Tag Archives: eileen mccartin

Caron Lindsay

Eileen McCartin to become President of Scottish Liberal Democrats

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 8th December 2015 - 4:45 pm

Eileen McCartin has been a Councillor in Paisley, first for the SDP and then the Liberal Democrats for some 27 years. She and former MP for Argyll and Bute Alan Reid were Willie Rennie’s “political parents” as they were key influences on him when he was a student in Paisley. They helped him when he achieved a cracking 26% in a by-election in the Paisley Foxbar ward in 1988. Willie talked to the Scotsman about it here and you get a sense of how that campaign shaped his values:

After school he applied to Paisley College to study ecology and land management. Living in a flat which cost just 14 a month rent and rates – and had no hot water or heating of any kind – made Rennie more keenly aware of the divide between the haves and have-nots. “I had to wash at the old swimming baths in Storey Street.” he recalls.

I’d been interested in some political stuff at school. I used to get agitated about environmental issues and so on. But this was different.” He was elected deputy president of the Student Union, and took a year’s sabbatical from his course. “Don’t be silly, vote for Willie” was the never-to-be-repeated slogan. But when he returned to his studies he found that “cell biology just wasn’t the same.” So he stood for council election in Paisley Foxbar in 1988.

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Caron Lindsay

Liberal Democrats in the New Year Honours list

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 31st December 2013 - 8:24 am

While we have been preparing our own Liberal Democrat Stars of 2013 (you can still submit your nominations), the Government has published its own list of recipients of New Year Honours list. For the first time ever, surprisingly since women make up more than half the population, they make up a slight majority of this list. It really might be time, though, for them to change the outdated way they list women. Married women are listed as their first names, then Mrs surname. Others have the designation Ms.  This is not the case for men, who are simply listed …

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