Dear Loki,

Away from social media, you don't know me. I live in Peterhead. I'm not sure if you've ever been here. It's where the Tories recently scrapped a major carbon capture storage scheme that my new home town was bidding for. That project would have brought highly skilled jobs that people with energy sector experience may have been keen to apply for. If we consider the supply chain, the north east might have seen up to 600 new jobs. At a time when the oil industry faces difficulties, it would have been a lifeline. Instead, it's been scrapped.

I haven't always lived in Peterhead. As I was to be a double breech baby my mum was flown from Uist to Glasgow's Southern General. It was a difficult and unusual birth. My mum says the room was fully packed out. For a young woman's first child to be born in a strange city, in a room full of doctors, it must have been an intimidating experience.

Within a few days I was transferred to Yorkhill. I was born with several joint contractures, a dislocated hip and a clubfoot. As a new born, my first items of clothing were leg splints. As my disability was somewhat unknown in the early 1980s, doctors informed my mum that her son was unlikely to walk and that numerous surgeries and years of physiotherapy lay ahead of me. My disability's Sunday name is Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congentia.

I first went under the knife when I was two. A metal plate stabilised my hip and my ankles, which were initially locked at 120 degrees, were permanently fused at a 90 degree angle. Up until this point, my mobility was limited to dragging my bum across the floor to get from A to B. As part of the recovery process, my dad would entice me to try walking by dangling a bell above my head. This was the first time I learned to walk.

Over the next three years, I underwent a lot of surgery. Doctors attempted to straighten my clubfoot and extend muscle tissues in my left knee. Months in plaster cast followed by physiotherapy followed. I had to learn how to walk all over again, but this time wearing metal leg braces and bespoke shoes.

I had to learn how to walk for a third time after several months in a half-body cast and using a wheelchair for nine months following major surgery in my early teens. Physio was horrendous. I was older this time so can remember how painful it was. Nearly a year of home schooling resulted in a loss of confidence which haunted my early teenage years. Transport in Dunoon was inaccessible and my parents were busy working. While my pals were meeting up to play football on the other side of town, I was stuck at home playing computer games or watching TV.

That all changed when I turned 16. As a disabled person receiving higher rate mobility, I was one of the first of my peers to start driving. My Motability car was the first instrument that set me on the path towards independent living. Confidence slowly returned. I attended university and went on to help create a new business which now employs nearly 20 people.

Then came that referendum. I, like you, am one of those things the Yes movement vomited up in 2014. I joined the SNP in August 2014, one month before the referendum. I made a decision at that point, that no matter the result, I wanted to play my part in changing our country for the better. As part of this process, I founded a cross-party campaign that addresses the underrepresentation of disabled people in politics by challenging the barriers we face.

I know you're aware that politics in Scotland has changed dramatically in the past two years. In many ways, it has grown up. On both sides of the independence debate, there are voices from across the political spectrum being given airtime and credibility which was once functionally denied to all but a decadent Labour establishment. It's a strong word, but there has been a revolution - both in terms of the viewpoints available to the wider public, and in the mechanisms utilised to deliver them.

The SNP is the party whose political agenda comes closest to what I would personally seek from a modern country. It boasts a record of achievement over the past decade all of its own making - and yes, maintaining universal services which have been privatised elsewhere is an achievement. Whether it be mitigating the bedroom tax or continuing the independent living fund, which was scrapped by the Tories south of the border, as a disabled person I know that the SNP fights from the corner of fairness and dignity. That's what I want and that's why I will be giving them both my votes.

The party is, by definition, a broad coalition. It includes people who in other countries would be firmly centre-right, and many who would consider themselves centre-left. What they share, however, is a desire to see Scotland's interests protected. With the SNP, you know what you'll get, and that's vigorous representation of Scotland's interests, unimpeded by any desire to win votes in the south-east of England. It's that unequivocal commitment that trumps the other parties - who, fairly or unfairly, are perceived as having too many fingers in other pies.

In Peterhead, where I now work, the fishing industry has a long memory, and the fact that the industry was thrown under a bus during the UK's EU entry negotiations tempers any consideration of the merits or otherwise of a Conservative government. Labour has never cared for the north east outside of Aberdeen and the Lib Dems are tainted heavily by their participation in the Coalition.

No party is perfect. I want to see the fracking moratorium become an outright ban, I want our system of local taxation to include land valuation. I don't want my taxes spent on nuclear weapons or an unelected second chamber. Every voter will find varying degrees of agreement with some of their party's positions. There will inevitably be positions I will disagree with. That's not contortion - that's realpolitik.

What the SNP has done successfully is work out where most Scottish voters sit; and that's somewhere to the left of centre. It's an electorate that appreciates its universal services, and believes in fairness towards the less fortunate. It's also an electorate which appreciates the merits of moderate taxation. Insofar as the SNP can be considered a party of the left, it's a reflection of the fact that politics in the rest of the UK have moved decisively to the right in the last forty years.

Many have painted the election as a foregone conclusion. It isn't. The SNP could, quite conceivably, fail to win an outright majority. The Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems could form a three way 'Grand Coalition', and push through the kind of policies that would be anathema to many north of the border. Re-introduce tuition fees, abolish free prescriptions and free public transport for the elderly. Ruth could conceivably be in charge, and we'd be relying on the good graces of Labour and the Liberals to temper her worst impulses. We've been there, done that.

When I see a UK Government that only 15% of Scotland's electorate voted for trying to redefine disability, and in so doing remove the support that enables me to live independently, I hope you appreciate why I want Scotland to return an SNP government.

We both aspire to a better country. We come from the same Scotland.

Best wishes,

Jamie Szymkowiak

Comment by Jamie Szymkowiak. Jamie is a disability rights activist, former business owner, current staffer to the SNP's Westminster social justice & welfare spokesperson. He is founder of the One in Five campaign. More info on One in Five can be found here oneinfive.scot.