There's been a murder!!

WOW!!!

That was all I could say last night as the unbelievable news came through that the SNP had taken Glasgow East.

Personally, I thought that they would have got within a couple of thousand of Labour, but ultimately come up short.

How wrong was I ?!!

Granted, Labour's campaign didn't get off to the best of starts, but even so, it has been an awesome effort by the SNP to take this seat.

If the SNP continue on the form they are on, who would bet against them achieving a "YES" outcome in an independence referendum? First Salmond takes the Gordon seat with a swing of 21%. Then he turns the political landscape upside down by his party becoming the biggest party in Scotland by gaining an incredible 20 seats at Holyrood. Now his party have taken a Westminster seat that has been Labour for generations.

Next stop independence?

What next for poor Frances Curran, oops, I mean Margaret Curran. She must have thought she was a certainty for the job as she was the MSP for part of the constituency and the fact that the area had traditionally voted Labour.

WRONG!!!!

She must have also considered herself to be one of the favourites to become Scottish Labour Leader, but surely she cannot stand for it now. She will struggle to be selected for the Bailieston seat at the next election in 2011, so I think she is heading the same way as New Labour - Out the door!

Glasgow East Countdown

It is just as well for Labour that they have a million percent majority in Glasgow East, because they are trying their best to lose this by-election.

First there was the fiasco over selecting a candidate. Then when one was picked, she couldn’t remember which part of Glasgow she lived in. Now, even at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning, when I am staggering from one side of Sauchiehall Street to the other, I still know where I live!

If that wasn’t enough, she tried to pull the wool over our eyes, by getting the endorsement of a “93 year old war hero”. The war hero turned out to be 67 and only 4 at the time of the said war.

Tony Blair ripped up by-election protocol when he used to visit by-election constituencies to lend “support” to the Labour candidate, but where is Gordon Brown on this occasion? Either he is extremely complacent, expecting a Labour landslide, or he is running scared.

Or maybe there is a third option. Maybe he is sitting in Drowning Street, sorry Downing Street, concocting bribes to ensure that the electorate vote in his favour and effectively keep him in a job. Like the freeze on the fuel tax announced this week.

The latest opinion poll showed that Labour had a 47 – 33 percent lead over the SNP. However both Political Betting and ASWAS seriously question the detail behind this poll. Maybe that is why Labour is canvassing the SNP candidate for his support for next Thursday!

I seriously doubt that the SNP will be able to pull off the 20 odd % swing needed to take this seat. But then again it wasn’t that long ago that the SNP came from nowhere to wrestle the reigns of power away from Labour at Holyrood.

So anything is possible!

Dummies Guide Of How Not To Run A By-election

By the time Thursday the 24th of July comes along, Labour will be thinking they have fought an election campaign already. And that is just to get a candidate in place to fight the Glasgow East by-election!

Firstly, Councillor George Ryan pulled out of the selection meeting at the last minute, citing the catch all "family reasons" for his decision. The other two candidates were then told the meeting would be cancelled, effectively saying to them that they will not be chosen to be the Labour candidate.

How Labour can afford to turn away two people who are actually WILLING to stand for the party is beyond me, but that is another story.

So, after the dead cert for the candidate withdrew, Labour apparently were scurrying about looking for someone to stand. The leader of Glasgow City Council, councillor Steven Purcell was apparently asked but he ran a mile.

According to the Sunday Herald, eventually Margaret Curran MSP is going to be asked. And she was fourth choice.

But this is just incredible short-sightedness in my opinion. It is just solving one problem by creating several more.

For one, it would probably mean a further by-election in this area if Curran was to resign her Baillieston MSP seat. How would the electorate take to that?

Secondly, she is one of the likely contenders to replace Wendy Alexander as leader in Scotland. They haven't got many to choose from as it is, so if another one were to go, you'd be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Of course, Labour may have a masterplan up their sleave just waiting to be delivered in the shape of John Reid.

M.P.s Expenses

After the debacle yesterday in the commons when M.P.s showed just how greedy they were by voting to retain their generous expenses, I thought what a life! The amount they are allowed to claim for their second homes, £24,006, is more than a lot of the people in Scotland get paid each year, particularly in Glasgow East. And that is just for their second homes.

If Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting had been about politics, I guess Renton's opening mantra would have been:

Choose a M.P.s life.

Choose a cushy job.

Choose a lucrative career.

Choose not to see your family.

Choose a f______g big John Lewis television.

Choose John Lewis washing machines, ministerial cars, John Lewis compact disc players, and John Lewis electrical tin openers.

Choose crappy health, high cholesterol and life insurance.

Choose the public to pay your fixed-interest mortgage repayments.

Choose a second home.

Choose to back-stab your friends.

Choose a John Lewis three piece suite on taxpayers money in a range of f_____g fabrics.

Choose for the taxpayer to pay for your DIY and wonder which home to read the papers in on a Sunday morning.

Choose sitting on that John Lewis couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing reality TV shows, stuffing f_______g junk food into your mouth at the tax payers expense.

Choose rotting away at the end of it all, when the electorate find you out and crawl back into the undergrowth with a seat in the Lords or some other unearned reward.

Choose a future on the Board of a FTSE 100 company.

Choose a M.P.s life.

But why would I want to do a thing like that? Because I have f______g morals!

Who's Next?

Wendy Alexander last week!

Nicol Stephen this week!

Annabel Goldie next week?

Charlie Gordon - aka Cathcart Comedian

Newsnight was quality last night.

Charlie Gordon, less than 7 months after playing the fall guy role, said that he was considering standing for Scottish Labour leadership.

But that wasn't the most funny part. At the start of the interview asked if Labour were going to win the Glasgow East by-election, he stated that we shouldn't take the electorate for granted. However, asked later about the independence referendum, he said that Salmond would lose the referendum!

Make up your mind. You either take us for granted or you don't!!