Keep Scotland Tidy...

Had a wedding gig on Saturday with the Canongate Cadjers. Alex, generous as ever, drove us out there and was happy to answer questions about his latest toy, a satnav system for the van.

I wondered aloud at one point if I typed in the destination as 'arse with both hands', whether the satnav would be able to find it. But a more fundamental problem arose once we got out of Edinburgh.

We were due to play at the 'Houston House Hotel' in Uphall, but Alex had only got as far as punching in Houston, whereupon the satnav directed us to the Houston industrial estate in Livingston. Luckily, they're only a few miles apart, but while that might be close enough if you're a nuclear warhead, it's not much cop otherwise. I guess it just goes to show that technology can only ever be as good as the person working it!

On the subject of nuclear issues and finding your arse with both hands, the best wee First Minister of the best wee country in the world gave a lecture last night in Haddington. The lecture, in honour of the much respected Labour devolutionist, Professor John P MacIntosh,who sadly died in 1978 before he had a chance to see a Scottish Parliament open its doors, basically marked out Labour as the only party not prepared to consider further powers for Holyrood.

So far, so dreary. But in the Q&A session afterwards, McConnell made the astonishing assertion that part of the 'union dividend' enjoyed by Scotland was that it let us dump the waste from our nuclear power stations in Cumbria instead of having to deal with it in Scotland.

I've been a keen McConnell watcher ever since I crossed swords with him in 1996 when I was a student at Stirling University and he tried to bully me over the choice of chair for a debate I was organising between himself and Nicola Sturgeon (he failed by the way, and Nicola went on to wipe the floor with him). But frankly, it's still hard to think of any statement he has made which better sums up his parochial, unintelligent and small-minded attitude to politics.

I used to think that the bumper stickers saying 'Keep Scotland tidy - throw all your rubbish in England' were just a bad joke. How revealing that it could yet be recycled as Labour's campaign slogan for next May.