Fog failure

Within minutes of the polls closing in Scotland, news filtered through of the first act of God to delay the count. Votes cast in the Western Isles, off the north-west Scottish coast, were marooned.

Heavy fog prevented a ballot-collecting helicopter from taking off on Thursday night. The chopper was due to collect the votes from the islands of Barra and Benbecula in order to whisk them to Stornoway for the count. A ferry has been dispatched to fetch the democratic wishes of the islanders.

No sour grapes from Sheridan

The perma-tanned socialist Tommy Sheridan will no longer be counted amongst Holyrood’s most notorious members after losing his Glasgow seat. The former Scottish Socialist leader, who formed his own Solidarity party eight months ago, reassured his supporters: “There’s no sour grapes.”

Sheridan was a mainstay in the tabloid press last year as a row over alleged infidelities was played out in court. He won a libel case against a Sunday newspaper that accused him of orgies, swinging, masochism and regular drug consumption. His wife successfully defended him by insisting “I would have killed him, pregnant or not, if it was true.”

Fore!

An angry golfer was arrested in an Edinburgh polling station after he attacked the ballot boxes with his golf club. The man, 36, had been issued with ballot papers when he began ripping up blank voting slips and launched a frenzied assault on the boxes.

Police arrested the man who had been restrained by election officials, the Edinburgh West count was not affected and no one was harmed. It is unknown whether the man cast his vote.

E-vote crash

South Buckinghamshire is in the vanguard of 21st century democracy. The council enthusiastically took part in a pilot scheme that allowed constituents to vote online.

Votes were cast and the system was on course - until it came to counting the votes. The computer crashed and the count was postponed, after a technical battle the IT department saved the votes. They will be counted today, by hand.

Zero for Blair's local Tories

Tony Blair may be at his lowest ebb in the opinion polls but the people of Sedgefield are showing little appetite for a resurgent Conservative Party. New Trimdon and Trimdon Grange ward, Tony Blair’s local council, will not feature a Tory this term. The blue candidate received zero votes. Mr Blair’s election agent John Burton said: "I’ve never heard of that before."

Rubbish vote

The Conservatives became the largest party on Birmingham City Council for the first time in almost a quarter of a century last night because Labour were seen as the anti-binman party. The Tories became the senior partners in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats after pledging that rubbish would be collected every single week.

Mike Whitby, leader of the council, warned Tony Blair that refuse collections in alternate weeks would not do. “People do not want their rubbish lying about for a fortnight and they have told me that loud and clear,” he said.

Edinburgh meets Florida?

In Edinburgh Central, rejected voting slips hold the balance of power. Labour deputy environment minister Sarah Boyack was re-elected to Holyrood with a majority of 1,193 but the vagaries of the much-maligned new voting system rejected 1,501 voting slips.

In Glasgow Baillieston there were 1,850 rejected votes, which is more than 10 per cent of votes cast. The returning officer’s spokesman said: “Early indications show that there has been some level of voter confusion.”

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