06/05/2008

Aberdeen-based freelance journalist, Hamish Mackay, is doing battle on Aberdeen University’s campus this week as students vote on their new rector for the next three years.

Mackay, who lost out narrowly to Green MSP, Robin Harper, in the rectorial election last time round, is up against Martin Ford - the Aberdeenshire councillor who derailed US tycoon, Donald Trump’s £1 billion golf resort plan for Aberdeenshire - and Steve Robertson, a member of the Scotland the What? comedy trio.

Mackay, who threatened to sue the Aberdeen University Students’ Association in the battle with Harper, over the way the vote was handled, had a civilised tete-a-tete with Ford yesterday on the manicured lawns of King’s College, although their respective election aides were somewhat bemused by a complex stand-off on sand-dune erosion and traffic flows which seemed to have little relevance to issues academic.

The university authorities have scrapped paper voting and the students will vote on-line from today until Thursday, using the single transferrable vote (STV) system.

Last year, Mackay stood as a regional list candidate in the Holyrood elections.

He said this morning: “I am enjoying myself immensely. With my fellow Highlander, the Lib Dem MP, Charles Kennedy, now ensconced as rector of Glasgow University, what a dynamic teuchtar duo we could make in pushing the higher education case at Holyrood and Westminster.

“All those so-serious newspaper education correspondents would be guaranteed riveting copy. However, as Charlie and myself are now not too enamoured with the attractions of the demon drink, it would be strictly lattes and muffins at the media briefings. How boring.”

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