Monthly Archives: April 2011

Linlithgow Candidate Profile: Mary Mulligan

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Mary Mulligan is the current MSP for Linlithgow having won the seat each year since 1999.  However, due to boundary changes, the notional majority is just 294 over SNP Fiona Hyslop, and given current pollings, Mulligan will face a real challenge holding onto her seat.

Mulligan was Labour’s Deputy Party Spokesperson for Housing and Communities in the last parliament and was previously spokesperson for Children.  She was a member of the following committees (Audit Committee, Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee, Local Government and Communities Committee)

With regards to voting, Mulligan voted against Labour on just 2 occasions[1] out of 568 and had a 93.7% attendance record.  You can see a list of Mulligan’s speeches in parliament at TheyWorkForYou.

Unlike Fiona Hyslop, Mary Mulligan is not on Labour’s Regional List for the Lothians so if she loses this seat she will be not returned to Parliament.

Mary Mulligan’s website is somewhat out of date and only has reference to old surgery dates and the latest news is from September last year.

[1] One rebellion was a interesting vote for a Robert Brown amendment to Fergus Ewing’s Antisocial Behaviour Bill

Don’t Blog Back in Anger

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Yesterday, Jeff at Better Nation posted what might be described by some as a diatribe against the Liberal Democrats, Only the Lib Dems Can Disappear Here

How can we sympathise with Chris Huhne attacking the No to AV campaign for spreading lies when his party is doing the same thing up here in Scotland? I can understand why the Lib Dems would want to wish the Green party away but it doesn’t seem to be working as the (hitherto) 5th party of the Parliament is finally gaining some traction in the polls.

Part of the problem was Caron Lindsay’s refusal to sign Jeff’s “include Patrick Harvie in the Leader’s Debate” petition, so it was unsurprising that Caron responded in kind :-

There’s been a lot of excitement in the SNP section of cyberspace – with a bit of cheerleading by the Greens as well – at a couple of polls published over the weekend which put them well ahead of everyone else in the Holyrood race. They are talking about the SNP beating Labour leader Iain Gray in East Lothian, of winning Orkney from us, and ousting the one really talented person on Labour’s front bench, Jackie Baillie. But we know what comes after pride…………

Alls bitchy in love and politics.  Malcolm Tucker would think it very tame.  However, one thing really got to me about Caron’s post :-

As for the Greens, when people get to realise that their proposals for Land Value Taxation are going to hit pensioners, students, people who rent their homes, single parents and people who live in city centres hard, I don’t expect that their vote will go up by as much as they think. I don’t remember them being particularly constructive or achieving anything during the time in Parliament when they had 6 MSPs either. I can’t see the point of voting for them.

Setting aside the point on Land Value Tax and the opinion about what the SGP managed to achieve between 2003 and 2007, Caron can’t see the point of voting for the Green. This just stood out at me as being plain wrong.

I’m currently reading Robin Harper’s autobiography. It is full of quotable comments.  One statement reads :-

Environmental issues grew steadily in importance, and by the time we began campaigning for the 2003 election I was measuring our success not only by how well the Green Party seemed to be doing but by the extent to which the big traditional parties were falling over themselves to cherry-pick our agenda to prove which of them was the fairest Green of all.  It was a fundamental Green dilemma [...] that the better we performed the more others would take on environmental issues and try to squeeze us out.

More than ever before I see political parties take environmental issues into their manifestos and policies.  Great, but they take them for the wrong reasons.  One, they think it will win votes.  Two, they see it as a way to boost the economy (“the goal of generating the equivalent of 100% of Scotland’s own electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020 would [...] power the re-industrialisation of Scotland”) rather than for any environmental issues.

Time after time, I read about environmental bills and targets being watered down from what is really needed.  The point about voting for the Greens is that they are the only party to put environment issues first.

Further to this, the Liberal Democrat’s don’t exist in West Lothian.  I’ve been trying to keep a positive outlook for all parties standing locally (except the NF) but I’ve had absolutely nothing from the Liberal Democrats, not even a posted leaflet.  Even the Liberal Party have sent a leaflet. It can’t be because they don’t have the money or funds.  The SGP must be even smaller, yet Alison Johnstone has been seen in West Lothian and talked about it lots.  How can I cast my constituency vote for Jennifer Lang when she she doesn’t appear to exist?

UPDATE: Mea Culpa: As Caron rightly points out, her post wasn’t a response to the post from Jeff that I thought.  I look forward to any response it does receive!  Luckily my point, about there being a point to voting Green, and that LibDems need to do more locally in West Lothian,  doesn’t fall on it being a response to a different post.

Newsnight Leaders Interviews, Series 2 No.5: Patrick Harvie

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The Scottish Greens were ignored this time round in the series of leader’s interview, but Patrick Harvie was interviewed briefly after the launch of the Green’s manifesto. I’ve included it in my series, and hope to post any further interviews with any other parties, such as the SSP or even George Galloway.

The interview was a mere 3 minutes long and talked about raising tax and how many MSPs the Greens wanted. At least Gordon Brewer, this time, discussed and argued the tax raising policy rather than perform a personality attack. Perhaps he was sated after Iain Gray.

Newsnight Leaders Interviews, Series 2 No.4: Alex Salmond

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The final newsnicht leaders interview is with Alex Salmond (so I’ll also include the Patrick Harvie mini-interview from the other day for completeness later)

Not only was this the last of the interviews, it was the poorest. If Gordon Brewer doesn’t feel like he has something to attack it seems like he can’t interview at all. Brewer was never going to have the same easy targets to find like he did with Tavish Scott, Annabel Goldie, or Iain Gray and was left floundering on the independence referendum and the idea that voting SNP gave David Cameron an easy time.

Any questions on policy were left to the final couple of minutes and there wasn’t enough time to question Salmond’s answers.

Newsnight Leaders Interviews, Series 2 No.3: Iain Gray

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Next up to face the not so subtle interviewing techniques of Gordon Brewer on #newsnicht is Iain Gray

Timing in politics everything. If Iain Gray had been the first Leader up, he may have got an easier time. But this interview came after a fresh set of poor poll results for Labour, the subway incident, a good performance from Alex Salmond on Question Time, and both Labour’s flagship policy and statistics on knives and Richard Baker were torn to shreds on Newsnight Scotland the previous night.

No wonder he looked terrified at the start. Highlight was the comment about the infamous Subway event “I did not run, I walked away”

For the whole series of interviews see my Newsnight Scotland Interview category

Suitably Despairing’s Guide to the Green Party Manifesto

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An update to the manifesto review from Suitably Despairing now that the Scottish Green Party manifesto is now out :-  #Sp11 Manifestos: Scottish Green Party

The review is, as expected, very positive with the only negative being the storage of nuclear waste.  Briefly, no large biomass, universal home insulation, developing plans for the “supergrid”, 100% renewable electric by 2020, no nuclear, no coal, cycle hire schemes (yes! big win), extra public transport infrastructure investment, peatland restoration, an increase in native woodland cover to 40% by 2050.

Greens Land Value Tax and Students

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The Scottish Green Party launched their manifesto today and one of the major talking points about it was the tax raising powers of the proposed Land Value Tax.

I haven’t quite made my mind up on LTV yet.  I think it is a great idea and the future way forward, but there will be quite a lot of edge cases to sort out during a transition to it.

Opposition parties have quickly attacked it, but they would do well to sit back and think through the responses calmly.  I’m not sure an election campaign in the best time to launch the idea in full as the attack dogs will try to tear it apart.

One of the serious problems is in relation to students.  Currently, students are exempt from council tax, and in fact, unless they owned land, they would not pay Land Value Tax either.  The problem is that the owner of the property a student rents would pay Land Value Tax and is likely to pass some or all of the burden of this tax onto the tennant.  It is not clear that this will happen, the Greens think supply and demand will stop this from happening, others do not.

Straight away opponents latched onto this, such as Caron Lindsay who said :-

They are talking about some properties attracting 5 times the level of Council Tax in Land Value Taxation. Presumably they mean in city centres. So what happens if you are a student in Marchmont, or you are not particularly well off? You’ll end up with a tax hike which will force you out of the city, leaving city centres as the preserve of the very rich.

I’m certain a flat in Marchmont is not going to see a 5 times level of Council Tax increase.  A quick search on Google shows that a random flat available in Marchmont are in Council Tax band C which will see a reduction in Council Tax not a 5 times rise.  City of Edinburgh roughly charge a £1000 a year for a council tax and according to the Green’s this would be about £800 LVT[pdf].  If the landlord were to pass on the whole of this to the student, the student would be £66 a month worse off.   It isn’t great, but it isn’t “5 times the level of council tax” (that would be £400 a month).

LVT is a sea change in taxation, and a whole different way of thinking about land ownership, property and taxation.  There is a lot to think about it before it is dismissed out of hand and I hope the scaremongers can see the benefits it will bring.

New poll predicts SNP will take Linlithgow and Almond Valley

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A new poll published in the Scotland on Sunday came out today showing a lead for the SNP

the SNP’s constituency vote stays the same at 40 per cent, Labour drop two to 37 per cent, the Tories hold steady on 11 per cent, while the Lib Dems pick up three points to 8 per cent. On the regional list, the SNP climb three points to 35 per cent, while Labour fall by six points to 33 per cent, The Tories stay on 12 per cent, the LibDems gain 2 points to 7 per cent, while the Greens are on 6 per cent.

Jeff from Better Nation ran these figures through his prediction calculator and thinks that both local constituencies, Linlithgow and Almond Valley will fall to the SNP now (on previous polls he had them as Labour seats)

Key FPTP wins for the SNP would include: Aberdeen Central (maj of 829 over Labour), Almond Valley (maj of 664 over Labour), Ayr (maj of 129 over Labour), Cunninghame North (maj of 572 over Labour), Edinburgh Pentlands (maj of 340 over Labour), Glasgow Southside (maj of 453 over Labour), Linlithgow (maj of 413 over Labour) and Stirling (maj of 150 over Labour)

Newsnight Leaders Interviews, Series 2 No.2: Annabel Goldie

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The second lamb up for the Leaders interviews on #newnicht was Annabel Goldie. I’m right on top of this as the interview was published on Tuesday.

The main revelation from the interview was that Goldie is not the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party. She is merely the Leader of the MSP group in the Scottish Parliament. Basically the same standing as Iain Gray for Labour. Goldie said that the party organisation was disparate and matters are dealt with by the party organisation. In fact, I tracked down a Telegraph article from January of this year that stated :-

Effective control of the Scottish Conservatives has been passed to London party chiefs

Whilst there is a party chairman, the Scottish Conservatives are run from London. Annabel did not handle the question well at all, and it is not surprising if she is trying to avoid looking like she is not in control, and doesn’t know what is going on.