Sunday 16 March 2008

I love the smell of Sunday in the morning

Looking at the polls published in the Sunday Times today made me hopeful for the future of my nation. The SNP's excellent start to government has instilled a sense of possibility in the Scottish people, helping to drive Scotland forward, resulting in tremendous levels of support for Scotland's Party.

Here's the numbers:
Holyrood constituency
39% SNP
31% Labour
15% Conservative
12% Libdem
3% Green (others)

Holyrood Additional Member
40% SNP
30% Labour
13% Conservative
11% Libdem
5% Green (others)

Westminster
37% SNP
30% Labour
18% Conservative
11% Libdem
3% Green

That wasn't all, though. There was another Wendy Alexander breaking the rules story covered.

She used Parliamentary expenses (our money, in other words) to fly to London for some meetings in the House of Lords - just before eight Members of that House gave her £2,900 for her leadership campaign.

Then she claimed taxi fares to attend a "town centre regeneration dinner" at the Marriott Hotel in Glasgow. It's becoming clear today that this was actually a meeting with Tesco about a development Tesco is planning and Wendy has been campaigning for. Tesco was kind enough to give her money for calendars.

She also took £110 to book a lunch at Reid Kerr College for herself, Jackie Baillie and Pauline McNeill and a staff member each to discuss how to run their offices. Quite apart from the fact that they've all been MSPs for nine years now and should know how to run an office, they meet each other at least twice a week in Parliament and could just have the discussion then. Of course then they would have to buy their own lunch ...

The other question which occurs to me is if this was a valid parliamentary duty why did none of the MSPs and none of their staff claim travel expenses to or from this meeting?

I'm indebted to the Secretary who sent me additional information for this.

2 comments:

Craig said...

The most worrying thing about this poll you have published is that the Labour vote has only gone down slightly despite all that has happened. Shows how deep rooted the whole "my father voted Labour and his father voted Labour so I'll vote labour" feeling is.

Interesting stuff about Wendy though, you know as well as I do that nothing will come of this though.

STB

Anonymous said...

the good thing about the poll is the 50% drop in Libdim support from 2005.