Scottish Elections: Pollokshields ward candidates (sort of)
Posted by: Richard in Glasgow, Media, Politics, Scotland, Scottish elections, UKI’ve just done a spot of googling to find out who the candidates are for the Glasgow Council election in the Pollokshields ward, and was rather surprised - as well as a tad depressed - to find that the Conservative candidates website was featuring rather heavily in all my results. So I looked some more, and couldn’t improve the situation: There really is very little detail coming through either my door, or online, regarding local council candidates.
So given the number of search engine queries that are floating my way as a result of being one of the very few Pollokshields ward and Govan’s MSP constituency bloggers (oh, the accolades I enjoy), I thought I should - as a floating voter in this election - try and do the other voters of the area a bit of a service and pull together a simple page outlining the online presence of various candidates in case - like me - you’re keen for a bit more information ahead of that rosetted knock on the door.
Firstly, judging by the online presence (or lack thereof), it’s shocking some of the party websites don’t seem to recognise that the boundaries and setup have changed. Pollokshields East is now called simply Pollokshields.
These guys at least have got it right:
- Green: Ian Ruffell has a decent sub-page of the Glasgow Greens website, including links to newsletters, and a decent pitch. It’s not a weblog format, and not really up to date, and it reads like a manifesto. I mean that in a good way. Come back to this comment after you’ve read the rest and you’ll see what I mean…
- Conservative: David Meikle is our fresh faced Conservative candidate who dominates the google searches for Pollokshields/Pollokshaws. David’s a 23 year old accountant, and appears to enjoy campaigning for the party in his spare time. He does have a weblog that’s full of asides, but I’m a little concerned it’s more about one-liners than saying what he’s going to try and do for the area. And the weblog format can work against you too if you’re not careful…
But as far as accurate declarations of council candidates go, that’s it. Two candidates as of now (11th April) have both a dedicated internet presence, and an ability to update that presence in some meaningful sense, with a grasp of the correct Glasgow political geography. The remaining candidates/parties just seem to be sluggish in sorting out their websites, or have none at all, and it really reflects badly on them:
- SNP: Judging from this, I think Khalil-ur Rahman Malik is our SNP candidate, but he’s got the ward details wrong as well as some nasty grammatical mistakes. I didn’t really come away feeling particularly well informed.
- Labour: A link from one of the local MP’s is as close as I can get to an online presence for Irfan Rabbani’s details. His name features on a Gordon Jackson (Labour’s current Govan MSP, and 07 candidate) flyer I’ve received (more on that in due course). Other than that Google pickings are a bit light
- Lib Dems The Lib Dems haven’t even got the ward details correct, so things aren’t off to a great start there, even for a Glasgow focused website.
So here’s my request. As a ward we get 3 (THREE!) councillors in the new political map of Glasgow council. Why is it then that of the five parties seeking our vote I’ve found only two have a decent online presence, and the rest are vague, out of date or incorrect in some way? Yes, I’m sure the candidates are busy people, but getting up to date information out to the electorate must be a priority, and the internet is rapidly becoming a key communication medium (or at least, I thought it was). Many of your voters will be searching the internet for details of your policies and candidates, and it’s going to be bad if they wind up here and not on your website…
So let’s sort it out.
So why don’t the candidates and the parties in Glasgow try and prove me wrong!? Show me your websites. Tell me how I’ve horribly misjudged or simply missed your website out. Upload scans of the flyers you no doubt produce on a computer anyway. Heck, I’ll host them if you ask me nicely. Information needs to be free, and right now there’s a real shortage of that regarding the local council elections and the people who are seeking our votes.
Lastly, I’m also trying to work out where the choice is… This election is under the STV system, but a good hour of poking about later and I can only come up with one candidate for the ward from each of the main parties. With three seats up for grabs, that seems like a missed opportunity, or - worse still - a reduced choice for the electorate. What if I want my preference to go to 3 candidates from my chosen party? Am I missing something, is there some special rule? Or are the parties all playing a game only they know the rules to?
Don’t get me wrong, I specifically want a more balanced council, but it feels very odd that there’s very little information about the prospective councillors out there, that I can’t help but wonder what’s going on.
Events/Further details
Update 13/04/07
The full list has been published here (Pollokshields is Ward 6). The full list is:
- ASHRAF, Ali :: Scottish Socialist Party-Independent Socialist Scotland
- CURRIE, Karin :: Independent
- MALIK, Khalil :: Scottish National Party (SNP)
- MEIKLE, David :: Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- NELSON, Isabel :: Scottish Liberal Democrats
- RABBANI, Irfan :: Scottish Labour Party Candidate
- RUFFELL, Ian A :: Scottish Green Party
- SHOAIB, Muhammad :: Independent
- UYGUN, Fatima :: Solidarity-Tommy Sheridan
Entries (RSS)
April 11th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
[...] the campaign has heated up, and the fact that there are only a few weeks to go until polling day, Richard Leyton can’t find much information about the candidates standing in his ward. He will have three councillors come 4th of May, but he [...]
April 11th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
[...] within a minute or two of discovering it, I managed to find the answer to a question that’s been bugging me since yesterday: Where are all the local council candidates? - My ward has 3 seats, but no internet presence, and [...]
April 13th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
[...] Whilst some of the party’s are rather obvious, some are a little vague, so I thought I’d have a look about and see what the interweb has to say on the candidates, and the party they represent, much as I recently did for Pollokshields council candidates. [...]
April 14th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Hi Richard,
Glad to see you’re contibuting to the elections debate. One minor niggle though. You’ve drawn attention to the “nasty grammatical mistakes” on the SNP site and still used “party’s” instead of “parties” on your own blog.
By the way, we’ve heard so much about Scotland that it didn’t dawn on me until just now that there are elections here in England too!
April 14th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Hi Janet,
Ooops. Yes, I’d caught myself making just that mistake in subsequent posts, but hadn’t gone back and fixed those I’d made earlier.
Just spoke to my mum who told me they have council elections going on in Somerset. Maybe you’ll have a bit more luck than I did with finding out information about the candidates standing in your area than I have!?
r.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Dear Leyton,
Please can you clarify on the two points raised in your blog regarding Mr. Khalil Malik: 1) The ward details, and 2) The nasty grammatical mistakes.
With regards,
M. Ahmed
Campaign Manager
K. Malik for Councillor
April 17th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Hi there Mr Ahmed,
Thanks for your comment and being the first of the candidates campaign supporters to grasp the nettle!
The ward is the subject of the post: Pollokshields. The SNP website still has it listed as Pollokshields East though.
The candidate summary appears to have been brushed up and expanded a little since I last visited (or my memory is rusty!). The grammar has, I think, improved (and I should hardly be the first to criticise given Janet’s comments about my own grammar!), but his overview still reads strangely (eg. “Mr. Malik has been the member of Scottish National Party (SNP) since a decade”).
Trivial grammar issues aside - I care much less about this than my post might imply - I’m actually much more interested in knowing what Mr Malik is proposing to strive for as a prospective councillor for the ward?
Why should we be voting for him over the other candidates? What are his key problems about how things have been dealt with by the previous councillors in the last four years?
Does your candidate have a website or some campaign leaflets that better set out his position? I’d be happy to change the content here if there’s somewhere better I can link to.
Thanks again for your comment!
Regards,
Richard.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Thank you Richard for the quick response. I would like to introduce Mr. Malik’s agenda from his own pen before you although I know this might look bit odd at a forum like this.
According to Mr. Malik, Scotland has been endowed with a wealth of natural bounty, e.g. the oil and the vast sea resources. Despite this, there is an all-too-obvious and ever-growing poverty, ill health and unemployment prevalent among the Glaswegians. The rich-poor gap is widening and the pockets of poverty mushrooming. We need to set a balance between what is being done for the cosmetic upper-level changes and the real down-to-earth development of the common people.
The SNP has all that is needed to bring the required changes. The fore-most factor which can materialize the change is freedom from the shackles of the Great Britain. An independent Scotland has the potential to make headway towards a destiny which, as I see it, most Scottish people cherish today.
Seeing Scotland free is thus the prime agenda for which Mr. Malik have since the last over 10 years spent his time and resource. The other main areas of his concern are:
1) Minority integration: This is Mr. Malik’s own observation and the fact that he have picked out from studies into the politics of today. There is contrasting difference of make-up between especially the Muslim minorities from the South who have migrated here in UK with those who have migrated to USA. Those who came here after the WWII were working, mainly the laborer class, while immigrants to the USA in the later half of ‘70s had been the affluent Arabs and the studious South Asians. The immigrants to UK and Scotland could not therefore integrate in their new homelands like their counterparts did in USA. Resultantly, there is today an ever-growing rift among the natives and the immigrants in UK and Scotland. The sporadic acts of violence like the London and Madrid bombing by the self-starter indigenous groups is alarming aspect towards which meager attention is being paid today. Mr. Malik wants to integrate today’s immigrants in their societies and thus work for cohesion, safety and security of each and every member of the Scottish society.
2) Sports facilities: Studies indicate that there are meager sports facilities for the youth in Scotland. Mr. Malik is rather disappointed by the general conduct of the younger generation. They hang about in the streets and loiter around wasting their own and their parents’ vital resource. He wants to bring them in to healthy activities like the sports. For this, he has a plan to employ youth for designing and implementing recreational and sports activities for themselves.
3) General cleanliness: Not a day passes by when the media does not report a story or two about the filthy conditions of especially the Pollokshields area. Pollokshields and the adjacent areas have been spoiled by the litter and dog refuse in very particular. Mr. Malik is appalled by the situation and has in mind a code of conduct for citizens which if implemented by the Glasgow Council shall bring the fresh look back.
This is the least that we can put here as ‘why vote for Mr. Malik.’ Space constraint does not allow more on this.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Well done! It’s been so difficult finding out anything about local council election candidates. It’s ludicrous that I’m sitting here on the eve of the election trying to work out who on earth I’m going to be able to use my STV vote for. This has helped.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:32 am
[...] previously pulled together details of the candidates given the lack of available information. I’m still quite surprised by the lack of candidate specific internet pages and services. [...]
May 6th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
[...] previously commented that there wasn’t much information available about the various candidates. Judging by some of the comments and e-mails I’ve received, and conversations I’ve [...]
January 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am
[...] means for elected representatives to explain what it is they’ve been up to. And after last years elections, where I found little or no internet presence for most councillors, maybe a bit more encouragement was what was [...]