RANDOM FOTOS ON FRIDAY

Brave decent man.

Let's be honest, neither of you gives a damn...

Oh my.... would you look at the state of that nonsense? I bet Chic was tempted with that sword; I know I would have been. This is how the other half lives, while the rest of us are worrying about the electricity bill.

No wonder the Brits wanted them on the Human Rights Council. When they bring in their English Bill of Rights for those with titles, the Saudis will rubber stamp it.

Eh Cameron?

IF WE STUFF IT MUCH FULLER IT MAY SINK INTO THE THAMES...AND WOULDN'T THAT BE A PITY?

When Danny gave his alternative budget only 10 Liberal Democrats turned up to listen.
Still, they'd be glad of that now.

According to the Daily Mail, Vince Cable and Danny Alexander were both offered and turned down ennoblement, but have instead accepted knighthoods in the dissolution honours list.

Why offer them anything, I hear you ask.

Quite apart from the outdated idea that people should be given honours that change their names, what exactly did either of them do to deserve this "honour" (if honour it really is)?

And why should people so roundly rejected by the voters in their constituencies be so rewarded? After all, what really happened was that their employers sacked them and chose other people to do their jobs. They were handsomely paid while they had the jobs and they were given redundancy packages by us. Why are we giving them silly titles which move them into the bottom section of the upper classes?

Why is there a dissolution honours list? Is it not enough that there is one at new year and one on the birthday of the queen? 

Don't think the National is too happy about it either...

It is expected too that this honours list will include the creation of 50 more peers of the realm, as if the number we had wasn't already ridiculous. Mr Cameron apparently needs more obedient people in the upper house to help him win the debates on Europe. 

That's nice. In a so-called democracy, where you received only 37% of the votes cast, but still have a majority in the lower house due to a ridiculously inadequate system, you can give yourself a majority in the upper house, at our expense, just by making up a list.

And these people don't just get to change their name. They get to sit in parliament and make laws, collect £300 a day tax free and expenses to boot. Additionally they can avail themselves of the subsidised restaurants and bars of the Palace of Westminster.

Because it now seems to be a requirement of peers to pose in a bra.
I suppose at least you could say that this is a sight easier on the eye then the last one.

Among these new peers there is expected to be a place for multi-millionaire donor, the investment banker James Lupton and our own fake tan and bra manufacturer Michelle Mone.

Philippa Stroud, a former aide to the grim reaper, Iain Duncan Smith (and therefore guaranteed to be a real charmer); Simone Finn, an efficiency advisor (no honest, I'm not kidding) to jolly old Francis Maude (is he STILL around?); Stuart Polak, a lobbyist and director of the Conservative Friends of Israel (you might know); and Cameron's chief of staff, Kate Fall, are also expected to be given seats in the Lords, for no other reason than presumably he can trust them to vote as they are told.

Unbelievably the Liberal Democrats are due for some more seats in the Lords... Ming the Almighty and Alan Beith, whom I've never heard of (both probably for longevity) are reckoned to be among 10 more Liberal Democrat peers to be created to add to their 102 current members. Not bad when the voters only reckoned they were worth 8 MPs!

Honestly the British democracy becomes more incredible by the day.

++++++++++

The House of Lords currently comprises:

227 Conservatives, 

213 Labour, 

102 Lib Dems, 

26 Church of England bishops 

38 other parties or non-affiliated

180 Cross benchers. 

786 Total.

FOTOS ON FRIDAY

Good old BBC. Even when it's forced to tell the truth, it does it's best to hide it.

Most of the Press: Barclays (resident in Sark, State of Guernsey; Rothermere (France) and The Dirty Digger (USA)

Well, that's not nearly as frightening as what they put about.

Well, not what I'd do, if I were a business owner, but I take my hat off to him...

Not quite got Nicola's talent for Gender Balance.
Or anything else.

You can see what Mrs Parker Bowles sees in him, can't you?
It's obviously his money.

Now we know why Dan Snow hates the SNP so much. This is the part of Scotland his father-in-law owns.

Just in case you had forgotten what he looks like now that he's a jobseeker.
By now he's probably a chav with his dirty trackies and baseball cap.

Now the Labour Group can meet in...well, in  whatshisname's bathroom.
They can have their meeting while he's taking a shower.

Makes you wonder...

This could be any of us. It's utterly heartbreaking.
WE JUST SHOULDN'T ALLOW THEM TO DO THIS TO OUR PEOPLE

I'm surprised the European Human Rights convention hasn't told Britain to sling its hook. Still, just think of the tax cuts they can give the super rich with all that money they have saved.

They'll bring back the ducking stool.
If you survive you're not sick, and if you drown you indeed were sick and should have got benefits but, as you're dead ...well, think of the savings.

Iain Duncan Smith, aka, The Grim Reaper.

Just in case you missed it first time round.

See... surely you didn't think all these Nobel Laureates in Economics were wrong?

Welcome to London.

ALL OVER BAR THE VOTING

Estimated Declaration Times

Well, it's all over bar the voting.

Much has been written about melt downs and Labour and the Liberals being obliterated.

I'm cautious. OK, call me a pessimist and a glass half empty man, but I prefer to predict low and be pleasantly surprised, rather than the other way around.

Remember any more seats than we have at the moment will be a gain.

At present the SNP has 6 seats in the London parliament. To get 12 would represent a massive success. It would double the representation, and would be one more than they have ever had in London.

Synchronisity  in Anas's ward.
All these people seem to have had the same thoughts, and written the same letter at the same time. Just how completley amazing is that?
Does he have magic powers?

Twenty seats would be a fantastic breakthrough; 30 utterly fabulous.

I'm thinking somewhere between 30 and 35 seats may go SNP.

Any more than that and we are off the scale.

Whatever it is, if it isn't the 59 that some of the press has been predicting, the unionists will call it all a busted flush. Be ready for that and remember that on the day after the election, parties tend to, and have always tended to, big up what little success they have had.

How well we remember, Dave.
Just read it back now and weep for your wickedness.

Just for a little light relief on the last day...

How many seats do you think the SNP will get, realistically?

And...

Of the potential losers, who do you most wish to lose their seat, and why?

Will it be Margaret Curran, for the vitriol she has spewed and for her dogged devotion to right-wing Jim, when only weeks before his election (she voted for him too) she was promising Glasgow Man a lurch to the left; to old Labour and socialism? (Like she remembered what that was!)

Will it be Jim himself? 

The strangest possible choice to lead a party that is begging for a move to the left, is a neo-Liberal, anti-Muslim, white supremacist, enthusiast for war, and lieutenant of the odious Blair. 

Why did they elect him? 

Failure to win his seat would be the ultimate humiliation for the party. Not particularly likely to happen as I'm sure they will have put massive resources into the seat, and will have taken every possible measure to ensure that Jim is back with a decent majority.

Or maybe it will be Cathy. Her record certainly suggests that she is pretty solidly anti Scotland having any powers. Interestingly in a year when most public servants had no pay rise or a pay rise of 1%, she appears to have given her husband a rise of 100%. Nice work if you can get it... and keep it. 

There's a raft of obnoxious Labour MPs who seem to have achieved almost nothing for some of the poorest people in Britain, and Western Europe. Amazingly Willie Bain, the worst of them, is almost guaranteed his seat. 

Just as well, what else could he do?

Remember though, whoever it is you want rid of, THIS is what we are up against. For all their protestations that they want us to stay, there is a strong feeling that we are not welcome in their union.

Who can put up a strong fight for Scotland? Maggie Curran, Cathy Jamieson, Anas Sarwar?

Of course we shouldn't forget the Liberals, although heaven knows, it's easy to do just that. They seem to have adapted remarkably quickly to being Tories. The obvious choice is high flyer Danny Alexander. You may remember that he's not a REAL Tory, just an honorary one.  Alternatively, there is the all but useless Scottish Secretary whose involvement in l'affaire francaise has still not been explained?

Anyway, your thoughts, if you have time on what I know will be a busy day, will be much welcomed.

Fingers crossed. Good luck in all your constituencies.

PAID FOR BY THE GRACIOUSNESS OF HER BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S LONDON GOVERNMENT

...OR MORE ACCURATELY, YOUR TAXES AND A PILE OF BORROWING

It seems that the UK government has decided to show us how grateful we should be for their beneficence with our taxes.

We have long been told that our little northern land is heavily subsidised by the generous and kind remainder of the UK, despite figures which have shown the contrary.

Now we are to be treated like the foreigners they keep on telling us we are not.

Good things that come to us through our membership of the United kingdom are to be labeled with a UK flag in the same way that aid for the third world is labeled as being from Britain. 

According to the Daily Mail, "The use of the logo is seen as a small step in shoring up support for the UK north of the border, with the SNP set to make big gains in May’s general election".

Well, I wish them luck with that. Another daft blue Tory idea which will be promoted by the much loved Danny Alexander!!! 

I wonder how many of these things they can attach to bridges and roads in the nine weeks before the election. It goes without saying that they will anger as many people as they will cheer. 

And of course most people will simply not notice them, unless they are huge and obtrusive. Still, in these times when we have money to burn... why not?

The plan has been drawn up with Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude (wouldn't you know it?), who said, amazingly without a single "jolly well": ‘As part of our long term economic plan, this government is investing in our nation's physical and digital infrastructure.'

Erm... Francis, isn't that what governments are supposed to do, you know, when they aren't arranging lucrative jobs for themselves so that they don't have the indignity of having to live on between £70,000 and £150,000 a year, you know compared to a working class pensioner living on £114 a week!? 

Actually, I don't really have any objection to it, as long as they remember to label all the rotten filthy things they do to us with our own taxes.

For example: JobcentrePlus, killing sick people off every day, brought to you courtesy of the British Government with a large Union Flag on it next to the smiling face of Iain Duncan Smith. (And yes, we are sure you know how to make him smile.)

SNAPS ON SATURDAY

Puts a whole new meaning on
 "It's a crime that he's unemployed".

Good to see that we punished the people who caused the last crash,
and are causing the next one. Oh wait...

Aye Danny, you're important right enough.
You and Gideon together. What a team!

Dave, solver of problems.

How does this man function in the real world?

Another of Danny's right wing mates.

Yeah, nice one, Anas...

I see that the guy with the 8 (it was 10) YES badges
was pulling Dimjim's chain!

Two cheeks of the same butt.

And they will support you on Trident too.
You're practically the same party.

See Eck  got a new job?

That's Britain. As it always was, and always will be.

+++++++++++++++++

It appears that the opposition don't understand finance or the various constraints put upon the Scottish government by Westminster. 

It also seems that no one reminded them that the underspend had actually been reported to parliament in June of last year. Does their finance spokesman not pay attention to finance matters?  

As has been demonstrated so often in the past, their researchers don't seem to be up to the mark. 

Sadly, none of the other parties seem to have a grasp on finance either, otherwise they would surely have pointed out the error of the Labour attack, which Dugdale threw, yet again, at the First Minister on Thursday.

I thought it was worth putting up John Swinney's comments about the underspend in full: 

The Scottish Government firmly believes Scotland will prosper best when all revenue raised here stays here.

Meantime, there is an obligation upon us to ensure what funds the UK Government does allocate to Edinburgh are managed responsibly. That’s why this government ensures that we put every penny we receive towards improving the lives of people in Scotland.

In contrast, Brian Wilson’s comments (Perspective, 10 January) betray the same problems understanding ­public spending that must have bedevilled the Labour Party when they managed Scotland’s finances.

Mr Wilson’s colleagues managed to forget to spend £700 million in one year and left more than £1 billion in a Treasury bank account which could have supported our economy and public services.

Thankfully the SNP secured the release of that money.

I can assure Brian Wilson, and your readers, that if the £444m of underspend he ­refers to was all money over which I had control, then every penny of it would be being invested properly to mitigate the impact of ­Westminster cuts and welfare reforms.

The £444 million underspend against the annual accounts-based budget, ­reported in the Final Outturn Report and in the media last week, also reflects variances in Annual Managed Expenditure programmes and other technical non-cash accounting budgets – for example depreciation and impairments.

So such underspends therefore do not reflect a missed opportunity to spend more on public services – much as Mr Wilson and his Labour ­colleagues try to claim otherwise. The reality is that the  fiscal underspend the Scottish Government has available from 2013-14 to invest in public services is only 0.5 per cent of our budget, or £145 million.

Far from keeping it a secret, I announced it to Parliament in June, and confirmed that it would be carried into the next year – and that every penny would be allocated to support people in Scotland.

On top of that, some £31 million of financial transactions was also brought forward to support vital investment in housing and regeneration. This is funding restricted by Treasury rules and can only be used for the provision of loans or equity investment beyond the public sector and has to be repaid to HM Treasury in ­future years.

We agree that Scotland’s schools and hospitals are worthy of the best possible levels of investment and, until we are responsible for our own financial affairs, they deserve better than the successive real-term cuts to which Scotland’s budget has been subject and which the Labour Party clearly intend to continue.

JOHN SWINNEY

Deputy First Minister