Hustings

Was flagging a bit last night so instead of chapping doors in the freezing cold, I went to St Stephen's Primary in Sighthill to hear from the by election candidates. David was quite clearly the one you could see as your MP and Willie Bain did his usual, told us he disagreed with most of the Labour Party policies and would "do something about it" if he is elected. Let's hope we don't have to contend with that level of dynamism come Friday morning!

Best bit for me though was the independents. Mikey, that guy from Big Brother? What planet is he from? We're talking about how ill equipped many of our soldiers are when they're sent to war and he says "bring the troops home" which is an opinion he's entitled to and one many folk share. But he then argues that if we "equip them with body armour they will just become a sitting duck so there's no point in doing that, just bring them home"! Er ... quite. Bet Gordon Brown wishes he'd thought of that excuse eh?

John Smeaton. Smeato, what are you doing to yourself? Or what is your party doing to you? Oh no, I forgot, he's an "independent" who just happens to have the backing of a party - not sure how that's different but there ye go. Anyway, I liked him, seems like a nice guy but that's all he was. He had nothing to say. I mean, he had WORDS but they didn't amount to much. He just kept saying "I don't understand how these terrible things are happening", "they shouldn't be happening", "and that's what I'm going down there to sort oot"! And his catchphrase? "It's an absolute disgrace". Everything, and I do mean everything, was "an absolute disgrace". I was going to ask what he thought of world peace just to see what he'd say but decided that was a bit unfair and despite my tiredness, I'm trying to be nice!

What I realised that was interesting however, was that Smeato is just a less sophisticated version of Tommy Sheridan. Tommy thought everything was an absolute disgrace too, the difference was he had "solutions". The PROBLEM was that although some of his solutions sounded good, I think that was more to do with Tommy's slightly more sophisticated delivery than what he was actually saying. And that was it in a nutshell, it sounded good but most of it (not all of it) was unworkable. I also think Tommy's losing his appeal a bit. If you want to shout and bawl for effect that's fine but don't make it your fallback position and don't turn into a parody of yourself. You need to save your Mr Angry bit for the moments when you really need people to listen. If you shout ALL the time, people switch off PLUS you get a sore throat. I've really no idea how that man can still talk at all.

Anyway David Kerr was composed, courteous and passionate - he is someone who really cares about Scotland and about Glasgow North East and I hope the voters give him the chance to prove that on Thursday.