Edinburgh Sucks! | Some Goodbyes

City Council

Some Goodbyes

By The Basa ⋅ May 7, 2007 ⋅

Well the count at Ingliston proved good value for money.Â Not that we saw any money being exchanged, in fact there was a dearth of brown envelopes with lots of cheers from different crowds at different times.Â

However, the overnight count was just frustrating – finally one night where everyone involved in politics was totally pissed off no matter what colour rosette they were wearing – that was the silver lining.Â The other thing we found out was that the Returning Officer ensured that you have to get elected before you can get a free coffee from the council – all those with hopes of starting to feed at the trough of the public purse for just being a candidate, agent or boyfriend were dashed upon sight of the overcharging pay-to-drink chuck-wagon.

With bleary eyes wiped clean it was the final charge at midday on Friday.Â Six hours of really constant fun.Â Well worth the cost of going to the city chambers to fill out a form then picking up as many passes as you wished to attend the festivities.Â With a few EdSucks contributors in attendance we had a lot of fun watching the faces of our “favourite” friends.

As we said before, our calls on the voters asking them to vote independent fell on deaf ears.Â However, because of the independents taking part, the results in a lot of wards are a lot different if they never took part.Â Kudos should go to Tina Woolnough (Inverleith), Norrie Davies (Portobello/Craigmillar), Keith Bell (Sigthill/Gorgie), and Fred Marinello (Forth) for making changes in their wards, hopefully for the betterÂ Â - you have all been given a mandate by your wards to build on for the next election when hopefully labour’s vote will just disappear.

So who are we saying goodbye to?Â

Teflon Don bowed out with his last political speech of the campaign at Ingliston – with that Edinburgh has lost its own Homer Simpson, one of Frank Boyle’s greatest creations assigned to the Labour Exchange.Â Poor Teflon Don had no chance, hoping to win in a seat with a slither of a majority for the FibDems was a good idea, but unfortunately for the Donald, he ended up being on the losing end of hugely increased majority hitting close to 2,000 – no matter how many times he trolled Gordon Brown around his constituency.

Tom Pontin.Â The man who coined the “Sow’s Ear” phrase was thrown out on his ear himself.Â Back to the pubs for Mr. Pontin with a big cheer from the Conservatives.Â I wonder whether we will see him in the public gallery at council meetings.

Another turncoat in the Council was John Longstaff who moved from the LibDems over to shore up the last Labour administration.Â Unfortunately, no matter how good a local councillor he was, if indeed he was, he was well and truly thrashed at the ballot box.

Down in the Forth ward we almost had to say goodbye to both labour councillors – now that would have been nice!Â However, it was not to be and we say goodbye to long serving labour councillor and city Baillie Billy “Nowt tae dae wi me” Fitzpatrick – well it really is “nowt tae dae wi him” from now on.Â The warning signs were there months ago for Fitzpatrick when Lesley Hinds and Bunty Backhander were doing the carving up.Â Bunty spent the last four weeks getting the word out through her network of grubby followers – who are all “on the books” in one or other of her committees, projects, or henchteams to make sure that she was first and if they “wanted to have two votes then do Billy – but if you are confused then just stick a cross next to my name the same as you always do.”Â However, Bunty was surprised because she only got in by the skin of her teeth even after the dirty, filthy tactics she used which shall surface in the next few weeks when proof emerges.

LibDem Sue Tritton didn’t quite make the muster on polling day.Â She lost out, but only just.Â We have never done a post on her so she must be squeaky clean.Â Shame a clean one didn’t get in when so many dirty, dirty, dirty, filthy slimeballs managed to get a seat.

Another loser for Labour was Bill Cunningham.Â Again we haven’t done a post on him either.

Trevor “the finger” Davies, the man we love to call Dick Dastardly and who went on to Talk 107 and called us liars until we turned up with the email to prove what a liar he was, has finally gone to much weeping of the Caltongate Developers and any other developer.Â Unfortunately for “the finger” he is not good at winning elections nowadays.Â Having been trounced in the labour leadership election, he now gets trounced by his electorate – nae luck!Â Finally the pigeon has wonÂ in the latest Wacky Race.

Shami Khan has finally paid for his stupidity over the last four years.Â I am sure there was a huge cheer let out from Fettes when the result came in and a huge weepFest from the Nolan crew in Craigmillar because he was their favourite councillor.Â Shami got a big hug from Ewan Aitken before retiring from Ingliston and the slow walk back to the car without the chance to see any video tape.Â We will miss his blunders which have given us so much copy over the last couple of years.

Down Porty way we saw the departure of Lawrence Marshall quite probably because of the same reason as Billy Fitzpatrick failed so miserably in Forth.Â In the Portobello/Craigmillar ward it was Maureen Child taking the place of Bunty Backhander and getting her followers to put her interests before those of her running mate.Â The writing on the wall for Lawrence was clear for everyone to see weeks ago, in fact – years ago.Â Although Marshall was elected as the councillor for Portobello, Maureen Childs was the publicity hog for the ward even although she was elected for another ward which she totally ignored for 8 years.Â Hence Lawrence’s 849 first past the post to Child’s 2,076 coming a poor second to the SNP’s Mike Bridgeman.Â Even the total of the Independent votes were higher than Marshall’s share.Â He unfortunately was sold down the river by his running mate.

What will become of the new council?Â It will be an interesting 4 years and EdSucks will be there all the way bringing you the scandal, the corruption, the stupidity and the wasting of money.Â Our only hope is that Stefan Tymkewycz is clean, upstanding and sensible.Â Not only is he a councillor but also an MSP so his nickname is already set in stone as Stef “two-jobs” Tymkewycz but the spelling of that surname is going to be real hard work for us in the years to come.

Good luck to all the new councillors – let’s hope the next four years proves that EdinburghSucks.com should become redundant.Â However, we won’t hold our breath.