IAIN GRAY'S STAND-UP COMEDY ROUTINE

Iain Gray really is a card, isn't he? After last week’s opinion poll put the SNP ahead by 10% and gave him a very embarrassing 33% on “satisfaction” compared with Eck’s 51%, he said that Mr Salmond had been in parliament for 20 years and was a one man band, so it was not surprising.

Eh?

Well, I’d put it this way Elmer: The SNP has been in government for 4 years at a difficult time when initially the grumpy Mr Brown was tighter with Scotland’s grant than he had ever been with a Labour government in Edinburgh; the BBC and the newspapers have consistently called him out on every little thing, sometimes deliberately bending the facts so that they can make him and the SNP look bad, and as for a one man band (snigger), if it were true, it would be a deal better than being a broken record, with no live musicians.

In fact it is not true. The SNP is a veritable phiharmonic orchestra by comparison with Labour. The front bench of Cabinet Secretaries and their ministers are first rate. John Swinney, in particular, has been a magician with money. If I’d not actually been in the man’s office I’d swear he had a printing press on his desk running of BoS £100 notes. And it is disingenuous of Gray not to acknowledge the excellence of the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health whose strong showings at FMQs in Mr Salmond’s rare absences and on television shows such as "Question Time" have been excellent.

In fact if I were in charge of the SNP campaign, one of the posters I’d produce would show the difference between the senior front bench team and their Labour shadows. The comparison is laughable.

Gray also denied that Wendy Alexander’s notice of her intention to stand down to “spend more time with her family” was as a result of his refusing to offer her a cabinet seat in his government if he were to win the General Election in May. He answered, with a patronising and sexist remark, saying that it was difficult for women with small children in politics and felt that perhaps the family friendly hours of parliament hasn’t helped enough.

Yes Elmer. You can say that all you like, but we’re not buying it.

In fact he then went on to have a dig at Mrs Alexander by bragging that Labour had been behind in the polls by 16% when he took over as leader. And since then he had gone "head-to-head with Alex Salmond in Glenrothes, in Glasgow north east and in last year’s General Election – on every occasion I have won and I have won well.”

There was me thinking that the General Election last year and the Glenrothes and Glasgow by-elections were contests for the London, England parliament, which would have been the responsibility of Gordon Brown and Spud Murphy. What with Mr Gray not having a clue what Mr Brown and Mr Murphy thought about Mr Al Megrahi, I would have assumed there must be very little communication between London Labour and it’s Edinburgh Office. Only on some things maybe?

Pics: (1) Nah, please, don’t, I’ll try to make the next joke better! (2) Who’s she burying? I mean he wasn’t THAT bad Nicola. (3) That’s how wide she can open Mr Gray. I’d get on the phone and offer her Justice if I were you. (The numpty you have there is useless!) (4) Just so there’s not favouritism here’s a pic of Nicola, she’ll wish had never gone out... or maybe she was just trying to remember Elmer’s real name.