Good news for the peoples loyal republic of Anniesland and Drumchuckie.

Having been left without a councillor since Steven Purcell resigned due to ill health, stress, gak inhalation and up closes associations with the err associates of know gangsters, the poor folk of Anniesland and Drumchapel have been left to their own devices, with no councillor to help them out it must have been a fraught time. 

Fear not for last night Labour achieved a quite remarkable victory and the good voters of the ward went X happy and plunked their mark down beside the name of Christopher Hughes - Labour.

 Mr Hughes who sounds like an eminently sensible chap despite his premature baldness and the African sunset of his manly beard was most effusive in praising the legacy of Mr Purcell, stating, "He did a lot of work and was a very fine councillor for them for a number of years. It was not an issue at all."

The hardest part of coping with addiction is moving on, and I'm genuinely thrilled that the good voters of the Blairtardie ward have had the bravery to put questions of Mr Purcell's judgement, his association with some err shiftier characters in the Glasgow business underworld and of course the role of cronyism with regard to his various quangocrats, to one side...

One can only hope that this is the last of the criminally supplied gak infused political scandals to hit the country...

 

We're doomed...don't think so.

There you go, 3.30 am and the party is just about over. The Tartan overlord's call for 20 SNP MP's proved to be catastrophically overambitious. 

The rampant enthusiasm after the narrow Holyrood victory in 2007 and the splendid Westminster by-election later that year in Glasgow East, came back and smacked Salmond and SNP supporters hard in the face.

Any straws to be clutched at will be dismissed as sour grapes by Labour party supporters and their fellow unionists. However, a biased media utterly thirled to Labour, blindingly negative campaigning and the emergence of tactical voting against the Tories all deserve an airing, simply because they served to turn around and kick the crap out of the SNP's aspirations. Believers in independence are bound to be depressed and suffering from the moops for the next couple of days. 

However, this was a Westminster election and making the breakthrough was always going to be a big ask. I suppose once the psephologist's start number crunching we'll discover that the SNP increased their votes from 2005, sadly that's no comfort at this time. I naively always see elections in optimistic terms, believing the electorate just needs the chance to listen to alternative arguments, before the veil of fear and propaganda is lifted. Jings, more fool me.

BBC Scotland, have rightly gone to the victors for their views tonight. We've had a continuous uninterrupted rant from Messrs Alexander, Murphy and Gray panning the SNP. This crowing and chest thumping will continue for a few days. It'll make some of us depressed, most it will simply anger, it'll help to resolve our desire to show these posturing mountebanks that we are not completely defeated. You have to ask why they aren't gracious in victory, could it be that they still fear the SNP are popular in government, that the task of standing up to the Tories in Westminster will be difficult from opposition and that they have been a woefully poor opposition in Holyrood? They're shrieking and preening because they're quite simply shitting themselves. David Cameron in control of Scotland's finances and reserved matters will not be popular here. A referendum on Independence offers many opportunities and will be difficult for them to manipulate from opposition in both parliaments. 

Holyrood next year, it's all to play for.