Elect Rose Gentle on 5th May

Rose Gentle is standing as an independent anti-war candidate for the East Kilbride constituency in the May 5th general election, against the Nu-Lab Armed Forces minister Adam Ingram. The SSP are supporting her and declining to oppose her. It's not clear if the Green Party's Kirsten Robb will continue to stand. I hope the Scottish Greens might reconsider this, like the SSP, in the light of a greater good.

Rose Gentle, for any who don't know, is the mother of the Scottish soldier Gordon Gentle, who died in road crash in Iraq in June last year. Since then, she's been working tirelessly to raise the issue of wasted lives in Iraq and campaigning to bring the UK troops home. If further reasons are needed to vote for her over sitting-MP Ingram, reflect that she was silenced by a MoD D-notice last year, refused entrance to the Scottish Nu-Lab conference in Dundee this March. You can get a taste of her viewpoint and arguments in the short CamcorderGuerrillas film Dear Mrs Blair.

I'll let her speak for herself:

“I am standing in this election because the government is not listening to us over Iraq. I still think that the war was based on lies and that British troops should be brought out of Iraq. Now is the time to do that. If Blair is so confident about the issues why doesn’t he publish the attorney general’s advice on going to war? want to make Iraq an issue in this election. The government wants to try to put it under the carpet. I have chosen to stand in East Kilbride because Adam Ingram has not given a damn about anybody. He’s still sending troops out to Iraq. He doesn’t care."

More links on Rose Gentle's campaign at BBC online and the Herald.

The prize for most-biased reporting goes, as usual, to Scotshit for this gem:

"Mr Ingram alleged that Mrs Gentle was being supported by the "Trots" (Trotskyites) of the Scottish Sociality Party... Flanked by an SSP member at a press conference in Glasgow, Mrs Gentle denied any link. She said: "I’m not a member of any party and I’ve not approached any party."

Scotshit © and Nu-Lab © (spot the difference) find it simplest to use tried-and-tested smears and labels.