Mark's MPs Meme

The UK's third most influential Lib Dem blogger, Mark Reckons has challenged us to name all the MPs who had ever represented us.

That'll be a breeze, I thought, being the political geek that I am, they will all just trip out of my brain, just like that.

Not so - most were easy, but a couple took some checking on the internet.

I've been lucky enough to have been represented by a cabinet minister, and a good one who resigned on a matter of principle, a couple of ministers, a Scottish Party leader, a UK Party leader and a complete maverick - not so bad. I've lived in mostly safe seats, but with a couple of marginals in there too.

So, in chronological order, here they are:

1967-79: Russell Johnston, passionate about both home rule and Europe. I'm sorry that I was just that bit too young to get to know him properly, although I met him on several occasions.

1979-87: Robert Maclennan. Bob was the last leader of the SDP and one of the most decent people I've ever known in politics. Although I moved away from Caithness in 1985, I continued to go back to help in elections there until 1992. If you read this blog regularly, you'll be fed up of hearing how I got detention for skipping school to go canvassing for him in 1983 when I was 15!

Those of you who have known me for a long time will know that I was in Aberdeen for a couple of years as a student but I never came off the electoral roll in Caithness so I could vote for Bob in the 1987 election. Just to show I'm a geek, my local MP in Aberdeen North at that time was Robert Hughes

1987-88: Ron Brown, who added colour to the House of Commons and who eventually pissed Labour off so much that they deselected him.

1988-89: The one and only Lord Foulkes.

1989-92: After we moved to England, I was quite disconcerted to be represented by a Tory for the first 3 years, and one with a very Scottish sounding name, Andy Stewart, at that. He lost his seat in the 1992 election that saw John Major cling to power. Paddy Tipping, the Labour MP who succeeded him, is still there.

When we moved back here in 2000, we not only had a Westminster MP but an MSP too. Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary at the time and Bristow Muldoon had seemingly unassailable majorities at the time.

Sadly, Robin, who resigned from the Cabinet over the Iraq war, passed away in 2005 to be replaced by Jim Devine, who, it has to be said, is significantly down the food chain and who has recently been deselected by the Labour Party over his expenses.

Bristow lost his seat in 2007 to the SNP's Angela Constance. I've known Angela ever since I moved here when I was on the local Community Centre's management committee. As a local councillor, she attended practically every meeting. I have a lot of time for her. She works very hard and has always been very friendly and polite.

It's quite disappointing that I had to wait until I was almost 40 years old to be represented by a woman. The preceding list is depressingly male, and white for that matter. The issue of getting more women elected is something I want to explore more more fully over the next few weeks.

I am not going to tag anyone with this, so just go ahead and do it if you want to.

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