AS the holiday period ends like so many others across Scotland MSPs are now heading back to their offices.

In our case this means getting back to Edinburgh to represent our constituencies and regions in the parliament, both in our committees and in the Chamber.

During Christmas I had a chance to reflect on my first nine months as a parliamentarian and some of the satisfactory moments I’ve had, like helping a constituent bring his hospital appointment waiting time down from 19 months to just one.

2017 has a lot in store for us. We’ll enter into new negotiations with the EU and form a new relationship with Europe, one that involves us regaining control of our waters and start to revive the once great fishing industry on Scotland’s western shores.

We will also be voting on the Scottish Government’s first budget of this parliamentary term. Unfortunately, the SNP have chosen a tax policy that places the burden on working families and have decided to dramatically cut local council budgets, starving our public services.

Despite the UK Government actually increasing funding for Scotland, every local authority in Scotland is sitting down right now and working out where the local cuts will lie on the back off their grants being reduced.

The “blame Westminster” game is over. The SNP asked for more powers to tackle poverty, but are none too keen to use them.

I firmly believe that job creation is the best way out of poverty.

Increasing rates in Bands E+F in council tax, not passing on tax cuts for middle earners that the UK Government introduced and higher large business rates in Scotland than the rest of the UK are putting us at a competitive disadvantage.

In times of uncertainty, the only thing the SNP seem to want to talk about is the continued threat of another independence referendum.

The First Minister has said it won’t be this year. Great. Why doesn’t she accept that it shouldn’t be any year? 2017 is the year to get on with the day job they were elected to do.