IS the #BothVotesSNP message falling flat? The diary asks after seeing Hamilton candidate Christina McKelvie has rushed out an apocalyptic flyer on ‘The hazards of tactical voting’. Tactical voting is “a huge risk to the SNP majority”, it wails. The SNP “needs” list seats to form a majority, it sobs, contradicting every poll. And in true desperation, it warns Unionists could “sneak in” if folk vote for the SSP, “currently at 1%”. The SSP aren’t even standing in 2016.
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WITH tax looming large, you’d expect party leaders to be good with numbers. So the diary was bemused to hear Labour’s Kezia Dugdale didn’t know her election budget in a recent interview. Worse, she didn’t know Labour had ruinously out-spent the SNP at the general election by £1.6m to £1.47m. “Oh right? Yeah?” she said in surprise.
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EVER since last month’s courtroom farrago, eviction has loomed large over Holyrood’s indycampers. An online petition to enlist Nicola Sturgeon in their cause attracted just 91 names. So what to do? Buy more bailiff bait, of course! A recent £500 donation has been converted into new caravan and, er, a chainsaw. It isn’t nicknamed ‘camp stupid’ for nothing.
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OUR North Lanarkshire mole reports the council has just raised the limit on election count spectators to 20 per party, although why is a mystery. “The SNP don’t have 20 activists who can stand to be in the same room, the Tories are all in bed after The Archers, and Labour can’t remember when it had 20 volunteers,” they write. “Maybe the LibDems want to raffle spots to pay for their lost deposits?”
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The SNP’s iron-discipline seemed to meet its match in Edinburgh Central candidate Alison Dickie at a hustings held by kindergarten advocates Upstart. We hear Ms Dickie railed against party policy on standardised assessments and said if elected she’d do all she could to reverse the decision. Including voting against the government? she was asked. At which Ms Dickie fell quieter than a class that’s just spotted the headteacher at the door.
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