Friday, May 04, 2007

Shagged Out

I've managed about 2 hours sleep in the last 30, which means that as I listen to the remainder of the results as they trickle over the airwaves, I am now doing so somewhat narcoleptically. It's been a great night for the SNP, although the result is looking as tight as the proverbial duck's arse right now, since every FPTP gain for the SNP increases Labour's likelihood of compensation on the lists.

This election has seen two firsts for me - not only did I see my first SNP parliamentary gain in the flesh last night, but I also might now have an SNP MSP in my home seat of Edinburgh East. That means, unless I'm very much mistaken in my sleep-deprived state, that the SNP represents either all or some of every Scottish city - a bit of Glasgow, a bit of Edinburgh, a bit of Aberdeen, most of Inverness, all of Dundee, all of Stirling (and all of Elgin, Brechin & Dunblane as well!).

Another interesting bit of trivia is that each seat that our intern campaigned in (both Dundee seats, Stirling, Western Isles and now Livingston) has now fallen to the SNP. She flies back to Washington DC tomorrow - if that's the effect she has, we should be moving heaven and earth to get her back for the next election :-)

Moving seamlessly from the sublime to the ridiculous, it appears that my old friend Dr Richard Simpson, he who once memorably described striking firefighters as 'fascist bastards', is back in for Labour on the Mid-Scotland and Fife list as well. This means that there might be hope for George Foulkes yet... I bet Labour are now regretting preventing their constituency candidates from standing on the lists.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

There is nothing quite like the exhaustion of the day after the election, is there?

Not only have you been on the go from well before dawn on polling day, but then you have to stay up all night.

At our count, when the machines had messed with our heads more than we could cope with, we went to find a quiet corner, to discover the Tories had bought along a hamper with wine:-) One drink would have killed me at that point, I think.

Richard Thomson said...

I usually always enjoy polling day in spite of the tiredness. Most activists realise that it's all over bar the shouting by that point anyway, and I always like getting the stories from the other side of the fence.

Actually, I still enjoy it even when it gets a bit heated. Read the second article if you're interested :-)

http://www.scotsindependent.org/2005/050819/index.htm

Unknown said...

Very funny. I don't think I would have been able to resist the urge to ever so gently wind him up.

While I was doing my good mornings in Dunfermline, I was thinking about polling days I have known - from running committee rooms in Chesterfield at 38 weeks pregnant in 1999, to being chased down a street by a couple of Labour thugs in Littleborough and Saddleworth in 1995 to winning a County Council by election in the heart of Dennis Skinner's very lefty constituency on the day John Smith died.

The best have undoubtedly been the two recent Dunfermline ones, particularly as they prove that I'm not the kiss of death to a campaign - on too many occasions, a seat has been won on the election after I've left - Chesterfield in 2001, Edinburgh South in 2003 to name two examples.