Big girls do cry.....

....as I have found on more than one occasion over the past 3 days. This post is the sequel to Heartbreak which I wrote on Friday as it became clear that Thursday's election had been much worse for us than even our wildest fears had imagined.

Friday didn't get much better for us. Having lost all the Edinburgh seats, our North East Scotland seats bar Alison McInnes on the list and our Glasgow and Central Scotland list seats overnight, the pain continued with the loss of Euan Robson and Jeremy Purvis in the Borders. For a grim moment, at lunchtime, I thought we weren't even going to pick up a seat on the South of Scotland list. That was based on a scene captured on television of an ashen faced Jim Hume comforting Fee, his member of staff. Thankfully, she was crying with relief.

I felt the loss of the Highland seats acutely. It was at my first ever election in 1983 that Charles Kennedy took Ross and Cromarty from the Tories. At that time, I was campaigning in Caithness and Sutherland for Robert Maclennan, fighting the election for the first time for the SDP Liberal Alliance, having left the Labour party two years earlier. I can't quite get my head round the fact that these places are now represented in Parliament by the SNP. I want to make sure we win them back in 4 years' time.

Losing Jim Tolson in Dunfermline was a blow, but not, sadly, a shock.  What was surprising is that the seat went to the SNP.  Jim did so much hard work locally and has served the area for the best part of 20 years as councillor and MSP and it's sad to see him go.

I had reconciled myself some time ago to the fact Robert Brown wasn't going to be around, but I always expected Ross Finnie would get back in & was so sorry that he didn't. He was a fantastic rural affairs minister for 8 years despite, as he told me once, not knowing one end of a cow from the other when he was appointed. He stormed his way up that learning curve, though, and was the man who kept foot and mouth pretty much out of Scotland. He is so good at articulating what it means to be a Liberal Democrat and getting an audience on his side. I was on his leadership campaign team 3 years ago and he was fabulous to work for. I should add that as a stickler for proper punctuation and grammar, he had my full and almost unquestioning admiration.

The most seismic shock for me, though, was losing Iain Smith in North East Fife. Iain, an MSP since 1999 and a Councillor since he was about 12, I think, is such a wise, straight talking liberal guy.  He has literally not put a foot wrong in all his years in Parliament and to see him defeated just shows that even the most thoroughly awesome people don't always win elections. I think the world of Iain and literally can't get my head round that he's not going to be there in Holyrood. In both the 2001 and 2005 Westminster elections, he was the Campaign Manager and I was an unpaid  minion. He was great to work with and I don't think I ever disagreed with him on anything. Even 3 days on writing this makes me want to cry.

I had been asked several weeks before if I'd go on Radio Scotland's Newsdrive on the Friday afternoon. So, off I duly went on the new service between Livingston North & Queen Street for my first trip to the plush BBC HQ at Pacific Quay. I was worried that we wouldn't have enough of a vote in Mid Scotland and Fife to elect Willie Rennie. As I sat in the studio, they crossed to the count at Glenrothes, where the RO was starting to read what they thought was the result, but it was only the votes in one constituency.

By the time I'd finished my blink and you'd miss it bit with former candidate Ian Robertson, who left the Party over tuition fees, sadly, the result hadn't come through. I  have a lot of time for Ian and I hope he feels able to rejoin us in the future.

Ian kindly gave me a lift to the underground station and even by the time I'd got back to Buchanan Street, there was no news. It was the most excruciating wait I can remember in a long time. I found it strangely calming to sit on one of the benches in the sunshine and just look at the gorgeous view. It was oddly restorative. After a while I decided to go into Forbidden Planet. A dangerous move, as I was armed with credit card in the mood for some retail therapy. However, I was able to resist - although I was strangely tempted by an Adipose Stress Toy. It was while I was in there looking at vampire books of all things, that I discovered via the magic of Twitter that Willie had in fact been elected.  That was a huge relief. I needed to go and sit on my sunny bench again to restore my equilibrium. It was then that I realised I was sitting outside a much better and more dangerous provider of retail therapy. My poor husband.  I put on Facebook, knowing he'd see it, that I had realised I was outside the Apple Store and it seemed open. By the time I'd emerged, I had several missed calls and a message in response on Facebook saying the place must be shielded because he couldn't get through. Sadly, it was just closing. We'll never know what would have happened if I'd got in there 20 minutes earlier. Would I really have bought myself a new, shiny iPad 2?

So that was it. A Holyrood Parliamentary party of 5. Things are going to be very different in this session and over the next few days I want to look at how the SNP managed more of a triumph than possibly they wanted, and the challenges for each party in the five years ahead.

Tavish Scott and the Scottish Liberal Democrats fight to save RAF Leuchars

You can't marry a St Andrews boy like I did and not be aware of the enormous significance of RAF Leuchars which sits just a few miles outside the town. He tells me that when he was a little boy, his nights were disturbed by the roar of the engine testing and he was excited with all the planes flying back and forth. The first links with military aviation in that area are 100 years old, and the RAF base we know today was opened in 1920.  Most people will know it for its spectacular annual air show, but it is a busy working base with a vital strategic purpose.

Not only is it part of the defence of our country, but the base provides a living for almost 1800 people. If it closes, all that money is taken out of the local economy, which would be a catastrophe for Fife.

Not only that, but we've already lost RAF Kinloss. If we are going to have enough cover to help in mountain rescues, we need to have both Leuchars and Lossiemouth able to provide it. As a former youth hostel warden, I know how busy the mountains are with walkers and climbers. Conditions can turn nasty in an instant and it's vital that we are able to rescue trapped or injured visitors.

Today, as the Courier reports, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish Scott has gone to London along with North East Fife MSP and MP Iain Smith and Menzies Campbell to make the case for the retention of Leuchars to Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey.

Let's hope that they are successful in their mission.

Liberal Democrat Iain Smith calls for enquiry into rail failures

I'm pleased to see that I'm not the only Liberal Democrat who is disgusted with the shoddy service First Scotrail has been providing recently. I know that they've had a challenge, but their management and communication is shambolic. If you don't believe me, go back and read about my game of musical platforms the other week or my husband's frozen encounter with the train that wasn't really cancelled.

Iain Smith, Liberal Democrat MSP for North East Fife is generally a very lovable human being. He does get grumpy, though, if his trains don't run on time, or if First Scotrail muck him about, at the best of times. I remember seeing a video profile on the Parliament website in which he was asked about what made him angry. Many other MSPs had said things like poverty and war and pestilence. Iain talked about shops selling Christmas stuff too early and Scotrail's rubbish communications, both causes very close to my heart. I am not sure if this is the one as I am stuck on the slowest laptop in the world but I'll check it later. (Update, much later, actually it's not, but it's worth watching anyway. And a note to the Test Match Commentary Team - if you are lucky enough to get an invitation to dinner at Iain's house, go, for goodness sake. The food will be amazing.

Anyway, he stood up for long suffering commuters by writing to Patrick Harvie, Convener of the Parliament's Transport Committee, to ask for there to be an enquiry into First Scotrail's many shortcomings over the Winter period.

During a debate on Winter resilience yesterday in Holyrood, Iain said:

"Part of [the problem] is simply down to ScotRail's inadequate information systems; its website failed to provide accurate information. If we wanted to find out whether a train was running, it was guaranteed that if it said on the live rail departure board that a train was on time, it had been cancelled. If the board said the train was delayed, it had been cancelled. The only way of knowing if the train was running was if it could be seen moving down the line.

"There is also the issue of whether the rolling stock is capable of the job. ScotRail says that the brakes freeze and the snow accumulates under the carriages, which causes damage to the equipment. We are told that there are infrastructure problems, such as freezing points. Those issues are all of concern and need to be addressed. A once-in-a-lifetime event has happened twice within 12 months, and we need to upgrade our railway network so that it can cope."

This will resonate with the many thousands of people who rely on a functioning rail system to get them to work. It's ridiculous that here in West Lothian we didn't have any service at all for 10 days with an occasional replacement bus service that turned up when it felt like it and was wholly inadequate to cope with the number of passengers.

Iain also raised the issue of heating oil supplies. It's awful that some people have been told that it'll be January before they will get a delivery and even the suppliers have no idea how much it'll cost when it does come. He said:

The issue is that the heating oil companies are being told that they are unlikely to get supplies at present, and the customers are unlikely to get deliveries until January. That is the situation on the ground, and it needs to be addressed. I accept the point about the derogation of the drivers' hours regulations, but that does not help if there is no heating oil to supply, which seems to be the problem. Someone has that heating oil, but they are trying to make a huge profit from it, and that is unacceptable.

Let's hope that that gets sorted and that people don't have to spend a cold and miserable Christmas either because they have no oil, or they're keeping their boilers turned down low to make the supply that they do have last.

Happy Golden Jubilee Iain Smith MSP

Any political activist or their offspring who is unlucky enough to be born in April or early May is going to find that their birthday most years is subsumed by election campaigns, even if it's a special one with a zero in it.

Today, Iain Smith, the Liberal Democrat MSP for NE Fife is 50. Now, I think on balance he would probably prefer that the election disrupted his birthday than his watching of the Test Match series, but even so, when he should be feted with champagne, basking in the adoring affection of his many friends from all over the world, he's more than likely out there on the doorsteps of Largo, or Elie, or Pittenweem or Anstruther or Cupar campaigning for the re-election of Ming Campbell.

He's one of my favourite people. I've worked with him on basically every other election so far this millennium when I was involved in and then chaired the Scottish Lib Dems Campaigns and Candidates Committee and he was in charge of the last two Westminster elections. He's great fun - he's one of those people who can come up with something really hilarious to say in any of the pitfalls that befall any campaign at some point or to cheer up and motivate tired staff. He's so good at thinking of really sharply astute analyses of opponents' policies on the spot - especially when he has the SNP in his sights.

Anyway, Iain, hope you have a fantastic Golden Jubilee. I'm sad that I can't be there with chocolate cake but we'll raise a glass of a decent red to you later.