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We reproduce below Councillor Lynn Filshie's letter to prospective voters, asking for an extension of the trust that the people of Avondale and Stonehouse have shown in her.
We think that Lynn has been an excellent councillor in difficult circumstances, and is a great asset to South Lanarkshire Council.
Please click through to read Lynn's letter.
This page will act as a compendium for all our posts relating to the 2012 elections. We would very much like you to vote for at least one Independent candidate and these articles will help to explain why.
This article will appear as a menu item for the next few weeks. All the links are below the page break.
Right, let's get this election started. This blog is unashamedly supportive of Independent candidates and we will be starting with the best Independent that we know - Councillor Lynn Filshie.
Lynn is the de facto leader of the Independent councillors in South Lanarkshire Council at the moment. Her council web page is here. She is a member of ten council committees and chairs the Financial Sctrutiny Committee. Because of her lack of party affiliation she has been able to bring a literally independent mind to council afffairs and has been very effective in holding officials and councillors alike to account, earning the respect of both.
Lynn and your editor joined forces in the Strathaven Academy Action Group in 2005, which was set up to try and prevent SLC from committing an act of democratic and cultural vandalism by demolishing the old Strathaven Academy and replacing it with a big shed. Although the local protests were the biggest since 1820 (possibly bigger) a Labour/Conservative administration pushed the plans through by whipping party members and the deed was done, against the express wishes of the Strathaven residents.
Lynn has demonstrated a willingness to work very hard for her constituents and an impressive ability to master a brief in a very short time. This blog would very much like all SLC Ward 5 residents (Avondale and Stonehouse) to give Lynn their first preference votes.
Declaration of interest: your editor was Lynn's election agent at the last election and only working in England has prevented him from doing so again; and we also built and manage Lynn's own website.
Lynn's press release announcing her candidacy is below.
The Scottish Local elections are coming soon and the conventional wisdom is that two things will happen:
Around these parts we’re not liable to just take the conventional wisdom as gospel – otherwise we’d believe that binge drinking was a growing menace to society and that the smoking ban had reduced the number of smokers, so it’s time to have a closer look at what might happen and eventually make a prediction or two.
Some background: the graph below shows the numbers of votes cast for the major political groupings in Scotland at local elections since 1995, when the current council structure came into existence. I say “groupings” rather than “parties” because a major part of the political scene here has always been the presence of Independent candidates. Some councils are habitually controlled and run by Independents – the various island councils are a good example of this.
Click on any graph for a BIG version.
The young lady who was the subject of a recent post sent me an excited MMS this afternoon - "Look who's in EK shopping centre!!". And indeed, just look who it is.
Note, not "what" it is, but "who" it is. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is one of those very few cars that has earned the great affection of the general public. Like James Bond's Aston Martin, Herbie, every Mini ever made (the Issigonis ones, not the German copy) and the Range Rover that finally extracted Gordon Brown from Downing Street, she is almost a personal friend.
There was a real historical Chitty, in fact four of them, plus seven more like this that were made for the film, but that is not the subject of this post. This is just an excuse for some cracking music.
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Updated 28/3/12 - see bottom of post.
This is a remarkable young lady, and I am going to ask you to put your hand in your pocket to help her achieve an ambition to help other people.
Her name is Amy Kirkwood and she lives in the Republic. I know her well. She is a shining example of what Scottish youth should be. I think you should know a bit more about her, about what she wants to do, and how you can help her...
The youngest member of the family has recently started to learn to drive. Near Drumclog there is an expanse of reasonably wide, flat, straight road with good visibility, the main traffic at weekends being the bizarre vehicles on their way to being thrown about at Kenny Telfer's 4x4 track.
My driving tuition tends to start off with a lot of start/stop driving. At one our stops I looked to my left and spotted the strange image below.
(Click to embiggen)
Which seems a little bizarre until you turn around and look over the road...
The last post was quite sad, part of my lifetime's hinterland fading into the past. This one's much happier.
Click on the video below and enjoy...
Didn't that make you feel happy? Although I will have to apologise now for planting an earworm in your head...
Click through for more...
Updated 26/2/12 - see bottom of post
I heard this morning that one of those distant but ever-present characters that we all have in our lives has died. Tant has passed away at the age of 87. To those of us who knew him, it's amazing that he reached that age, or anything like it: Tant abused his body unlike anyone else I've ever known.
His name wasn't really Tant, but very few people ever called him Angus except ironically. The only explanation I ever heard for the nickname was that it was due to a childhood speech impediment. Certainly he was difficult for strangers to understand or at least comprehend, and conversation with Tant often involved a lot of grunts and whoops.
When we moved to the village in 1965 he was already one of the local worthies and part of the folklore. He had no regular job, but worked around the farms, digging ditches, shifting things from here to there, anything that required a heavy manual effort and not a lot of thought. I worked alongside him a couple of times and he could certainly put in a fair bit of graft for someone built like a withered stick.
