Children and Families Management Team and links with STV-PR!

Brief slot on the Children and Families Management Team meeting agenda this afternoon; just to say a quick thank-you for all their efforts in the run-up to the setting of the 2007/08 City Council budget this coming Thursday (mentioned this before here).

No definite decisions until Thursday obviously ... but it has proven to be a very difficult balancing act this year between setting a long-term budget, and the short-term demands of an upcoming election. Add to that the inevitable fact that this budget will be 'picked up' by a new coalition Administration (because of the implementation of the Single Transferable Vote [PR] for Scottish Local Government elections on May 3rd) and you'll get some flavour of the tensions around the upcoming, final decisions.

But ... as I've mentioned several times before ... despite my own best interests (or in spite of them!) I've always been a long-term supporter of PR ... I'm a Director of both the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) and Chair/Director of Fairshare ... and am wholly supportive of the moves to STV-PR for local government elections in Scotland.

Indeed, the ERS recently opened an office in Edinburgh and they're about to launch a "Democrazy" website to help publicise the change to STV-PR for the local government elections on Thursday May 3rd.

I'll post more details on the website as soon as I get them ... meantime, lots of information on the Electoral Commission Scotland's website which can be found here.