A week is a long time in blogging

Blogging hiatus for the last week as I've been up in Aberdeenshire with the boss and relaxing over the bank holiday weekend so have been away from the net for much of that time. (The photo is of part of the 17,000 acre estate we visited)

Whats happened since I last blogged? Well there has been a round of local elections in England & Wales where Labour got absolutely trashed by the electorate across the board, Tories had a fantastic night and we had a better than expected night ending up with a net gain of 30 odd seats - personally I'd been expecting a loss of anywhere up to 100. Londoners have shown themselves to be political plonkers by electing Boris "blethering idiot" Johnstone as their Mayor and putting a fascist scumbag into their Londim Assembly in the shape of a BNP member. Ken wasn't worthy of re-election but I was very disappointed that the stand out best candidate, Brian Paddick, came 3rd.

On the fitba front Rangers made it to the UEFA cup final in Manchester whilst Manchester United and Chelsea made it to the Champions League final in Moscow - wonder if Abramovich manages to turn up to that one? sadly Irvine Meadow lost two nil away to Pollock which put our title hopes in serious jeopardy :(

Up here in Scotland wee Wendy has done a scorching U-turn on the question of an independence question in a constitutional referendum. Time for our Scottish Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen to also have a change in heart methinks. It is well worth remembering that our Scottish Conference has not debated this position and that the Leader announced the policy off his own bat during last year's election campaign. Methinks I feel a conference motion coming on.

Other news: a crane collapsed at the BAE systems shipyard in Govan this morning causing damage but fortunately no serious casualties; A typhoon in Burma has killed thousand and made hundreds of thousands more homeless, thankfully however, the Junta has said that it will accept assistance from international aid organisations; It would seem that our "Big Brother" state of millions of CCTV cameras has failed to cut crime - no surprise there then. Obama and Clinto are still going head-to-head in Indiana and North Carolina - go Barack go!

Finally the Labour whips in the Commons have failed to suitably honour the memory of Gwyneth Dunwoody MP, the recently deceased member for Crewe & Nantwich, by calling the by-election even before her funeral. Very, very distasteful sharp practice.

Eck in fantasyland

Eck Salmond heid honcho of the Gnats seems to be living in fantasyland if he believes that they can gain at least an extra 14 seats at the next Westminster election. Reasons? Well at the 2005 Westminster election the Gnats won 6 seats and came 2nd in 20. Two of their held seats Perth & North Perthshire and Angus are held by a small majority (Perth 1521, Angus 1601) and are vulnerable to folk voting Tory to oust the Gnat type tactical voting.

Lets have a look at the 20 seats where they are second:
Airdrie & Shotts. Labour majority 14 o84. Swing required 21.2%.
Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill. Labour majority 19 519. Swing required 25.5%.
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East. Labour majority 11 562. Swing required 14.8%.
Dundee West. Labour majority 5 379. Swing required 7.3%.
East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow. Labour majority 14 723. Swing required 15.4%.
Falkirk. Labour majority 13 475. Swing required 14.7%.
Glasgow East. Labour majority 13 507. Swing required 21.8%.
Glasgow North East (Speaker). Speaker majority 10 134. Swing required 17.8%.
Glasgow South West. Labour majority 13 896. Swing required 22.4%.
Glenrothes. Labour majority 10 664. Swing required 14.3%.
Inverclyde. Labour majority 11 259. Swing required 15.6%.
Kilmarnock & Loudon. Labour majority 8 703. Swing required 9.8%.
Kircaldy & Cowdenbeath. Labour majority 18 216. Swing required 21.8%.
Lanark & Hamilton East. Labour majority 11 947. Swing required 13.7%.
Linlithgow & East Falkirk. Labour majority 11 202. 12%.
Livingston. Labour majority 13 097. Swing required 14.8%.
Motherwell & Wishaw. Labour majority 15 222. Swing required 20.5%.
Ochil & South Perthshire. Labour majority 688. Swing required 0.735%.
Paisley & Renfrewshire North. Labour majority 11 001. Swing required 13.5%.
West Dunbartonshire. Labour majority 12 553. Swing required 15.1%.

As they borrowed two seats from us at last year's Holyrood elections they must be added as Westminster targets too:
Argyll & Bute. Lib Dem majority over Gnats (4th) 9 070. Swing required 10.5%.
Gordon. Lib Dem majority over Gnats (4th) 12 910. Swing required 14.5%.

In a YouGov opinion poll which was published on the 8th of April voting intentions in Scotland were listed as Labour 35% Gnat 31%. Bearing in mind that Labour polled 38.9% and the Gnats 17.7% at the last Westminster election this shows that the Gnats have achieved a swing of 8.6% since then. This would mean that of their Labour target seats they would win Ochil & South Perthshire, Dundee West and be quite close to (but no coconut) Kilmarnock & Loudon. Say they also win one seat from us but lose one of their holds to the Tories, then they would have a grand total of 8 Westminster seats. A far, far cry from the 20 that Eck wants - does the man's arrogance and smugness have no end?

Being slightly less controversial, I would argue that voters tend to punish an unpopular government with whatever club available. This in Scotland could see us taking Aberdeen South, Edinburgh South, Edinburgh North & Leith and Glasgow North with the Tories possibly taking Dumfries & Galloway, East Renfrewshire, Edinburgh South West & Stirling. Of course this will only happen if the current Government continue with their lack of popularity and remember that Broon will probably, given our current political landscape, continue until 2010. The Gnats also need to remember that people vote differently when voting for Westminster than they do for Holyrood.

We shouldn't get our kilts in a twist

I see that some sections of the Scottish meeja are getting all steamed up about the English Democrats posters which are supposedly insulting to Scots and allegedly racist. Quick frankly I see it as a quite amusing attempt, by a fringe party and it's candidate for London Mayor, to gain free publicity. What they quite conveniently do forget is that London and Londoners are hugely subsidised by the rest of the UK and, of course, think the world revolves round London - it doesn't!

Hurrah! Zanu-PF lose majority in Zimbabwe's Parliament

The BBC new has just published news that the Zimbabwe Election Commission has announced that Zanu-PF have "won" 94 seats with the opposition parties winning 105 and 1 Independent being elected. There are 207 seats in total in the Parliament. The true scale of the Zanu-PF defeat may have been greater if there were no irregularities in the counting process.

Now all we need is the true results of the Presidential election to be declared although the way things are looking at the moment it seems to be heading for a run-off between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC.

The MDC themselves announced figures collated from information posted at polling stations which suggested that the presidential result was:
Tsvangirai 50.3%
Mugabe 43.7%
Makoni 7%

Hopefully Mugabe will do the decent thing and walk away after all he's plundered the resource of a country, which was once described as Africa's breadbasket, for 28 years now. Indeed it has gone from breadbasket to economic basket case.

Almost scared to believe Barack can do it

Great news for those of us who think Barack Obama is a strong voice for change in the USA and subsequently the rest of the world. He has won Hawaii, as expected - being born there, with 76% of the vote. The greater excitement is that he also won Wisconsin, beating Clinton by 58% to 41%. According to the BBC he now has 1319 delegates to Hilary's 1245, these being delegates won in elections and not "Superdelegates".

It is also cheering that barack has made great inroads in the traditional "lunch pail" working class Democrats and polled equally with Hilary amongst white women, both traditional heartland voters for Hilary. As usual he ran away with the youth vote and, according to exit polls, 6 out of 10 "Independent" voters backed Barack. This Wisconsin win is even more astonishing given that according to polls Hilary was ahead just a week ago, Barack certainly seems to have the "Big Mo".

The campaigns have moved on to Texas and Ohio where Hilary has to win at least one to truly stay in contention. She had been holding a huge lead in Texas, with it's high proportion of Hispanic voters - normally a strong Clinton constituency, but the latest poll shows Clinton on 50% and Obama on 48%. With the margin of error this means that at the moment it is a statistical dead heat.

In the latest Ohio polls the Clinton lead as dropped from it's highest of 29% to 9%.

Recent US wide polls have suggested that Obama would beat McCain but Clinton would lose to him.

Scots Lib Dems inadvertantly censored this blog

As I'm sure you'll all be fed up hearing by now, I recently was in an election to become a Vice Convener of the Scottish Lib Dems.

The rules of engagement state that "no candidate nor any supporter may publish or circulate any material promoting his/her election. This prohibition includes the production of badges, posters, stickers, audio-visual or similar publicity material and any form of mechanical production (including photocopies or carbon copies) or any written material."

I rather suspected that before mentioning my Candidacy on here I should check with the Returning Officer. I duly did so and received a decision that a blog would fall into the rules above. Hence the reason that nowt has been blogged about the election before Friday's declaration.

I would strongly suggest to my fellow Scottish Lib Dems that we need to change these archaic rules before there are any other internal elections contested. It is not very Liberal to censor people, even when it's done accidentally.

Scottish Lib Dem Office Bearers 2008-2009

Further to my earlier post here are the full details of the Scottish Liberal Democrats Office Bearers who shall serve their term from the 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2009.

Leader: Nicol Stephen MSP (re-elected unopposed)

Deputy Leader: Michael Moore MP (re-elected unopposed)

President: Malcolm Bruce MP (re-elected unopposed)

Convener: Audrey Findlay (beat Helen Watt by 758 to 425)

Treasurer: Brian Logan (beat Patricia Carruthers (Catherine's Mum) by 633 to 533)

Vice Convener (Policy): Siobhan Mathers (elected unopposed)

Vice Convener (Campaigns & Candidates): Stephen Peters (elected unopposed)

Vice Convener (Conference): Iain Dale (beat Sheila Ritchie by 592 to 586)

I'm looking forward to serving my term of office and working with the other Office Bearers to improve the standing of the party in Scotland and to see our party become bigger, better and more radical.
many thanks to all who voted for me and sincere commiserations to Sheila Ritchie on losing by such a small margin. As I think Wellington said it was " a dammed close run thing".

I Won! (by 6 votes on the second recount)

Dale 592
Ritchie 586

As of the 1st of January 2008 I shall be an Office Bearer of the Scottish Liberal Democrats & shall discharge my duty with due diligence. Many thanks to all who voted for me and I promise to implement the manifesto on which I stood. More to follow..........

Elections bleeding elections

By the end of the year I'll have taken participated in Local Government elections, Scottish Parliament elections (Constituency & Regional list), 3 internal Scottish Party elections, European list selection and Leadership election. At least Broon bottled it so that wasn't yet one more. All this democracy takes it out of you after a while!

Oh well, life goes on

I didn't get elected to North Ayrshire Council. Bugger, blast, damnation and f**c!!!
Actually not - Catherine missed out in the Carse of Gowrie too (she on the 5th count and me on the 7th), we both hit the woodwork. No gloating Mr Dale of the Tory persuasion. Well I shall allow you a small gloat on the basis that it was a Tory who nipped in ahead of me for the 4th seat in the new multi-member ward although the Tory group went down from 5 to 3.

I'm disappointed of course, but the fact that we both lost means that we can actually start to plan a future together rather than spending most of our time 90 miles apart. No rush, no hurry but we have plans.

The really good news, however, is that Ruby got elected in Irvine East and Andrew in Kilwinning. I'm over the proverbial moon for them especially as they are the first Liberals elected in Irvine & Kilwinning for over 60 years - yes we made the breakthough which we have worked bloody hard to achieve. I know that they will be a credit to our party and excellent Councilors. Well done!

I would also like to thank everyone who voted for me in Irvine West and assure them that the Focus leaflets will still keep coming. My thanks also go to the 1977 people who voted for me as their MSP. This is a rise of just under 2% from last time, which was pleasing on a night which didn't go the way we hoped.

Jim Hume was elected as a South of Scotland list MSP and I'm really confident that Jim will be an excellent Parliamentarian and a first class standard bearer for Liberal Democracy across the whole of the South of Scotland.

When I returned home in 1999 we had no Lib Dems representing us at any level of government in Ayrshire. We now have Councillors, a MSP, a Lord and a MEP - that's what I call progress!!

Good luck my friends

I write this to wish my many friends in the Scottish Lib Dems all the best tomorrow. if I listed them all then this post would go on forever but I would like to specially mention just a few people:

• Catherine Carruthers in the Carse of Gowrie
• Ruby Kirkwood in Irvine East
• Andrew Chamberlain in Kilwinning
• Lewis Hutton in the North Coast & Cumbraes (also Cunninghame North)
• Jim Hume in the South of Scotland
• Siobhan Mathers in Edinburgh Central
• Kathy McInnes in Strathkelvin & Bearsden
• Nora Radcliffe in Gordon
• All the rest of my friends and colleagues across Scotland

You've all worked extremely hard and deserve success!

Sore feet

Well that's all the leaflets delivered and all the campaigning over. I must have lost a fair few lbs over the last couple of weeks. Now all we wait for is the voters verdict. I think I have done enough work and campaigned hard enough to win a council seat but still have the usual butterflies. All will be known by lunchtime on Friday.

Jings, crivvens & help ma boab!

Standing at the back door having my usual ciggie this morning I casually glanced at my calendar and realised, with a sense of bladder weakening terror, that i'll know my fate regarding election to North Ayrshire Council in a mere 12 weeks today as the Council elections are being counted electronically on the day after polling day.

Between then and now I have to deliver many thousands of leaflets. Then of course there is all the rest of normal election stuff. Not forgetting my duties as Scottish Parliament PPC for Cunninghame South, my day job with Elspeth and, very importantly, finding time for the Lady who lives in Kinross-Shire, who also happens to be standing in a winnable ward for Perth & Kinross Council. Then there's the small matter of being in Aviemore for 5 days next week for Scottish Spring Conference - NO SNOW PLEASE!

A positive aspect of all this activity is that my home town of Irvine has likely never seen so much Lib Dem campaigning - I just hope that all this work will bear fruit at the ballot box and I can be the 1st Liberal elected in Irvine for over half a century. My grateful and heartfelt thanks go to the small, but perfectly formed, team who are helping out. But, sometimes, just sometimes, I think: Can I have my life back please?