I've been waiting to do a post on this blog following the elections until the political picture became clearer in both Scotland and Edinburgh - but it seems pretty clear that won't be for some time yet!
So a few brief comments meantime - first, I'm obviously delighted that Malcolm (Chisholm) and Sarah (Boyack) got back in - they both deserved to! And secondly, at both local and Scottish level, it's clear that noone party can claim they've got a mandate for government. That's true for Scotland. It's even more true for Edinburgh, where even though Labour still got most votes, just, the LibDems actually got more seats - and the Tories got more votes than the SNP, but the SNP got one more councillor - but the real message is that the people have chosen 4-5 parties to have a say in the running of the city!
I hope that the politicians of all the parties show the maturity to recognise that this is what the voters have said - in both Edinburgh and for Scotland, we can either have a logjam; or four years of confrontation; or getting down to business where there is broad agreement amongst the parties. (See question 2 which I asked at Tuesday's Scottish questions in the House of Commons).
The other big story of the elections was the fiasco about spoilt votes, and I was able to raise that in Parliament this week. (My question is half-way down the link). I'm also going to be raising the issue with the Electoral Commission next week.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Join the Campaign for a Leith Museum
The recent announcement that National Trust for Scotland was likely to sell off Lambs House to for a housing redevelopment has led to a lot of public interest in the idea of setting up a Leith museum. (Another suggestion for a location is the Leith Custom House see right). I've been in touch with a number of local groups who are keen to have such a museum set up, and I thought it would be a good idea to launch a campaign in support of the proposal. I had planned to do a bit more preliminary work for the campaign (and I also thought it might be best to wait until the elections were over) but there's been some interest in media who'd heard we were thinking of starting such a campaign. So we've launched our campaign - if you support us, sign the on-line petition!
John Arthur and his Persevere Portal has been really keen to promote the campaign, and with all his contacts, I am sure the message will get round soon enough! We want to get as many signatures as possible, to show that this is something the people of Leith - and friends of Leith, and Leithers and ex-Leithers worldwide - really want to happen.
John Arthur and his Persevere Portal has been really keen to promote the campaign, and with all his contacts, I am sure the message will get round soon enough! We want to get as many signatures as possible, to show that this is something the people of Leith - and friends of Leith, and Leithers and ex-Leithers worldwide - really want to happen.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The end of the campaign - almost!
A lot of campaigning again this weekend. We had a good turn-out of members and supporters at the weekend, so were able to get a lot of leaflets and lamppost posters out. Malcolm Chisholm's being spending a lot of the time on the doorsteps; there's no doubt there's a lot of respect for him out in the constituency - hopefully that will be reflected in the ballot box on Thursday! (Here's Malcolm in our campaign HQ).
Still getting a lot of emails from people complaining about Lib Dem leaflets: the following is an example:
I saw the recent posting on the North to Leith blog (the blog of the SNP candidate Davie Hutchison) suggesting that the data given by a Lib Dem election leaflet in Edinburgh North and Leith was wrong.
I'd like to share my own disappointing experience in Edinburgh Central. In her election leaflet Siobhan Mathers shows a simple bar chart depicting the situation at the last election. She has got the right numbers, but has distorted the chart.
The result is a visual misrepresentation of the 2003 result because she has cut the size of the Labour bar to make it look like the Lib Dems are in contention. If you bother to read the data, Labour are 9 points ahead of the Lib Dems who are, in turn, 5 points ahead of SNP. So, in reality the Lib Dems are closer to the SNP & Tories than they are to Labour, but the chart shows the reverse. This visual misrepresentation is the message that casual readers of the leaflet will take away with them.
This is compounded by the text, Siobhan writes "remember, the election in Edinburgh Central is between the Liberal Democrats and Labour. No other party is challenging here." The data suggests otherwise, and is, of course historic. The urgency to create a "two horse race" and persuade the public to vote tactically based on a false and misleading statement of the truth is wrong and shameful. We are used to politicians making unprovable assertions, but this is objective data that is being distorted When Siobhan quotes Ming Campbell saying: Siobhan Mathers will be a powerful and principled voice it makes me wonder exactly what kind of principles the Lib Dems have
A couple of weeks ago there was a hoo ha because a person was featured in a Labour party political vox pop who turned out to be a member of the Labour party. But we all know that the only vox pop that will be used in a TV broadcast is the one that fits, so this scandal is in fact fairly trivial. Distorting the objective truth by manipulating data to visually depict false conclusions is indefensible, unprofessional and really rather sad.
Yours sincerely,
Giles McGellie
Still getting a lot of emails from people complaining about Lib Dem leaflets: the following is an example:
I saw the recent posting on the North to Leith blog (the blog of the SNP candidate Davie Hutchison) suggesting that the data given by a Lib Dem election leaflet in Edinburgh North and Leith was wrong.
I'd like to share my own disappointing experience in Edinburgh Central. In her election leaflet Siobhan Mathers shows a simple bar chart depicting the situation at the last election. She has got the right numbers, but has distorted the chart.
The result is a visual misrepresentation of the 2003 result because she has cut the size of the Labour bar to make it look like the Lib Dems are in contention. If you bother to read the data, Labour are 9 points ahead of the Lib Dems who are, in turn, 5 points ahead of SNP. So, in reality the Lib Dems are closer to the SNP & Tories than they are to Labour, but the chart shows the reverse. This visual misrepresentation is the message that casual readers of the leaflet will take away with them.
This is compounded by the text, Siobhan writes "remember, the election in Edinburgh Central is between the Liberal Democrats and Labour. No other party is challenging here." The data suggests otherwise, and is, of course historic. The urgency to create a "two horse race" and persuade the public to vote tactically based on a false and misleading statement of the truth is wrong and shameful. We are used to politicians making unprovable assertions, but this is objective data that is being distorted When Siobhan quotes Ming Campbell saying: Siobhan Mathers will be a powerful and principled voice it makes me wonder exactly what kind of principles the Lib Dems have
A couple of weeks ago there was a hoo ha because a person was featured in a Labour party political vox pop who turned out to be a member of the Labour party. But we all know that the only vox pop that will be used in a TV broadcast is the one that fits, so this scandal is in fact fairly trivial. Distorting the objective truth by manipulating data to visually depict false conclusions is indefensible, unprofessional and really rather sad.
Yours sincerely,
Giles McGellie
Spring cleaning!
The weekend saw a number of "community clean-ups" in parks in the constituency. The organisers had invited local candidates to come along - giving them an ideal chance to demonstrate their environmental credentials!
For the cynically minded, yes, I too joined one of the clean-ups; although I can at least claim it was in a park which my family actually use, and where I'm a member of the park's "Friends" - so not too cynical, I hope. Here's a fetching (!) photo of me helping keep Scotland tidy!
The hidden toll of death in the workplace
Saturday was International Workers' Memorial Day, which commemorates the millions of people world wide who have been killed at work. I went along to the ceremony in Edinburgh at the memorial tree in Princes Street gardens - I can remember when as Council Leader some twenty years or so ago when we planted the tree, and there's been a ceremony there every year since.
The theme this year was the deaths caused by occupational cancer, and we also had a very powerful speech from Louise, whose brother had been electrocuted at work last year, just when he was 21, and only a few months before he was due to be married. It was an uncomfortable reminder of how many die at work, and how the vast majority of these deaths could easily have been prevented. We've got legislation on "Corporate Killing" going through Parliament at the moment, and although it's an important advance, events like this one today emphasise the need for that legislation to be strengthened further.
After that, I went down to the exhibition, organised by the "Edinburgh Language Academy" in North Junction Street, of artwork from children in Belarus and Ukraine, to raise funds for some of the work being done for the "children of Chernobyl". I remember being in the Ukraine a year or so after Chernobyl, and at the time the full extent of the disaster was something that was covered up by the authorities. In its own way, I suppose, the Cherobyl accident was also a work-related incident - and one of the reasons why I still think we should not be developing more nuclear power stations in Scotland and in the UK. Yes, I know that the technology at Chernobyl was poor, and the nuclear industry has changed since then - but ultimately, there is always the risk that if something goes wrong at a nuclear power plant, the consequences could be catastrophic, in a way which isn't true of any other type of power generation.
The theme this year was the deaths caused by occupational cancer, and we also had a very powerful speech from Louise, whose brother had been electrocuted at work last year, just when he was 21, and only a few months before he was due to be married. It was an uncomfortable reminder of how many die at work, and how the vast majority of these deaths could easily have been prevented. We've got legislation on "Corporate Killing" going through Parliament at the moment, and although it's an important advance, events like this one today emphasise the need for that legislation to be strengthened further.
After that, I went down to the exhibition, organised by the "Edinburgh Language Academy" in North Junction Street, of artwork from children in Belarus and Ukraine, to raise funds for some of the work being done for the "children of Chernobyl". I remember being in the Ukraine a year or so after Chernobyl, and at the time the full extent of the disaster was something that was covered up by the authorities. In its own way, I suppose, the Cherobyl accident was also a work-related incident - and one of the reasons why I still think we should not be developing more nuclear power stations in Scotland and in the UK. Yes, I know that the technology at Chernobyl was poor, and the nuclear industry has changed since then - but ultimately, there is always the risk that if something goes wrong at a nuclear power plant, the consequences could be catastrophic, in a way which isn't true of any other type of power generation.
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