My name is Alastair MacIntosh, I’m a writer, researcher, campaigner, and I live in Govan in Glasgow, in the Drumoyne area which you see from my window here. And what I'm holding up is an object, it’s something that was given to me by a man called Bernie White, one of those Glasgow men who died in his mid-life.

I don’t know what happened to him, but, he passed away, but he was a metal worker and he gave me this and he said it was an Oscar for speaking out.

Well, I only speak what folks share with me and in 2011 when the Poverty Truth Commission issued its first report of findings after having been started in 2009 by a group of people from disadvantaged communities in Glasgow who testified on poverty in front of 400 people, these are the words that I spoke for the report:

Remember that truth is an active power for change.

If we don't face truth, and truths, we will never see what the problems are

Never know what the vision for better world could be

Never set a course to nourish fundamental human needs in ourselves and one another

Truth brings from the sharing of community with one another

It is seeking that which gives life

Life as love made manifest

And I share those words in fond memories of Bernie White, and many others like him, who poverty in its many forms took before his time.