Labour and the LibDems announce plans to end all tolls on the Tay, and most on the Forth, despite voting against similar plans in February.
McConnell: "Five weeks to save Devolution"
Central Scotland: former Glasgow Labour Councillor Gaille McCann to stand in Central Scotland for Mev Brown's NHSFirst Party. This will come as a blow to Julie McAnulty, who is standing as an Independent on the Regional List, as well as in Coatbridge & Chryston, and now sees her potential Regional votes split.
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6 comments:
Hi Will,
I decided to come off the list some weeks ago; I'm now simply running on the constituency vote, so this will not affect my vote. Makes life a bit easier (though not much!)Will be interesting to see how NHS First pan out over the next few weeks.
Thanks for the tip-off, Julie. I have to admit to being sceptical about NHSFirst, mainly because of their founder's shifting loyalties, but aside from Independent candidates such as yourself and local pressure groups, this is the first nationally-organised body concentrating primarily on the NHS, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they do: the Moray By-Election wasn't the best of starts but the fact that they've carried on since then is important.
Shifting loyalties?
As opposed to what - Julie McAnulty, the Coatbridge & Chryston rep for the Scottish Senior Citizen Unity Party until recently? Come on, be fair!
NHS First may have been started by an ex-Tory, but that's an ex-Labour Councillor that's standing for them now.
To be fair, pfifo, Mev Brown has in the last two years alone, stood as a Tory candidate in the Westminster Election, an Independent in the Livingston By-Election, the UKIP Candidate in the Murrayfield By-Election for City of Edinburgh Council, and the NHSFirst candidate in Moray. This is the longest affiliation he's had to a Party for a while - can you blame me for being suspicious?
OK, fair dos, although it has to be said that a lot of people have jumped ship from the UKIP lately, especially in Scotland. The Alistair McConnachie affair left plenty uneasy as to what sort they were mixing with, & many join it only to hotfoot out once they discover it's little more than a gin club for ex-NF, Monday Club, New Britain Party & other anti-Johnny Foreigner types. Edinburgh as Roy Bramwell's old hang out has long been a centre of such beings.
As for McAnulty's "past" membership, lest anyone be in any doubt:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:_B4yVRZrupsJ:www.sscup.org/members.html+scottish+senior+citizen+unity+party+julie+mcanulty&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4
It seems bizarre that McAnulty's not thrown her lot in with the NHS First slate - she would then have the cred of being part of a Scottish slate (& let's be realistic about this, she'd have a better chance then: nice upper-middle class areas like Bearsden may like the idea of an Independent candidate partly out of intellectual snobbery as much as idealism, but the working classes want their candidates to belong to parties), extra help & split costs. There's a lot about her candidature that doesn't seem to add up, but I dare say plenty will come out about all candidates during the election.
This is going to be one hell of an campaign!
Hi pfifo,
Don't know where you got your info (maybe off the sscup website which has been stuck for a year), but I can tell you that Julie left the sscup last summer after an absolutely disastrous meeting of the National Committee. I know, because I was in the sscup with her and I left two months after her.
Basically she was p**ed off because John wasn't taking any interest in the issue of Monklands hospital and she also had a spat with him because he was keen to go into alliance with Labour (which is why I left!)
Anyway, she's a kosher independent. As to Brown, he seems to be a bit of a serial candidate, and I think at one point he actually tried to join us. I remember David our treasurer mentioning something about a candidate from Edinburgh wanting to run in Glasgow; that might well be him. I agree with Will that there's something fishy about him.
David M
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