And another thing…

Congratulations Willie!

Thanks for wiping the smirk off Lord Gaga’s chops.

Who said Friday the 13th was unlucky?

Yes, Well Done!

Congrats Willie.

I wonder whether he’ll bother to turn up in Westminster to vote against the government, unlike some eh Tom

Oh well, a shame; but as some US democrat once said “the people have spoken, the b******s”

Hopefully the rest of the country will be more sensible at the GE, whenever that is

Congratulations, shame that the turnout was so low. I presume the weather had a part to play in this?

Well done!

I’ve fed the percentages into the wonderful Electoral Calculus site. It predicts a Labour majority of 594 in the next Parliament.

I guess we could live with that…

60% of 30%.

By my calculations that’s 82% of the constituency that didn’t vote Labour.

And nearly 7000 postal votes too!

Was there tumble weed blowing round the polling stations? By God they must have got through some coffee….

Great result. Congrats to Willie. Scottish Labour Party worked like Trojans by the sound of it, and should be very proud!

SO… what you’re saying is you COULD have gone down to London and voted against the government and not affected the result in Glasgow NE in the slightest?

Apart from sending those two Nats off on holiday without knowing how to submit a postal vote.

Paul: no, the fact Glasgow North-East is, after 74 years of Labour, one of the most deprived constituencies in the UK, has huge amounts of unemployment, has been used by Labour’s Glasgow City Council as a “dumping ground” for asylum seekers (and by that I mean no disrespect to the asylum seekers, merely the way in which they get dumped into an impoverished area with little chance for them to make a fair go of things) and that voter-apathy in this area could not be any higher. It is, in many ways, a very depressing place. I won’t lie; I didn’t enjoy campaigning here. It was at times even rather scary, getting hassled by drunks and various ne’er do wells wasn’t nice, and I guess my mostly-english accent didn’t help on that score.
It *does* need change though, and I hope that Willie Bain can help provide that, or, even with only 6 months in the job, he’s going to be answering some questions come May.

My response here may seem overly critical of Labour; in the last 74 years many things have happened to the area, and a lot of them aren’t Labour’s fault. Springburn was always one of Glasgow’s slums, and whilst I believe SNP policies would have helped the area in recent decades more than the Labour ones they got, I’m not about to try claiming every single misfortune to befall the area can be laid at Labour’s doorstep.
But some of them can. They’ve voted square for Labour again, as they have done in every election for Council, Holyrood and Westminster for the last few generations. They’ve seen little change.

One can only conclude they like things how they are.

Only one way to find out if you’re popular in the Country.

Let’s call a general election.

Considering the currency which was made out of winning Glasgow East with just 365 votes on a 42% turnout, I think we can safely gloat at the SNP.

Yay! 18% of the people want Labour!

Funnily enough, that’s more than twice the amount that voted Labour in the EU elections.

Labour are definately on a roll.

I can only echo David Davis and invite the people of Glasgow North East to take a look around and see where 74 years of voting Labour have taken them.

Thankfully the rest of the UK will have a lot, lot more sense in May/June.

Well done, Willie.

Will he make any difference to the appalling stench of local and national government indifference and fecklessness which must, by definition, hang over an area with such a huge and lasting incidence of smoking, alcoholism, illegal drug taking, obesity, unemployment and God knows what other pestilential markers of abject failure?

I fear not.

Hardly a ringing endorsement, is it, A 33% turnout? A record low, apparently. Also, it’s in an area of high unemployment, which goes to show that, in certain areas of Scotland, that people will vote for a turd if it has a Labour rosette stuck on it. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas.

Here’s your mate, Archbishop Cranmer, on this matter

Today, there is a by-election in Glasgow North East where a scandalous 30 per cent are unemployed and claiming benefits; life expectancy in the poorest areas is just 60.2 years – worse than Bangledesh, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Several primary schools are facing closure, healthcare is manifestly deficient, and poverty abounds. The former-Speaker’s constituency is ranked 7th in the UK for the highest rate of benefit claimants.

There is no salvation in Socialism. There is no social justice, no economic sense, no equity, no progress.

Vote Labour, stay dispossessed

Tom I do think things have improved for your party in Scotland after the SNP letting out the murderer. Who is improving day by day now he is back home.

But do not make the mistake that anything much has changed in England and Wales.
I am looking forward to an independent Scotland so you can keep all the Scotts back home.

Does “Cranmer” have “mates”?

I am denied my opinion of him in this forum.

Still, Labour is a broader church . . .

If that murderer keeps mproving can we send more of our ‘terminally ill’ people to Libya, they appear to have a better healthcare system than us. ironic given how much we spend on the 4th largest employer in the world!

I’m glad there will be a further inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing, Al Megrahi – innocent or guilty – did not act alone.

WoW – what a result!

To paraphrase an old Sun headline . . .

“It woz the Postal Votes wot won it”

That’s turning out to be a great scam for Labour – they might even consider banning polling stations and allowing only postal voting if they get in again – that should ensure the New Labour Reich lasts a thousand years LOL

I had to laugh at Willie Bain’s first press release condemning the Scottish Government for not giving enough town centre money to Glasgow, which coincided with a press release from Wendy Alexander condemning the Scottish Government for giving too much to Glasgow and not enough to Paisley.

You are going to have to watch the parish pump politics….

Johnny Norfolk
I am looking forward to an independent Scotland
*********************************************

Johnny, mate… ‘independent’ as in the ‘not dependent’ sense?

Never gonna happen.

>> I had to laugh [...]

Because the alternative was crying? What makes it easier to gloat at you and your party is the complete bad grace in loosing which borders on utter denial.

Now, am I the only one here who spots the mistake in claiming that as Glasgow NE has “been Labour” for “74 years”, this is not necessarily the same as the national government in a parliamentary democracy being Labour? Also that individual constituencies, with their own localized issues, are not entire countries like Iraq and Uzbekistan?

Yes UntergrumpenFuhrer ‘Silent’,

First measure in 2011:

Postcard votes to be printed by QuietzapplePrintsInc monopoly.

You still can’t spell losing Alec. I don’t want to gloat about it mind.

I don’t know how you could possibly accuse us of losing with bad grace – especially compared to Scottish Labour’s gigantic strop at losing the 2007 election which is still going on!

The thing is you see that we are used to losing. Labour have humped us at every election in Springburn (or Glasgow North East at Westminster) and they will probably go on humping us.

It doesn’t bother me to admit that because we have never claimed that we can win every single seat in Scotland. Some seats we will never win and Glasgow North East is probably one of them.

Glasgow South now, that’s a different matter…..