A message for over-excitable unionists everywhere:

Ahem...

Hello there. Before I start, I should make clear that this message isn't aimed at all unionists - far from it. I've been told before that I'm quite well-balanced (for a Nat, apparently), so in that spirit, it's time to repay a compliment which managed to be both back-handed and tongue in cheek at the same time. So with that said, level-headed, fair minded supporters of the UK, please exempt yourselves from what is to follow.

Now. I know that since I’m an SNP supporter, in the eyes of some very voluble commentators and commenters, everything I’m about to say will already be completely wrong before I’ve even said it. Don't worry - I'm used to it. I'm used to the silly jibes that everything I do as a supporter of independence is about fermenting ‘grudge and grievance’, propagating ‘myths’, or whatever the insult of the week happens to be. Unquestionably, what I’m about to say will also be ‘typical’ of some vice you imagine is held universally by those of my political persuasion. However, please, hang in there. It’ll do you good, I promise.

It’s no secret that for reasons best known to yourselves, some of you guys really dislike the SNP. I also know that some of you, in your desperation to try and do down the SNP and the cause of independence, will leap on any passing bandwagon, no matter how rickety or unsafe it may seem to those of us with cooler heads, be we pro-independence or pro-union.

In that spirit, I can understand how exciting it must have been to see yesterday’s Daily Mail, with its screaming front page headline about how Alex Salmond had been ‘slapped down’ by the Norwegian Foreign Minister. ‘Sent homewards to think again’… ‘whaur’s your arc of prosperity noo’… that sort of thing. ‘Bigger is better, so just shut up about how brilliant you think things are elsewhere’. All great knock-about stuff.

I hope I’m not being unduly critical. After all, if a Minister of the Crown like Jim Murphy can stand up in Parliament to accuse Norway and Ireland of being insolvent, then there’s little hope that the febrile, uni-loony attack dogs of cyberspace might adopt a more reasoned and intelligent stance. Frankly, therefore, my expectations were already exceptionally low in this regard.

However, a word from the wise. Before rushing to publish, it might have been advisable to read the comments made by the Norwegian Minister concerned, and to establish whether his words could lend support to the slant being placed on them by the politically interested. I’m sure that for the smarter folk amongst you to have done so, would have led to the realisation that the Daily Mail was indulging in a little bit of stirring.

That’s why the following letter below is now on its way to the Daily Mail, courtesy of the Norwegian Ambassador, which I hope they’ll have the decency to publish in full:

Sir,

The article "Salmond Slapped down by Norway Minister" in the Daily Mail on 29 October contained several incorrect and misleading statements attributed to Norway's Foreign Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre.

Firstly, there is no "growing anger in Norway" over comparisons made between Scotland and Norway during the debate in the United Kingdom against the backdrop of the current global financial crisis.

Secondly, no accusations have been made by Mr Støre against Mr Salmond, as alleged in the article. In the interview, the Foreign Minister merely pointed out factual similarities and differences between the challenges presently faced by Scotland and Norway. Inferring from this that Mr Støre is of the view that Mr Salmond has in any way lied or mislead the public, is simply incorrect.

In short, the Norwegian Foreign Minister did not intend to criticise either side in this debate, which is a domestic political discussion. What he strongly emphasised in the interview with the Daily Mail and which, sadly, was simply omitted from the article, was his sincere appreciation of the warm ongoing relationship between Scotland and Norway.

Yours sincerely,
Bjarne Lindstrøm
Ambassador of Norway

Oh dear. Egg on face time for a few people, I fear. Is it time to speak of a unionist yolk which can be thrown off? ;-)

Oops!

My researcher, Mr Google, has drawn my attention to an article in the Scotsman, where Tavish Scott is having a go at the SNP.

No change there. However, this time he's making the case for something called an 'Infrastructure Investment Board' to be set up, which would take the decisions about which major transport infrastructure projects ought to be progressed out of the clammy hands of ministers.

'Why on earth would he want to do that?', I hear you ask. Well, it seems Tavish has it in his head that the SNP is only interested in advancing major projects in constituencies which they hold, or would like to hold. This, he contends, would be a way to stop such low down skulduggery.

Golly. I wonder if he means the Edinburgh Tram Project? Oh, sorry, that one's going ahead, and the SNP was against it, wasn't it? Ah, here we go - he means improvements to the A9 between Perth and Inverness, which, he contends, the SNP only want to press on with, not because it might be a good and useful thing to do, but because it runs through Fergus Ewing's constituency.

R-i-g-h-t. Now Fergus, I concede, is indeed the SNP MSP for Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber, and could, I suppose, accurately be described as someone with an interest in seeing improvements to the A9 go ahead. But remind me - which party currently represents the seats containing Caithness and Sutherland; as well as Inverness West at Holyrood? And which party is it that represents Inverness and all points north at Westminster? And which party, other than the SNP of course, is it that has repeatedly called for the A9 to be dualled between Perth and Inverness over the past 4 decades?

I'll give you a clue. Russell Johnston, a formidable advocate in his lifetime for improving the A9, used to be one of their MPs [for Inverness, as it happens].

Still nothing? Well, they provided the transport minister in the last Scottish Government, before the SNP took over in 2007.

Still nothing? Oh, OK then. That former transport minister, who singularly failed to improve the A9 during his term of office, is the one now complaining in this Scotsman article about the SNP going ahead and doing what he didn't.

It's certainly a novel tactic - trying to hold onto seats by complaining about transport improvements which you've always supported going ahead. Anyway, all answers, this time on the back of a dodgy by-election bar chart, to the usual address.

Kerr In The Community

From the Daily Record:

LABOUR must tackle the SNP head on or "whimper out of existence," MSP Andy Kerr warned yesterday.

He said: "Labour people who are in hand-to-hand combat with the SNP want to see me as leader of the party.

"This is a battle to the death with the SNP. That's how I see it and many party members see it."

It's nice to see that Mr Kerr is mantaining a sense of perspective and balance in his party's hour of need...

We'd have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for his pesky Lordship...

I am roused from the box-strewn midden I am proud to call my new living room and my dial-up internet purgatory, by this piece of idiocy:

SNP 'brainwashes' Scotland by painting trains in blue and white Saltire livery

"The Scottish National Party was accused of attempting to "brainwash people into independence" after it emerged that Scotland's trains are to be re-branded in a blue and white Saltire livery.

"Labour said the move was a "huge waste of money" and accused the Scottish Executive of adopting the design for nationalistic reasons.

"Stations will also be repainted in a dark blue colour scheme similar to that already used at Glasgow Central and Edinburgh Waverley.

"Lord Foulkes, the Labour MSP, said it was "independence by creep" and followed on from the SNP re-branding of the Scottish Executive as the Scottish Government".

Drat, rumbled again! All those hours spent plotting away in secret at Nat Towers on McDonald Road, agonising over our strategy on how to get the last few percentage points we need to win an independence referendum. Eventually, we alighted on a scheme whereby die-hard unionists getting on a train at Glasgow Queen Street at 7.45am on a Monday would become Nationalists through colour-scheme osmosis by the time they'd stepped off at Haymarket 50 minutes later. It was as villainous and cunning as it was masterful. And it's all been ruined! We'd have gotten away with it as well, if it hadn't been for his pesky Lordship...

Mind you, it still doesn't explain how I managed to spend my childhood hopping on and off Edinburgh's maroon and white buses without ever being converted from an Aberdeen supporter into a Hearts supporter. But then, perhaps I can thank the Tories for their bus deregulation, which meant that the effects of this sinister Jambo/LRT subterfuge were neutralised any time I stepped on a green and white citysprinter.

Now I think about it, maybe my nationalism was affected by travelling on all those Citylink coaches as a student, with their sinister and insidious use of the prefix 'Scottish' and their stylised saltire logos? Maybe all those British Airways flights I've taken to and from London over the past year have turned me a little Unionist? And what about the effect of all those orange-liveried Easyjets? Goodness, where will it all end? With me taking walking holidays in Belfast in July?

Alternatively, and much more likely, his Lordship could just be talking nonsense and be in need of a lie down. Perhaps some kind soul could offer him a soothing expenses claim form to help cool his fevered brow?