. My view that lived experience boards should be phased out is not a grievance. It is an opinion. It is far from a social norm. And my views were dismissed by the Scottish government’s social enterprise funding body.
What I write now will split readers’ opinions. However, it is too important an issue for it to go undocumented. Like rights holders—citizens of Scotland—who don’t have the resources and capacity to challenge the inequalities that prohibit dignity, the Scottish Government doesn’t have the resources or capacity to provide every citizen in Scotland with human rights/dignity. The objective evidence is clear and covered in detail in chapter seven. Subjectively, since 2014, I have worked directly and indirectly with the Scottish Government in some capacity. For the seven years before 2014, I was an active foot soldier for the SNP. I even went to vetting for candidacy for MSP. I am an idle supporter today because I became burnt out attempting to challenge/change the top-down institutional system from within a political system, a cornerstone of the institutional system itself. The focus of any society is on GDP growth. Goal eight of the UN SDGs is Decent Work and Economic Growth. GDP growth is an international aspiration. So economic growth should be. However, as Chapter Four shows, my paid employment lowers my subjective well-being/ dignity because I am unhappy with my professional identity. Membership of the SNP provided false hope. I believed my SNP colleagues and I could bring about a fairer, healthier Scotland. Perhaps evidence exists to show inequality has reduced in Scotland since 2007. However, it has not been reduced to the point where the most vulnerable rights holders feel empowered and have dignity. Do I think the Human Rights Integration (Scotland) Act 2026 will enable rights holders and provide dignity for every Scottish citizen? NO. No, I do not.
Thank you for reading and watching the video. If you have any questions, ask them in the comments box.
David M Howie 