28 October 2009

Mev, p'tahk!

Well, this has got me off my sick bed: nominations for the Glasgow NE By-Election have closed and we have learned that Mev Brown is on the candidates' list. Here's his political CV up to now:

5 May 2005 - Westminster Election. Tory Candidate in Edinburgh East. He came fourth out of eight, with 4,093 votes (10.31%).

29 September 2005 - Livingston By-Election. Independent candidate. He came eighth out of ten, with 108 votes (0.37%).

10 November 2005 - Murrayfield By-Election (City of Edinburgh Council). UKIP candidate. He came eighth out of eight, behind even the Liberal candidate - and I mean Liberal Party candidate , as they had a candidate besides the LibDem - with just four votes (0.2%)

27 April 2006 - Moray By-Election. NHSFirst candidate. He came fifth out of fifth with a slightly more respectable 493 (1.8%) votes.

3 May 2007 - Holyrood Election. #1 on the NHS First List - having agreed an electoral tie-up with Scottish Voice which saw him drop his plan to stand in Lothian. They came thirteenth out of sixteen, with 1,955 votes (0.69%). He also stood in Airdrie & Shotts, where he came fifth out of five with 970 votes (3.57%).

4 June 2009 - European Election. #3 on the Jury Team List in Scotland. They came thirteenth out of thirteen with 6,257 votes (0.57%).

And that list doesn't convey the alleged attempted hook-up with the SSCUP (they knocked him back), his intervention on the scotsman.com comments section, his presence on policing forums asking for policies, the presence of his party mildly pissing off a genuine health campaigner whose candidacy for Coatbridge had been declared about a year in advance of the election, and two differing biography pages on his websites.

So with the Jury Team backing John Smeaton this time, Mev begins another stage in his quixotic journey through the footnotes of electoral history.

Incidentally, mev is Klingon for 'stop'. I'm not sure whether I want him to or not...

3 comments:

Jeff said...

If we're going to bemoan the lack of change at Westminster while simultaneously deriding the plucky outsiders trying to get into Parliament to make a change, then I don't think we'll ever win.

Will said...

True, but we have to ask ourselves, what change, if any, does this particular plucky outsider actually want to make?

I'm just going to come right out and say it: I don't trust Mev Brown, least of all to make any sort of change.

Certainly in terms of independents who can make a change, I'd be more trusting of Smeato - and I don't recall you challenging the kicking he got from the blogosphere ;) - or Mikey Hughes who at least are notable for things other than getting onto ballot papers with a variety of descriptions. Also Mikey does at least have a platform and justification for his candidacy. I hope they have a good campaign and election - though obviously David Kerr is who we both want to win - but Mev Brown? Let's just say that he's no Martin Bell or Jean Turner...

Stuart Winton said...

I wonder if Mev had dumped the Jury Team before they selected Smeato, or perhaps he's peeved that they didn't give anyone else a chance?

I mean, fair play to him for having a go in the past, but it should be obvious to him by now that his candidacy will achieve nothing.

Unless he's got some kind of political-masochistic streak about him.