More Sour Grapes.

From Drumlanrig again, "New official data on last year's Holyrood election fiasco has once again drawn attention to Cunninghame North, where the SNP's Kenny Gibson beat Labour's Allan Wilson last year by just 48 votes. The new data shows that 309 voters who backed Labour on the second vote spoiled their ballot paper on the constituency ballot, compared with just 207 voters who backed the Nats. Labour sources point out that, had the votes been properly recorded, Wilson would almost certainly have won, and the SNP's one-seat victory over Labour would have been reversed."

Mr Smith wishes Mr Wilson (aka the "Labour source") would give up banging on about this. Why doesn't he go to court if he is so sure of success in overturning the result?

The Un-elected.

So which of our current illustrious Members of the Scottish Parliament have no right to be there?

"THE expert appointed to investigate last year's Scottish Parliament election fiasco has said some MSPs may have no right to sit at Holyrood. Elections watchdog Ron Gould revealed he is "not comfortable" with the view that all 129 MSPs elected last year actually received more votes than their opponents. He blames the farce in which more than 140,000 ballots were spoiled."

So it looks as though we have the best democracy that money didn't even need to buy and we criticise unelected regimes the world over. How long until someone starts analysing the Scottish version of the "hanging chads" to see which MSPs didn't actually get elected?

Democracy on the cheap.

So, "THE COST of last year's Scottish election fiasco soared by £9 million more than the previous election to £25m, figures released today reveal. This has led Scottish Nationalist MSP Keith Brown to call on the company which supplied the electronic counting machines to offer a rebate."

Mr Smith would point out to our elected representatives that the major reasons why the costs of the elections rose so significantly was because our politicians in their infinite wisdom decided to change the electoral systems for local government to a system of proportional representation, as well as holding the elections for the Scottish Parliament and local government on the same day.

The fundamental reasons why costs rose so much was because politicians made bad decisions about the running of the elections. To try and pass the buck onto the makers of some counting machines that turned out not to work very well really is a bit rich.

The best democracy ....?

"Alex Salmond's SNP outspent Labour for the first time in May's Holyrood elections by more than £280,000 as the Nationalists almost trebled their campaign spending to a record £1.4m, not far short of the statutory limit. Figures released by the Electoral Commission yesterday revealed that the four main parties spent a total of £3.4m this year, more than double the £1.6m they spent in 2003. Backed by wealthy donors such as transport tycoon Brian Souter, who, according to the commission's register, gave the Nationalists £625,000 in the first part of the year, the SNP spent £1,383,462 in May's poll, up from £473,107 four years ago, which represented a rise of 192.4%."

Mr Smith thinks .... the point is ... that all of it was within the law ... and declared.

Well done Douglas.

Mr Smith reads that former Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander MP, has faced calls for his resignation over the "voting fiasco" at May's Scottish Parliament elections when over 140,000 votes cast by the punters were ruled ineligible because of confusion over the voting system for the Holyrood election. Indeed, he has now apologised for his role in the affair.

Now, Mr Smith may be cynical but he suspects given that the SNP effectively "won" May's elections, that the SNP would probably have received even more votes, as would all of the opposition parties, if it hadn't been for the "confusion" over the voting system.

Amidst May's chaos, the Labour share of the vote only fell by a couple of percentage points whilst the SNP's rose by nearly 10%. If it hadn't been for Douglas' mistakes Labour might have lost even more seats in May's elections.

So the real question is perhaps not whether Douglas and other Labour Ministers acted incompetently in the run up to May, but whether they deliberately allowed confusion to be created knowing that their own party would be the main beneficiary of the chaos that ensued? Mr Smith thinks that in some quarters Douglas may actually be getting a pat on the back for his creativity and saving Labour's bacon.