JE SUIS DE RETOUR (OR TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY, I'M BACK)

I had a great break in Paris. It was warm, it was sunny, the people were polite, the streets clean (apart from round Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est), there were virtually no fat people and no incredibly thin ones, there were no drunks, no one was wearing "What Every Gadgy Wants" chic and the food was out of this world.

For just €30 I could buy a travel ticket which entitled me to use the Métro, Buses, RER, Trams (yes, they are splendid) and the funicular up to Sacre Cœur. What more could you want?

Oh yes, the concert.... well, it was all you would expect from Pet Clark...perfection. The French are more boisterous in their approval (or disapproval) of an artiste. (I think they are a bit like a good old fashioned Glasgow audience: if they like you, they like you a lot; if they don't like you.....God help you.) We were all along the front row, Jerseymen, English, Scots, Canadians, Norwegians, Germans, Australians, French, Belgians, and although I had, by this time a serious dose of la grippe, or flu, I was up dancing and shouting with the rest. 


It's always good to get home to Scotland, no matter how good the holiday, but the journey this time involved a hold up of around an hour in England because some poor sod had jumped in front of a train. Life in Yorkshire had presumably become too much for them. So we had to wait, and then, because we were a diesel train and could go round the 'accident' area, we were obliged to pick up, on our already "standing room only" train, the passengers of two other expresses, so that we became dangerously overloaded.


I couldn't wait to get to Edinburgh... to let the train disgorge what seemed like several hundred thousand people... and to get to a toilet, which had hitherto been impossible. If there is an alternative, my advice would be never travel by East Coast Trains. This is the line owned and run by the English Department of Transport. 'Nuff said.


Anyway, the journey was probably the only bad part of the whole break...


And so I got back to read figures on unemployment which, without wishing to seem to be a smart ass, the only thing I can say about is...I told them so. The idea that the private sector would take up the slack of the public sector as the country headed for a double dip recession was just risible. When is Gideon going to come up with a real plan for the economy?


He is, of course far too busy continuing his long time assault on the SNP and the independence referendum. He seems as idiotically blind to the futility of this campaign as he is to the stupidity of the Plan A nonsense he came up with to return the country to boom.


The Eton, Westminster, Winchester, Cambridge, Oxford, Bullingdon millionaires lecturing Scots on how poor, wee and stupid we are, and how we need England's munificence to keep us upright is music to my ears and I hereby invite the entire cabinet to lecture us non-stop on the subject in their plummy tones for the next 3 years. 


They should really realise that its all counter-productive. But no. They think that their words will stir the true Brit that they imagine to be at the heart of all of us. They might as well be Vietnamese, they are so foreign to the average Scot. Still I wish them a hearty cheer. They are wasting their time, but as least while they are doing that they are keeping away from other dangerous business.


I read in French papers about Cameron ranting about lack of patriotism and respect for soldiers in Remembrance Week. I'll bet he was not best pleased to find that there had been a leak that the government was reducing the subsidy for a couple of military charities, and that they would now be making more forces personnel redundant than they had  previously announced. Denied of course, by Pip Ham-mond... but then, who would believe anything he says?


So, all in all, am I glad to be back? 


No.


*****


Craig Murray has asked us all to make sure that this article gets the biggest amount of publicity possible. He apparently sent it to the Main Stream Media for which he regularly writes, and which has never rejected his work before. Despite checking its veracity, they have, to a man (if that's the word), refused to publish it. 


It makes grim reading. Fox and Werrity were up to more dangerous business than enough. War is almost certainly planned by the MoD and no one will answer questions about Werritty's and Gould's part in it. Even to MPs in the House.


Makes you wonder where the pay off is.