Hamish Macdonell - voting, who is counting?

WITH little going on at Holyrood while the parliamentarians are on recess, attention has been focused on Alex Salmond's participation record at Westminster.
The Tories published the statement which the First Minister still carries on his Holyrood members' register, claiming he is one of the top ten hardest working Scottish MPs at Westminster.
They then contrasted this with the First Minister's record on voting, motions, questions and amendments since he came back at Holyrood in 2007, revealing that, ove the last two years, he has one of the worst records of any Scottish MP.
But the SNP spin machine is nothing if not efficient and Nationalist officials quickly dug up their own record showing that, if the data is taken back to 2005, then Salmond still has an excellent record at Westminster, much better than the Tories claimed.
It was all spin, spin and counter spin, that is until Labour got involved and stated (very off the record) that over the last two years Salmond actually had a worse voting record than their former MP, the late John MacDougall, who died last summer, prompting a by-election.
That was pretty unsavoury territory for Labour, particularly when it was pointed out to them that one of reasons John MacDougall had a decent voting record was that he very graciously acceded to the appeals of his whips on several occasions and made it through the division lobbies of the Commons when he really wasn't very well at all.
I think that's probably enough on voting records for all the parties now, or I hope so.
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Hamish Macdonell - Brown-ed off

SOMEONE please tell Conservative MSP Gavin Brown about mixed metaphors and how anybody with aspirations to be any kind of public speaker should avoid them.
He has actually just said this: "Labour and the Liberal Democrats are attempting to run the four-minute mile on the road to Damascus."
Worst line of the day? Worst line of the year so far.
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Hamish Macdonell - Tories put a kilt on it, again

HOW to turn even the remotest story to your local advantage, part II.
After their embarrassment in trying to turn the election of Barrack Obama into a story about the kilt and the Royal Mile, the Tories have now decided to use the snow falls across southern and central Britain to make another point, this time about Prestwick Airport.
In doing so, they managed to publish one of the most convoluted statements of the year, here it is, from Ayr MSP John Scott, on Prestwick Airport's busy time in coping with flights diverted from elsewhere.
He said: "It's an ill wind that blows no good, so the heavy snowfall and the unexpected guests it has brought to southern Ayrshire as a result of their enforced diversion has certainly brought a welcome boost to local hoteliers at what would otherwise be a quiet time of the year."
Whether those travellers aiming for Manchester, Liverpool or London who end up in Prestwick instead feel quite the same way is another matter.
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