It has been a busy time in Scotland over recent weeks and what with Holyrood in recess for a month before Westminster broke up, there have been holidays to work around, babies being born, MPs standing down and candidates being selected all over as well as an away day for all parliamentarians and campaign staff.

Archie Scott was born earlier this week, weighing 8.5lbs to the delight of Kirsten and Tavish, our sincere congratulations to them both.

Alison and Mike Moore also have recently had a baby, Ella Louise. Now, Ella Louise was born prematurely so Mike Moore is taking the plunge and is hoping to raise £3,000 to give something back to the Special Care Baby Team, and is therefore walking the Borders Abbeys Way, together with Leader of Borders Council, Councillor David Parker, over the 5 days from 29th August to 2nd September. You can read more here and sponsor Michael here. Please help Michael reach that target.

From babies to MPs, honest, there is no immediately obvious link;

John Barrett MP has decided the time is right to hang up his boots at the next General Election after 25 years in the public eye. You can read about John’s decision here. We hope his wife Carol has started on that list of DIY jobs that need doing around the house and send our best wishes to them both. The process has started for the appointment of the candidate in Edinburgh West to replace John.

Eileen Baxendale was selected to fight the forthcoming Glasgow North East by-election for the Scottish Liberal Democrats. The campaign will be the third by-election in just over twelve months for us in Scotland and will be a hard fight. The BNP have already said their objective is to beat us – no contest there! Eileen will be a fantastic candidate and has already hit the ground running.

Tavish Scott has recently launched a major campaign to Bring the Bank of Scotland home and Vince Cable is firmly behind this. This campaign is about to go online so you will all be able to support it. However, in the meantime we are campaigning to stop the SNP Government merging all the Police Boards across Scotland into just one central one, if you agree with our campaign please sign the petition on the front page at http://www.scotlibdems.org.uk

For those of you who are on Twitter, there are plenty of Scots with you. Here are just a few of the MSPs, MPs, MEP, Councillors, bloggers, staff and Liberal Youth @scotlibdems, @joswinson, @eileenbaxendale, @georgelyonmep, @jimhumemsp, @andyreeves, @caronmlindsay, @willierenniemp, @katygordon1, @cleslie92, @stephenpglenn, @ruaraidhdobson – so if you are on Twitter, follow as you like.

Andrew Reeves is the Liberal Democrats’ Deputy Director of Campaigns (Scotland).