CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
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closedDepends which part of SW Edinburgh he was canvassing. It's not all Tory inclined (includes Wester Hailes, for example).
Current MSP is Gordon McDonald (SNP). Alistair Darling is the MP for the reconfigured constituency which incorporates the old Edinburgh Central too.
On the Wester Hailes point ... Malcolm Rifkind long held SW Edinburgh for the Tories. No-one in Wester Hailes voted for him because of his Party, but he was widely respected as a person and an MP.
includes Wester Hailes, for example
Aye, but what are the chances gembo was canvassing there? Maybe he was, but I doubt it.
Current MSP is Gordon McDonald (SNP)
Aye, that was an interesting result. Tory vote stayed at home perhaps? Disillusion with recent Labour government? Hacked off Fib Dem voters switching to SNP? Certainly does not compute with Gembo's '60% No' straw poll: or maybe does, if McDonald elected with around 30% of vote?
No-one in Wester Hailes voted for him because of his Party, but he was widely respected as a person and an MP.
Might there be a similar effect for the current constituency MP, who just so happens to be the spokesman for Bitter Together? Not outwith the bounds of possibility.
@gembo
Are you out canvassing for 'No'?
Presumably canvassing for the Euros? Y'know, the election in two days' time?
(Vote Green to keep UKIP out of Scotland).
Has anyone linked to this yet? interesting.
I am heading down to sighthill soon to check out the lay of the land. It is referendum canvassing not euro.
The houses canvassed last night were mostly former corporation houses, mostly owner occupier snow but some private lets with sofas in gardens and some still rented from council. From what the people were saying the streets we were in were largely labour. The overall area is a differnt matter.
South west has one labour councillor, one SNP and one conservative. One member of parliament labour one SNP (Westminster / Holyrood). Rifkind went south after losing. McLerchie was here. Also I think iain Gray for labour.??
So as I said mixed area.
I have tired of the spinning so went out to see for myself. Obviously when canvassing people on the doorstep there is an element of spin. I spent some time talking to some folk, one older lady strong SNP I managed to talk some doubt into her mind, she has one son an SNP councillor but I wondered about her other son? Also rather tipsy socialist voting yes that I swayed to don't know because I had red trousers on. Lovely Nigerian man spent long time trying to persuade me to vote yes. He had his dressing gown on, relaxing over the holiday weekend.
I think that people now vote differently for euro and Holyrood than they do for Westminster and I think referendum is going Westminster style. Just a hunch.
@gembo
Fancy a bit of double-header canvassing? I'll do Yes, you do No? It'll confuse the hell out of everyone that's bought into the divided society meme....
@IWRATS sounds good, certainly will be paired up in wester hailes. Will hold on to my leaflets next time and we can go off piste together.
A Tory and a Lib Dem I've known since university used to go out leafleting together. They could get it done in half the time and then go to the pub.
"
For one of the most unexpected and – in the long term – disturbing aspects of the referendum campaign has been the almost uniformly reactionary and depressive tone of the No campaign so far. The symptoms of this mood of reaction range from the No campaign’s apparent cross-party conviction that there really is no viable alternative to the UK’s present politics of fierce austerity, rising inequalty, and blame-shifting onto vulnerable groups, to the sneering schadenfreude with which some Unionist commentators like to debunk the very idea that Scotland might aim for something more like the Nordic social and economic system that currently produces the world’s most successful societies.
"
http://www.scotsman.com/news/joyce-mcmillan-leaders-still-miss-bigger-picture-1-3420475
Did we not already discuss Joyce McMillan?
"Did we not already discuss Joyce McMillan?"
Discuss the message then.
(You'll prefer this one - http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/scottish-independence-professors-back-no-vote-1-3420484 )
'uniformly reactionary and depressive tone of the No campaign so far'
It's not just the tone that is hateful and hopeless, it's the medium through which the messages are transmitted - in televised speeches from authority figures who never take questions and in booming newspaper editorials.
Two years ago I was totally undecided, now I regard the British state as indifferent to my welfare at best, verging on being a hostile presence in my country. That took some doing, and it will take some undoing.
One of the few people who has stood up to engage publicly on the No side is the prime author of the 'Fat, Fishy Salmond's Plan to Wreck the UK' meme, Alan Cochrane. I'm going to see him in a head to head debate next month, which should be enlightening.
Cochrane's a long standing Tory supporter. Always incisive and interesting, occasionally. humorous. Worth a listen even if I disagree with almost everything he says most of the time.
@crowriver
I read his stuff in the Torygraph, to try to keep a handle on the latest lines of attack from the No campaign. It's pretty low grade stuff - very personal. He tried to link the death of the girl crushed by a falling wall at Liberton High School to the independence campaign.
Just thought I'd put the Ukip hype into a bit of perspective by reminding people of their election performances in Scotland in each of the last types of election.
European elections 1999 - Ukip got 5.2% - which was a fall of 1.5%age points.
UK General Election 2010 - Ukip got 0.7% (contested 34/73 seats). 17,223 votes, beating the Greens, who stood in 20 seats, by fewer than 400 votes.
(Incidentally, it's often said that Ukip have never held a deposit in any election in Scotland - but they got 6.32% in Orkney & Shetland in 2010.)
Scottish Parliament 2011, regional votes - Ukip got 0.91%, or 18,138 votes. About a fifth of the Green vote, and a little over half of the Senior Citizens vote. They got fewer votes across the whole of Scotland than the Greens and Margo each got in Lothian alone. And in Lothian Ukip were beaten by the BNP.
Scottish local elections 2012 - Ukip got 0.28% of first preferences, for 4,289 votes. The Greens got 9 times as many votes, the Lib Dems, in their worst ever local elections, got 25 times more.
One may ask why these nobodies have had such extensive media coverage of late.
Indeed "One may ask why these nobodies have had such extensive media coverage of late."
BBC website headline "UKIP's support surges, with Labour also making gains as Tories and Lib Dem lose seats in the English local elections, with most results still to come."
Actually Labour's gains are 50% higher than UKIP's total (numbers of Councillors). Labour take lead (nos of councillors) and keep lead (nos of councils). Tories drop to second place yet still have almost 8 times as many councillors as ukip. Even the third placed LibDems have more than twice as many councillors as ukip. But BBC headlines don't mention any of this.
@calmac
Has any work been done to examine the influence of randomness on a first past the post Westminster election with three conservative parties (Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem) and a radical/insurgent party (UKIP in England, the SNP in Scotland)? It feels to me like FPTP could start producing almost lottery-like results, especially with low turn-outs.
@IWRATS Hmm, not that I know of. I think that could be hard to model - what is it we're looking at?
But this would be a good place to give a shout-out to the maddest result from 2011, which was in Edinburgh Southern. Before the election this was the seat on mainland Scotland where the SNP had it's lowest share of the vote last time round, at 17.2%. But the Lib Dem and Tory vote fell, Labour gained some and the SNP gained more, and the SNP went from fourth place to win the seat with 29.4% of the vote!
Of course, across the region it all comes out in the wash.
@Calmac thanks for the sane, rational context your above numbers provide. If you've got a chance you may want to forward to Nick Robinson who had a blog up last night about UKIP (0 MPs) now being the "4th Force" in Westminster politics (and the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties and the Norther Irish parties, all of whom have had many seats for many years can go hang).
I think Mr Robinson was making that old BBC assumption that anything happening in "English" politics = "British" politics.
@kaputnik
I wonder if the 'fourth force in Westminster' relates more to UKIP's influence on the three conservative parties rather than to their non-existent parliamentary party?
The SNP and the DUP (and even to some extent the mythical 'Scottish Labour Party') can say what they like - the conservative parties in England can safely ignore their parochial concerns. But UKIP threatens to eat their breakfast. They must respond and we will probably see all three conservative parties tack towards populist authoritarianism.
Journalists love the idea of a new mould-breaking party. SDP anyone? SNP by-elections, Scottish Socialist Party. They even loved the Monster Raving Loony Party. Even the BNP got a wee shot at being mould-breaking. It gives them something to talk about, it rattles the other parties.
SDP anyone?
Been there, parents probably still have the t-shirt somewhere.
Surely the genuinely mould breaking party is the Green party? Not rabid, shouty, foaming at the mouth, populist, road rage driver enough for the increasingly sensationalist media though.
All this fragmentation seems to be pointing towards the UK moving into a new phase of coalition politics. Unfortunately, the Westminster electoral system, much of the political "class" (and to a degree the electorate) aren't ready or able to handle it.
For genuine mould breaking vote Brie.
The cultured choice.
"
As we pollsters say: you can guess, or you can find out. In the 12 hours after the polls closed on Thursday night I surveyed over 4,000 peoplewho took part in the Euro election. My poll doesn’t try to predict the result – that would be illegal before voting has finished in all European countries – but it helps explain why voters did what they did, and what they might do next.
"
GSA, BBC reports "The UK government has said it would make a significant contribution towards the costs of restoring the building.Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said it would contribute "in the millions, if necessary" to restore a "priceless gem"."
I trust that the Weirs will be making a substantial contribution too ?
@pintail
Is your argument that the UK government as the chief backers of Better Together require an equivalent sum from the biggest backers of Yes Scotland? That would be an odd, but interesting, line of thought.
I am highlighting one of the many benefits of being in the UK, the emotional and financial support readily offered by our compatriots in Westminster in times of need.
And I am contrasting that with the millions donated by the Weirs given in order to destroy that bond.
If there is a No in September then Westminster will be taking millions to restore the Palace of Westminster. It should more than balance out. Is this Westminster promise like the flooding one earlier in the year?
The art school is nice but I wouldn't classify it as "times of need". Nobody was seriously injured and everybody got out. That's more important than any building.
I had a look at it yesterday. The building looks OK. All the big windows on the front are intact. From initial reports I thought they had gone. I've been walking past it for more than 30 years and never bothered to go in for a look so I'm not getting bent out of shape over it now.
Glasgow has knocked down or abandoned plenty of other important buildings in the past and they built a multi story car park across from Scotland St school which blocks the view from the M8.
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