Friends and readers.
We are about to enter the final week of campaigning for the nose in the trough Holyrood handicap stakes. Sucks as you know is covering the hotly contested constituency of Edinburgh North and Leith currently held by the Labour Party but not for much longer if the bookies are to be believed.
Sucks has now got all the candidates leaflets and have had a good look at them in all their glossary and fantasy promises finery. Well what can we say other than mirror mirror on the wall who is the biggest chancer of them all.
Let us start by saying that no candidate should bad mouth another in their literature, it shows a lack of courtesy and down right bad form and the voters don’t like it and rightly so. And we have to say that once again Sucks favorite character and the Calamity Jane of Local Government Lesley Prada Hinds has done exactly that just as we thought even she could not be that stupid. Not only is her leaflet full of inaccuracies, the biggest one being about the Tram, given it was her that wanted to stop it at Haymarket and tried to drag the Tories in on her daft scheme.
But dear friends she calls the SNP candidate in her lealflet an ”L plate novice” and that’s just not cricket nor is it sensible, it shows a sign of desperation. Attack the policies, have a go at the track record but no personal attacks, Lesley you just lost the election.
Now we turn to bookies favourite and front runner SNP candidate Ben your honour MacPherson. Having not been involved in any local campaigns whatsoever Benny boy makes some elaborate promises, but they all do that and no-one actually believes them. To his credit he has steered away from personal attacks on any other candidate probably realizing it’s a dead end. The problem with making so many promises is that punters might actually hold him to account and that’s when things start to get a little awkward.
Haven excluded several very experienced members from his tight little personal circle Benny boy has left himself open to manipulation from the nutter element several of whom are running his campaign although we have seen little or no sign of this alleged SNP juggernaut. Stories have reached us of disharmony in the camp and not the happy bunch of groupies plastered all over face book, and a lack of a visible presence on the campaign trail. Now of course none of this may matter as the polls show the SNP miles ahead but it shows a distinct lack of respect for the electorate, very similar indeed to the way several experienced members were excluded. When we heard the names of people that were excluded we were very surprised, but it shows contempt for others and a complacency which may just be starting to sweep over the SNP.
Will Benny boy if elected keep even 10% of his pledges? is he capable of doing that? Will he understand that he has to work in the interests of the whole Constituency? or will he as a few think pander to the few who have cornered him. We may well know soon enough.
The Tories are an irrelevance and might as well not bother as are the Lib Dems, one and the same aren’t they? But Sucks did come across something quite interesting, an Independent candidate by the name of Jack Caldwell. Reading his very basic leaflet was refreshingly different from the high gloss in your face leaflets of the major Party’s. Sucks has a soft spot for the underdog and young Jack the lad is exactly that. He as you would expect does not have the party machine behind him battering the voters with lie after lie, and seems from what we hear to be an amiable lad happy to learn and listen to advice, quite profound actually.
So Sucks is going to take a punt and support young Jack the lad. Prada Hinds is a spent force resorting to personal attacks and fanciful nonsense about her achievements, lack of them more like. Ben your honour MacPherson is a production line candidate who will promise the earth while trying to win the seat but we confidently predict deliver nothing if he stays a prisoner of the nutter element.
Forget the Tories they are the brutal predators of politics, attack the weak while supporting the strong, keep away from them, they should have a health warning on their leaflets. As for the Lib Dems, spineless comes to mind, and would do a deal with the devil, wait a minute they did, remember Clegg and his bunch of fifth columnists, how could we forget.
So we suggest a vote for Jack the lad Caldwell on the first pass the post ballot paper and whoever you fancy on the second ballot. We remind voters that this time round it could well be that Labour get most of their MSP’s from the list system, so tread carefully when you vote on the second paper other wise Labour could sneak back with more MSP’s than they deserve.