New city council for Edinburgh

The votes have finally been counted and Labour have lost control of Edinburgh City Council to the Liberal Democrats. This is great news as it should mean that several planned destructive, inappropriate developments for the historic centre of Edinburgh should not go ahead. It should also mean that Corstorphine Hill in its entirety is protected from housing developments. The old Labour administration was very keen on economic development at the expense of conservation of historic Edinburgh and the natural environment and the Liberal Democrats have always stood against this and now they have the power to halt it. The additional piece of good news is that we now have three Green Party councillors in the city, their first representation on the council. (I was delighted to see that in each of the English cities of Lancaster, Brighton and Norwich, there are over ten Green councillors and several other councils have some level of Green representation. Great news for the environment.)

The Scottish Parliament votes have all been counted now too and the Scottish Nationalist Party has the most seats, just one more than Labour. As suspected the number of Green MSPs has dropped from 7 to 2. I have heard that the Green Party are calling for all the 100,000 invalid ballot papers to be recounted. The future direction of the Parliament is uncertain as the SNP will need to form a coalition with someone, but whom? It will be interesting to see what happens, but the result was not good for the environment as I said here yesterday.