Making political history.

It's not every day that a lowly councillor makes political history, but that's what happened last Thursday when the SNP's John Corall was elected to the Midstocket/Rosemount council ward on Aberdeen City Council, becoming the first councillor ever to be elected in Scotland using the new Single Transferable Vote in a multi-member ward at a by-election.

Congratulations to Councillor Corall and commiserations to the Scottish Conservatives who also became the first Scottish political party to lose a council seat under the new voting system, with a gain for the SNP, albeit at a very late stage in the iterative voting system.

Mr Smith suspects the result will have ramifications for all political parties, because it probably means that unless a candidate manages to get themselves elected with a majority of the vote at stage 1 of the ballot process, It makes it virtually impossible to predict what then happen when the second, third and fourth stage voting preferences of the rest of the voters come into play, and there are no prizes for coming second in a by-election.