Come in, Mr Cashley! Can you hear me? Ah, that's better...Yesterday, in your blog, you claimed that Labour "don't publish Scottish figures" for party membership.
As I knew that to be untrue, I posted a quick comment pointing you to this March 2008 BBC article, which says that "the party reported 17,000 last year" and explains that membership figures for each constituency party are "published in the annual report presented to the Scottish conference".
You didn't approve my comment and so nobody else saw it.
In the same blog entry, you noted (correctly this time) that Labour's published membership and subscription fees for Scotland were £114,403 in 2007. But then you made this claim:
Labour's membership fees are £36 a year with a concessionary rate of £12 a year. If every member paid the full rate there would be 3,178 Labour members in Scotland; if every member paid the concession there would be 9,534 Labour members in Scotland.So I posted another quick comment, directing you to Labour's member signup page and pointing out that your figures were unduly low as students and young people (under 27) can join for just £1.
But again, that piece of information somehow failed to make it through your comment filter.
Today, you have posted again, claiming this time that Labour's membership in Scotland is now "down to 8,932". As that would represent an unprecedented halving within the space of under a year, some kind of source wouldn't go amiss.
Oh, incidentally, if you want to reply here, you'll find that I don't filter comments.
I too saw the post by Mr Cashley and thought 'shurely shome mishtake Mish Moneypenny' only 9,000 SLAB members, that cannot be right in the socialist enclave that is Scotland.
You mentioned that these figures have been published by Labour for 2008 at 17,000. Are these published every year, it'd be an interesting excercise to go through the decades to see the level of hard core Labour support. You could even get The Socialist Adam Smith to graph them up. He like's his figures :-)