THE FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon will be among those paying tribute at a memorial service for motor neurone disease patient and campaigner, Gordon Aikman today (Saturday).
The former policy boss at the Better Together campaign, who was diagnosed with the disease two years ago at the age of 29, will be laid to rest at a funeral held at Warriston Crematorium, Edinburgh before the service at The Hub.
The Edinburgh-based campaigner formed the Gordon’s Fightback campaign following his diagnosis, and successfully lobbied the First Minister to double the number of MND nurses and fund them through the NHS, as well as raising more than £500,000 for research.
His husband Joe Pike will be joined by Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale and former Chancellor Alistair Darling in paying tributes to Aikman at a memorial held at The Hub in the capital.
Instead of flowers, his family has asked that donations be made to GordonsFightback.com to help support Gordon’s efforts to fund a cure for Motor Neurone Disease
.
Speaking ahead of the day, Gordon’s husband Joe Pike said: “Saying goodbye to Gordon is so painful. But today is also about saying thank you: celebrating everything he achieved. And remembering his energy and passion, but also his kindness, generosity, and Gordon's love of life.
"Even when he was dying, Gordon taught me and so many others how to live, to be true to ourselves, and to fight to make things that little bit better for those who follow.”
Aikman, a former Scottish Labour party staffer, received a British Empire Medal in the Queen’s birthday honours in 2015 and an honorary doctorate from th e University of Edinburgh in the same year for his work to transform care for people with MND and his efforts to find a cure.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here