So here we are with a shiny new bunch of councillors – and already some of them have thrown their hat in the general election ring, writes Ruth Wishart.

Gary Mulvaney for the Tories and Alan Reid for the Lib Dems are standing in the general election in Argyll and Bute against the SNP’s Brendan O’Hara.

And Aileen Morton (Lib Dem) is attempting to gain a seat in East Renfrewshire.

(You will recall too that Tory MSP Maurice Corry, elected as a List member at Holyrood last year, hung on to his councillor’s seat for the year until this month’s council elections.)

Whatever alibis all these folk concoct, however they allocate their salary or allowances, the fact of the matter is that that people voted for them in good faith, for three of them just a couple of weeks back.

And did so in the not unreasonable expectation that their councillor would be concentrating on that particular day job rather than diverting their political energies to the general election campaign trail.

If Alan Reid wants his old Westminster job back then he should have made that clear and not used the council as some kind of each way bet.

If Gary Mulvaney thinks he can surf the Tory tide to all the way to the Commons then he should have said so, and not used his council seat as a handy safety net.

I suspect Aileen Morton entertains no real hope of winning East Renfrewshire where there will be a battle royal between the SNP and the Tories, and it may be that her party wanted a seasoned campaigner to fly the flag.

Nevertheless from now until June 8th her political energies will not be expended locally.

I take the old fashioned view that candidates owe it to the voters to be clear about their personal ambitions, and not to try to ride two horses simultaneously.

This is not a party issue. I don’t think the voters who made former SNP leader Alex Salmond their MSP for Aberdeenshire East got full value for their money when he was elected MP for Gordon and kept both jobs for the year until the next Holyrood poll.

Not taking a salary for one didn’t guarantee his presence when needed.

It seemed ludicrous that Labour’s George Foulkes – having joined an embarrassing flock of ex Labour MPs in the House of Lords - should then go Holyrood as well, as the first name on the local Labour list.

Especially as he had made a reputation trashing the Holyrood brand. And he kept both “jobs” for a full term.

Superhuman as some of our politicians doubtless think themselves, they cannot be in two places at once.

There are bound to be occasions when they should be present in one chamber and find themselves in another.

Some little inner instinct tells me that neither Messrs Reid and Mulvaney nor Ms Morton troubled the voters with the news that with a bit of electoral luck they would be waving goodbye to the council chamber a month after saying hello.

There is nothing in electoral law or precedent which prevents candidates standing in two different elections covering the same period. You might think common decency should.