Review of 2008 - Scottish News

I've read a few reviews of 2008 on Now Public so I thought I would give a Scottish review.

This is my quick personal review of news stories from Scotland that were important to me:

On 3 May police found two children dead in a secluded car park in
Lennoxtown. Ashok Kalyanjee pleaded guilty to killing his own children, two-year-old Jay Ross and six-year-old Paul Ross.

He is still awaiting sentence.

It's 15 May and Glasgow Rangers football club [soccer] make their first big final for many years. Fans go in their thousands to Manchester to see their team play in the final of the Uefa Cup.

Rangers lose 2-0 to Zenit St Petersburg of Russia.

So Rangers fans do what they seem to do best in recent times, cause trouble and riot bringing shame on Scottish Football, and Scotland.

It's a sad day for the Scottish Labour party in Scotland on 28 June as their leader Wendy Alexander quits.

Her resignation came after months of press criticism of donations to her leadership campaign.

It's all the media seemed to cover for a while.

Iain Gray takes over.



25 July and SNP's John Mason enters a by-election and does what no other SNP man or woman has done before and overturns a Labour majority of 13,507 and wins by 365 votes.

He captured Labours safe Westmister MP seat of Glasgow East.

Scottish and UK media went daft... and so did the SNP!

You could read headlines like 'Should Prime Mister Brown step down now'!!.

The SNP later in another by-election hoped the same would happen when Prime Minister Gordon Brown faced losing another safe seat - basically in his own neighbourhood of Fife.

After the death of  Labour MP John MacDougall the Glenrothes seat was up for grabs.

There isn't a lot of miles between Glenrothes and Gordon Brown's Kirkcaldy seat. Should any party other than Labour win the Prime Mister would have been in trouble.

Lindsay Roy won and was elected as the new Westminster MP with a majority of 6,737 (cut from 10,664) over the SNP's Peter Grant. 

This is a good piece written the Now Public user allyshand90 on this story.

Happydays on 19 August as Edinburgh-born cyclist Chris Hoy becomes the first Scots Olympian in a century to scoop three gold medals for the United Kingdom. He later goes on to win the BBC Sports Personality of  the Year.

This opens up debate (again) among the press that Scotland should have it's own Olympian team like we do in the Commonwealth games, football, Rugby etc.

We currently come under the United Kingdom - TEAM GB.

More happy sports news for Scots' sports fans, it's 9 September this time and Scottish Tennis player Andy Murray, from Dunblane beats world number one Rafael Nadal to reach the final of the US open but to be beating by Swiss plaYer Roger Federal.

It's near Christmas and it's the 2 December. One of the most horrid Scottish murders is put to rest after 17 years.

Peter Tobin is found guilty of the murder of Vicky Hamilton, a Falkirk schoolgirl who went missing in February 1991.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison. Tobin was already serving a life sentence for the 2006 murder of Polish student Angelika Kluk in Glasgow.

The case was reopened after police found out Tobin had lived near Vicky at the time she went missing and thanks to DNA police were able to arrest him.

Police are currently checking Tobin's life history to find where he stayed in the past.

Records show he has lived in different area's of the UK and will follow up on any missing girls around those times.

Recently on 16 December the jury at Woolwich Crown Court found the terrorist Dr Bilal Abdulla guilty of conspiring to murder hundreds of people when drove a car bomb driven into the entrance of Glasgow Airport in June 2007.

He was giving 32 years in prison.

To finish it's got to be the recent story about the Hokey Cokey...