Alex Salmond visits Kilsyth

Another busy day today. Spent the early part of the afternoon knocking doors in Abronhill with my colleague Councillor Liz Irvine. It was heartening to hear from people that they had received our election address and most seemed to respond well to the issues we had raised in it. I met many people who are going to vote SNP on 3rd May, some for the very first time. Increasingly people are coming to realise that the way to make change happen at this election is by supporting the SNP and that was quite clear from many conversations I had today.

Then it was over to Kilsyth where SNP leader Alex Salmond was paying a visit. We got the chance to meet with a number of folk on Kilsyth Main Street. Again, it is clear that not only are people coming over to our campaign locally, but that the campaign to make Alex Salmond First Minister of Scotland has really captured the public imagination. Most people we spoke to were telling us that they intend to vote SNP at the election.

And this evening we had the first election hustings of this campaign at Cumbernauld Primary. It was a combined hustings for the Cumbernauld and Kilsyth Scottish Parliament campaign and the Cumbernauld North ward for North Lanarkshire Council, so there was a massed rank of about 16 candidates including myself and my SNP colleagues Alan O'Brien and Norman Robinson.

The chairman of tonight's event started off by making that old gag that at one stage he thought he would have to introduce the audience to the panel, but in the end there was a pretty good turnout. That there were so many candidates meant not a lot of time to talk for each individual, but we got through some interesting topics, many of which we have been speaking about already in this campaign. It was a good warm up for tomorrow night's second (and last) hustings of the campaign at Cumbernauld College.