Alex Cole-Hamilton shines at Edinburgh student hustings #sp11

One thing that cheered me up this morning was reading the reports about the Edinburgh University Students' Association hustings which took place last night. The Journal has a live blog of the proceedings and you can see how people who were there felt by looking at the #eusahustings page on Twitter.


It appears that Edinburgh Central Liberal Democrat candidate Alex Cole-Hamilton really impressed those who were watching.Here's a selection of the comments about him:


From someone who isn't keen on the Liberal Democrats:

If it wouldn't make me sick in my mouth to think about it, I'd actually campaign for @Alex4Central after these hustings.


From the same person:


Another name drop for #WriteToMike from @Alex4Central. An example that principled Lib Dem politicians still exist.  


Pleased that @Alex4Central is suggesting that Scottish Labour's appalling 'Carry a Knife Go to Jail' policy is just that


On Coalition red line issues:


Alex: good Q. 3 absolutes: CND, Free NHS, no (mandatory) knife carrying jail terms 


I think i'm going to call the #eusahustings as a tie between ramsay and cole hamilton. - Alex is the only one of those standing in the constituency of Edinburgh Central, though.


Well, @Alex4Central won that in my opinion


@Alex4Central blew the opposition out the water at hustings tonight


Alex has been a friend of mine for a long time, so I'm hardly unbiased, but I've become more and more impressed with him as a leader over the years and I think Holyrood needs someone who will be a passionate supporter of young people. He's on the same page as I am on things like Trident - he's totally opposed to nuclear weapons - as a former student leader, he has a long track record of opposition to fees and understands how hard many students find meeting their day to day living costs. He understands about the crisis in FE colleges too as he showed recently on Brian Taylor's Big Debate. 


Have a look at this really thoughtful video he's done about knife crime. I feel that he really gets what's important here - finding a way to make our communities and our young people safer.





Politics aside, one of the things I care most about is children, their welfare, factoring in their needs at every level of policy. I want to see people in Holyrood who share that passion, who get it instinctively without it having to be pointed out. Alex is top of my list of people I want to see in there.

Alex Cole-Hamilton opposes Botanic Gardens entrance charge

Liberal Democrat candidate for Edinburgh Central, Alex Cole-Hamilton, has spoken out against the proposed £5 entry fee for visitors to Edinburgh's beautiful Botanic Gardens. I used to take Anna there a lot when she was little and it's there she first learned to appreciate different plants and flowers, not to mention develop a fascination for squirrels. It's a favourite meeting spot for mums and children.

There's no way we'd be able to go if we had to pay £15 for the three of us to get in. It seems such an excessive charge and it would be a real shame if the gardens lay empty and unappreciated outside the tourist season.

Alex feels so strongly partly because he has a long standing love for Gardens and he and his wife Gillian were married there. Listen to him talk about it in the video below, which is also available here on You Tube.

Alex Cole-Hamilton's speech on tuition fees to Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference

Following on from yesterday's post, here's Alex Cole-Hamilton telling Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference last Saturday why we should vote down the amendment calling for a graduate tax.

In his he recalls how proud he was of the Liberal Democrats for standing up to Labour on this issue and how the graduate endowment was simply to help poorer students. It was not spent on paying for tuition in any way.

The clip is worth watching just for the images of Richard Baker producing draconian legislation in iambic pentameter.

Alex Cole-Hamilton reaaffirms Scottish Liberal Democrat commitment to free higher education

Alex Cole-Hamilton is the Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate for Edinburgh Central  for next year's elections.

I first met him 9.5 years ago during the 2001 election campaign when he was working in Edinburgh West. Before that, he'd been the President of Aberdeen University Students Representative Council.. As a former student leader he understands both the financial pressures students face and why we all need a flourishing higher education sector.

As this video shows, Alex joined the Liberal Democrats in the first place because of our success in abolishing tuition fees in the first Holyrood coalition and he remains committed to that policy today.



In Alex's words:

Without a well informed well educated graduate workforce, we can't hope to compete or be a leading source of innovation in the world economy.

Lib Dems on course to win Edinburgh Central

The Evening News has done a profile on Edinburgh Central. In it under-threat Labour incumbent admits that people are thinking about the SNP. How interesting. I seem to remember the struggling Labour campaign in Dunfermline talking up the SNP as their main rivals when they knew perfectly well that their support was haemorraging to Willie Rennie. In 2005 the struggling Labour campaign in Edinburgh South talked up the Tories as their main rivals when they knew Marilyne MacLaren was breathing down Nigel Griffith's neck. In fact, Marilyne was just 405 votes behind.

The moral of the story is that a vote for the SNP in places like Edinburgh Central and Dunfermline West might as well be votes for Labour.

Labour knows that Siobhan Mathers is on course to win and the only thing that will save their skin is an increase in the SNP vote.

Siobhan Mathers for Edinburgh Central!

There's no point in pretending that I don't get emotionally involved in election campaigns - in every election, I have close friends standing and I desperately want them to win. So I'm going to use this blog to do a bit of shameless plugging for some of them - starting with my friend Siobhan Mathers in Edinburgh Central. We have a friendship which was forged on the streets of East Dunbartonshire helping Jo Swinson in 2005. Since then we've been through the Livingston by-election, where Siobhan's husband Charles Dundas was the candidate, the Moray by-election, the Dunfermline by-election where she worked on casework with me and the build up to her campaign to win Edinburgh Central.

Don't just take my opinion as to her prospects. The Observer both acknowledges her great personality and her chances of winning. In Edinburgh Central, it's clearly a two horse race between Labour and Liberal Democrat and a vote for anyone else just helps Labour.

I was amazed to find Siobhan all over the front page of the Scotsman on Easter Monday. It's not often you go to get petrol and Tesco and find your friend in the same sort of position usually reserved for supermodels and celebs:-)

Siobhan has tremendous energy and enthusiasm and is very focussed - she's good enough to be a minister in time - and will totally devote herself to getting the best deal for her constituents if elected. She has such a breadth of knowledge on so many issues and, having cut her professional teeth on the BSE Enquiry and in Europe, she certainly knows how to master a complex brief. Her analytical mind will have absorbed and understood a complicated document while I'm still struggling with the introduction.

She and I share a love of food and wine, but she is much more disciplined about it than I am.

She also wins the prize for the best campaign headquarters - I have never, in my life, seen a lace tablecloth on the envelope stuffing table. And flowers in the window too.

I hope she makes it into Holyrood - she will liven it up a bit, bringing flair, energy, humour and knowledge to benefit both the parliamentary party and, most importantly, her constituents. So, if you live in Edinburgh Central, vote for Siobhan.