The MacAskill Campaign Bus

On Saturday a team of us headed out in the Kenny MacAskill campaign minibus to campaign in East Edinburgh, North Edinburgh, Musselburgh and Leith.

Compared with other forms of campaigning it was actually quite good fun. First we headed to Musselburgh and covered the main shopping street. From there we headed to Portobello with the fairly impressive sound system broadcasting a message from Alex Salmond and music. You could hear us coming before you seen us.

In Portobello we saw Solidairty hold a street stall and I stopped for a quick chat. We then bumped in Ewan Aitken who was waiting on his own for the bus with his rucksackful of leaflets. He notes hearing and seeing us out in the van although, perhaps unsurprisingly, he didn’t much approve.

From there we headed to Easter Road and bumped into Labour’s Angela Blacklock handing out leaflets in the street. We bundled out, distributed balloons, had quick hellos with Anglea and got some leafleting done while we were there.

Then it was down Leith Walk (at full volume) to the Kirkgate. Again we bundled out, gave a quick wave to Mark Lazarowicz who was out on a stall and headed up Leith Walk where we bumped into a Green stall who were just calling it a day.

It was then onwards to Stockbridge to deliver leaflets and hand out balloons. From there we headed back to Restalrig where we repeated out established method and got a pile of leafleting done thanks to us being there with a substantial team of activists. We headed off from Restalrig to see a somewhat forlorn Ewan Aitken delivering his leaflets.

The bus then headed on to Craigmillar to do some more delivery work but instead I headed back to the clubrooms to quickly organise the next weeks activity.

All of this in fairly glorious weather. It was actually quite good to see so many parties out campaigning and there was a real feel that there was an election in the offing. I saw Labour, Greens and Solidarity campaigning but strangely no Lib Dems