Edinburgh Council have published a list of all the candidates:
Derek Howie – SNP
Phil Hunt – Pirate Party Scotland
John Christopher Knox – Liberal Democrats
Alys Mumford – Green
Stephanie Murray – Conservative
Keith John Robson – Labour
John Scott – Independent
Jonathan Stanley – UKIP
UKIP leader Nigel Farage went to Edinburgh on Thursday to drum up support for the UKIP candidate in the Aberdeen Donside by-election.
However, it didn’t quite go to plan:
UKIP leader Nigel Farage had to find refuge in a pub after he was swarmed by angry protesters as he left a press conference.
When he later left the Canons’ Gait pub in Edinburgh’s historic old town and was escorted into a police van, protestors chanted “scum, scum, scum”.
Here’s a picture of the protestors outside the Canons’ Gait, with Farage holed up inside:
Scotland is electorally the worse place for UKIP — for example in the 2009 European election they did worse here out of all the regions they fought, getting 5.2% of the Scottish vote compared with 16.5% of the overall vote in Great Britain. This is in part because they want to abolish the Scottish Parliament and replace it with Scottish Westminster MPs who would spend part of their time on UK issues and the other part on Scottish issues.
Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde is standing for the European Parliament in Finland:
Peter Sunde has announced he will run in the European Parliament elections next year. Sunde, the former spokesman for The Pirate Bay, will participatefor the Finnish branch of the Pirate Party. Sunde has yet to sit out a prison sentence for his previous involvement with the infamous BitTorrent site but hopes to emulate the Swedish Pirate Party’s previous successes when they claimed seats for two MEPs.
The RIAA and MPAA have spend years trying to have the Pirate Bay shut down, without success. They have managed to imprison Sunde, but if he gets into the European parliament on the back of their persecution he will have the last laugh.
If I go into a public library, I can read a book without paying for it. If I go to the Pirate Bay, I can read a book on the Internet without paying for it. Because that’s what the Pirate Bay is — a public library for the internet age. And its administrators and users shouldn’t be punished, on the contrary they should be celebrated as public-spirited citizens, because that is what they are.
The Edinburgh Evening News is reporting that the trams may go out to Dalkeith:
“NEXT stop Dalkeith” is something future tram commuters could be hearing if ambitious plans to extend the controversial travel network out to the Midlothian town are realised.
City officials have revealed they are planning future growth around a tram line extension potentially being built out as far as Dalkeith.
But the ambitious vision – revealed here before the present line to the airport is even finished – has already been labelled “fanciful”.
One Transport Scotland spokesman said that given the current plan has already been severely cut back to just the eight-mile airport to city centre route, it appears to be a case of town hall bosses running before they can walk.
Here’s a map of the proposed tram route past The Inch, the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and Moredun. The dotted blue line is the proposed tram route:
The route goes from the A7 at North Bridge down to the A701 at Craigmillar Park, then past the Cameron Toll shopping center then and south-east along Dalkeith Road (the A7 again) past the Inch, the hospital and Moredun.
These are all existing roads and digging them up is going to take a lot of time and money, and cause a lot of disruption. Especially if they have to do it twice, as they did with Princes Street.
Is this the best way to do it? Maybe not. There is an existing railway line in the area, the South Suburban Line (solid red on the map). This is not currently used for passenger traffic, just of goods. What if this was re-opened for passenger traffic, and a spur was taken off it (the dotted red line) going past the hospital and down to Dalkeith? Along the line, build housing, office space, shopping and leisure facilities.
This would have a number of advantages:
I propose that the council, when considering extensions to the tram, considers using existing railway lines, and also previous railway lines that are now cycle paths, as an alternative to digging up the roads.
We have some news of the other candidates in the Liberton / Gilmerton by election. The Green candidate will be Alys Mumford who is a director of Jubilee Scotland (which campaigns against poor country debt).
UKIP don’t have a candidate yet but they have put out a notice asking for candidates to come forward. UKIP did very well in yesterday’s local elections in England, but traditionally have done less well north of the border.
There will be a by-election in Liberton/Gilmerton ward (ward 16) on the 20th of June 2013.
The by-election was caused by the sad and untimely death of Councillor Tom Buchanan from a brain tumour, earlier this month.
I will be the Pirate Party candidate in the by-election. This will not be the first time I’ve been a candidate in Liberton/Gilmerton — there was a by-election in that ward in 2010 in which I was the Pirate candidate, which incidentally was the first council election contested by Pirate Party UK.
At the last Lib/Gil election, Pirates got 43 votes which was 0.65% of the total. This was at the time our best performance (the party had only been going for a year). But now we’ve been around for four years, more people know about us and what we stand for, so I’m expecting to get a higher vote share. This election will be the first time Pirates have stood twice in the same election, so it’ll be the first time our result will be directly comparable with a previous result.
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 27 February starting at 7pm.
It will be at the Links Hotel on Alvanley Terrace (the north part of Whitehouse Loan).
We’ll be discussing — among other things — preparations for the European election next year.
Anyone’s welcome — whether you’re a Pirate party member, interested in the party, or just want to ask us questions.
(details)
February the 23rd marks the 1000th day since PFC Bradley Manning was arrested on suspicion of having released hundreds of thousands of classified documents to whistle-blowing organisation WikiLeaks.
Manning’s bravery brought to public attention previously undisclosed information regarding the US military’s actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, leading to widespread denunciations of war crimes.
For this, Manning was held on solitary confinement, in conditions the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as ‘cruel and inhumane’.
To commemorate this there will be a vigil outside the US Consulate General in Edinburgh, tomorrow 23-Feb-2013, from 1pm to 2pm. Details here.
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Phil Hunt in Meadows/Morningside Ward.
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