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Slightly overlooked in all the hoo-ha about the Scottish Parliament election results is Scotland was also voting for local councillors, and it’s been argued before that councillors - not MSP’s or MP’s - have a more direct impact on daily lives.

I’d 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 held, there’s a general frustration with councillors (and candidate MSP’s for that matter) for relying on flyers-through-the-door rather than grasping the nettle and putting together a useful internet presence, much less cutting through the party-speak and giving us strong reasons to support them other than what colour rosette they’re wearing.

The one exception to this was David Meikle, who I’m actually quite pleased to say is now one of three Pollokshields councillors, and did receive one of my votes. Given my other choices didn’t get through, I like to think it helped him in some way. The full result breakdown is available at Glasgow Council’s website.

I’m hopeful David keeps up his weblog and embraces is at as a useful - and direct - way of staying in touch with his ward. Right now he’s the only Pollokshields councillor with his own internet forum. The SNP councillor Khalil Malik, and the Labour councillor Irfan Rabbani don’t have any presence of note. Heck, google searches come to my own website. Do they really want that? (See for yourself: Rabbani search and Malik search). I’m can’t help but conclude that they’re just riding on the reputation of their party rather than trying to distinguish themselves in their own right?

As to the overall council result, sadly Glasgow council remains with Labour, and by some way too. There’s certainly much much better opposition representation (which is what I was voting for!), but I fear it’s a long way away from moving it to a no-overall-control, much less another party in power. I hope that Labour take note that they’re only just control an absolute majority (56%) of seats. I also hope that Glasgow voters pay particular attention to how they go over the next four years, in particular how tax is dealt with next year, and how they manage the expenditure - especially with the ominous commonwealth games bid.

“Adequate” or “Acceptable” is really no basis, in my view, for re-electing a council, and they’ve barely been that in the few years I’ve been here. They need to be impressing us and deserving of our vote, getting in by default through the fact that they’ve got a red-rosette pinned to their lapel is really not a mandate to be proud of.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Glasgow, Politics, Scotland, Scottish elections, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.