SO, TODAY, A BIG CONTINGENT OF SCOTS MPS ARRIVED IN LONDON, ENGLAND

WHAT A LOVELY WELCOME

ALL OVER BAR THE VOTING

Estimated Declaration Times

Well, it's all over bar the voting.

Much has been written about melt downs and Labour and the Liberals being obliterated.

I'm cautious. OK, call me a pessimist and a glass half empty man, but I prefer to predict low and be pleasantly surprised, rather than the other way around.

Remember any more seats than we have at the moment will be a gain.

At present the SNP has 6 seats in the London parliament. To get 12 would represent a massive success. It would double the representation, and would be one more than they have ever had in London.

Synchronisity  in Anas's ward.
All these people seem to have had the same thoughts, and written the same letter at the same time. Just how completley amazing is that?
Does he have magic powers?

Twenty seats would be a fantastic breakthrough; 30 utterly fabulous.

I'm thinking somewhere between 30 and 35 seats may go SNP.

Any more than that and we are off the scale.

Whatever it is, if it isn't the 59 that some of the press has been predicting, the unionists will call it all a busted flush. Be ready for that and remember that on the day after the election, parties tend to, and have always tended to, big up what little success they have had.

How well we remember, Dave.
Just read it back now and weep for your wickedness.

Just for a little light relief on the last day...

How many seats do you think the SNP will get, realistically?

And...

Of the potential losers, who do you most wish to lose their seat, and why?

Will it be Margaret Curran, for the vitriol she has spewed and for her dogged devotion to right-wing Jim, when only weeks before his election (she voted for him too) she was promising Glasgow Man a lurch to the left; to old Labour and socialism? (Like she remembered what that was!)

Will it be Jim himself? 

The strangest possible choice to lead a party that is begging for a move to the left, is a neo-Liberal, anti-Muslim, white supremacist, enthusiast for war, and lieutenant of the odious Blair. 

Why did they elect him? 

Failure to win his seat would be the ultimate humiliation for the party. Not particularly likely to happen as I'm sure they will have put massive resources into the seat, and will have taken every possible measure to ensure that Jim is back with a decent majority.

Or maybe it will be Cathy. Her record certainly suggests that she is pretty solidly anti Scotland having any powers. Interestingly in a year when most public servants had no pay rise or a pay rise of 1%, she appears to have given her husband a rise of 100%. Nice work if you can get it... and keep it. 

There's a raft of obnoxious Labour MPs who seem to have achieved almost nothing for some of the poorest people in Britain, and Western Europe. Amazingly Willie Bain, the worst of them, is almost guaranteed his seat. 

Just as well, what else could he do?

Remember though, whoever it is you want rid of, THIS is what we are up against. For all their protestations that they want us to stay, there is a strong feeling that we are not welcome in their union.

Who can put up a strong fight for Scotland? Maggie Curran, Cathy Jamieson, Anas Sarwar?

Of course we shouldn't forget the Liberals, although heaven knows, it's easy to do just that. They seem to have adapted remarkably quickly to being Tories. The obvious choice is high flyer Danny Alexander. You may remember that he's not a REAL Tory, just an honorary one.  Alternatively, there is the all but useless Scottish Secretary whose involvement in l'affaire francaise has still not been explained?

Anyway, your thoughts, if you have time on what I know will be a busy day, will be much welcomed.

Fingers crossed. Good luck in all your constituencies.

OH DEAR, SIMON

That's a bit over the top, isn't it?

Not to mention that it's probably illegal!

STOP SALMOND CAMPAIGN IN GORDON

It seems, according to a report in the Scotsman by David Maddox, that some Labour and Tory supporters are likely to back the Liberal Democrat candidate in Gordon, in a cross party "Stop Salmond" campaign.

Although the parties have denied that they will do this, activists and voters in an area which voted 60-40 for dependence have indicated that they hate Salmond so much that they are prepared to vote for someone they don't want, just a bit less than they don't want Salmond. This, of course, is their prerogative, and in a First Past the Post system that serves the voter so badly it is not unusual for tactical voting to take place.

The local Liberal deputy chairperson, Marion Ewenson, said: “A lot of people in the Better Together Group were impressed by the way Christine (Jardine... the Liberal candidate) campaigned, which is why they are getting behind her even if they are normally supporters of other parties.”

According to one Labour supporter, George Simpson, what they need is a strong candidate to thwart Alex Salmond. He says he will vote Liberal because Labour does not have a strong vote in the area. 

I find that notion a little strange, given that, prior to the their coalition with Cameron, and with the established and well-known Malcolm Bruce as their candidate, the Liberals polled 36% of the vote in 2010. The SNP polled 22%, Labour polled 20% and the Tories 19%. Hardly a great deal in it.

I think what Mr Simpson may have meant to say was that the Labour candidate this time round, 22 year old Braden Davy (right), is, in some people's opinion, a weak choice, and rather unlikely to win. 

Jayne James-Duff is a Tory. Indeed she was a Conservative candidate for the local council, and she has said that she, and her Conservative friends, are considering voting Liberal, although they fear that, given the Liberals standing in the polls it may be a waste of a vote.

The Official party lines from the Tories and the Labour party are that they aren't advising tactical voting and that there will be no official Anti-Salmond pact.

Mr Maddox gave all three of the named contributors an opportunity to say a few nasty things about Alex (you can read them here), and in the interests of fair and balanced journalism I'm sure that he gave the SNP the opportunity to respond. 

Maybe they were out, maybe there just wasn't enough space in the paper for their comments, or maybe a careless sub-editor just lost them...and that is why none appears!