New FIPRE building plans online

The design plans for the new Fife Institute of Physical and Recreational Education are available onine - there are a load of related pdf documents here, and this link is to the overall design statement (another pdf) if you just want to have a look at an overview.
Here's a link to the topic in the forum.

Leslie House burning down!

Here's some on the spot reporting :) :

and here's the related thread in forum...

Glenrothes is a plook.

The cheeky buggers at Prospect magazine have just voted Glenrothes Scotland's most dismal town! Here's the BBC reporting it, and here's the 'carbuncle awards' website.
Don't they know we're only a few years away from being retro cool? No foresight, and besides I kind of like some of the architecture, unfortunately it seems to be the town centre that's let us down, and given the rate at which shops seem to be dying off up there and the new retail parks that are on their way I can't see it getting much better there soon. I really need to get that public art map finished now, must show some good stuff about Glenrothes!
Here's a related thread in the forum in case you have any suggestions on how Glenrothes can un-plook itself!

some sad news..

Bernard the Saint Bernard, the "beast of balbirnie" passed away on Tuesday. After he was rescued from his previous owners he had a great life, full of walks, food and drool - I'll miss him loads. Here's his appearance on GMTV as memorial.

why does nobody ever have a camera with them?

Another Beast sighting in Glenrothes, after it was seen in Methil recently. Must have just been visiting.

Labour win the Glenrothes by-election

Labour hold the seat with 19,946 votes, the SNP got 13,209. Here's the BBCs report.

The Courier Hustings

I went to The Courier Hustings Tonight but I left early . This is was mainly due to the fact that the supoosedly "randomly" selected questions weren't exactly random and the fact that the political editor had no control over the audience .

The Glenrothes Gazette Hustings was far better controlled .

by-election poll update

There are only 14 days to go until the 2nd most talked about election in the world (possibly), and as the media swarms through the town centre, journalists chill out in the CISWO and the Acorn and Gordon and Sarah, Alec, David and who knows who else turn up on your doorstep with a handful of flyers and sincere promises, the world turns it's attention to the Glenrothes Spoon poll. As of today the voting figures are as follows: Labour: 50, SNP: 68, Lib Dems: 7, Conservative: 10, Other: 6.
The SNP were off to an early lead when we first started the poll up, but Labour have been steadily catching up over the month or so that it's been on the site. You also need to decide whether you want to include the 19 votes from the SNP blog that linked to the poll (see the post further down this page) - if you decide not to, then it's absolutely neck and neck, with Labour actually winning by one vote.
The bookies odds are way too close to call on the main two parties too, so it's going to be a fun couple of weeks for everyone involved!
If you haven't voted yet, get stuck in! And if you haven't made your mind up yet - don't forget there's always the by-election celebrity lookalike page to help you decide. ;)

Gordon Brown Finally Announces He Will Come To Glenrothes!

The Press Association is reporting that Gordon Brown has written a letter to a number of MP's stating that he will be coming to Glenrothes to campaign !

Gordon's on his way to Glenrothes.

At least according to this report in the Daily Record he is...
edit: and here's the guardian, the telegraph and the bbc reporting it today.

Glenrothes by-election special on STV's Politics Now

I'm still watching this as I type but its basically a summary of everything by-election related up till now. So far there's been dodgy pronounciation of Cardenden and the Tory guy comparing himself to Rocky, so there's a couple of reasons to watch already.....they also have a questioning session with the SNPs Peter Grant and Labour's Lindsay Roy.
It's available online for 27 days after today - here are the links:
Part 1

Part 2

If you have any problems with those links this is the main Politics Now page, it was broadcast on the 25th September.

Glenrothes' reactions to Gordon Brown's speech

The BBC went to the Ciswo, and STV hit the Acorn - you can see the interviews they did there by following these links: BBC's Reporting Scotland and STV's Scotland Today. There's also this thread in the forum following the reporting. Hurry up though, they don't say how long they'll stay online for.

more by-election

The news section on the right of this page just keeps getting busier with more and more speculation about the importance of the Glenrothes by-election result to Labour and to Gordon Brown. I found a handy page on wikipedia that should give you up to date information on who's standing etc. - it's here.
I also added the SSP and UKIP candidates to the by-election candidate celebrity lookalikes as I felt they would be at a disadvantage if they weren't included - that's over here. :)

the poll

it looks like the SNP vote may be a wee bit inflated on the poll - I just read a comment below that says an SNP blogger has been linking to it, so I checked the analytics thing for the site and 19 hits have come directly from snpyouth.org.
I can't find the link so maybe it's deleted now, but if you like you can subtract 19 votes from the SNP to get a more realistic idea of what regular visitors to the site think (although some of that 19 might have been from Glenrothes...). This is probably why they still use polling booths.

Glenrothes by-election lookalikeys

Now that all the candidates have been announced, it's time to start deciding who gets your vote. But don't worry - Glenrothes Spoon is here to ease that decision making. We've fed the 4 main candidates into a celebrity lookalike site and the results are over here.