Emrys
Emrys's JournalThe Scottish Parliament is run on the D'Hondt voting system
(as are the Northern Ireland and Welsh National Assemblies and the London Assembly).
The whole set-up for the Scottish Parliament was intended to force coalitions. Nevertheless, last election, the SNP won an overall majority with 69 out of 129 seats.
Under the modified D'Hondt system in Scotland, you have two votes. The first is for a directly elected first-past-the-post constituency member, of which there are 73. The second is for a party regional list member, of which there are 56 (7 from each of 8 regions). The list member votes are weighted so that the more directly elected seats a party wins, the more votes it needs to gain a list seat.
On current polling, it looks like the SNP will sweep the board on directly elected seats - winning literally every seat. It also looks like they'll poll heavily enough at list level to win an outright majority again, possibly increasing it by one, but it's a very unpredictable system.
A lot of the pundit chatter at the moment concerns whether the Tories will replace Labour as the second-placed party. It's also possible that UKIP may win its first regional list seat.
Culture Secretary John Whittingdale Caught in Prostitution Scandal
Or so it says here:
Byline can reveal a year long relationship between a senior figure in David Cameron’s government and a dominatrix which potentially jeopardized government security and left ministers open to blackmail. John Whittingdale, now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport {was} involved in a long relationship between at least November 2013 and January 2015 with Olivia King, a well known escort who specializes in domination and sado-masochistic practices. It is unknown whether the relationship continues.
...
As Culture Secretary, Whittingdale’s brief includes press regulation, the BBC Charter and OfCom, including the implementation of press regulation based on recommendations from the Leveson report.
Whittingdale’s relationship has been an open secret in Westminster and Fleet Street circles, and major tabloid and broadsheet papers including the Mail on Sunday and The Independent have undertaken extensive investigations and written stories, only to have the stories abandoned at the last minute. In emails seen by Byline, the Editor of the Independent, Amol Rajan, wrote in a December 7 2015 email to a source that he had made the decision to not run the story on ‘editorial grounds’. However, the previous day, Rajan had met with Whittingdale and Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre at the Society of Editors Conference in December 2015. When he delivered the keynote address, he stated that he was minded not to implement a major recommendation of the Leveson inquiry and passed by Parliament as part of the Courts and Crimes Act.
...
One senior source associated with a major tabloid newspaper said they believed the story had been withheld for ‘political’ rather than editorial reasons because of Whittingdale’s significant influence over legislation related to the media.
...
We can also reveal that while she was involved with Whittingdale, Ms. King was also involved in a relationship with a member of the London underworld, who has a previous firearms conviction.Whittingdale’s relationships with prostitutes are said to be well known in the London underworld and could potentially leave him exposed to blackmail considering his senior position in the Government.
https://www.byline.com/column/51/article/950
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