End Of Term

Today sees the end of the second term of the Scottish Parliament. With the Executive going into 'Purdah', Labour will no longer have access to the Scottish civil service, or have a legion of Executive press officers to highlight their triumphs and bury their mistakes. Instead, they'll have to rely on their own people and a campaign machine which seems increasingly creaky and rudderless.

There's a funny atmosphere about Holyrood today. Jack McConnell is turning in a shouty, beleaguered performance at FMQs, assailed from all sides over broken election promises, health, crime, council tax, nuclear power and the performance of devolution. His rants about the SNP seem even more heated and lacking in humour than usual. All told, his demeanor is not one of a man brimming with confidence about being returned to his position in May.

The next parliament seems set to be very different indeed. 12 MSPs are standing down of their own volition, but a wee glance at the polls suggests that there could be more than a few new faces about the place come May. Both The Times (yesterday) and the Daily Mail (today) have carried polls putting the SNP ahead of Labour, both in terms of support and likely seats in parliament. The solitary thread of comfort which Labour spokespeople have clung to for dear life has been the apparent fall in support for Independence, down from 50% plus earlier in the year to just 27%.

Proof that the Labour campaign is working at a certain level, perhaps? Well no, actually. The difference is in not just the question asked, but the number of questions asked. You see, when the question of 'Independence - yes or no?' is put, there's a roughly 50/50 split. However, throw the rather nebulous option of 'more powers' into the mix and unsurprisingly, the numbers change. In fact, we find that in addition to the 27% who want 'independence, nothing less', some 52% would like more powers, perhaps as a further step towards sovereignty.

Game, set and match for the union then, and vindication for the Lib Dem stance that there should be no referendum on independence? Again, no. No-one takes the trouble to set out what these 'more powers' might be - would they include full fiscal autonomy, for example? The right for Scottish Ministers to represent us in Europe? Control over broadcasting regulation? The simple fact of the matter is that no-one knows. You'd get as worthwhile an answer by replacing the question with one asking whether you are in favour of fluffy kittens and nice sunny days.

The Lib Dems justify their anti-referendum stance by citing such polling data and by highlighting their support for federalism. In this way, they argue that there can be a 'middle way' on the constitution, whereby Scotland gets more powers and can stay happily in the union. That would be an honourable position, if it weren’t for the fact that they've supported federalism for over a century, yet still don't have a viable plan on how to bring it about.

All they have in their locker is to call for powers which Westminster would have to cede, over which the Lib Dems would have no leverage. And let's be brutally honest here - the only leverage for getting the powers worth having will be a strong SNP vote in May. Westminster might cede more powers to Holyrood, but only if Independence looks like it will be on the cards and even then, as with devolution V1.0, only as little will be ceded as they think they can get away with in order to dissipate the SNP 'threat'.

This is where it gets interesting. With any referendum likely to come towards the end of a 4-year term, there will be ample opportunity for Westminster to make its play. However, the SNP has already set out a little shopping list of powers it would like for Holyrood, such as control over North Sea Revenues and that right to lead negotiations, such as over fishing, in Europe.

If it can be shown through the rejection of some fairly modest requests that further reform of the British State is either impossible or won't come until many years into the future, won’t that make voters more inclined than ever to demand a referendum on independence? And where would that leave the Lib Dems, other than on the wrong side of the argument?

Support for independence down? It all depends on the question you ask, as well as the number of questions you ask. Alex Salmond could be unwrapping the mint Viscounts at Lancaster House yet.

Strange Happenings at Holyrood Towers

The Scottish Parliament goes into dissolution this week, which means that from Thursday until after the elections, there will be no MSPs. Accordingly, every corridor in the MSP block is strewn with packing crates at the moment, while members decide what to throw out, and what to keep in case they find themselves re-elected.

All mundane stuff. So why, then, have the Solidarity staffers chosen to 'black out' the windows in their resource centre with binliners and sellotape, while they undertake this process? What on earth could they possibly be doing that they don't want the rest of us to see? Maybe more to the point, would we particularly care even if we did?

Guardian of My Concience? Not Today...

One of the advantages/drawbacks of my job is that most days, I've read all the Scottish newspapers worth reading by 11am. This leaves me with the problem of which one to buy at lunchtime. Usually, the Evening News wins out if I'm in Edinburgh. Today, however, I opted for the Guardian, which due to the amount of tedious crud in its pages I managed to get through at near flickbook speed. That said, 2 articles jumped out for long enough to tee me off.

The first was a feature in G2 on Whole Foods, a US food store chain which is about to open its first UK outlets. Now, I quite like food shopping in the US - just 10 minutes walking round somewhere like Harris Teeter shows up many of our own supermarkets. Whole Foods, though, is in a different league - a bit like a reasonably upmarket deli the size of a small supermarket. If they are going to be any like the ones in the US, then as far as I'm concerned, they can't get to Edinburgh fast enough.

Surely then, this is just sort of enterprise which would get your average Guardianista hugging themself with delight. But woe and alack, you will be horrified to learn from G2 that there is a dark side. Trade-offs between what consumers want and the high ideals the company started out with; frozen TV dinners for sale alongside the organic produce; happy employees but only because they get high pay(!).

I'm sure you get the picture. All that's missing in the critique is a particularly graphic description of a dark Satanic mill, even though its Satanicness or otherwise would only be measured in comparison with the ideals set for it by the über-green Birkenstock wearers of California. Anyway, I'm lucky to have an old-fashioned high street and the time to shop there, but in the absence of same, give me a Whole Foods any day of the week.

But today's prize for putting the cart before the horse goes to George Monbiot, who makes the frankly bonkers claim that biofuels are causing 'more harm than good'. Eh? Causing more harm than their mineral-based equivalents? Pull the other one...

Apparently, our demand for biofuels is contributing to deforestation, and will lead to farmers growing more crops geared towards biofuels instead of providing food for those without. At a certain level, the argument has appeal - an apocalyptic paradox that by doing good, you end up doing more harm. In truth, it's well suited to the messianic 'I know better than you lot' tone that he seems to have as his stock-in-trade.

But there's 2 big problems with this thesis. The first is that since there's no shortage of agricultural land in the world, there's no reason for anyone to lose out as a result of increasing biofuel production. The second is that by trying to make a causal link between issues like all deforestation and all biofuel production, he damns the very considerable levels of potential production which can take place on currently fallow land.

All in all, if you're feeling miserable, I can recommend today's Grauniad for being chock-full of the sort of self-flagelatory, ill-informed 'we're all doomed' prose guaranteed to keep you that way. If you're in a reasonable humour, though, then steer clear. It's a lovely day, after all, and life is short.

Labour Doesn't Know Jack - Official!

Sometimes, it never rains but it pours...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5PG16p-JLc

Zip-i-dee-doo-dah, Zip-i-dee-ay...

I've been in an exceptionally good mood today. There was a wee bit of a hangover following yesterday's post-match celebrations, but that was soon forgotten about. I've even managed to sail serenely past Lord George Robertson's latest shroud-waving drivellings in the Sunday Times about the SNP.

The reason for my good mood? Well, ever since my old car got taken away to see what could be done with it after my accident, my hallway has been strewn with the general detritus from the boot. Fed up of stepping round it for the last couple of weeks, I determined that today was going to be the day I'd start deciding what to keep and what to throw out.

Rewinding a week or so to when I actually bought the new car, the salesman offered to fit a CD autochanger to it for me at a cost of c. £300, an offer which I felt more than able to turn down at the time. So you can no doubt imagine my delight to find this morning, when putting my first aid kit under the passenger seat that, unbeknown to me, a CD autochanger had already been fitted to the car!

Did the salesman already know this and was trying to sneakily screw the £300 cost back out of me? I don't know and to be honest, I don't really care either. Normally when I look down the back of my car seats, all I ever find is loose change and fluff-covered polo mints. This was a very pleasant surprise, and coming in the week that the insurance cheque came through, it's a nice and unexpected coda to this particular drama!

None Of Their Business

Usually, this blog has quite a bit of admiration for the institution that is the Royal Bank of Scotland. Although I'm not a customer of theirs, through their sponsorships, expanding branch network, free cash machines and mobile banking, they play a role in the community which suggests to me that despite now being the 5th biggest bank in the world, they haven't forgotten the essential values which have helped make the company what it is today.

Today, though, I'm going to give them a well-deserved slap. This follows the news that some jumped-up 'executive', doubtless puffed up with his own sense of self-importance and desire to please those above him, has issued a tablet of stone memo 'reminding' staff that they could face disciplinary action if they do not get their monthly salaries paid into a Royal Bank account.

Now, I don't have too much of a problem with the idea that staff should show some commitment to the organisation they work for. Nor do I have any difficulty with the idea that if you want to benefit from some of the perks of working for a bank, like getting a cheaper mortgage, you need to toe the line and use their products. However, where I draw the line is when it is made compulsory to order purely personal affairs, which do not impede your ability to do your job, in such a way as to please the whims of management.

Despite being the most dynamic part of the Scottish economy, the financial services sector can still be a hotbed of reaction and old-fashioned attitudes. I still remember with bemusement the attitude held by local management at one employer where those working 8-4 were regarded as hard workers; 9-5ers were solid and dependable; while 10-6ers like me were idle, scrimshank malingerers. Flexitime, yes, but only if you use it to suit conventions. From another employer, I can remember horror stories from the past of staff being summonsed to get a dressing down from their line manager, simply because they hadn't paid their bank credit card bills in time.

Luckilly, data protection law and more enlightened employment practices mean that for the most part, these intrusive, paternalistic and ultimately self-defeating attitides have died out. Increasingly, as lifestyles change, there is a realisation that the only way to attract and retain the best staff is to be flexible in the benefits you provide as an employer, and to drop any intrusive aspirations of having social control over your staff outside of the working environment.

Quite frankly, this 'executive' has crossed a line and deserves to be dumped on from a great height for turning this into a mini-PR disaster for the bank. Ulitimately, where RBS employees choose to place their business is none of the RBS Management Team's damn business. On this occasion, the affected staff should tell the bank exactly where they can swipe their Cashline cards.

Mr Cock-Up Comes To Town!

On Monday, wee Jack was clenching his fist with fury at SNP plans to 'wreck' the union (which on closer inspection, just meant he wasn't happy that the SNP wanted to discuss things like getting more powers from Westminster). However, in today's Scottish Parliament Business Bulletin, a motion appeared in the name of the Scottish Executive, calling amongst other things for more powers for Holyrood.

Embarrassing enough, you might think. However, not content with shooting a hole clean through one foot, this afternoon, they took careful aim at the other, then fired by amending the part of the motion which called for more powers for Holyrood 'where appropriate'.

Since it was an Executive motion, Jack would have known all about it at the time he was in full rant mode against the SNP (wouldn't he?), and presumably, was therefore in favour. He can therefore stand accused of rank hypocrisy, but now that it's been pulled, we can surely add rank cowardice to the charge sheet as well.

Who at Westminster, do we think, might have pulled his strings to get the motion amended? Where does Labour really stand on more powers for Holyrood? Who on earth is running their campaign - Gordon Brown, or Jack McConnell? And perhaps more importantly, will Scottish voters manage to emerge from their convulsions of laughter in time to cast their votes in May?

You couldn't make it up. Would the last strategist to leave the Labour party please turn out the lights? :-)

I Always Know When You're Lying, Darling

Alasdair Darling has some neck on him. Interviewed as part of BBC Scotland's post-budget coverage, he had the effrontery to claim that Labour was trying to cut income tax by 2p, while the SNP wanted to increase it by 3p.

What he forgot to mention, of course, was that under Labour you would continue to pay Council Tax, whereas under the SNP, you wouldn't pay a penny. Expect more similar Labour untruths between now and polling day.

Another Lord a' Leaping

The indescretion! Lord Turnbull, a former Head of the Civil Service who spent 4 years at the Treasury as a Permemant Secretary, has chosen to lift the lid on the M.O. of the Chancellor. And, comble de malchance!, has done so just in time to spoil Brown's budget speech tomorrow.

Brown's Treasury, we are told, surprises by "the more or less complete contempt with which other colleagues are held". Brown himself takes a "very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues"; does not allow "serious discussion" with colleagues; and in enhancing Treasury control over domestic policy, had done so "at the expense of any government cohesion and any assessment of strategy".

The Chancellor also has a "Macavity quality - he is not there when there is dirty work to be done". He also uses denial of information as an instrument of power. And just to make sure we all get the message, Turnbull goes on to conclude that "You can choose whether you are impressed or depressed by that, but you cannot help admire the sheer Stalinist ruthlessness of it all."

It's a devastating critique, all the closer to the bone for its echoes of what Brown's opponents in the Labour Party have been saying about him for years. Given Milliband's reluctance to challenge for the leadership , perhaps Blair's favoured successor really is the man charged with responding to, rather than delivering, tomorrow's budget speech.

Conference Dispatch - Sunday

Rather surprisingly for being the morning after the night before, delegates seem unusually invigorated today. However, that might have something to do with the gale force winds and near-horizontal hail which scoured us all as we arrived at the conference this morning. A few intrepid smokers are huddled outside, looking thoroughly miserable as they get blasted by the elements – I suspect they may not be the most enthusiastic of attendees at this afternoon's health debate!

The papers seemed mostly favourable for the SNP this morning, a few amusing brown-trousers-and-bicycle-clips pieces aside. The Sunday Herald has, disgracefully in my view, tried to stir it up over Brian Souter's donation, despite the fact he got no favours at all from the SNP during the repeal of Section 2A. What inference are we being invited to draw? That the SNP is tainted, while Labour and the Lib Dems, who started the Section 2A repeal process then ran and hid from the ensuing brouhaha instead of making their case, are worthy of our continued support? Eejits.

The main event this afternoon will be Alex Salmond's speech. It's being spun that he will be unveiling the SNP's proposals for government, but it wouldn't be a Salmond speech if he didn't have at least one rabbit to pull out of the hat. The actual conference hall is a bit too small for all of the people here, so I suspect I'll end up watching it on the TV in the breakout area instead.

Overall, there seems to be a sense, even amongst the most hardened of SNP-sceptics in the media, that this might really be it. The polls are all good for the SNP; the party is winning big-hitting endorsements left, right and centre; while Labour are left to fight a relentlessly negative campaign, torn tactically between wee Jack's gang on one side and the 'Brownies' on the other. I have to confess that the grim faces of Labourite journos Angus MacLeod of the Times and Magnus Gardham of the Record have been an absolute joy to behold! 46 days and counting...

Conference Dispatch

I've made it through to Govan, and despite the greyness of the skies and the awfulness of the result from Ibrox, there's a lot of cheer to be had at the SNP conference in the Glasgow Science Centre. The conference, already on a high thanks to yesterday's endorsement by George Mathewson, has been positively buzzing with the news that long-time supporter Brian Souter has donated £500,000 to the SNP election fund.

This matters on two levels. First, it represents yet another endorsement of the SNP's policy stance, albeit from a long-standing and high-profile supporter of the party. Perhaps as significantly, though, it will put the SNP on an equal financial footing with a Labour campaign which will be heavily bankrolled from London.

There's more conference business tomorrow, and rumours have persisted all day of yet another big announcement to come. However, it wasn't in Nicola Sturgeon's generally well-received address to conference, so if it's coming we'll have to wait now until tomorrow to find out if there's anything in it.

Sadly, there'll be none of the usual après-conference shenanigans for me, since rather foolishly I've already taken a gig to play at a wedding tonight in Fintry. Easy enough to get to from Glasgow, of course, but with a midnight finish I'll be lucky to see my bed by 2am. Nothing unusual for an SNP conference, I'll grant you, but tomorrow will doubtless be spent looking like a half-shut knife and facing allegations from friends of drunken excesses which won't have taken place. The joys...

By George!

Sir George Mathewson, former Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the old Scottish Development Agency, has on today's Scotsman letters page come out in favour of independence and an SNP-led government post-May. It's a timely contribution, since Labour, a bit like a child which has learned a new word, has discovered that a lot of Scots work in financial services and now opts to try and tell them at every opportunity that their jobs would somehow be 'at risk'.

Total garbage of course, and Mathewson, who transformed RBS from a struggling local outfit to the 5th largest bank in the world, is clearly having none of it. I can't wait to see how Labour are going to try and spin this one!

'There are several reasons why I shall vote SNP at the forthcoming Scottish election, the foremost of which is that I believe the SNP offers Scotland the best chance of escaping from the dependency culture that is currently all-pervasive at every level in Scottish life.

'I do not share the fear of independence which is currently being fostered by those who have most to lose by a change in the status quo and those who see Scotland as a source of safe seats, thus guaranteeing their rule over the United Kingdom.

'In addition, comments that have been made on access to the English market are patently absurd. Currently, a huge proportion of the English financial services market is supplied by companies in the United States, in Holland, Germany, Ireland, etc.

'Globalisation is here and Scottish companies have embraced it and indeed have benefited from it.

'Finally, our votes will choose the new First Minister of a parliament which has consistently disappointed since its creation, partially due to the lack of high-quality leadership. The outstanding candidate must be the SNP leader, Alex Salmond'.

(SIR) GEORGE MATHEWSON, Ballintrium, Perthshire

UPDATE: We didn’t have long to wait. Blair has resorted to claiming that RBS is somehow not a ‘real business’, and that Mathewson’s contribution is ‘self indulgent and absurd’. What a deluded fool Blair has become.

£9bn... Do I Hear £12bn?

Having just come out of a horrific accountancy exam this lunchtime, I'm loathe to start talking about numbers. However, with today's confirmation that the official cost of the 2012 London Olympics has hit £9.3bn, I'm afraid I can't help myself.

When I last blogged on this and mentioned a figure of £10bn, the official cost was still £2.4bn. Nonetheless, the following day (21 November 2006), it was announced that costs had increased by £900m to £3.3bn.

Appearing before the Commons culture, media and sport committee, Minister Tessa Jowell told us that this rise was partly due to a doubling in the price of steel, along with a decision to revise transport costs to take into account inflation (!) in the years to 2012. It also included an extra £400m to pay "delivery partner" CLM to make sure the games came in on budget and on time.

Jowell duly gave assurances to the committee that 'This project is under control. Cost control is a daily part of the rigour'. Yet just four short months later, another £6bn has been added to a figure which, according to Jowell, already represented a project 'under control'.

This is just one project amongst many big infrastructure projects due to come 'on-line' around 2012, including the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link, an Edinburgh Tram Network and the start of a replacement Forth Road Bridge. Since the date of the Olympics can't move, the only variable that can be altered is the amount of money we throw at the project, doubtless to the detriment of the costs on other projects - and don't the contractors just know it.

'Dripping roast' doesn't even begin to describe the bonanza that awaits the construction industry at our expense. Most public sector projects seem to run over budget and behind schedule, but the shower of blisteringly incompetent Panglossians we have in government right now seem determined to set some new kind of Olympic record of their own. Quite frankly, I wouldn't even trust them to sell union jack tat to spectators outside the games.

Keeping Hold Of Nurse

I enjoyed this wonderfully mischievous letter in today's Herald from SNP MEP Alyn Smith. I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but even Scottish Tories would have to admit there might be a certain logic to this one.

Sir,

If noted intellect David Mundell MP sees fit to grade his Tory MSP colleagues then the Tory gene pool must be gey shallow right enough. More of a paddling pool, or perhaps a gene puddle.

But am I being too cynical in wondering why a paper that has existed since the summer was only leaked just before their turmoil-by-the-Tay on the eve of David Cameron's speech to the hushed faithful?

I spend time in Brussels, and this week in Strasbourg, talking to a number of colleagues, from all parties. The younger English Tories are almost unanimous in their view, at least in the bars and coffee lounges, that it is only a matter of time until the Tory mother-ship cuts the Scottish Tories loose as a bad job. They bear Scotland no particular ill-will, if they think of us at all, seeing us as the "near abroad", a convivial place to hunt and fish, and the source of the battalion of knuckle-draggers padding out the Labour benches at Westminster.

They see their party soft-pedalling on the Barnett Formula, the West Lothian Question and the, as they mistakenly see it, squillions in subsidies we ungrateful jocks fleece from the English taxpayer, not to mention the Scottish Raj running their government. They think their party in England could go after these issues harder without the need to shield their Scots colleagues from friendly fire. They view independence as a matter for us to decide and, increasingly, as a potential advantage for them.

So, is this leak in fact the opening salvo of covert friendly fire from Tory Central Office? If so, how should the Scots Tories react? I would have loved to be a fly on the wall as David Cameron headed back south having brought his cheery vacuity north to be greeted by Bill Walker and views more at home in Jurassic Park than Cool Britannia. Surely he must be tempted along the same lines as he looks towards his next Westminster election, probably facing the self-proclaimed Great Briton but irredeemably Scottish Gordon Brown.

I know a number of decent Scots Tories, and if it comes to it there are competent ones as well, looking to get a decent result for the people of Scotland, same as most Scots politicians of other parties. But is the party as a whole going to allow misty-eyed illogical sentiment for the Union to destroy them? Not least when their own UK party views them increasingly as at worst a hindrance and at best a slightly embarrassing mad old Scots Auntie Morag who sits at family gatherings dribbling into her soup muttering about the Treaty of Union?

In the European Parliament, there are dozens of modern centre-right political parties of the Christian Democrat model from large countries and small. Would the Scots Tories not do rather better to put sentiment to one side and embrace independence? The Tories right now are a de facto anti-Scottish party, so the SNP currently has a policy of not entering into coalitions with them. If they wised up they could reinvent themselves as the only party promoting a centre-right, pro-Scottish agenda. I disagree with the "centre right" but I'd work with them on the "pro-Scottish".

That does, of course, presume that they will change, though I suspect the change is going to be forced upon them anyway. Something for them to think about. Perhaps David Mundell could write us a memo?

Alyn Smith MEP, SNP Europe spokesman, European Parliament, Strasbourg.

Train Kept A Rollin'

I'm on my way to London just now to spend a couple of days out on the lash with an old friend of mine from Scottish Widows. We both bailed out at around the same time, myself to go and work for the SNP, while Rich moved to London to be a mortgage broker. As he's just bought a house in deepest, darkest Beckenham, I'm guessing he did the right thing by moving on when he did too!

The idea was that we would go to see the England-Scotland women's international, which was due to be played on Sunday at Wembley. Although the English FA got the keys to the stadium today, the game has been moved to Wycombe Wanderers ground instead, which would be a bit of a hassle for us to get to. For that reason, the girls will just have to do without our support while we go out and get trashed instead. Ochone, ochone etc.

Anyway, I'm on the train in a first-class carriage, getting free coffee refills; getting online thanks to GNER's free wi-fi; no-one caring if I've got a set of nail clippers or a bottle of water in my bag; sitting in a big comfy seat with plenty room to stretch my legs; and in less than 3 hours time will be delivered slap-bang into the centre of London and all for under £40. I'm racking my brains just now to come up with a good reason why I used to always fly down, but right now I'm damned if I can think of one.

Get the Edinburgh-London rail journey time down below 4 hours, and I can guarantee that the airlines and their shareholders will start cacking themselves. Now, remind me again, why was it again that former British Airways Chief Executive Rod Eddington thought high-speed rail travel was such a non starter? All answers on the back of an airline boarding pass, please, to the usual address.

With friends like these...

The capacity of the Scottish Tories to self-destruct never ceases to amaze. After the wipe-out of 1997; David McLetchie's little confusions over expenses; Annabell Goldie's reluctant leadership and persistant attempts by a grassroots minority to throw the current MSP group overboard; it was difficult, although by no means impossible, to see how they could slip any further.

With an election coming up, the party high-heidyins must have been praying that everyone would just stick to the script and stay gaffe-free until polling day. The last person they would have been expecting to pull the plug on their campaign would have been Shadow Scottish Secretary, David Mundell MP. Alas, on the eve of their Scottish Conference, the Daily Record (I feel nauseous linking to this) has obtained a memo sent by Mundell to party leader David Cameron, which contains a damning assessment of his erstwhile Holyrood colleagues.

According to Mundell, the MSP group suffers from a "simple lack of thinkers". They are 'incapable of coming up with new policies', while "there are more obvious problems than solutions emanating from Scotland from a party point of view." The replacement of Scottish party chairman Peter Duncan should be an "immediate priority". And while "key personnel need to be identified to take on strategic roles...nobody obviously comes to mind".

With friends like these... there are conflicting views amongst Tory bloggers, with Ian Dale supportive, while Conservative Home demands his head on a stick. I think if I were a Tory activist, though, I'd be arranging my holidays to coincide with the elections so I could be as far away as possible from the impending carnage in May.

There's a place for a party of the centre-right in Scotland - but the prospects of anyone being able to hew it from the rotten timbers of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party now look not so much slim as positively skeletal. Independence and cutting the apron strings to the party in London must now be their only hope for recovery.

UPDATE - Widespread praise in the canteen for Annabell Goldie's riposte to Jack McConnell's use of the above memo at First Minister's Questions. 'At least, First Minister, my party's internal memos don't end up being scrutinised by Scotland Yard'.

Splat! Who said that Holyrood had banned bloodsports? :-)

Age Shall Not Weary Him

'What is the point of Menzies Campbell?', is a question with which I've been wrestling for quite a while now. In many ways, it's a question I never thought I'd ever be asking myself, since I'd long had a kind of sneaking regard for him. Sure, whenever matters SNP reared their head, I'd always found his knee-jerk patrician sniffiness to be absolutely insufferable. Otherwise, though, he earned my respect for both looking and sounding like a thoroughly competent MP who knew exactly what he was talking about.

I see in retrospect that mine was quite a rose-tinted view. That sure-footedness, demonstrated in matters of home and international affairs, has never quite been there when it comes to the equally important arenas of economic, health and education policy. In fact, it seems that the very qualities that made him appear so well cut out to be a Home or Foreign Secretary - his dispassionate aloofness and cultivated appearance of somehow being above the vulgar posturing of lesser mortals - are the very same qualities which are now rendering his stewardship of the Lib Dems such a becalmed and uninspiring affair.

Oddly, he seems to have diminished in stature since assuming the Lib Dem leadership. His perceived lack of support for Charles Kennedy tainted him from the start, as did his many fluffed appearances at Prime Minister's Questions. But never mind the recent fuss about whether he'd dump PR to get into government with Labour. To me, it is his apparent inability to connect with voters or to articulate any kind of coherent policy agenda, which should be causing the most discontent in Lib Dem ranks just now.

They are dropping, slowly but surely, in the polls. Where people liked Charles Kennedy even if they didn't necessarily respect him, Campbell seems to suffer from the reverse. Concerns about his age are raised, to which he now responds with an unbecoming prickliness. Watching him try to address this irrelevant jibe is becoming an increasingly painful sight. Like Gordon Brown trying to convince Middle England that he would make a good Prime Minister, the more Campbell tries to stress his youthfulness, the less it convinces.

Let's be clear, his age is largely irrelevant if we regard it as being an attitude of mind rather than a physical characteristic. In fact, I get the feeling that Campbell was probably middle-aged by his early twenties. And as one of the many politicos spawned by the Glasgow University Union Debating Society in the 1950s, it would have been surprising if he'd turned out any other way.

For all his protestations of having grown up in a Glasgow tenement, Campbell is a politician from the upper-middle classes, imbibed with a paternalistic and slightly patronising sense of noblesse oblige. But what once reassured about Campbell now just grates. And it is this, I think, which is what is hampering him and his party, rather than any questions about age. Like Gordon Brown, a section of voters has decided that they don’t particularly like him. And while voters cite Brown’s ‘Scottishness’ as being his prime draw-back (something which doesn’t seem to affect John Reid), it is Campbell’s age which is being held against him.

Highlighting the most obvious perceived flaw of someone we dislike is an instinct we develop in the playground. It might not be fair and it might be as base as it gets, but as Neil Kinnock, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith all found out, if the voters won’t take to you then electorally-speaking, both you and your party are toast.

The Lib Dems, while often confounding the pundits, have for the past while seemed like a party in search of a role. The charisma of a Paddy Ashdown or a Charles Kennedy has always in the past allowed them to escape the scrutiny they deserved for being all things to all people. With a revitalised Tory Party in England under David Cameron, also no slouch at appearing to be all things to all people, the days of the Lib Dems being able to hoover up the votes of the disenchanted now look to be numbered.

R.I.P.

Well, I phoned the insurance company this morning and regrettably, my car is going to cost too much for them to fix. It was still driveable, though, so maybe somebody might be able to put it back on the road. Hopefully it's not for the scapyard quite yet, and someone else might be able to get the good of it.

It's a nuisance, because the car was reliable, comfortable and I'd planned to hang on to it for at least another year. Anyway, that's all out the window now, and since my courtesy car is due to return as soon as the cheque arrives, it was out for a piece of unscheduled car hunting this lunchtime.

I've fancied getting a poor man’s Volkswagen Skoda turbo-diesel ever since I got a shot of my cousin's partner's one last year (taxi drivers seem to rate them too, which must count for something). The one I was after seems to be in short supply just now, but luckily, the garage down the road had a pre-registered one on the forecourt with just 27 miles on the clock.

Anyway, after taking it out for a blast with the salesman, we completed the paperwork and as of Monday, it will be mine, as, sadly, will be the paying of it for the next five years - ouch. It should be a lot more economical than my old car, mind, but since it's quite a bit smaller I suppose I'm going to have to learn to keep a boot tidy again!

And As If By Magic...

Once more, Holyroodbelle is first off the mark with a sneak preview of Labour's latest campaign poster :-)

Scorching the Earth

Well, at least we can't say we weren't warned...

McConnell Starts Dirty War

"There is nothing that Labour can say that will change peoples' minds about Labour. There is no point in having a positive campaign because it doesn't wash. There isn't a bit of evidence to suggest that going positive will make any difference. They don't know Jack and they don't like Labour." - Labour Campaign Source.

Sir Menzies hits out at opponents

The Liberal Democrat leader questions Gordon Brown's "courage" to lead and attacks David Cameron.

So there you have it. Since Labour and the Lib Dems (the original Labour saving device?) have little good to say for themselves, they'll try and scare people away from their opponents; play the man rather than the ball at each opportunity; drive down the turnout and then hope for the best. Anyone fancy a sweep on how long it is before Lakshmi Mittal is paying for posters round Scotland of Alex Salmond with 'demon eyes'?

UPDATE - just found this excellent post by Will Patterson, saying much the same as me, but with far more eloquence than I feel like attempting just now. Read and enjoy.

Legal Weasels

I've just had a 'courtesy call' from the legal team attached to my car insurers, following my accident at the start of the week. They asked me how I was, to which I answered "fine". "Are you sure?", they then asked, "no aches or pains or anything? Because we can get you examined".

"Quite sure", I said, before joking that I had no plans to sue anyone over the accident if that was what they meant. And without so much as a pause for breath, the caller went 'OK Mr Thomson I'll just put that on your notes thanks for your time goodbye', and hung up.

I know they're on my side, but even so, what a bunch of ambulance-chasing, unethical weasels! How many folk are now pursuing claims for damages, on the grounds of non-specific back and neck pain 'resulting' from minor car accidents, I wonder? And how many settlements are made out of court, not becuase of the merits of the case, but because it's the cheapest way to make it go away?

'Courtesy' call my foot. Grrrrrr.

Worth a Laugh

This is good. Well worth a look.

WTF?

Can anyone explain to me what business Network Rail, an effective state monopoly masquerading as a private company, has in donating any money at all to the regional franchise of the governing party?

Scottish Labour

Network Rail Ltd status: Company
company reg no: 04402220 40 Melton Street, London NW1 2EE
28/02/06 £ 5,000.00

Scottish Labour

Network Rail Ltd status: Company
company reg no: 04402220 40 Melton Street, London NW1 2EE
31/12/06 £ 6,000.00

Good News Travels Fast

Rather irritatingly, Tory über-blogger Ian Dale, has scooped us all with details of a sensational poll in tomorrow’s Scotsman (even more so since he appears to be on a jolly to Washington DC right now!). In figures unprecedented this close to an election, it would seem that the SNP has a 5-point lead over Labour for Holyrood in the constituency vote and a 4-point lead in the regional ballot.

It looks like the wheels are coming off the Labour campaign, since this poll won’t take account of Health Minister Andy Kerr announcing a probe in to the alleged manipulation of NHS waiting lists. Neither will it have been able to digest the astonishing news that senior Labour aide, Stephen Lawther, had quit his post following clashes with colleagues over tactics and presentation. And with Jack McConnell providing such visible leadership…

The polls have been remarkably consistent of late, agreeing that the SNP is ahead, even if there’s some debate about the magnitude. And unless far more complex moves are afoot, this apparent swing to the SNP looks like having one of two possible explanations. Neither, it has to be said, looks particularly good for Labour.

The first explanation is that traditional independence-supporting Labour voters might be starting to come over to the SNP, thus threatening to tip the balance in many marginal central-belt seats. Alternatively and perhaps more worryingly for Labour, if these voters are staying loyal, perhaps it is floating voters who don’t necessarily want independence, that are now looking for an SNP government.

Neither group looks like particularly fertile ground for Labour’s current nat-bashing strategy, described by one party stalwart at the weekend as being ‘The worst campaign I have been involved in for over 20 years”. While I’d never underestimate the power of the Labour establishment in Scotland to pull out the stops for the party, even that might not be enough to save them this time.

The SNP deserves a chance to show what it can do in office. I hope these figures can be taken as a sign that it might be about to happen.

Another Competition

After yesterday's unplanned excitement, it looks like things might be getting underway. My car should be collected tomorrow morning by the garage, and a courtesy car delivered around the same time. Fingers crossed, then.

I've spent a lot of time on the phone this morning, being entertained, if that's the word, by the music they play when you're on hold. And while I was waiting I thought, why not have another competition, this time to find the least appropriate piece of music to play while someone's on hold to their car insurance company?

I can't promise a prize this time, since this could see me a few hundred quid out of pocket for a week or two. However, I will start things rolling with some suggestions of my own. There's 'Crash! Boom! Bang!' by Roxette; 'Hazard' by Richard Marx; and 'Into the Valley' by, ahem, The Skids.

I'm sure there's loads more, and of a higher quality than I've managed. Anyway, the comments section quivers with anticipation...

Call Centre Limbo Beckons...

I had an accident in the car on the way home from Dundee tonight. Nothing serious, no-one injured, but the poor girl in the other car was pretty shaken up by it.

It happened in Perth, on the north side of the river, just before you turn over the bridge to head south. Basically, I was coming up the inside of a queue of traffic, when someone turning right into a side entrance pulled right across in front of me. There was no time to stop and so I went straight into the side of her car at 90 degrees.

Luckily, there were witnesses and since she pulled in front of me without a clear view of what was coming, the insurance claim should be cut and dried. I was going fairly slowly, so no airbags were harmed, although since the crumple zone did its job so efficiently, it did mean that the car limped home looking more like an accordion than anything else.

Anyway, on getting home tonight, I dug out my policy and phoned to set the claim in motion. However, the phone number put me through to a different part of the insurance company, who then transferred me to customer services. They then gave me another number which, you've guessed it, put me straight back through to the first number.

Not really what I wanted to hear, as I'm sure you can imagine. And since they shut in 15 minutes, it hardly seems worth trying to fight through the system tonight. Why do I get the feeling that the rest of the week is just going to end up as one big massive hassle? >:-/

Lazy Sunday - Part I

Some interesting stuff in this morning's Sundays. The Sunday Herald splashes with news that one of Jack McConnell's key election strategists has quit, supposedly after having clashed with senior Labour colleagues over tactics and presentation. Now, regular readers will know that I don't like to intrude into private grief (much), but surely eyebrows will be raised at the quote from the 'senior Labour insider' that “This is the worst campaign I have been involved in for over 20 years”.

Regardless as to whether it's the conflict story which is true or the official line that 'family reasons' are behind his departure, there's one thing of which we can be completely sure: no-one in their right mind would be happy about having such a senior aide quit just a matter of weeks before an election. And just how hacked off would you have to be in your job to walk out and leave your chosen party in the lurch like that?

Next up is the Sunday Times (when are they going to put their Scottish content back on line, BTW?), which carries a story about how Rory Bremner, posing as Gordon Brown, managed to trick Margaret Beckett into making some indiscreet comments over the phone about her cabinet colleagues. The usual disclaimers apply here – shameful intrusion of privacy, sneaky and underhand blah, blah, blah – but I still found it incredibly funny in spite of that. And I have to admit, Beckett's reported response of 'Oh f***' when she found out about the con, hasn't made it any easier for me to regain my composure...

Of more significance are the lead stories on page 2, where Scottish Power, HBOS and the Edrington Group are 'understood to be furious over the [CBI] decision to challenge the SNP over its economic plans'. This refers to a series of 11 questions posed by the CBI, an early draft of which was leaked to the SNP. The SNP responded direct to each CBI council member, but in spite of that, the leadership took the decision to publish the questions anyway, before screeching that the SNP weren't answering the questions and that Alex Salmond was somehow refusing to meet with them.

Leaving aside the sheer mendacity of the CBI leadership tactics and the remarkable similarity in language between the questions and many recent Labour press releases, a better theatrical strop you couldn't have found outside the pantomime season. But will the people be much wiser as a result? I doubt it, somehow.

Thank goodness, then, for Bill Samuel, former senior corporate adviser to the Bank of Scotland and property investor, who not content with rescinding his former anti-home rule views, has made a £25,000 donation to the SNP and written a powerful article on p17 of the ST, where he sets out why he feels independence is the only way to address a falling population and low growth rate. And for good measure, he accuses Labour of having delivered “mediocre, lacklustre management”, while describing Alex Salmond as “a leader of real vision”.

SoS has got hold of a US government memo in which senior political figures spoke prior to the 1999 election of their concerns that the Scots wanted to be independent in the long-term, and that doubts amongst the Scottish voters as to Labour's good intentions meant that the SNP was well placed to do a number on the party. The language is vivid, and all the more striking when you see the people quoted. Go take a read, and compare and contrast with what they said in public at the time!

And finally, Mungo Mackay's diary entry for Friday has a familiar ring to it. Should I ask them for royalties? Or maybe even a job? :-)

Lazy Sunday - Part II

One of my favourite Sunday vices is to head down to Stockbridge, and seek out a cafe in which to spend the afternoon leafing idly through the papers. It's often hit and miss whether I can find somewhere with a seat, but it's been harder than usual today, thanks to the 'unforseen circumstances' which have kept Maison Hector closed.

It's clear that my long-held idler approach to Sunday is becoming increasingly popular in this part of town. And despite the ubiquitous Starbucks and Café Nero, it seems to me that there's plenty more room in the market for coffee and brunch-type places here.

My two favourite shops in Stockbridge when I was a kid were Duncanson's pawn shop (long since moved upmarket to Queen St), and the Stockbridge Bookshop. Sadly, the bookshop is now closed, but it does mean that some excellent window fronted premises are now for let...

Put in a decent coffee machine, some nice seats, tables at a height comfortable enough to read, eat and use a laptop at; install a wi-fi connection, find a decent patissier, learn how to do eggs benedict properly, and I can guarantee you'll be stowed out every weekend. I would if I had the spare cash, but I don't. Are there any business people out there with an urge to have their own little slice of Edinburgh café culture?

Some New Links

I've updated the links section to include some of the blogs and sites which have caught my attention recently.

First for a mention is my former SNP HQ colleague Julie Hepburn, wife of SNP Cumbernauld & Kilsyth Candidate, Jamie. I particularly enjoyed her demolition of the chancers of the SSCUP, but the most interesting thing will be to compare and contrast how the two blog about the run-in to the election and its aftermath.

Next up are Clairwil, Kevin Williamson, The Flying Rodent and Scotswahey!, while 1820 - Rise Like Lions and SNP Tactical Voting are also worth a look.

Finally, I'm adding a link to a new site called You Scotland, which bills itself as being "about the people of 21st-century Scotland taking power for ourselves, reclaiming the Home Rule agenda from a Scottish establishment that has so patently failed".

Sounds promising, although it doesn't seem to be much more than a glorified debating forum at the moment. But am I alone in thinking that the idea there's somehow a mass 'collective will' out there, ignored by politicians, but which can be brought to bear by a website, is really keech of the highest order? It all sounds too much like the fraudulant rhetoric of the 'independent' or the 'anti-politician politician' for my liking. 'Vote for me and I'll consult and then do whatever you want'. Aye, right.

Maybe this is how it needs to pitch itself to get attention from Scotland's web community. However, if it manages to get people thinking about their collective democratic responsibilities as well as getting folk to yell about the hot button issues of the day, those behind You Scotland will deserve the thanks of us all. I wish it well.

Question Time - Have You Seen This Man?

Question Time was enjoyable last night if you are a Nat. Poor George Foulkes was awful, making a fool of himself at one point by accusing the SNP of 'xenophobia' ( S&I passim), just seconds before he slated Alex Salmond for being 'London based'. Oops...

Nicol Stephen started promisingly enough, but he never seems to know when to shut up. In the end, vile self took over to turn in a waffly and forgettable performance. Annabel Goldie started quietly but came into it later, scoring points off of George Foulkes over crime (but did she really mean to say that Independence was 'not a priority'? - wow). Meanwhile, Alex Salmond was effective, winning the audience over early on and, maybe surprisingly in view of the red rag tendencies of wee George, kept the interruptions to a minimum.

But the star for me was Hardeep Singh Kohli. Not for him the usual celeb panellist cop out of regurgitating for each answer some variation on the theme of 'why can't we all be nice to eachother and have the politicians work together?'. He managed to be truculent, impassioned, thoughtful, honest, respectful and funny, often at times in the same sentance. He even got away with responding to the Edinburgh congestion charge debate by declaring 'I'm from Glasgow - I don't care', and lived to tell the tale! A fine performance - well done, sir.

And nice to see someone in the audience point out that McConnell had once more bailed out of a debate with Alex Salmond, leaving an unelected peer in his place. Wee George was left to splutter away about planted questions... rule number one, George - even if it is a planted question, you still answer it gracefully, even if you don't particularly see why on earth you should!

Jack Posted Missing. Again.

Question Time comes tonight from Edinburgh. All the main Scottish party leaders will be there, with the exception of First Minister Jack McConnell. Instead, Labour has decided to send along no-hope list candidate and serial bluster-merchant Lord George Foulkes.

Notoriously, Have I Got News for You, on being stood up once by Roy Hattersley, replaced him on the panel with a tub of lard. Maybe the Question Time team should have considered, oh, hang on a minute…

Reid All About It

It's been announced today that the cost of the Scottish Parliament building has been finalised at £414m - £16m down on the most recent estimate of £430m. It might not be much, and it's still a far cry from the ridiculous £40m we were promised at first by Donald Dewar. Nonetheless, it's a piece of good news from a project which had threatened to become a millstone round the neck of self-government.

In many ways, the Holyrood project held up a mirror to Scotland, and truth be told, I'm not sure anyone liked much what was reflected back. It became a byword for waste, incompetence and mismanagement. Everything about it, from the cosy cronyism in the choice of architect and site; the indecent haste to begin Dewar's vanity project; to the inept political and administrative scrutiny of the project itself; emphasied all that was rotten about the 'old Scotland' and everything that a Scottish Parliament was supposed to change.

Let's be brutally honest - in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum, Scotland was served badly by her politicians. Too many MSPs of all parties, at key points where some sanity could have been restored to the Holyrood project, decided to press on with nary a pause for thought. The mindless happy-clappiness of 'New millennium, new Scotland, new parliament, new building' was allowed to steamroller over those who recognised a stitch-up when they saw one, and who were rightly sceptical that you could get the promised building for anything like the sums being bandied about.

This mattered. In a trice, the grass-roots home-rule project had been snatched away from those that had supported and nurtured it through its darkest days. Home rule now belonged to the new cadre of politicians rather than to the people who had marched, delivered the leaflets and turned out to vote in their droves for the new institition. It represented something of a minor betrayal of people's early hopes - whatever they had been voting for, it hadn't been for this.

And how the antis all laughed. The cretinous reportage of Martin Clarke's Daily Record and of Andrew Neil’s Scotsman may have said more about their own atavistic hostility to home rule than anything else. However, the speed at which previously strong voices for devolution turned against was surprising, even by the 'expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed' mentality of the Scots.

But there’s no point crying over spilt milk. This final cost reduction is a minor triumph for Presiding Officer George Reid. When he became Presiding Officer, he set the parliament a target of 'moving in, and moving on'. Given the thankless task of trying to land what had become a jumbo-jet already in freefall, he took the controls and managed to bring things back under as much of a semblance of control as it was possible to achieve by that stage.

As someone who had grappled with Ethiopian warlords during the 1984 famine in his time with the Red Cross, dealing with the notoriously litigious construction industry and the more unreconstructed elements of the Scottish press would have been a bit of light relief in comparison. Heads were banged together, and even hardened construction veterans cried foul as timetables were cut and their acute awareness of costs was finally reciprocated by the client.

Well, we moved in a long time ago, and I think that even if we haven't entirely forgotten, we've at least managed to move on. As a Holyrood sceptic from the outset, I have to say that it is growing on me, even if the working space and some of the IT facilities leave much to be desired. And even at £414m, it still came in at a lower cost than the Millenium Dome, or the new Wembley Stadium.

Maybe it did the Scots no harm to realise that with the wrong people in charge, we were every bit as capable of governing ourselves badly as was Westminster. But there is another, less well-known aspect to this story.

Perhaps predictably, back in 1999 the devol-unionist establishment wanted David Steel as the parliament’s first Presiding Officer. What is less well known is that it took a personal intervention from Donald Dewar before Labour backbenchers would even back Reid as a Deputy Presiding Officer, such was their desire to vote with the Lib Dems and the Tories so that the hated nats could somehow be dished.

For me, Dewar's fair-mindedness aside, that little vignette sums up all that is worst about the petty tribalism in Scottish civic society. For make no mistake, Reid is someone who could have done so much more for his country, but too often was held back for being honest enough to wear his support for independence on his sleeve.

From the outset, Holyrood needed a Presiding Officer of Reid’s calibre, who could be both a silky diplomat in public and a hard-nosed little bastard in private. Eventually, we got him, and Scotland owes him a debt of gratitude for restoring some sanity to Holyrood, and for allowing us to start talking about the political issues which should have been detaining our MSPs from the outset.

In having to resign his party membership to take up the post, I’m pleased to say that the SNP’s loss was Holyrood's, and Scotland’s, eventual gain. For that reason, no matter who governs Scotland post-May, I hope a suitable future role can be found for him. It would be criminal if someone with his experience, international contacts and record of service couldn’t continue to serve Scotland in some capacity.

Mission Impossible

It seemed like Mission Impossible, but I think I may have found a blogger who's views on the SNP make those of Cllr. Terry Kelly look nuanced and insightful. Take a bow, then, Lib Dem blogger James Graham, for your attempted defence of Jamie Stone's ridiculous 'xenophobe' comments.

Quoth the bold Graham:

"The bottom line is, nationalism is an extremely ugly thing, whether it is Cornish Nationalists “confiscating” English Heritage signs or Scottish Nationalists chucking faeces through English people’s letterboxes. Alex Salmond may like to pretend that nationalism has an “acceptable” face, but it’s fundamental features are a belief that your ‘people’ are both superior to another group and permanent victims at the same time".

I should warn you that it deteriorates considerably from here, with circular arguments and sweeping generalisations that seeking independence = nationalism = xenophobia = anti-Englishness. And the 'when did you stop beating your wife' approach to my growing incredulity towards the end of our exchange, as well as the advice to politicians to never apologise, has to be seen to be believed.

The silence from other Lib Dem bloggers suggests that anyone taking an interest has probably decided that discretion is the better part of valour. This tallies with George Lyon MSP on Newsnight Scotland last night, who while not apologising, at least had the decency to distance himself clearly from Stone on the issue. Anyway, strap yourself in, point your browser here, and admire the cynicism and simplicity, if not the quality, of this man's thought.

Nicol Stephen - the Arsene Wenger of Scottish Politics?

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen makes much of his party's 'positive' approach to politics, and of how the Lib Dems eschew the name calling and dirty tricks of all the other nasty parties. Now, anyone who's ever had any kind of involvement in politics, be they Labour, Tory or SNP, knows perfectly well that this claim is a load of pious, hypocritical nonsense. However, his party is cynical enough to play on the fact that you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. And up until now, it has tended to work fairly well for them.

How unfortunate, then, that following what was by all accounts a well-received speech by Stephen to his party's conference in Aviemore, Lib Dem MSP Jamie Stone decided to prove the adage that it's better to stay quiet and be thought a fool than it is to open your mouth and remove all doubt. For in commenting on his leader's speech, in trying to take a pop at the SNP, he elected to scrape the bottom of the barrel by calling the party 'xenophbic'.

Accusing the SNP of xenophobia, or anti-Englishness, is usually the last refuge of a thick unionist who is losing the argument. However, the tendency to cock a snook or blame every misfortune on our English neighbours has a long and undistinguished history amongst all our politicians. Ian Lang, for instance, once ranted about the 'bloody English' when the government of which he was a member handed the refit work for Trident submarines to Devonport instead of Rosyth. And who could forget the outcry caused by Jack McConnell's ill-judged 'anyone but England' stance at last year's World Cup?

For the 'nice' party, we need only go back to 2002 when Ross Finnie, at a CBI function, was overheard referring to then Director General Digby Jones as an 'English Prat'. It wasn't big and it wasn't clever, but a fulsome and immediate apology from Mr Finnie was enough to save his career. That, along with the fact that he is generally well-liked helped him enormously, with even opponents realising that while his chosen adjective was as offensive as the outburst was out of character, it was difficult to fault the accuracy of his choice of noun.

Perhaps predictably, the SNP has cut up rough. But they are absolutely right to do so. This sort of language only cheapens debate and as Alex Salmond rightly points out, how can he be expected to sit round a cabinet table with someone who considers both him and the party he leads to be xenophobic?

Now, Jamie Stone is an obscure irritant, and in many ways a complete distraction from the fuss he has caused. He is regarded widely in Holyrood as a buffoon, being better known for his myriad references in debate to the family cheese factory than for any conspicuous political ability. While today's pitiful explanation of his comments falls well short of the apology required, it's probably only to be expected. What matters more is the deafening silence from his leader, Nicol Stephen.

This is a real test of leadership for Stephen. If he wants to show the statesman-like qualities that might get people to stop laughing when his cheerleaders talk him up as a future FM, he needs to distance both himself and his party from Stone's remarks and do so quickly. Then he needs to get Stone to apologise unreservedly for a set of remarks which were grubby, puerile, imbecilic and plain wrong.

So far, it doesn't look good. The Arsene Wenger defence of 'I cannot comment because I did not see the incident', barely cuts it in a Premiership post-match interview - using the same tactic here is a spineless cop-out from someone aspiring to political leadership of their nation. The longer he stays silent, the more it will look like he condones Stone's intemperate idiocy.

Scottish voters are entitled to know before they cast their votes whether Stephen shares his colleague's view of the SNP. It's not overstating the case to say that how Stephen handles this over the next few days could determine whether his party remains in office post-May. As things stand, if the SNP emerge as the lead party after the elections, the temptation to try and find a means of keeping the Lib Dems out of government might prove overwhelming.

Lib Dems Show Their True Colours

Best comment on Menzies Campbell's soporific address this afternoon to the Lib Dem conference comes from Douglas Fraser of The Herald:

'It wasn't so much a standing ovation as delegates getting up to stretch their legs'.

Boom-boom!

Spot the Difference...

3 October 2006: 'We reject the bitter battles and name calling of the other major parties. While the other parties fight each other, we will fight for Scotland' - Nicol Stephen MSP

16 Februay 2007: 'The Liberal Democrats will mount an attack on their Holyrood election rivals as the party's Scottish conference gets under way' - BBC News

Pot, kettle, black, anyone?

AYE! fower

Sit back, relax and enjoy - saves me typing it out!

Politics Endures a Bleak Midwinter

There's been yet another kerfuffle over the past week regarding the economics of independence. This time, The Scotsman dragged out Professor Arthur Midwinter, an academic with well-known unionist sympathies, to accuse the SNP of fiddling the numbers on Scotland's fiscal position.

However, in a rare outbreak of fair-mindedness, the SNP got a right of reply in Monday's paper, the content of which seems to have got right up Arthur Midwinter's nose. Good - he's been quick enough in the past to dish out political barbs disguised as objective analysis, so to see his petulant reaction to having had shoddy assertions dismantled so comprehensively, was very satisfying indeed.

Anyway, you can probably imagine my delight to see a letter in today's paper from Professor Neil Kay, economist of this parish and briefly a tutor of mine at EBS. Prof. Kay has the rare gift of being able to take even the most complicated of subjects and cut out the crap, distill what's left down to its essence and explain the results in plain English. On this occasion, he doesn't disappoint...


'I am rather bemused by the coverage in The Scotsman and other newspapers describing Professor Arthur Midwinter as an "economist" and leading "expert", who has debunked the economic case for an independent Scotland. My understanding is that Prof Midwinter has a background in political science, indeed is a former professor of politics and a specialist in local government finance.

'It is, therefore, perhaps a step too far to saddle him with the label "economist", let alone describe him as an "expert" in the field. And, in fairness, I cannot recall him ever describing himself as an economist.

'If it is wished to have a mature debate on the economics of independence, I would sooner put weight on the opinion of Professor David Simpson, a qualified and highly experienced economist of the highest calibre, who cogently argued the economic case for independence in another newspaper this week. For what it is worth, I am pleased to second Professor Simpson's opinion that the economic arguments favour independence for Scotland.

'If we are taking a tally of professional economists' opinion, so far that makes two for and none against'.

(PROF) NEIL KAY, Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

Ouch... but if we're in the business of keeping score, then the numbers for independence are even better than Prof. Kay suggests. Perhaps this is something reflected by the decidedly lukewarm response given to Gordon Brown, as he attempted to drum up opposition to the SNP at a clandestine CBI meeting in Edinburgh a fortnight ago.

Anyway, it seems that on the economics of Independence, the last unionist bolt has probably been shot. Maybe that means we can replace the fatuous argument about whether Scotland could be independent, with the far more important debate about whether she should be independent. Bring it on!

Road Pricing - It's All Our Fault

On the two days a week that work takes me to Dundee, I often think that I must have one of the nicest commutes anywhere. I start by leaving my house and looking out over the Forth from Portobello Beach, before setting off through a UNESCO World Heritage Site on my way to the sweeping span of the Forth Road Bridge.

Looking right as I cross the Forth, I have the magnificent Rail Bridge and to my left, the Zeebrugge ferry. Then begins the long climb from North Queensferry, passing Loch Leven and the Lomond Hills, through Glenfarg and over Balmanno Hill, where the carse opens up below. From there, it's a fast, downhill bit of motorway across the River Earn towards Perth.

On a clear morning, the sun glints off the bare rock face of Kinnoul Hill and as you head over the Friarton Bridge, there's often just a little bit of mist hanging over the Tay hundreds of feet below. And from there, it's a 20-minute thrash along the side of the Tay and through some of the most fertile land in Europe until I reach the office, just off the Kingsway in the north of the city.

I suspect if I had to do it every day, the novelty would soon wear off. And being honest, despite the views, it is a bit of a trek, taking as long to get from my flat to the Forth Bridge as it does to get from there to Dundee. It was for that reason that a few months ago, in a fit of self-righteous middle-class greenery, I sat down and worked out how much it would cost me if I were to dump the car and take the train instead.

The results were surprising. In the course of my research, I found that the Edinburgh-Dundee route is about the only one operated by First Scotrail where you can't buy discounted tickets in advance. Since a season ticket would be no use to me, that would have meant buying a full-price ticket for each journey at nearly £20.

In fact, the only difference in cost between the two modes of travel was the annual depreciation on my car, for which I got in return the convenience of four wheels for the remainder of the week. But then came the time factor - the choice between spending 3 hours of my day in a car, or nearer 5 hours door-to-door on public transport. It was, in the end, a complete no-brainer.

Now, I don't think anyone could reasonably claim that the cost of motoring is too low. I pay £150 road tax each year, a 75% rate of tax on the fuel which goes in my tank, a tax on my compulsory insurance premium and at least one bridge toll (two if I come back by the Tay Bridge). Yet in spite of all that, the public transport option still ended up dearer. From that, the only conclusion you can draw is that the cost of public transport is simply far too high.

Trust Labour, then, not to come up with a way to improve our railways, but instead to come forward with their own gimcrack road pricing scheme, designed to clobber commuters like me. The scheme, we are told, would involve a 'black box' being fitted to every car, which would then feed back information to the authorities on where you were, where you'd been, how long you'd been there and how fast you'd been going in between times.

Environmental and economic concerns aside, just stop for a minute and consider the enormity of what this would entail. It means that the government and their employees, whom you may or may not trust to use such information benignly, would be able to track your every move around the country, and no doubt in time would be able to send out automated speeding tickets if it looked like you'd been making better progress than you perhaps should have been.

If this went ahead, it would represent a monsterous intrusion into our daily lives, which probably goes some way towards explaining why the e-petition lodged at Downing St against road pricing now has well over 1 million signatures. But according to my favourite New Labour cyborg on Radio 4 this morning, although it's great that so many ordinary members of the public are engaging with the political process in this way, there's been so much disinformation about the government plans that those taking part don't really understand what they are voting against! And once we have been properly informed and had a balanced debate, he's confident that the government plans will enjoy widespread support!

Move over Hazel Blears and Patricia Hewitt - learn at the feet of a graduate egregia cum laude from New Labour's Ministry of Truth.

Trouble Over Bridged Waters

At the moment, I've got an ear on the debate currently taking place in the Holyrood chamber on whether to abolish tolls on the Forth and Tay Bridges. Although I missed the start, my standout moment of the last hour has been Labour MSP Scott Barrie announcing that he's resigned as a Labour whip so that he can vote for abolition.

Good for him. However, it's a bit dispiriting to hear the likes of Iain Smith and Helen Eadie slam the SNP for being dastardly enough to agree with them that tolls should go. How dare the SNP put forward yet another motion to that effect? Shame on them! It might force us to put our votes in parliament where our mouths are at election time!

The Green argument against removing tolls seems bizarre in the extreme. They cite a FETA (if you're Mark Ruskell in the chamber)/Scottish Executive (if you're Mark Ballard on GMS this morning) report, claiming that the abolition of tolls would lead to a 20% increase in congestion.

Ah, yes... I can see how that scenario plays out. All these commuters sitting on the bus and the train thinking to themselves of a morning: 'You know, this public transport lark is all very well, but if only it cost £1 less for me to drive back from Edinburgh/80p less to get back from Dundee, that's what I'd do instead'. I wonder if I asked them nicely, whether they'd be kind enough to bag some of that up for my mum's rose bushes?

Anyway, the vote looks quite tight at the moment. The suspicion is that Fife Labour MSPs had been given special dispensation to vote against the Executive motion, on the grounds that the Green MSPs would support the Executive in their place. However, Mark Ballard refused to say on GMS whether the Greens would in fact support the Executive. I'll let you know if I hear any squeals of pain coming from the Labour corridors between now and 5pm...

Champagne Supernova

I had the pleasure of meeting up with fellow blogger Mr Eugenides last night for a couple of pints. The occasion, in as much as it could be described as such, was to hand over his winnings from the 'Song for Jack' contest.

The prize, on this occasion a bottle of champagne, was one I think I'd picked up as a 'thank you' from a gig I played at a few months ago. However, I'm not really a fan of the stuff, so I was glad to be able to give it away to someone who might appreciate it more than me (Don't worry Will - I can do non-alcoholic prizes too if the occasion arises!)

I think my general aversion to champagne dates back to the night of the 1997 election. Going into that election, there were 10 Tory MPs left in Scotland, and the SNP was defending the then Perth and Kinross seat which Roseanna Cunningham had won in a by-election. Myself and my pal Russell, both of us then students at Stirling Uni, decided to get 11 bottles of the stuff on 'sale or return' from Victoria Wine in Bridge of Allan, the idea being that we'd crack a bottle open for every Tory who lost his seat, and open the last one if Roseanna held P&K.

Well, at the beginning of the SNP party in the function suite of the Salutation Hotel in Perth, we thought we'd be opening about 5 or 6 tops, hence the 'sale or return' deal. Then Jim Murphy won Eastwood for Labour and our group went through the following roller-coaster of emotions in the space of about 15 seconds: 'Great! It's a wipe-out! Aw naw, Jim Murphy's an MP! Oh Jeez - we're going to have to drink all that bloody champagne...' The rest, as they say, is history.

And so, dear reader, this is how about half a dozen of the Federation of Student Nationalists' finest were to be found guzzling champagne on Perth's South Inch from about 4 in the morning until the sun came up. Since we'd already had a skinfull in the hotel, it didn't take long before we were incapable of swallowing any more booze - and so started the chamapgne fights with the bottles we had left...

It was great fun, though allied to the pints of 80/- I'd been skulling earlier it left me with possibly the worst hangover I've ever had in my life, and it wasn't exactly great for the bank balance, either. But you have to do these things when you're a student. I have happy memories of behaving like an eejit that night - and just think of the money I've saved by drinking lager instead of champagne since then!

More in sorrow etc...

As that great philosopher of our times, Calvin, once said to his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, 'Every day, I'm forced to add another name to the list of people who piss me off'. With regret, I've come to the conclusion that if I kept a similar list, I'd now be about to add Observer columnist Ruaridh Nicoll to it.

I've mentioned before that The Observer 'In Scotland' is possibly my least favourite Sunday read - that oh-so-patronising 'In Scotland' bit allied to its preachy London-centric bias sees quite admirably to that. Nonetheless, on the surface of things, there's no reason why such an apparently mild-mannered guy as Nicoll should provoke such a strong reaction in me.

After all, reading his columns, Nicoll comes across as thoroughly intelligent, articulate, insightful and cultured. He might not share my politics, but then as a wee look at the links down the right-hand side of this blog show, I read and enjoy the work of quite a few people whose views seldom accord with my own. No, what gets my goat is the way Nicoll chooses to write about politics - leaving us room to imagine that he's being even handed and fair, before dropping in the odd nugget of illogical prejudice which he fails to support with any kind of preceding argument.

For reasons best known to himself, as a self-proclaimed admirer of Gordon Brown, Nicoll seems to have little difficulty in writing columns which are broadly supportive of SNP standpoints. Yet despite this, he still finds himself able to try and belittle the party with lazy 'Braveheart' clichés and sly innuendoes about Anglophobia.

Both of these charges are ludicrously easy to brush off. However, what annoys me about these jibes is that they are, or should be, the preserve of the one or two cartoon Labour councillors we all know and loathe, who lack the intelligence to do anything other than sling mud at their opponents. Nicoll is so obviously better than this, yet more often than not fails to make any kind of constructive critique of the SNP.

According to Nicoll in one piece where he ventured up to the North East of Scotland, he found an 'unsettling bleakness' in the bars, where there took place "fiercely, intimidatingly nationalist" conversations. Well, he wouldn't be the first traveller in history to long for the refinements of home, as they squint up nervously from maps still marked with 'here be dragons'. But before we let him claim the moral high ground, here's an interview he gave the Evening News a couple of weeks ago, where he says: 'Like a lot of Scots, I grew up as a nationalist supporter, shaking my fist at England.'

Now put like that, he sounds like the sort of numbskull that any self-respecting SNP-er would cross the street to avoid. But old habits seem to die hard. Like many unionists, he sees no contradiction in biting the hand he claims feeds us by cheering against England during the World Cup, on the grounds “that there's something about the English football team that winds me up”. Yet returning to the EN article, he acknowledges that there is a huge amount of anti-Scottishness in England. “We have really pissed them off”, he says. Hmm... I wonder how that could be?

But then, consistency is the hobgoblin of the tiny minds of others. Witness: "We think that by splitting away from England we will protect ourselves from such follies as Iraq in the future, which is true, but we will have no influence". And there, in one sentence, you have the classic North Brit-left apologia for the UK's post-war foreign policy – ‘it's more important to be in the right gang than it is to do the right thing’.

Maybe I'm being unfair. Perhaps some of Nicoll's best friends are nationalists. But ultimately, what annoys me most is that while he has far more in common with the SNP on most economic, social and cultural issues than with any other party, somehow it is the SNP for which he reserves his harshest and least-justified criticisms.

Whether building from within or throwing a few well-aimed rocks from without, someone of Nicoll 's talents could and should be making a better contribution to the standard of unionist debate in Scotland. Yet for all his descriptions of Scottish Labour as being moribund and dead from the neck up, why do I get the feeling that, more in sorrow than in anger of course, he will magisterially come down on the side of Labour come May, 'cause big Gordy will make it all better'?

It's always sad to see erstwhile progressives end up standing in the way of progress. I do hope that doesn't happen to Ruaridh Nicoll.