Blooming lovely

The blossom on the tree in Hope Park Square. I've never seen it in blossom before. I was promised that it was spectacular. It is indeed.

I was thinking of blipping a picture of an advertising hoarding encouraging people to get themselves registered for the European Parliament elections in May, but in the end I was tempted by the blossom because I don't think it will be quite as nice by Thursday when I'm next in the office.

Meanwhile, my story to accompany the EP elections hoarding will have to stand alone...

I spent a jolly interesting evening chairing a debate/husting related to EP elections for the Young European Movement at the University of St Andrews. It was quite well attended overall, mainly by students from other EU states and a few international students, and a smattering of others (hangers on to the candidates, for example). All were well behaved, including the candidates, and happy to let the intended target audience - i.e. the students - ask the questions they wanted to ask and generally try to answer them. Even the UKIP candidate was ok, and didn't try to dominate proceedings.

Not so two UKIPers in the audience. One (aged about 60, clearly not a St A student...) tried to push his way in to ask a question, and when I eventually gave him the floor started shouting at me and telling me I was a disgrace and the worst and most biased chair he'd ever seen. I stood up and told him to shut up, that I was the chair and was running the event for the benefit of the target audience (I had spent all evening anyway trying to get the candidates to address questions in a way that was relevant to an international panel of voters not simply from a rather parochial Scottish perspective). I had been about to give his mate the floor, but after that I decided against on the grounds he too was clearly not a student wanting to ask a question, but a UKIPer wanting to make a political point. Anyway, at the end, this second UKIPer - rather than addressing me personally by name - starting talking loudly about 'the chair' being 'worse than the East Germans' when it came to suppressing debate... Hey ho. I seem to remember I chaired something like this in Edinburgh five years ago, and a very similar occurrence happened. I think I was supposed to be spooked by the fact that the second UKIPer said 'It's been noted'. In other words, come the UKIP revolution, I'll clearly be first against the wall.