By election updates

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

1 minute ago, Alan Stubbs said:

Are the working-age folk moving from Edinburgh to Fife really more likely to be Tories? I'd have thought the opposite if anything. If you're moving out of your own city, presumably to be able to afford to buy, then I would guess you're likely to be young to middle aged and earning an average income. I can see there being plenty of alright jack retired Tory's in Aberdour and the like but I don't think this can be blamed on Edinburgh commuters.

Looks like the Tories have nudged a few extra percent on a lower turnout. Hardly a big surprise.

The Tory vote dropped by around 20% from the last set of elections.

But in answer to your first question, this is a classic case of nothing to do with being Tories, but everything to do with being Unionists. Dalgety Bay had one of the biggest No voting percentages in Fife in 2014.....it's no surprise to see people there (who may have been Labour or Lib Dem voters) ditching these tradional parties and voting for the most Unionist/Loyalist.

 

 

[NotThePars]

Just now, renton said:

Yep, from a polling point of view it's a perfect cross section for Scotland.

 

Think it was a microcosm of the independence vote as well, was it not? 

[Detournement]

5 minutes ago, Alan Stubbs said:

Are the working-age folk moving from Edinburgh to Fife really more likely to be Tories? I'd have thought the opposite if anything. If you're moving out of your own city, presumably to be able to afford to buy, then I would guess you're likely to be young to middle aged and earning an average income. I can see there being plenty of alright jack retired Tories in Aberdour and the like but I don't think this can be blamed on Edinburgh commuters.

Looks like the Tories have nudged a few extra percent on a lower turnout. Hardly a big surprise.

They are probably earning an average income but hoping that Tory policy will keep driving house prices up and keep council tax down.

[renton]

3 minutes ago, Alan Stubbs said:

Are the working-age folk moving from Edinburgh to Fife really more likely to be Tories? I'd have thought the opposite if anything. If you're moving out of your own city, presumably to be able to afford to buy, then I would guess you're likely to be young to middle aged and earning an average income. I can see there being plenty of alright jack retired Tories in Aberdour and the like but I don't think this can be blamed on Edinburgh commuters.

Looks like the Tories have nudged a few extra percent on a lower turnout. Hardly a big surprise.

Besides, most of the Edinburgh commuters will have moved into the huge housing estates built in and around Dunfermline, not a sleepy characterless hole like Inverkeithing, or a No voting hamlet like Dalgety Bay.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

Just now, NotThePars said:

 

Think it was a microcosm of the independence vote as well, was it not? 

Roughly, yes.

I once saw a break down of the 2014 vote from every polling station in Fife...it was online somewhere.

Dalgety Bay was something like 70/30 'NO' (as were certain areas of Dunfermline). Inverkeithing overall was just 'YES' if I remember correctly. Central Fife in general....the mining areas....were around 60/40 YES (some of the highest Yes votes in the country, IIRC).

 

 

[renton]

2 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

 

Think it was a microcosm of the independence vote as well, was it not? 

That's what Curtice reckoned anyway. Albeit you could imagine Fife being short, percentage wise, on the professional middle class metrics. 

[tirso]

7 minutes ago, Alan Stubbs said:

Are the working-age folk moving from Edinburgh to Fife really more likely to be Tories? I'd have thought the opposite if anything. If you're moving out of your own city, presumably to be able to afford to buy, then I would guess you're likely to be young to middle aged and earning an average income. I can see there being plenty of alright jack retired Tories in Aberdour and the like but I don't think this can be blamed on Edinburgh commuters.

Looks like the Tories have nudged a few extra percent on a lower turnout. Hardly a big surprise.

if you've got the money, you stay out of Edinburgh and commute in.

Fife is a far nicer place to live than a city for middle aged, manager types.

[renton]

Just now, tirso said:

if you've got the money, you stay out of Edinburgh and commute in.

Fife is a far nicer place to live than a city for middle aged, manager types.

Every syllable of this post conveys an incorrect meaning. Even the letters might not actually be correct.

[tirso]

1 minute ago, renton said:

That's what Curtice reckoned anyway. Albeit you could imagine Fife being short, percentage wise, on the professional middle class metrics. 

Nah, Fife's a rich place in a lot of areas I think.   East Nuek is stunning as well.  nice part of the world.

[tirso]

2 minutes ago, renton said:

Every syllable of this post conveys an incorrect meaning. Even the letters might not actually be correct.

hahah fair enough.  made me chuckle.

[renton]

2 minutes ago, tirso said:

Nah, Fife's a rich place in a lot of areas I think.   East Nuek is stunning as well.  nice part of the world.

I'm from Kirkcaldy. I appreciate there is plenty to like about Fife, I really do, but I honestly would never go back to live there.

[Detournement]

13 minutes ago, renton said:

Yep, from a polling point of view it's a perfect cross section for Scotland.

Lanark and Hamilton East has to be the most mixed constituency. Areas of affluence and areas of extreme poverty. Extreme unionist areas but also a big Catholic vote. And a mix of urban and rural.

[renton]

1 minute ago, Detournement said:

Lanark and Hamilton East has to be the most mixed constituency. Areas of affluence and areas of extreme poverty. Extreme unionist areas but also a big Catholic vote. And a mix of urban and rural.

On a constituency basis I'd probably agree, much of the Fife constituencies tend towards homogeneous demographics (and Cowdenbeath tends towards homogeneous Genomes) but taken as a whole, the region certainly seems to be a miniature of Scotland.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Dalgety Bay has always been full of conservative (with a small c) voters - no surprise at that result.

 

 

[Im_Rodger]

52 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Lanark and Hamilton East has to be the most mixed constituency. Areas of affluence and areas of extreme poverty. Extreme unionist areas but also a big Catholic vote. And a mix of urban and rural.

Could not agree more with that analysis.

 

My Constituency is probably the most diverse there is. 

 

Heartbreaking result there but. 

 

Also not surprising at all most people from Hamilton support the Old Firm.

[Granny Danger]

Fife is a bit of a political conundrum.  The only place in Scotland to ever elect a Communist MP, Willie Gallacher.

It was said that the only two people who ever went to Parliament with good intent were Willie Gallacher and Guy Fawkes.

 

[tirso]

32 minutes ago, Im_Rodger said:

Also not surprising at all most people from Hamilton support the Old Firm.

curious, what do you mean here?  It's a three way split.  Celtic SNP, Rangers Tories and Accies old school Labour?

i can just about see the sort of "staunch/orange walkers" going for the Tories but not sure what football really has to do with it in any way.   but not from there.

Edited September 7, 2018 by tirso

[John Lambies Doos]

Dalgety bay seems to be full of c***s

[Detournement]

1 hour ago, Granny Danger said:

Fife is a bit of a political conundrum.  The only place in Scotland to ever elect a Communist MP, Willie Gallacher.

It was said that the only two people who ever went to Parliament with good intent were Willie Gallacher and Guy Fawkes.

 

Motherwell elected a Communist in 1922.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton_Newbold

[Detournement]

Kind of related to electing Communists here are some interesting comments from James Kelman and the erasing of our history.

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That comes back to the old colonial thing of not being taught your own traditions, or being told they are secondary.

Well, there is that. There’s also the fact that to some extent Scottish history is a radical history, it’s a history in opposition to the mainstream. And radical history is marginalised, and not necessarily taught. Heroes who are radical heroes, like John Maclean, John Murdoch and Donald Macrae, James Connolly or Arthur McManus, Helen Crawford, Agnes Dollan, they’re not really known. In other countries they would be heroes, but they’re not known in their own country, they’re radical figures politically. In other countries everybody would know who Wilson, Baird and Hardie were, Thomas Muir – or Thomas Reid, or Ferrier, or Clerk Maxwell, Hugh Miller. In Scotland they don’t know these things. They don’t know about George Buchanan, they don’t know about these great Reformation and post-Reformation figures, they don’t know about the Scottish Latin tradition. They just seem to know these silly things, fantasies about royalty and religion, kilted super-heroes. It’s really shocking, in a way, pathetic is a better word.

Scottish history is not nice history. It’s the history of subjection. We are so used to tipping the hat to our superiors. And that’s still the way things are, unfortunately. How many other countries do we know, how many cultures in the world do we know where there’s a debate about ‘should we determine our own existence or not?’ Such inferiority, it’s shocking. Independence is not an economic decision, it is a decision to do with self-respect. How we determine our own existence, this is what we do as adults for goodness sake, it’s our culture, ultimately it concerns survival. And we’ll see it literally, if the independence movement is set back again, emigration as usual, for those able to do it, spiritual demoralisation for others.

https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2012/06/the-srb-interview-james-kelman/

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