Sounds fair.....NOT

Ah, democracy according to the Labour party.

Interestingly if Labour lose just one constituency seat in say Glasgow, Central or West of Scotland, then they make no corresponding compensation on the list and their power bonus is reduced for little effort. Because the current PR system favours larger parties, even the SNP winning constituency seats means it does not lose on the list. If the SNP had won Govan in 1999 and 2003, it would still have claimed 4 and 2 seats in on the list in addition to Govan. So despite what John Curtice thinks or implies, it is not outwith the guile of the SNP to target constituency seats for its own advantage.

Please Labour voters in Glasgow and Central belt - wake up to them .... get out and vote for a party that can restore some self-respect to our country.

VOTE SNP

Why is this surprising, Labour created this system of government for the expressed purpose of keeping the SNP out of power - this is not an opinion, this was confirmed by Robin Cook.

the SNP know what they need to do - win seats in the Central belt. If they can't do this then they don;t win power, simple as that. There's no unfairness about it!

Wonder what the five seats are? I would guess that the obvious target seats like Cumbernauld, Kilmarnock and Loudon, Govan and Linlithgow would fall on a 5.4% swing.

Scott #1 -- I agree with you, but the trouble is there is no such thing as a totally fair electoral system. The main problem with the additional member version of PR is that the parties decide who will get the seats not the voter.
People who say that's what happens anyway are wrong -- if you don't like the candidate you don't have to vote for him/her; on the closed list you vote the party and the bigwigs decide who gets the gravy.
I reckon it's a shame that the Tory idea of an American-style primary for their candidate for Mayor of London went pear-shaped. It would at least have been worth trying.

Well lets not screw our one chance to get the cancer that is labour and the rest of the comedians out once and for all :)

The system may be designed to keep the SNP out of power however if the SNP, Greens and SSP actually begin working together on a joint campaign for independence the potential is there to win the election.

Many people are not voting because they can't see the point. On the three hundredth anniversary of union they might well change their mind and boot out Labour's band of anti-Scots politicians who hate the idea of normal powers for their own country.

Just as the Daily Star, Express, Sun etc are not really Scottish papers, none of these politicians who detest Scotland deserve to be described as Scots.

Gordon Brown let the cat out of the bag when he said he applauded Gazza's goal against Scotland and cited it as his favourite of all time. He's a sell out just like every other Labour politician who puts English rule over home rule.

Happened in 2005 General Election, a plurality of votes in England went to the Tories, yet a majority of English Seats went to Labour. Perhaps one of the reasons Labour has been resisting the Independent Boundary Commission changing seats for as long as possible.

By all means attack the Unionists Ian, but save your Anglophobia. If the English ruled, we would not have had top-up fees, foundation hospitals and many other things imposed on us against our will. As well as having the very concept of Englishness attacked (until recently when the Westminster Elite have pretended to partially embrace it in order to stop the drive for English, not regional devolution).

Labour rule, not us.

True Dave. I'm half English, and I've always voted SNP. The English are not the problem, it's the pathetic unionist Scots who are holding us back.

Vote SNP!!!

I've said before and I'll say it again: I don't trust the Unionist. I don't trust the Labour party I think they'll have a few more dirty tricks up their selves.

At least the Scot Nats have some passion for Scotland and care about Scotlands communite which is more I can say for some labour MP's such as Adam Ingram he's really sleasy. I think he's a rubbish MP (I've lived in his Constunces in the past) He's a hopless mister of armedforces and deffence (Look at what he's done to Scotlands Army) but he make a really good Minster of War (I read a new paper artcle which he wrote back in 2003: Why we must go to war, he came across as a minster of war to me in it.)

The five constituencies (I bought the print edition to check) were Glasgow Kelvin, Cunninghame North, East Kilbride, Livingston and Edinburgh Central.

These are not seats that fall on a 5.4% swing, but which fall a few percentage points after that. These are the seats that are crucial for the SNP to take if it wants to cancel out the disproportion in the system and become the largest party in terms of seats as well as votes.

#16 Marco: Thouse 5 really, thats depressing I don't know much about the other 4 them but I know the majourity people in EK vote Labour, I was sock last year by how many people voted for waste of space Adam Ingram.

I left that pifetic town to get away form these people please tell me it does rest with EK I hate that place and I still have nightmare about how cruel the people I went to school with were.