John Scott - 10 today

Ten years ago today the good people of Ayr went to the polls in the first by election of the Scottish Parliament. Labour MSP Ian Welsh, who had had a majority of 25, resigned for family reasons after eight months in Parliament.


There were some tiring journeys back and forward to that constituency, but it was an interesting exercise and an interesting result. The Labour vote plummeted less than a year after they had become the largest party in Holyrood (unlike the SNP, of course, we won Glasgow East after becoming the largest party in Holyrood), the Conservative vote eased upwards, and the SNP vote shot up by nine and a half points to take us into second.


Victor on the day was John Scott of the Conservatives with a majority of 3,344 and he's held it in two elections since then.


Here's the result as announced

William Clifton BOTCHERBY Scottish Independent 'The Radio Vet' 186
Gavin Nelson CORBETT Scottish Green Party 460
Kevin James DILLON Independent, Anti-Cloning Candidate 15
Robert GRAHAM Pro-Life Alliance 111
Jim MATHER Scottish National Party (SNP) 9,236
Alistair David McCONNACHIE UK Independence Party 113
Rita MILLER Scottish Labour Party 7,054
Stuart David RITCHIE Scottish Liberal Democrats 800
John SCOTT The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Candidate 12,580
James STEWART Scottish Socialist Party (Convener Tommy Sheridan) 1,345
Rejected papers 58
Majority 3,344

And here's a picture of John Scott and David McLetchie trying to keep up with William Hague shamelessly nicked from Ian Old's excellent site:

It's still a runaway tram.

On the last day of September last year, Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP disclosed that the Edinburgh Tram Project was £200 million over budget and wouldn't run until at least 2013. Lib Dem council leader Jenny Dawe claimed that it wasn't true:

Cllr Dawe dismissed Ms Somerville's claim as "purely scaremongering".
She said: "It's a lot of nonsense and unbelievably unhelpful when we are trying to deliver such a major project as close as possible to the sum of money we know we have available and we have a contractor in dispute over various things.
"She doesn't like the trams and is doing everything she can to foil the project. She is not going to."
TIE spokeswoman Mandy Haeburn-Little said:
"For Shirley Ann Somerville to be suggesting that there is some other information being held back is ridiculous and unhelpful. If Ms Somerville would like to name her sources then we would be very pleased to respond fully."

She went further when speaking to the BBC:

Jenny Dawe, Edinburgh City Council leader, said: "The funding situation and projected delivery date for trams running on the street has not changed since being reported to the council last month.
"The dispute resolution process is currently underway and both the council and Tie are committed to ensuring that we come in as close to budget as possible.
"Speculation from Ms Somerville is purely scaremongering - a fact backed up by her inability to substantiate her sources."
Mandy Haeburn-Little, Tie spokeswoman, said: "Not only is this information incorrect but it is deeply damaging to the positive progress of the Edinburgh tram project.
"Categorically there is nothing to suggest that the programme will extend beyond 2012 as had been stated publicly.
"The programme is making good progress and is on track to be clear of Princes Street at the end of November as planned."

Of course, I believed the MSP. She was the one who revealed that line 1b was for the chop back in November 2008 and that was denied by Councillor Dawe as well, but the cancellation was announced in April 2009.

Now, it would appear, TIE and the council both knew at the time the council leader and the TIE PR consultant were making these statements that they were false.

Mandy Haeburn-Little said it would was "ridiculous and unhelpful" to suggest that information was being held back - while TIE and the council were both holding this information back. It's not the job of the leader of a PR team to tell lies, if she knew the truth then her position is untenable, if she didn't know the truth then the veracity of any and all of her other statements on behalf of TIE is open to question.

Jenny Dawe said that the claim was "a lot of nonsense and unbelievably unhelpful". If she knew that the council knew then her position is untenable, if she didn't know then serious questions have to be asked about her grip on the largest local authority public procurement project in Scotland in decades. Either way we can't take her at her word on the Tram Project.

It's time for some openness. Audit Scotland reported to the council on the Tram Project in January:

91. We will discuss these matters further in a more detailed report on the tram project which will be issued in the first instance to the Director of Finance in January 2010.

The council should publish that report in full. While it's going about that, it should also publish in full the "independent analysis of the project" which it claims to have had done. Some claim commercial confidentiality as the reason for keeping the chaos secret - how many more tram projects do they think the council will be commissioning in the near future?

Today's story included the memorable line:

There is absolutely no question of a cover-up

I can't help thinking "so why did you feel the need to say that?" There'll be no whitewash?

Mind how you go.

Controversy in New York!

You do a wee blog-post and you create controversy. Indy commented on my last post that New York, New York was a Gerard Kenny song but that's not the one I meant. Here, have a listen:

Manifesto commitments - so good we hit them twice!

Frank Sinatra's got nothing on me! I just realised while perusing a certain Belle's ponderings that the SNP Scottish Government has surpassed the 'additional 1,000 police officers' target. Thing is, we did that already and it was so satisfying that we did it again (I know, fluctuation in numbers is normal and the drop in the middle was just a matter of retirals and waiting for new recruits but I managed to squeeze a terrible Frank Sinatra joke out of it).

Mind how you plod!

Joan McAlpine - she's no bad

I find myself in agreement with Joan McAlpine (a journalist whose style tends to the succinct and direct - excellent) in her recent musings. I, too, wonder why some media outlets seem to think it perfectly acceptable to traduce the character of a young lady on the basis of hearsay while failing to question the failure of senior members of the Labour party to have even a smidgen of good grace about a colleague of theirs departing politics (apparently permanently - but you can never be certain). There were interesting revelations in her column this week, too, about the one lawyer representing so many newspapers on a regular basis that snapping him up for a client effectively neuters a fair chunk of Scotland's press pack and in the piece by her colleague on the paper about who would turn up at a Glasgow Labour fund-raiser.

We need good journalists as much as we need good politicians, keep it up!

Scotland wee?

Scotland small?

Scotland is often referred to as a small nation (I think that it's just the right size, but there you go) and that can obscure our actual position. Our population is 5,168,500 or thereabouts making us about the 113th most populous country in the world with about 124 countries smaller than us. We've got 78,722 square kilometres, putting us about 116th in terms of land mass, 121 countries being smaller than us. We are, as it were, about the middle in terms of size, we fit in nicely.

Size is all-important, apparently ...

STV Homecoming programmes

There is an attempt to create a stooshie and a fuss over the Homecoming programmes aired by STV, as you'll recall. It has been widely covered in the inky fingers press and you might have imagined that the Labour-supporting Daily Record would be eager to jump on that particular passing bandwagon. You'd be surprised if you did.

Why would the Record not be covering the story in great depth? Well, the Daily Record was another sponsor of the programmes and was a partner with the Scottish Government in the whole adventure. SNP propaganda sponsored by the Daily Record? I think not!

Mind how you read