Search
1000 results for “Andy”
-
Holaaa, me podéis llamar todos Andy y soy nuevo aquí :)
Me gustan los #mapaches 🦝, el #arte (el ajeno, no soy demasiado creativo jsjs), los #videojuegos 🎮 y muchas más cosas, un poco de todo, se podría decir.
Encantado de conoceros :P
-
Holaaa, me podéis llamar todos Andy y soy nuevo aquí :)
Me gustan los #mapaches 🦝, el #arte (el ajeno, no soy demasiado creativo jsjs), los #videojuegos 🎮 y muchas más cosas, un poco de todo, se podría decir.
Encantado de conoceros :P
-
Holaaa, me podéis llamar todos Andy y soy nuevo aquí :)
Me gustan los #mapaches 🦝, el #arte (el ajeno, no soy demasiado creativo jsjs), los #videojuegos 🎮 y muchas más cosas, un poco de todo, se podría decir.
Encantado de conoceros :P
-
Holaaa, me podéis llamar todos Andy y soy nuevo aquí :)
Me gustan los #mapaches 🦝, el #arte (el ajeno, no soy demasiado creativo jsjs), los #videojuegos 🎮 y muchas más cosas, un poco de todo, se podría decir.
Encantado de conoceros :P
-
Holaaa, me podéis llamar todos Andy y soy nuevo aquí :)
Me gustan los #mapaches 🦝, el #arte (el ajeno, no soy demasiado creativo jsjs), los #videojuegos 🎮 y muchas más cosas, un poco de todo, se podría decir.
Encantado de conoceros :P
-
Andy Burnham’s camp scrambles to challenge a Wes Streeting leadership bid – POLITICO
More than 90 Labour MPs called for Starmer to quit, including four ministers who resigned to demand his…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #AndyBurnham #AngelaRayner #DanBloom #EdMiliband #Elections #Energy #KeirStarmer #Mayors #Parliament #Rights #Scotland #Tax #UK #UnitedKingdom #Wales #WesStreeting
https://www.newsbeep.com/536731/ -
Dodgers vs Giants Prediction: Odds, recent stats, trends, and best bets for May 13 https://www.rawchili.com/4999200/ #AndyPages #Dodgers #Giants #LosAngeles #LuisArraez #MLB #RobbieRay #SanFrancisco #SanFranciscoGiants #ShoehiOhtani #ShoheiOhtani #TheDodgers #TheGiants #WillyAdames
-
Dodgers drop series to Guardians after lackluster offensive showing https://www.rawchili.com/mlb/658332/ #AndyPages #Baseball #Dodgers #FifthTime #FirstHomeRun #game #Guardians #hit #hitter #inning #La #LADodgers #LADodgers #LastSeason #LosAngeles #LosAngelesDodgers #LosAngeles #LosAngelesDodgers #MLB #no #season #ShoheiOhtani #WillSmith #Yamamoto
-
This thread was originally written and published in March 2024.
For no good reason, I decided to make a chart that shows the changing political make-up of Edinburgh’s municipal government in the last 124 years. It’s a graph whose changing colours and gradients tell lots of different political and historical stories about municipal government in that time, so let’s pick apart 124 years of Edinburgh’s political local history and find out what was going on and why, shall we?
Seat make-up of Edinburgh Town / District / City Council after Municipal Elections, 1920-presentFirst things first, we need to get a few things out of the way. In doing so it helps to avoid coming to the wrong conclusions about the graph and helps to understand what’s going on in the background and how the local electoral system has changed over time.
Until 1974, people voted for the Town Council, which was the elected1 component of what was known formally as the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh but almost universally as just the Corporation. The city was divided up into wards, as it is now, and each ward had three councillors, one of whom was elected each year on rotation. Each councillor served a three year term after which they retired but could stand again for re-election. This meant that voters were expected to vote annually for one councillor, the ballots of which were always held in the first week of November until in 1948 they were shifted to May. If a councillor stepped down or died during their term of office there would either be a by-election or if it was close to the next election then two seats would be up for grabs. Very occasionally, the entire Town Council was up for vote, e.g. after the amalgamation of Edinburgh and Leith in 1920 and when the date of ballots moved from November to May in 1948.
The Town Council in April 1961, the Lord Provost (John Greig Dunbar) and Bailies (senior Magistrates) sit at the head of the meeting. The Labour members are on the left, the Progressives on the right © Edinburgh City LibrariesIn 1974, voters went to the polls to vote for members of the new District Council. The District was the lower tier of municipal government established by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Edinburgh, Mid-, East and West Lothian Districts together formed the upper tier; Lothian Regional Council. This new system came into effect on May 16th 1975 and had votes every three (later four) years for the entire council, with a single councillor elected per ward on a first-past-the-post system. In 1995, voters went to the polls for the unitary authority of the City (of Edinburgh) Council as a result of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 which abolished the Regional Councils and devolved their powers to new unitary authorities based roughly on the Districts (or closely, in the case of Edinburgh). City Council elections followed the same electoral system as the District until 2007, when the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 changed this to a multi-member ward system, with three or four councillors elected every five years by proportional representation.
n.b. The graphs do not show the results of any intermediate by-elections, or the proportion of votes cast, it only shows the proportion of seats on the council that were held by each political grouping after the election of that year.
1920s. Moderates and Socialists
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1920-30Our graph starts at 1920, when a full Town Council election was held on account of Leith having just been incorporated in to the City under the terms of the Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920. The city was completely dominated at this time by the purple of the Moderates – not a formal party, but a political bloc of small-c conservatives, Liberals, Unionists, Liberal-Unionists and Independents who were strongly aligned to the Church of Scotland and whose purpose was largely to keep the right sort of people running the city and keep the red Socialists2 of Labour out.
Central Edinburgh Constituency Labour Party banner, 1925. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe Moderates were effective in the latter purpose but inevitably Edinburgh’s first Labour councillor was elected on November 2nd 1909 when dentist John Alexander Young was returned for the Dalry ward. Although by 1930 Labour had crept slowly up to sixteen councillors – after a jump from 6 to 14 in 1926, (just shy of 1/4 of the Council – there was still no sign of the city “going red” as was threatening in Glasgow. Just peeping in at the top in 1930 is the thin grey line of a single independent councillor, Alexander Thomson, who would shift his allegiance to the Moderates in 1933.
1930s. Progressives and Protestants
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1930-44Between 1930 and 1940 there were two big changes in the Town Council – none of which actually affected who actually ran the City. In 1936 the loose, purple assemblage of the Moderates re-constituted themselves as the dark blue band of the Progressives, a more formally constituted party to counter the threat posed by Labour. On the formation of the Glasgow Progressives, where by now Labour was in control of the Town Council, the Scotsman described them as “an organisation which would effectively combat the Socialist menace, break down the apathy of many citizens, and co-ordinate all Moderate opinion in the city.” The other big change during this time was the brief but rapid rise and fall of the black band of John Cormack’s Protestant Action Society.
The banner of Loyal Orange Lodge no. 188, who style themselves “Cormack’s Protestant Defenders” on parade in Edinburgh, Lodge photo from public facebook group.Protestant Action were an extreme, anti-Catholic organisation whose basic platform was “No Popery“. Cormack made a habit of causing trouble wherever he could, stoking sectarian tensions in overcrowded and underprivileged wards, whipping up his supporters into violence and occasional riots, but always careful to be able to absolve himself of the blame. He formed his party in 1933 and in 1934’s election it got one councillor on 6% of the popular vote. By 1935 it got 21% and three seats, peaking in 1936 with a worrying 31% of the vote and nine seats. But not even Cormack’s force of oratory could hold his unruly grouping together; the established Protestant power of the Orange Order would have little to do with them. They picked fights with the fascists and the communists and then they picked fights amongst themselves. Support for Protestant Action soon waned and in the last pre-war municipal election of 1938 they had dropped back to 12% and 6 seats. John Cormack however would cling on to his seat in South Leith, becoming the “Father of the Council” in 1956 as its longest serving member. This seniority entitled him to the office of Bailie, one that conferred significant authority. He retired in 1961.
Post-war. Labour Rising
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1944-55On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Government suspended municipal elections for the duration and so the Town Council sat, as it was, for the duration. Its representation did change however in 1940 when Dalry Labour councillors David Stephen (1938 election intake) and George Boath (1939 by-election) resigned their party and changed allegiance to the dark red band of the Communists. With no by-elections possible, they continued to serve under this particular banner until elections re-started in 1945 when they were duly voted out at the first opportunity.
Except from “Old Street, Edinburgh” by William Wilson, 1935. A scene looking up the old Elder Street to St. James Square and showing canvassers for the forthcoming general election. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandIn line with the national trend, Labour saw an upsurge in post-war popularity, with its share of 40% of the popular vote translating to an increase to 27 seats, or 40% of the Town Council. This position was reversed in 1949 when they went back to 15 seats and 22% of the popular vote. Again this mirrored popular, national discontent with the Labour government and a recovery in Conservative fortunes. It was not until 1955 that Labour had managed to regain the ground it had lost to the Progressives six years previous, so the political status quo in the city was maintained throughout the decade. Protestant Action lost their seats coming up for re-election in 1945 and 1946, with only John Cormack able to cling on, as the thin black line at the bottom of the graph, from 1947 onwards.
1955-65. Progressive Decline
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1955-65The story of the next ten years was one of a long, slow waning in the fortunes of the Progressives. Throughout the decade Labour was able to make ground against them, until by the 1962 election both parties polled 38.5% of the popular vote, and in 1963 for the first time ever in Edinburgh Labour briefly surpassed the Progressives by this measure, 39.6% vs. 36.0%. But the three year system meant it was a long, slow process to effect political change although Labour had narrowed the gap between them and the Progressives to a single seat (32 vs. 33) by 1964, they were never quite able to bridge it. It cannot be seen in this chart, but in 1965 the Labour local vote collapsed to 27.9%, their worst since 1949, and the Progressives recovered to 58% after a run of five bad years. A new entrant onto the political scene in 1957 was Lady Morton (Hilda Sherwood Morton), who was elected for the orange strip of the Liberals in Merchiston ward. She was the first of her party to do so after it began to stand a few candidates in the city in 1955; by 1963 they had picked up four more for a total of five.
1965-74. End of the Old Order
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1965-74The next ten years following 1965 saw the first big shake-ups on the Edinburgh local political scene beyond the glacially slow 50 year rise of Labour. Most importantly, it was the decade in which party political politics, which had been more or less kept out of Municipal Government for the last 50 years, finally took over. Firstly, in 1962 the Unionist party started standing candidates. This was a centre-right political party that stood for Westminster elections in Scotland and that was aligned to the (English) Conservatives. In other parts of Scotland the National Liberal Party stood; both they and the Unionists took the Conservative whip in the House of Commons. In 1965 the Unionists formally merged with the Conservatives to form the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party, joined in 1968 by the National Liberals. Just as the Moderates had given way to the Progressives, so to did the Progressives give way to the Conservatives, but over a much longer timescale. Note that the press had long called both the Progressives and the Unionists “Tories“. Most of the Progressive old guard continued to stand as such, but new candidates stood instead as Conservatives. The result was that after their first candidates were elected in 1962, the light blue band of the Conservatives gradually and seamlessly usurped the old party, which finally died out alongside the long-established Town Council in 1974.
During this period, the Labour party found its position for a while squeezed between the strengthened Tory bloc and the insurgent yellow blob of the Scottish National Party, which enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity after Winnie Ewing’s breakthrough victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election. In 1968 they swelled to 35% of the popular local vote in Edinburgh and by 1969 had ten councillors, before rapdily collapsing back to local indifference by 1972 with just 2.9% of the vote. The first Scottish nationalist candidate had stood for the Town Council way back in 1932 but no more stood until 1956-59 when their handful of candidates polled less than 1% of the popular vote.
Jack Kane, Lord Provost of Edinburgh 1972-75; official portrait by Alexander Goudie. True to his down-to-earth form, he has eschewed donning his official robes. He was the first Lord Provost to decline the honorary knighthood that his position conferred. © Museums & Galleries EdinburghBy 1972, the SNP threat had gone, the Progressives were in terminal decline and Labour was recovering, and as a result it finally managed to become the largest party on the council, with 33 seats to the opposition’s 30. It had only taken them 63 years since their first councillor was sworn in! Their leader, Jack Kane, was elected Lord Provost that year, the first Labour holder of that post. With the final elections to the old Town Council in 1973, Labour had 34 seats and finally had a majority!
1974-95. District Days
Edinburgh District Council make-up 1974-95In 1974, the residents of Edinburgh went to the polls to vote for their new District Council, which replaced a system of local Government that had been going in one form or another for the past 700 years or more. Interestingly, although archaic titles such as Lord Provost and Bailie were meant to be swept away, they were kept on as honorific positions. The District Council performed many of the functions of the old Edinburgh Corporation, but strategic issues such as Transport, Education, Regional Planning, Police and Fire were run by the upper tier of Regional Councils.
Lothian Regional Council ghost sign, 20 plus years after that authority ceased to be. Photo © SelfThe results of the first election saw the Conservatives come out as the largest party, with one more seat than Labour. They lacked an overall majority but got it at the next ballot in 1977, with 34 of 67 seats. This marked the high point of the Conservative party in Edinburgh’s local government, and they have been in decline ever since. After the election of 1984, Labour increasingly dominated local politics. At the final District Council election in 1992, they took 30 of 62 seats, with the (by now) Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power. But by now there were more than two big parties in local politics and the single member wards with first-past-the-post electoral system did not function fairly. The Liberal Democrats in 1992 got 15% of the popular vote but only 3% of the seats. The SNP got 14% of the vote and no seats! Labour were flattered by the system, getting 48% of the seats on 29% of the vote.
1995-. The Rainbow Council
City of Edinburgh Council make-up 1995-2022It was all change again in 1995, when voters at the local elections now went to choose their City Council, a unitary authority based largely on the boundaries and functions of the old District but with the additional responsibilities of the Regions, which would disappear the following year, also. There was no fundamental changes however; Labour continued to dominate, the Conservatives continued their decline and the Liberal Democrats filled the void for the sort of voter who would once have been religiously Moderate or Progressive but who found they couldn’t bring themselves to vote Conservative due to national issues. By 2003, Labour retained a slim majority (31 of 59 seats), with the Liberal Democrats the next largest bloc on 15.
The SNP had a real problem however – they were reliably getting 15-30% of the popular vote in the Council elections but rarely picked up seats; they gone 1.7% of the seats on 21.5% of the vote in 1999. Labour in contrast had more than 50% of the seats on less than one third of the vote. This democratic deficit was remedied in 2007 when a new system of multi-member wars elected by Single Transferable Vote (proportional representation) was brought in. This had the immediate effect of giving the long-suppressed SNP a huge boost, with one fifth of the popular vote and council seats gained that year. The change was disastrous for Labour however, whose commanding position was built on the shaky foundations of an unrepresentative electoral system and their number of seats more than halved, to one much more in line with their overall popularity. The changes also let in the Scottish Green Party, who after standing candidates in one form or another in the city since 1980 finally picked up 3 seats. Rainbow politics had finally arrived!
The story of the rest of the period covered by our graph is largely now the story of Scottish and British national politics. The Conservatives continued to decline in popularity, but got a post-2014 Independence Referendum boost; the Liberal Democrats were punished heavily in 2012 after their coalition government at Westminster with the former party, and their recovery has been slow and largely concentrated in their traditional base of the west of the city. Labour have been largely unable to capitalise on these changes however – caught between any number of local and national issues – as the SNP and Green popular vote has held up and continued to creep upwards, with a combined 40% in 2017 and 2022.
Portobello political window in 2014. National politics has now come to dominate local politics. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe last local election in 2022 was one fought heavily on manifestos of national issues, despite these not being something that any local Council has any jurisdiction in. As a result, it saw the Conservative turn in their worst ever result for the Moderate-Progressive-Conservative bloc in the 122 years of our graph, with just 18% of the vote and 14% (nine) seats. Labour managed only 19% of the vote and 20% of the seats, their second-worst result in 100 years and yet somehow managed to pull various political strings and favours to run a minority administration; something the SNP failed to have sufficient support from their opposition to do, despite remaining the largest party by both seats and popular vote.
Who knows what 2027 might bring!
- There was an honorary seat on the Town Council for each of the Deacon Conveners (senior office holders) of the Merchant Company and the Incorporated Trades, meaning two members of the Town Council were unelected ↩︎
- The Scotsman perceived the Socialists as an extreme threat to the established order of the city and was strongly and persistently hostile to them in the 1920s through to the 1940s. In its reporting it almost always referred to them as just “the Socialists” ↩︎
If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.
These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur
-
Moderates, Progressives, Communists and Protestants: the thread about 122 years of local political change in Edinburgh
For no good reason, I decided to make a chart that shows the changing political make-up of Edinburgh’s municipal government in the last 124 years. It’s a graph whose changing colours and gradients tell lots of different political and historical stories about municipal government in that time, so let’s pick apart 124 years of Edinburgh’s political local history and find out what was going on and why, shall we?
Seat make-up of Edinburgh Town / District / City Council after Municipal Elections, 1920-presentFirst things first, we need to get a few things out of the way. In doing so it helps to avoid coming to the wrong conclusions about the graph and helps to understand what’s going on in the background and how the local electoral system has changed over time.
Until 1974, people voted for the Town Council, which was the elected1 component of what was known formally as the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh but almost universally as just the Corporation. The city was divided up into wards, as it is now, and each ward had three councillors, one of whom was elected each year on rotation. Each councillor served a three year term after which they retired but could stand again for re-election. This meant that voters were expected to vote annually for one councillor, the ballots of which were always held in the first week of November until in 1948 they were shifted to May. If a councillor stepped down or died during their term of office there would either be a by-election or if it was close to the next election then two seats would be up for grabs. Very occasionally, the entire Town Council was up for vote, e.g. after the amalgamation of Edinburgh and Leith in 1920 and when the date of ballots moved from November to May in 1948.
The Town Council in April 1961, the Lord Provost (John Greig Dunbar) and Bailies (senior Magistrates) sit at the head of the meeting. The Labour members are on the left, the Progressives on the right © Edinburgh City LibrariesIn 1974, voters went to the polls to vote for members of the new District Council. The District was the lower tier of municipal government established by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Edinburgh, Mid-, East and West Lothian Districts together formed the upper tier; Lothian Regional Council. This new system came into effect on May 16th 1975 and had votes every three (later four) years for the entire council, with a single councillor elected per ward on a first-past-the-post system. In 1995, voters went to the polls for the unitary authority of the City (of Edinburgh) Council as a result of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 which abolished the Regional Councils and devolved their powers to new unitary authorities based roughly on the Districts (or closely, in the case of Edinburgh). City Council elections followed the same electoral system as the District until 2007, when the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 changed this to a multi-member ward system, with three or four councillors elected every five years by proportional representation.
n.b. The graphs do not show the results of any intermediate by-elections, or the proportion of votes cast, it only shows the proportion of seats on the council that were held by each political grouping after the election of that year.
1920s. Moderates and Socialists
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1920-30Our graph starts at 1920, when a full Town Council election was held on account of Leith having just been incorporated in to the City under the terms of the Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920. The city was completely dominated at this time by the purple of the Moderates – not a formal party, but a political bloc of small-c conservatives, Liberals, Unionists, Liberal-Unionists and Independents who were strongly aligned to the Church of Scotland and whose purpose was largely to keep the right sort of people running the city and keep the red Socialists2 of Labour out.
Central Edinburgh Constituency Labour Party banner, 1925. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe Moderates were effective in the latter purpose but inevitably Edinburgh’s first Labour councillor was elected on November 2nd 1909 when dentist John Alexander Young was returned for the Dalry ward. Although by 1930 Labour had crept slowly up to sixteen councillors – after a jump from 6 to 14 in 1926, (just shy of 1/4 of the Council – there was still no sign of the city “going red” as was threatening in Glasgow. Just peeping in at the top in 1930 is the thin grey line of a single independent councillor, Alexander Thomson, who would shift his allegiance to the Moderates in 1933.
1930s. Progressives and Protestants
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1930-44Between 1930 and 1940 there were two big changes in the Town Council – none of which actually affected who actually ran the City. In 1936 the loose, purple assemblage of the Moderates re-constituted themselves as the dark blue band of the Progressives, a more formally constituted party to counter the threat posed by Labour. On the formation of the Glasgow Progressives, where by now Labour was in control of the Town Council, the Scotsman described them as “an organisation which would effectively combat the Socialist menace, break down the apathy of many citizens, and co-ordinate all Moderate opinion in the city.” The other big change during this time was the brief but rapid rise and fall of the black band of John Cormack’s Protestant Action Society.
The banner of Loyal Orange Lodge no. 188, who style themselves “Cormack’s Protestant Defenders” on parade in Edinburgh, Lodge photo from public facebook group.Protestant Action were an extreme, anti-Catholic organisation whose basic platform was “No Popery“. Cormack made a habit of causing trouble wherever he could, stoking sectarian tensions in overcrowded and underprivileged wards, whipping up his supporters into violence and occasional riots, but always careful to be able to absolve himself of the blame. He formed his party in 1933 and in 1934’s election it got one councillor on 6% of the popular vote. By 1935 it got 21% and three seats, peaking in 1936 with a worrying 31% of the vote and nine seats. But not even Cormack’s force of oratory could hold his unruly grouping together; the established Protestant power of the Orange Order would have little to do with them. They picked fights with the fascists and the communists and then they picked fights amongst themselves. Support for Protestant Action soon waned and in the last pre-war municipal election of 1938 they had dropped back to 12% and 6 seats. John Cormack however would cling on to his seat in South Leith, becoming the “Father of the Council” in 1956 as its longest serving member. This seniority entitled him to the office of Bailie, one that conferred significant authority. He retired in 1961.
Post-war. Labour Rising
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1944-55On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Government suspended municipal elections for the duration and so the Town Council sat, as it was, for the duration. Its representation did change however in 1940 when Dalry Labour councillors David Stephen (1938 election intake) and George Boath (1939 by-election) resigned their party and changed allegiance to the dark red band of the Communists. With no by-elections possible, they continued to serve under this particular banner until elections re-started in 1945 when they were duly voted out at the first opportunity.
Except from “Old Street, Edinburgh” by William Wilson, 1935. A scene looking up the old Elder Street to St. James Square and showing canvassers for the forthcoming general election. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandIn line with the national trend, Labour saw an upsurge in post-war popularity, with its share of 40% of the popular vote translating to an increase to 27 seats, or 40% of the Town Council. This position was reversed in 1949 when they went back to 15 seats and 22% of the popular vote. Again this mirrored popular, national discontent with the Labour government and a recovery in Conservative fortunes. It was not until 1955 that Labour had managed to regain the ground it had lost to the Progressives six years previous, so the political status quo in the city was maintained throughout the decade. Protestant Action lost their seats coming up for re-election in 1945 and 1946, with only John Cormack able to cling on, as the thin black line at the bottom of the graph, from 1947 onwards.
1955-65. Progressive Decline
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1955-65The story of the next ten years was one of a long, slow waning in the fortunes of the Progressives. Throughout the decade Labour was able to make ground against them, until by the 1962 election both parties polled 38.5% of the popular vote, and in 1963 for the first time ever in Edinburgh Labour briefly surpassed the Progressives by this measure, 39.6% vs. 36.0%. But the three year system meant it was a long, slow process to effect political change although Labour had narrowed the gap between them and the Progressives to a single seat (32 vs. 33) by 1964, they were never quite able to bridge it. It cannot be seen in this chart, but in 1965 the Labour local vote collapsed to 27.9%, their worst since 1949, and the Progressives recovered to 58% after a run of five bad years. A new entrant onto the political scene in 1957 was Lady Morton (Hilda Sherwood Morton), who was elected for the orange strip of the Liberals in Merchiston ward. She was the first of her party to do so after it began to stand a few candidates in the city in 1955; by 1963 they had picked up four more for a total of five.
1965-74. End of the Old Order
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1965-74The next ten years following 1965 saw the first big shake-ups on the Edinburgh local political scene beyond the glacially slow 50 year rise of Labour. Most importantly, it was the decade in which party political politics, which had been more or less kept out of Municipal Government for the last 50 years, finally took over. Firstly, in 1962 the Unionist party started standing candidates. This was a centre-right political party that stood for Westminster elections in Scotland and that was aligned to the (English) Conservatives. In other parts of Scotland the National Liberal Party stood; both they and the Unionists took the Conservative whip in the House of Commons. In 1965 the Unionists formally merged with the Conservatives to form the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party, joined in 1968 by the National Liberals. Just as the Moderates had given way to the Progressives, so to did the Progressives give way to the Conservatives, but over a much longer timescale. Note that the press had long called both the Progressives and the Unionists “Tories“. Most of the Progressive old guard continued to stand as such, but new candidates stood instead as Conservatives. The result was that after their first candidates were elected in 1962, the light blue band of the Conservatives gradually and seamlessly usurped the old party, which finally died out alongside the long-established Town Council in 1974.
During this period, the Labour party found its position for a while squeezed between the strengthened Tory bloc and the insurgent yellow blob of the Scottish National Party, which enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity after Winnie Ewing’s breakthrough victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election. In 1968 they swelled to 35% of the popular local vote in Edinburgh and by 1969 had ten councillors, before rapdily collapsing back to local indifference by 1972 with just 2.9% of the vote. The first Scottish nationalist candidate had stood for the Town Council way back in 1932 but no more stood until 1956-59 when their handful of candidates polled less than 1% of the popular vote.
Jack Kane, Lord Provost of Edinburgh 1972-75; official portrait by Alexander Goudie. True to his down-to-earth form, he has eschewed donning his official robes. He was the first Lord Provost to decline the honorary knighthood that his position conferred. © Museums & Galleries EdinburghBy 1972, the SNP threat had gone, the Progressives were in terminal decline and Labour was recovering, and as a result it finally managed to become the largest party on the council, with 33 seats to the opposition’s 30. It had only taken them 63 years since their first councillor was sworn in! Their leader, Jack Kane, was elected Lord Provost that year, the first Labour holder of that post. With the final elections to the old Town Council in 1973, Labour had 34 seats and finally had a majority!
1974-95. District Days
Edinburgh District Council make-up 1974-95In 1974, the residents of Edinburgh went to the polls to vote for their new District Council, which replaced a system of local Government that had been going in one form or another for the past 700 years or more. Interestingly, although archaic titles such as Lord Provost and Bailie were meant to be swept away, they were kept on as honorific positions. The District Council performed many of the functions of the old Edinburgh Corporation, but strategic issues such as Transport, Education, Regional Planning, Police and Fire were run by the upper tier of Regional Councils. The District also expanded the boundaries of the City to include outlying areas such as Currie, Balerno, Kirkliston and South Queensferry, which had previously been semi-independent Districts (or in the case of Queensferry, a Burgh) within the old Midlothian County (thank you to Paul Cockburn for pointing this fact out).
Lothian Regional Council ghost sign, 20 plus years after that authority ceased to be. Photo © SelfThe results of the first election saw the Conservatives come out as the largest party, with one more seat than Labour. They lacked an overall majority but got it at the next ballot in 1977, with 34 of 67 seats. This marked the high point of the Conservative party in Edinburgh’s local government, and they have been in decline ever since. After the election of 1984, Labour increasingly dominated local politics. At the final District Council election in 1992, they took 30 of 62 seats, with the (by now) Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power. But by now there were more than two big parties in local politics and the single member wards with first-past-the-post electoral system did not function fairly. The Liberal Democrats in 1992 got 15% of the popular vote but only 3% of the seats. The SNP got 14% of the vote and no seats! Labour were flattered by the system, getting 48% of the seats on 29% of the vote.
1995-. The Rainbow Council
City of Edinburgh Council make-up 1995-2022It was all change again in 1995, when voters at the local elections now went to choose their City Council, a unitary authority based largely on the boundaries and functions of the old District but with the additional responsibilities of the Regions, which would disappear the following year, also. There was no fundamental changes however; Labour continued to dominate, the Conservatives continued their decline and the Liberal Democrats filled the void for the sort of voter who would once have been religiously Moderate or Progressive but who found they couldn’t bring themselves to vote Conservative due to national issues. By 2003, Labour retained a slim majority (31 of 59 seats), with the Liberal Democrats the next largest bloc on 15.
The SNP had a real problem however – they were reliably getting 15-30% of the popular vote in the Council elections but rarely picked up seats; they gone 1.7% of the seats on 21.5% of the vote in 1999. Labour in contrast had more than 50% of the seats on less than one third of the vote. This democratic deficit was remedied in 2007 when a new system of multi-member wards elected by Single Transferable Vote (proportional representation) was brought in. This had the immediate effect of giving the long-suppressed SNP a huge boost, with one fifth of the popular vote and council seats gained that year. The change was disastrous for Labour however, whose commanding position was built on the shaky foundations of an unrepresentative electoral system and their number of seats more than halved, to one much more in line with their overall popularity. The changes also let in the Scottish Green Party, who after standing candidates in one form or another in the city since 1980 finally picked up 3 seats. Rainbow politics had finally arrived!
The story of the rest of the period covered by our graph is largely now the story of Scottish and British national politics. The Conservatives continued to decline in popularity, but got a post-2014 Independence Referendum boost; the Liberal Democrats were punished heavily in 2012 after their coalition government at Westminster with the former party, and their recovery has been slow and largely concentrated in their traditional base of the west of the city. Labour have been largely unable to capitalise on these changes however – caught between any number of local and national issues – as the SNP and Green popular vote has held up and continued to creep upwards, with a combined 40% in 2017 and 2022.
Portobello political window in 2014. National politics has now come to dominate local politics. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe last local election in 2022 was one fought heavily on manifestos of national issues, despite these not being something that any local Council has any jurisdiction in. As a result, it saw the Conservative turn in their worst ever result for the Moderate-Progressive-Conservative bloc in the 122 years of our graph, with just 18% of the vote and 14% (nine) seats. Labour managed only 19% of the vote and 20% of the seats, their second-worst result in 100 years and yet somehow managed to pull various political strings and favours to run a minority administration; something the SNP failed to have sufficient support from their opposition to do, despite remaining the largest party by both seats and popular vote.
Who knows what 2027 might bring!
- There was an honorary seat on the Town Council for each of the Deacon Conveners (senior office holders) of the Merchant Company and the Incorporated Trades, meaning two members of the Town Council were unelected ↩︎
- The Scotsman perceived the Socialists as an extreme threat to the established order of the city and was strongly and persistently hostile to them in the 1920s through to the 1940s. In its reporting it almost always referred to them as just “the Socialists” ↩︎
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
This thread was originally written and published in March 2024.
For no good reason, I decided to make a chart that shows the changing political make-up of Edinburgh’s municipal government in the last 124 years. It’s a graph whose changing colours and gradients tell lots of different political and historical stories about municipal government in that time, so let’s pick apart 124 years of Edinburgh’s political local history and find out what was going on and why, shall we?
Seat make-up of Edinburgh Town / District / City Council after Municipal Elections, 1920-presentFirst things first, we need to get a few things out of the way. In doing so it helps to avoid coming to the wrong conclusions about the graph and helps to understand what’s going on in the background and how the local electoral system has changed over time.
Until 1974, people voted for the Town Council, which was the elected1 component of what was known formally as the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh but almost universally as just the Corporation. The city was divided up into wards, as it is now, and each ward had three councillors, one of whom was elected each year on rotation. Each councillor served a three year term after which they retired but could stand again for re-election. This meant that voters were expected to vote annually for one councillor, the ballots of which were always held in the first week of November until in 1948 they were shifted to May. If a councillor stepped down or died during their term of office there would either be a by-election or if it was close to the next election then two seats would be up for grabs. Very occasionally, the entire Town Council was up for vote, e.g. after the amalgamation of Edinburgh and Leith in 1920 and when the date of ballots moved from November to May in 1948.
The Town Council in April 1961, the Lord Provost (John Greig Dunbar) and Bailies (senior Magistrates) sit at the head of the meeting. The Labour members are on the left, the Progressives on the right © Edinburgh City LibrariesIn 1974, voters went to the polls to vote for members of the new District Council. The District was the lower tier of municipal government established by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Edinburgh, Mid-, East and West Lothian Districts together formed the upper tier; Lothian Regional Council. This new system came into effect on May 16th 1975 and had votes every three (later four) years for the entire council, with a single councillor elected per ward on a first-past-the-post system. In 1995, voters went to the polls for the unitary authority of the City (of Edinburgh) Council as a result of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 which abolished the Regional Councils and devolved their powers to new unitary authorities based roughly on the Districts (or closely, in the case of Edinburgh). City Council elections followed the same electoral system as the District until 2007, when the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004 changed this to a multi-member ward system, with three or four councillors elected every five years by proportional representation.
n.b. The graphs do not show the results of any intermediate by-elections, or the proportion of votes cast, it only shows the proportion of seats on the council that were held by each political grouping after the election of that year.
1920s. Moderates and Socialists
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1920-30Our graph starts at 1920, when a full Town Council election was held on account of Leith having just been incorporated in to the City under the terms of the Edinburgh Boundaries Extension and Tramways Act 1920. The city was completely dominated at this time by the purple of the Moderates – not a formal party, but a political bloc of small-c conservatives, Liberals, Unionists, Liberal-Unionists and Independents who were strongly aligned to the Church of Scotland and whose purpose was largely to keep the right sort of people running the city and keep the red Socialists2 of Labour out.
Central Edinburgh Constituency Labour Party banner, 1925. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe Moderates were effective in the latter purpose but inevitably Edinburgh’s first Labour councillor was elected on November 2nd 1909 when dentist John Alexander Young was returned for the Dalry ward. Although by 1930 Labour had crept slowly up to sixteen councillors – after a jump from 6 to 14 in 1926, (just shy of 1/4 of the Council – there was still no sign of the city “going red” as was threatening in Glasgow. Just peeping in at the top in 1930 is the thin grey line of a single independent councillor, Alexander Thomson, who would shift his allegiance to the Moderates in 1933.
1930s. Progressives and Protestants
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1930-44Between 1930 and 1940 there were two big changes in the Town Council – none of which actually affected who actually ran the City. In 1936 the loose, purple assemblage of the Moderates re-constituted themselves as the dark blue band of the Progressives, a more formally constituted party to counter the threat posed by Labour. On the formation of the Glasgow Progressives, where by now Labour was in control of the Town Council, the Scotsman described them as “an organisation which would effectively combat the Socialist menace, break down the apathy of many citizens, and co-ordinate all Moderate opinion in the city.” The other big change during this time was the brief but rapid rise and fall of the black band of John Cormack’s Protestant Action Society.
The banner of Loyal Orange Lodge no. 188, who style themselves “Cormack’s Protestant Defenders” on parade in Edinburgh, Lodge photo from public facebook group.Protestant Action were an extreme, anti-Catholic organisation whose basic platform was “No Popery“. Cormack made a habit of causing trouble wherever he could, stoking sectarian tensions in overcrowded and underprivileged wards, whipping up his supporters into violence and occasional riots, but always careful to be able to absolve himself of the blame. He formed his party in 1933 and in 1934’s election it got one councillor on 6% of the popular vote. By 1935 it got 21% and three seats, peaking in 1936 with a worrying 31% of the vote and nine seats. But not even Cormack’s force of oratory could hold his unruly grouping together; the established Protestant power of the Orange Order would have little to do with them. They picked fights with the fascists and the communists and then they picked fights amongst themselves. Support for Protestant Action soon waned and in the last pre-war municipal election of 1938 they had dropped back to 12% and 6 seats. John Cormack however would cling on to his seat in South Leith, becoming the “Father of the Council” in 1956 as its longest serving member. This seniority entitled him to the office of Bailie, one that conferred significant authority. He retired in 1961.
Post-war. Labour Rising
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1944-55On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Government suspended municipal elections for the duration and so the Town Council sat, as it was, for the duration. Its representation did change however in 1940 when Dalry Labour councillors David Stephen (1938 election intake) and George Boath (1939 by-election) resigned their party and changed allegiance to the dark red band of the Communists. With no by-elections possible, they continued to serve under this particular banner until elections re-started in 1945 when they were duly voted out at the first opportunity.
Except from “Old Street, Edinburgh” by William Wilson, 1935. A scene looking up the old Elder Street to St. James Square and showing canvassers for the forthcoming general election. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandIn line with the national trend, Labour saw an upsurge in post-war popularity, with its share of 40% of the popular vote translating to an increase to 27 seats, or 40% of the Town Council. This position was reversed in 1949 when they went back to 15 seats and 22% of the popular vote. Again this mirrored popular, national discontent with the Labour government and a recovery in Conservative fortunes. It was not until 1955 that Labour had managed to regain the ground it had lost to the Progressives six years previous, so the political status quo in the city was maintained throughout the decade. Protestant Action lost their seats coming up for re-election in 1945 and 1946, with only John Cormack able to cling on, as the thin black line at the bottom of the graph, from 1947 onwards.
1955-65. Progressive Decline
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1955-65The story of the next ten years was one of a long, slow waning in the fortunes of the Progressives. Throughout the decade Labour was able to make ground against them, until by the 1962 election both parties polled 38.5% of the popular vote, and in 1963 for the first time ever in Edinburgh Labour briefly surpassed the Progressives by this measure, 39.6% vs. 36.0%. But the three year system meant it was a long, slow process to effect political change although Labour had narrowed the gap between them and the Progressives to a single seat (32 vs. 33) by 1964, they were never quite able to bridge it. It cannot be seen in this chart, but in 1965 the Labour local vote collapsed to 27.9%, their worst since 1949, and the Progressives recovered to 58% after a run of five bad years. A new entrant onto the political scene in 1957 was Lady Morton (Hilda Sherwood Morton), who was elected for the orange strip of the Liberals in Merchiston ward. She was the first of her party to do so after it began to stand a few candidates in the city in 1955; by 1963 they had picked up four more for a total of five.
1965-74. End of the Old Order
Edinburgh Town Council make-up 1965-74The next ten years following 1965 saw the first big shake-ups on the Edinburgh local political scene beyond the glacially slow 50 year rise of Labour. Most importantly, it was the decade in which party political politics, which had been more or less kept out of Municipal Government for the last 50 years, finally took over. Firstly, in 1962 the Unionist party started standing candidates. This was a centre-right political party that stood for Westminster elections in Scotland and that was aligned to the (English) Conservatives. In other parts of Scotland the National Liberal Party stood; both they and the Unionists took the Conservative whip in the House of Commons. In 1965 the Unionists formally merged with the Conservatives to form the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party, joined in 1968 by the National Liberals. Just as the Moderates had given way to the Progressives, so to did the Progressives give way to the Conservatives, but over a much longer timescale. Note that the press had long called both the Progressives and the Unionists “Tories“. Most of the Progressive old guard continued to stand as such, but new candidates stood instead as Conservatives. The result was that after their first candidates were elected in 1962, the light blue band of the Conservatives gradually and seamlessly usurped the old party, which finally died out alongside the long-established Town Council in 1974.
During this period, the Labour party found its position for a while squeezed between the strengthened Tory bloc and the insurgent yellow blob of the Scottish National Party, which enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity after Winnie Ewing’s breakthrough victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election. In 1968 they swelled to 35% of the popular local vote in Edinburgh and by 1969 had ten councillors, before rapdily collapsing back to local indifference by 1972 with just 2.9% of the vote. The first Scottish nationalist candidate had stood for the Town Council way back in 1932 but no more stood until 1956-59 when their handful of candidates polled less than 1% of the popular vote.
Jack Kane, Lord Provost of Edinburgh 1972-75; official portrait by Alexander Goudie. True to his down-to-earth form, he has eschewed donning his official robes. He was the first Lord Provost to decline the honorary knighthood that his position conferred. © Museums & Galleries EdinburghBy 1972, the SNP threat had gone, the Progressives were in terminal decline and Labour was recovering, and as a result it finally managed to become the largest party on the council, with 33 seats to the opposition’s 30. It had only taken them 63 years since their first councillor was sworn in! Their leader, Jack Kane, was elected Lord Provost that year, the first Labour holder of that post. With the final elections to the old Town Council in 1973, Labour had 34 seats and finally had a majority!
1974-95. District Days
Edinburgh District Council make-up 1974-95In 1974, the residents of Edinburgh went to the polls to vote for their new District Council, which replaced a system of local Government that had been going in one form or another for the past 700 years or more. Interestingly, although archaic titles such as Lord Provost and Bailie were meant to be swept away, they were kept on as honorific positions. The District Council performed many of the functions of the old Edinburgh Corporation, but strategic issues such as Transport, Education, Regional Planning, Police and Fire were run by the upper tier of Regional Councils.
Lothian Regional Council ghost sign, 20 plus years after that authority ceased to be. Photo © SelfThe results of the first election saw the Conservatives come out as the largest party, with one more seat than Labour. They lacked an overall majority but got it at the next ballot in 1977, with 34 of 67 seats. This marked the high point of the Conservative party in Edinburgh’s local government, and they have been in decline ever since. After the election of 1984, Labour increasingly dominated local politics. At the final District Council election in 1992, they took 30 of 62 seats, with the (by now) Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power. But by now there were more than two big parties in local politics and the single member wards with first-past-the-post electoral system did not function fairly. The Liberal Democrats in 1992 got 15% of the popular vote but only 3% of the seats. The SNP got 14% of the vote and no seats! Labour were flattered by the system, getting 48% of the seats on 29% of the vote.
1995-. The Rainbow Council
City of Edinburgh Council make-up 1995-2022It was all change again in 1995, when voters at the local elections now went to choose their City Council, a unitary authority based largely on the boundaries and functions of the old District but with the additional responsibilities of the Regions, which would disappear the following year, also. There was no fundamental changes however; Labour continued to dominate, the Conservatives continued their decline and the Liberal Democrats filled the void for the sort of voter who would once have been religiously Moderate or Progressive but who found they couldn’t bring themselves to vote Conservative due to national issues. By 2003, Labour retained a slim majority (31 of 59 seats), with the Liberal Democrats the next largest bloc on 15.
The SNP had a real problem however – they were reliably getting 15-30% of the popular vote in the Council elections but rarely picked up seats; they gone 1.7% of the seats on 21.5% of the vote in 1999. Labour in contrast had more than 50% of the seats on less than one third of the vote. This democratic deficit was remedied in 2007 when a new system of multi-member wars elected by Single Transferable Vote (proportional representation) was brought in. This had the immediate effect of giving the long-suppressed SNP a huge boost, with one fifth of the popular vote and council seats gained that year. The change was disastrous for Labour however, whose commanding position was built on the shaky foundations of an unrepresentative electoral system and their number of seats more than halved, to one much more in line with their overall popularity. The changes also let in the Scottish Green Party, who after standing candidates in one form or another in the city since 1980 finally picked up 3 seats. Rainbow politics had finally arrived!
The story of the rest of the period covered by our graph is largely now the story of Scottish and British national politics. The Conservatives continued to decline in popularity, but got a post-2014 Independence Referendum boost; the Liberal Democrats were punished heavily in 2012 after their coalition government at Westminster with the former party, and their recovery has been slow and largely concentrated in their traditional base of the west of the city. Labour have been largely unable to capitalise on these changes however – caught between any number of local and national issues – as the SNP and Green popular vote has held up and continued to creep upwards, with a combined 40% in 2017 and 2022.
Portobello political window in 2014. National politics has now come to dominate local politics. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe last local election in 2022 was one fought heavily on manifestos of national issues, despite these not being something that any local Council has any jurisdiction in. As a result, it saw the Conservative turn in their worst ever result for the Moderate-Progressive-Conservative bloc in the 122 years of our graph, with just 18% of the vote and 14% (nine) seats. Labour managed only 19% of the vote and 20% of the seats, their second-worst result in 100 years and yet somehow managed to pull various political strings and favours to run a minority administration; something the SNP failed to have sufficient support from their opposition to do, despite remaining the largest party by both seats and popular vote.
Who knows what 2027 might bring!
- There was an honorary seat on the Town Council for each of the Deacon Conveners (senior office holders) of the Merchant Company and the Incorporated Trades, meaning two members of the Town Council were unelected ↩︎
- The Scotsman perceived the Socialists as an extreme threat to the established order of the city and was strongly and persistently hostile to them in the 1920s through to the 1940s. In its reporting it almost always referred to them as just “the Socialists” ↩︎
If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.
These threads © 2017-2024, Andy Arthur
-
Former Yankees reliever suffers torn Achilles https://www.rawchili.com/mlb/237790/ #AndyPettitte #Baseball #MarianoRivera #MLB #NewYork #NewYorkYankees #NewYork #NewYorkYankees #RogerClemens #TornAchilles #WillieRandolph #YankeeStadium #Yankees
-
Andy Ibanez smashed a three-run double in the eighth inning to help the upstart Tigers complete a sweep of the Astros. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2024/10/03/baseball/mlb/tigers-sweep-past-astros/ #baseball #mlb #detroittigers #houstonastros #mlbplayoffs #andyibanez #kansascityroyals #baltimoreorioles
-
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, a highly beloved and talked-about science fiction novel. Now, personally, I am not much of a science fiction gal, so I really wasn’t sure what I was going to think. I ended up really enjoying the book (science and math stuff aside) and found the world and the characters to have really shone through, making it such an enjoyable read.
Main Characters:
Ryland Grace: Such an unexpectedly great main character. He’s smart (obviously), but not in an intimidating way. He questions things, messes up, figures it out, and brings a lot of personality to what could’ve been a super technical story. He made this book so much more approachable and, honestly, really fun to follow.
Rocky: I won’t say too much because it’s better to experience it, but one of the best parts of the book. The dynamic here is something I did not expect, and it adds so much heart, humour, and depth to the story.
Eva Stratt: The scientist who creates the mission that Grace goes on often butts heads with Grace on their ideas, but in a respectful, professional way.
My Review
As mentioned, I went into Project Hail Mary not really knowing what I was getting into or if I would like it. I did not expect to love this as much as I did. Sci-fi isn’t usually my go-to, and anything involving heavy math, science, or engineering? Also not my thing. So I went into this a little hesitant, but this book makes it so accessible. I didn’t really understand those aspects of the book, but I also didn’t feel like I needed to to really grasp what was going on in the story. You can feel the characters’ emotions, and that often showed me more than the science and math did. I rated Project Hail Mary a 9/10 rating, and would totally recommend it to people like me who don’t usually check out science fiction, or aren’t usually drawn to those types of stories.
In Project Hail Mary, we follow Ryland Grace when he wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of who he is or how he got there. As his memory slowly returns, he realizes he’s on a mission to save Earth from a catastrophic threat that could wipe out all life. As he pieces together what’s happening, the story jumps between past and present, showing how the mission came to be, and how Grace ended up being humanity’s last hope. Along the way, unexpected connections form, and the scope of the mission becomes even bigger than initially imagined. We, the readers, are spun a gorgeous world in space through the eyes of someone who never expected to be up there.
So yes, due to the plot of the book and Grace’s role in it, the book includes a lot of science, math and engineering. Yes, there’s complex problem-solving. But I never felt like I needed to fully understand every detail to stay engaged. The way it’s written keeps things clear enough that you can follow along without getting lost, which made a huge difference for me and how I was pulled into the book. What really pulled me in was how the story unfolded. The connections that are made throughout, especially the ones you don’t see coming, are so well done. It takes things in directions I never would’ve expected, and it just works.
And Grace as a character? Loved him. He carries the story in such a natural way, and you actually enjoy being in his head as everything unravels. He makes the high-stakes, end-of-the-world mission feel personal and grounded.
I will say, it’s a little unsettling how some of the issues in this book don’t feel that far off from real life. Like, it’s sci-fi, but also, not entirely? That added an extra layer of tension for me.
The space aspect was also just really cool. It’s such an out-of-reach concept for most of us, and I loved getting to fully dive into that world and go along for the ride. It felt immersive without being overwhelming.
And the ending? So good. It wrapped things up in a way that felt satisfying and meaningful, which isn’t always easy with a story this big.
I’m also really curious to see how the movie adaptation turns out, whether it sticks close to the book or switches things up a bit.
Overall, this completely surprised me in the best way. Super engaging, surprisingly emotional, and just a really fun (and slightly terrifying) ride through space.
I hope you enjoyed this review! Thank you for checking it out! Feel free to subscribe to the page to be one of the first to know when I release a new review!
#AndyWeir #AndyWeirBookReview #BookBlog #bookBlogger #BookBlogging #BookBlogs #bookLover #BookOpinion #BookPost #BookPosts #BookRecommendations #bookReview #BookReviewPage #BookReviewerAndBlogger #BookReviews #BookSeries #BookSummary #books #fictionBookReview #fictionBooks #PopularReaDS #ProjectHailMary #ProjectHailMaryBook #ProjectHailMaryByAndyWeir #ProjectHailMaryReview #Reading #Review #Reviewer #Reviewing #Reviews #SciFi #SciFiBooks #ScienceFiction #ScienceFictionBookReview #SpaceBooks #SpaceTravelBooks #TopChartBooks -
I'm a massive #AndyWeir fan, just on the basis of #TheMartian and PHM. Not actually read Artemis. But the influence he's having on high school students is huge. I've had at least one, per year, sometimes more, of my prefects mention The Martian as an influence in their choice to do science, and I'm seeing more, younger, students being excited by #ProjectHailMary
-
The thread about the Forth Dam megaproject; why bridge the Firth when you can block it?
Here’s one for you that I bet you’ve probably never heard of: did you know that in 1928 there was a proposal to cross the Firth of Forth by building a dam across it? This will be a short thread, by nature of the dearth of information available, but hopefully a useful record of this bold initiative.
Forth Bridge from above [South] Queensferry. James Valentine postcard, 1890. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe scheme was the brainchild of Matthew Steele, a Bo’ness-born architect whose work focused on retail and housing, first in an Arts & Crafts and later in the Moderne style, and includes the Hippodrome cinema. In this endeavour he was joined by fellow Bo’nessite John Jeffrey; hotelier and burgh councillor.
Bo’ness Hioppodrome cinema, by Matthew Steele (top left). Picture via Visit Scotland website.This was a time before the Kincardine swing bridge was built (not completed until 1936) and there was much public debate about the best manner and location for a road vehicle crossing of the Forth downstream of Stirling. The Firth had of course been crossed way back in the 1890s by the rail bridge.
The Kincardine Bridge, © Copyright James Allan, CC-by-SA 2.0 via GeographJeffrey and Steele’s proposal was to throw a 7,300 foot long barrage (1.3 miles, 2.2km) across the Firth and lay a roadway along the top of it for vehicular traffic. It would run from just west of Port Edgar on the south shore to a point a quarter of a mile to the west of North Queensferry. You’ll be as totally thrilled as I was to find it to know that there’s a sketch plan!
“The Proposed Forth Dam”, Edinburgh Evening News – Monday 15 December 1930You’ll notice that the project wasn’t just a dam: in order to maintain navigation along the Forth it was planned to cut a 2,500ft (762m) long channel between Inverkeithing harbour and St. Margaret’s Bay, complete with locks on the scale of the Panama Canal. This latter point was critical as Rosyth was the principal dockyard in Scotland of the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet and was on the upstream side of the dam. The channel would have to be allow passage by the fleet’s largest battleships such as HMS Hood, the 47,000 ton, 860ft long pride of the nation.
HMS Hood in the Panama Canal locks, 1924It was Steele’s contention that by building the foundations of the dam to the west of the Beamer Rock (where the modern Queensferry Crossing finds its footings) it would be easier and cheaper than forming the base for bridge piers. The promoters put forward a number of claimed benefits for their dam:
- Firstly, it would bring thousands of construction jobs to the out-of-work miners of Bo’ness, Stirlingshire, West Lothian and Fife, many more so than would be required to build a bridge.
- Secondly, a steel bridge would be built with steel that inevitably came from Lanarkshire and would not directly benefit the Forth coast, and would require specialised steel fabricators rather than the sort of work that would suit the skills of miners.
- Thirdly, the dam would help the region find a convenient way to dispose of its surplus of ugly and often dangerous coal and shale bings, which would provide the perfect infill material.
- Fourth, and dubiously, they proposed that a new level of the Forth would form a fresh water lake several feet about the natural high tide level thus ridding the estuary of its “hideous black mud-flats“. This, of course, would actually have been an ecological disaster as those mudflats are a rich and critical biome.
- The elevated water level of the new Loch Forth would benefit shipbuilding in Bo’ness and Grangemouth it was claimed, as with deeper water they could launch larger ships, and the docks of these towns could support larger vessels without tidal restrictions.
- The giant new lake, cut off from the roughness and vagaries of the sea, would be perfect for the landing of seaplanes, and military and civilian bases were proposed. (Alan Cobham had sent Leith aviation crazy in June 1928 by arriving at its docks in his flying boat.)
- To top off the lengthy list of benefits of the Forth Dam, “the water… could be used to create hydro-electric power for all the Forth Valley” and would be a “big inducement in bringing new factories to West Lothian, Stirlingshire and parts of Fife“.
The roadway along the dam would drastically shorten the distance for vehicular traffic across the Firth and “fast water buses” were also proposed to work passenger transport: Jeffrey foresaw “his man-made lake becoming a highly popular water playground for the whole of Central Scotland“. He imagined it would be akin to the Swiss lakes – or more realistically the Clyde or Loch Lomond – and be served by pleasure steamers visiting picturesque new coastal villages.
Lake Lucerne paddle steamer “Stadt Luzern”, CC-by-SA 3.0 SputniktiltThe intrepid pair set about touting their scheme and trying to gain supporters, which started with a letter to The Scotsman on July 7th 1928 and proceeded onto the pages of the West Lothian Courier and Linlithgowshire Gazette. Locally, they found both vocal support and also incredulity. Jeffrey upped the ante – “When is this squandering of public money going to cease?” he demanded, in the Gazette in 1930, referring to the “millions” being spent on the Dole rather than progressing his scheme. But a lukewarm response was received when details of the scheme were sent to the Prince of Wales (heir to the throne and later Edward VIII), whose private secretary politely declined his patronage saying the Prince couldn’t possibly look into every crackpot scheme that crossed his desk. Instead, the secretary forwarded the scheme on to the Secretary of State for Scotland, Godfrey Collins, from whose intray it never appears to have resurfaced. Within a year or so, it was superseded by serious bridge schemes in the Queensferry area.
Proposed Forth suspension bridge, August 1935, ScotsmanThe war of course then intervened and the Forth wouldn’t get its downstream road bridge until 1964, but it did gets its car ferries between South and North Queensferry in 1934. You can read more about their amusing habits of running aground in this previous thread. Sixty years later, a smaller barrage scheme, but one that would have been environmentally destructive too, was put forward to infill Wardie Bay between Leith and Granton harbours. You can read more about that over on its own thread.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
Andy Beshear calls out Trump’s misuse of faith while accepting LGBTQ+ allyship award
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/andy-beshear-trump-award
-
Andy Beshear calls out Trump’s misuse of faith while accepting LGBTQ+ allyship award
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/andy-beshear-trump-award
-
Andy Beshear calls out Trump’s misuse of faith while accepting LGBTQ+ allyship award
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/andy-beshear-trump-award
-
REPUBLICAN TRUTH TELLING: Conservative columnist #AndyMcCarthy shreds Acting Attorney General #ToddBlanche for indicting former #Yonkers resident and #FBI director #JamesComey...
#SMH...When the chances of getting a conviction are less than zero...
-
Hello, lgbtqia.space!
May I introduce myself?
I'm Andy, an agender, asexual panromantic living in the Cascade Mountains of WA with two nesting partners, two cats, and one German Shepard. I write queer polyamorous romantasy and teach skiing.
I've been on Mastodon for a while as @andyb I was planning to keep the account to be a more writer-specific one, but I'm rethinking that after seeing the character limit on lgbtqia.space is so much higher... (Like, I don't see myself hitting it unless I try to share an entire blog post...) I may well port everything over here instead...
But while I decide that, here's a picture of my cats, Novi (closer) and Talvi (further).
#Cats #BlackCats #Introduction #QueerWriters #LGBTQIA #asexual #agender #polyamorous #panromantic
-
@andysmanclubuk virtual 10k (and a bit) with Barnes Junior #itsoktotalk #SuicidePrevention #muddymilesformegs @runningpunks @VeganRunnersUK #runningpunks #veganrunners #andysmanclub
-
Rugby de Irlanda: ¿Podrá el equipo de Andy Farrell retornar a la normalidad en 2026? #Andy #equipo #Farrell #Irlanda #normalidad #Podrá #rugby #volver #ButterWord #Spanish_News Comenta tu opinión 👇
https://butterword.com/rugby-de-irlanda-podra-el-equipo-de-andy-farrell-retornar-a-la-normalidad-en-2026/?feed_id=62141&_unique_id=69525e4ff2c8a -
Andy Garcia Returns To Directing With ‘Diamond’ Starring Brendan Fraser, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Demián Bichir, Vicky Krieps & More
#News #AndyGarcia #BillMurray #BrendanFraser #DemianBichir #Diamond #DustinHoffman #RosemarieDeWitt #VickyKrieps -
Andy Garcia Returns To Directing With ‘Diamond’ Starring Brendan Fraser, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Demián Bichir, Vicky Krieps & More
#News #AndyGarcia #BillMurray #BrendanFraser #DemianBichir #Diamond #DustinHoffman #RosemarieDeWitt #VickyKrieps -
Andy Garcia Returns To Directing With ‘Diamond’ Starring Brendan Fraser, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Demián Bichir, Vicky Krieps & More
#News #AndyGarcia #BillMurray #BrendanFraser #DemianBichir #Diamond #DustinHoffman #RosemarieDeWitt #VickyKrieps -
Andy Garcia Returns To Directing With ‘Diamond’ Starring Brendan Fraser, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Demián Bichir, Vicky Krieps & More
#News #AndyGarcia #BillMurray #BrendanFraser #DemianBichir #Diamond #DustinHoffman #RosemarieDeWitt #VickyKrieps -
The thread about Junction Road Church in Leith and its long and complicated journey through different church and congregation schisms and mergers
This thread was originally written and published in March 2022.
Today’s auction house artefact is this silver church collection plate, inscribed “To the glory of God and in loving memory of Miss Jessie Gray, died 18th Nov. 1961, Dear sister of Rev. Joseph Gray. Easter 1964. Junction Road Church.“
Junction Road Church collection plate, 1964Junction Road Church stood on Great Junction Street. The building is still there, a rather plain, Neoclassical block, but the congregation merged into Leith St. Andrew’s Church of Scotland at the foot of Easter Road in 2006. It is now used by the Mohiuddin Jamia Masjid (Mosque) and education centre.
Junction Road Church. Bryan Hickman via British Listed BuildingsAs a church, it is yet another one of those born out of the various 18th and 19th century schisms in Scottish Presbyterianism and had quite a ride before it joined the established Kirk (Church of Scotland) in 1929. Junction Road Church started out in the Relief Church, an organisation that split off the Kirk in Fife in 1763 as the “Presbytery of Relief” for the “Relief of Christians oppressed in their Christian privileges” over the right of congregations to choose their own minister. The Leith congregation of the Relief Church sat in the old North Leith Kirk of St. Ninian as a temporary home when it formed in 1822. The parishioners were Leithers but had up to this point been worshipping in a Relief congregation at St. James Place in Edinburgh.
The St. James’ Place Relief ChurchThe congregation is reputed to have been “a great Kirk for Captains and Company Porters“, the seafaring and dock-working men of Leith (and their families). In March 1824, the foundation stone of a new Relief church in Leith was laid on what would become Great Junction Street – except then was known either as Junction Road (or even St. Anthony’s Road). The Junction Road name stuck for the church, even though when the whole road scheme was finally completed in 1827 it was called Great Junction Street. At this time the congregation numbered 269, so this was quite a financial undertaking.
The church opened on the Sabbath, 30th Jan. 1825 at a build cost of £4,000. The minister was Francis Muir of Strathaven who preached “Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house and the place where Thine honour dwelleth.” in thanks to its temporary home. Reverend Muir was joined by a 2nd minister – Deans – in 1865 to assist with the burden of duties of a congregation approaching 900. Muir died in 1871, aged 75, after 49 years with the congregation. Deans resigned in 1878 owing to ill health brought on by the burden of his work.
The new minister – Duncan – was called in 1879, but resigned 3 years later owing to being unable to manage the large congregation that had been held together largely by their loyalty to the long serving Muir. The next minister – McLeod – died suddenly in 1886 after only 3 years service. His replacement – Scott – suffered a schism in the congregation in 1890 over the issue of unfermented communion wine. The dissenters left to form the Ebenezer Free Church down the street.
The Ebenezer United Free Church is now down the road on Bangor Road, having moved when the block it was contained within was subject to a slum clearance in the 1970s.At the close of 1899 the Junction Place Church had a healthy congregation of 1,187. By this time it was part of the United Presbyterian Church, (the U. P. Church you will see on old Ordnance Survey maps) the Relief Church having merged with the United Secession Church in 1847 (Any excuse to bring out this diagram!)
The Scottish church schism timeline diagram for 1847Over this time, the Church that had sat on the fringes of Leith in orchards and market gardens when it was opened was swallowed up by the burgeoning burgh, and enclosed within dense housing and industries.
1849 vs 1893 OS Town Plan. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandIn 1900, the United Presbyterian Church joined with most of the Free Church to form the United Free Church. To celebrate, a new pipe organ was installed in 1903. (A motion to use a harmonium instead of an organ was defeated by “overwhelming majority“)
The Scottish church schism timeline diagram for 1900The Church had also built itself a new hall to its rear, facing onto Bonninton Road, in 1894 and ran a very active social program from here. This included a literary society, a savings bank, clothing scheme, children’s work lessons, temperance band, mothers’ meetings etc.
Former Junction Road Church halls on Bonnington RoadA new minister – Rev. Joseph Gray – was inducted in 1921 in time for the church’s centenary. The congregation followed most of the United Free Church by joining the established Kirk in 1929. It is Gray’s sister to whom the collection plate is dedicated.
The Scottish church schism timeline diagram for 1929By 1975, long term population shifts (an ageing, depopulating Leith) and changes in worshipping habits saw Junction Road merge with the nearby St. Thomas’ on Mill Lane to form St. Thomas’ Junction Road. St. Thomas’ building would become home to the Sikh Gurdwara
The Sikh Gurdwara, formerly St. Thomas’ ChurchWriting in 2003, “We- Ministers, Elders, Managers and Members of Junction Road Church-do not know what the future has in store for us as individuals and for us as a Congregation”. The future held a merger with Leith St. Andrew’s at the foot of Easter Road, the congregation moving into the latter building. The future of even this merger of mergers Church is now once again up for debate, with the real prospect that the Church of Scotland will consolidate into a single Leith congregation at the South Leith Kirk.
Leith St. Andrew’s Church of ScotlandThis thread is one of an occasional series with the vague working title of “just why are there so many old churches in Edinburgh and Leith.” You can read a bit more in the thread on Leith Communion Tokens.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret
