Maxine's Personal Message

Hi to all of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances,

I have to tell you how absolutely delighted, ecstatic and over the moon I am at being elected to Highland Council for the Cromarty Firth ward.

It has been a long, trying, costly and extremely arduous journey for me to get to this point in my life where I can serve the area that I adore and do the job that I love. For me this is more than a new position it has been my most precious goal for many years and now I have finally achieved it I am floating on the ceiling and can't wait to get stuck in.  What is even more special to me is that I have achieved it amongst friends and with my SNP colleagues.

I want to thank all of you who are in this ward who voted for me whether on a personal or party level and those of you who have travelled the journey with me; also those of you who I have worked with and will work with in the future; my much valued fellow SNP members and last but not least my children, David and Hayley, who have been patient with me in some of my more stressful hours.

I was elected to serve the Cromarty Firth ward alongwith Martin Rattray, Carolyn Wilson and Mike Finlayson - out of all the 9 candidates these were the ones I most wanted to work with so that makes me even happier and I know we will as a team make a huge difference to the quality of life for people in this area. 

17 out of 22 of my SNP Council candidates have also been elected, which is tremendous.  This provides a platform and bonded team which can deliver things for you on much wider scale.  With an alliance with others we will be able to set the agenda on behalf of the Highland people rather than have the top Council officials decide without consultation what happens.  This will provide delivery of services at a more local level and with greater effectiveness and public representation.

We also took 47 seats as opposed to Labour's 46 seats in Scottish Parliament.

However, this election has been fraught with administrative difficulties that I won't pursue here but one that is really appalling was the mis-calculation yesterday at the Count when the Regional MSP seats for the Highlands list candidates was going to be announced.  The Returning Officer, Arthur McCourt had intimated to the Green candidate and 4 Labour candidates that they had been duly elected and that none of our SNP candidates on the list had been successful.  Just prior to announcement luckily one of our SNP candidates noticed that the figures were wrong and pointed it out.  The calculations had completely omitted the 69,000+ votes that the SNP had received!! They were re-calculated and the 4th Labour candidate had to be told she had not been elected, alongwith Eleanor Scott of the Green party who had not been successful.  Instead the SNP's Rob Gibson and David Thompson were duly elected.  I am told that if the Returning Officer had announced the original result it would have had to stand and could only have been challenged in Court! That would have meant the SNP got 45 seats in Scottish Parliament as opposed to the 47 that they did get, giving them one more seat than Labour.

My friend Karen Shirron contested the Central Aberdeen Scottish Parliament seat where she lost by 365 votes to the Labour candidate, however there were 2,000 spoiled ballot papers at the first count!

Make of this what you will, but to my mind the things that have happened in this election with postal votes arriving when the person has gone on holiday or to the wrong address, ballot boxes damaged and tens of thousands of spoiled papers, low turnouts from the elderly, count delays etc. are the things you expect to see in a third world country that is testing out democracy, not in one of the apparently most democratic nations of the world.  I remain disgusted at the way it has been conducted and hope there is a thorough investigation.

On a brighter note I wish Alex Salmond all the best in negotiating his position for First Minister and I look forward to working with you all from Tuesday onwards when I sign the Councillor's declaration.

Thank you one and all.

Maxine

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO LEAVE COMMENTS IN MY GUESTBOOK AS TO YOUR VIEWS ON THIS

David Smith	Hayley Smith
Sean Connery at the SNP Conference March 2007	Maxine and her daughter, Hayley December 2006
Maxine's Hyundai Coupe - Its time