CURREN MIGHT BE BETTER, JUST OCCASIONALLY, TO KEEP HER MOUTH SHUT

Alex Salmond is to have talks with David Cameron in Downing Street, London, during a meeting of the administrations of the UK. 

It is expected that he will raise the spectre of the Bedroom Tax, along with other social security issues and youth unemployment. 

Mr Cameron wants to focus the meeting on immigration, the Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup. But Salmond is determined to raise issues which are pressing for ordinary Scots. Naturally Cameron has no earthly idea what an ordinary Scot is, only having seen the kind that living on shooting estates and went to Eton. Nor of course does he give a stuff about how they live as they consistently refuse to vote for his party and are, therefore of no interest to him whatsoever.

The new secretary of state, who should be fighting Scotland's corner in cabinet, has advised Mr Salmond to arrive in Downing Street with a positive attitude and to listen and learn.  No honestly, he is reported to have said that. Listen and learn from Cameron (the most inept prime minister since... oh yeah, Gordon Brown) and Carmichael (who's been in the job two weeks!).

Of course it would be handy for Mr Cameron if everyone just sat there and listened and learned from the man that has the best qualifications in England that money can buy. But Salmond needs no lessons on statecraft from Cameron, and no advice on how to behave himself in government from Carmichael, and he is there to do what Carmichael and Moore have singularly failed to do: represent Scotland's best interests.

Stairheid Rammy: The Shadow Secretary of State

Not to be left out of course, Labour's shadow secretary for Scotland had to open her mouth. Was it Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain who said: "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt"? (It may have originated in the Torah, Proverbs 17:28). Anyway whoever said it Stairheid should take heed.

She accuses Mr Salmond of "Grandstanding". 

She says: "What Scots need tomorrow is action to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, not more grandstanding from Alex Salmond and David Cameron.

"Prices are rising faster than wages, energy bills are still going up and the bedroom tax is continuing to hit people across the country.

"This is a rare opportunity to hammer out a plan to get to grips with this cost-of-living crisis.

"Instead of coming to London to tell David Cameron to bin the bedroom tax, Alex Salmond should be laying out a plan to stop it hitting Scots."

[The word "coming" is telling! As a Scot based in Scotland, I'd have said "going".]

Maybe China will send us some food aid?

So, does she not think that bringing up the bedroom tax is the best way of dealing with it? Who does she think is responsible for the cost of living, the energy companies' prices, and the bedroom tax? Not to mention the other criminal behaviour that puts the poorest in our country  in need of food banks and Red Cross parcels?

Why does this stupid woman feel obliged every time she opens her mouth, to carp at Alex Salmond and the SNP? The man is going to do more or less all she is demanding but when he does she feels the need to call it "grandstanding". Would she prefer him to just be a polite man and listen and learn from Cameron and Carmichael? She needs to learn that there is a time for opposition, and there is time to let the first minister do his job. Is she unaware that he will be doing more or less what she is demanding?

Labour really needs to replace her with someone with just a spark of intelligence, because right now, every time the shadow secretary of state opens her mouth she proves beyond doubt that she is a bad joke. We deserve better, Ed.

THIS IS A OFFENSIVE IDEA; LET'S STOP IT HAPPENING

I think we have all been agreed for some time that, faced with the fact that Scotland was likely to leave the United Kingdom, the UK government was equally likely to be looking for means, fair or foul, to put independence back in its box.

I am willing to bet that we, as UK taxpayers, have been forking out for members of the security services to rifle through every tiny detail of the lives of anyone in Scottish government, or the YES campaign, to see if they can find anything discrediting about any of them.

Following the success of the year of Jubolympics,  it was always on the cards that they would want another big-money, flag waving exercise to take place during 2014.

In fairness, I would say that it is not likely to be a coincidence that the year of the referendum, chosen by Alex Salmond, will see a grand sporting event in Scotland, one in which our athletes will compete under the Saltire and not the union flag, and that the Ryder Cup will be held at Gleneagles, the first time in Scotland since 1973, and a great showcase for the country, around the world and at home.

So Cameron and his men must have been looking around for something that would allow for a sense of Britishness, like the Jubilee, that would pull people out together to sing 'Rule Britannia' and 'Jerusalem', and wave union flags, hold street parties, etc.

Of course we can still reasonably expect that Harry's wedding will take place that year, but in terms of the English aristocracy, the younger son has never quite the same importance as the heir. It is also not beyond the bounds of possibility that William and his wife might well be expected to be producing children by that time and it would be naive to imagine that this possibility has not been discussed. 

But Cameron needs more than one event of Britishness... indeed the more the merrier.

So, like many of the other ideas he has grasped at in his amateurish governance, he has come up with a bizarre notion that we should commemorate the START of the Great War, the war to end all wars.

Normally, one commemorates the END of a war. In that way the commemoration can be mixed with a celebration that the terribleness is over and a joy that life can return to normal. But 1918 would be too late for Cameron.  Scotland will have voted; the deed will have been done. And in any case, it's unlikely that he will still be prime minister.

We already commemorate the END of the First World War every year at the exact time that hostilities ceased, ie the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month (or the nearest Sunday to that time). We shall do so again in less than a month's time. The Queen, members of the royal family, politicians from all chambers and old soldiers are watched in respect by the nation as they lay wreaths at the Cenotaph in London, in capitals over the UK, and in towns over the world. Politics are forgotten as people pay their respects. 

I have no issues with the various UK governments suggesting that children do special history projects, and if they can afford the money from the education budget, I have no problem this year, or any other, with visits being made to the graveyards and fields of slaughter.

But it seems to me to be open opportunism to exploit a war in which millions were killed and millions more lives ruined, in order to whip up some Britishness.

Cynical Highlander brought to my attention a petition asking the government to reject the plans. You might like to sign it, if you agree with me that this is a distasteful idea.

Here is the link again.

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The result of our poll for the least popular politician can be found on the comments of this post. For those who care enough to know who won, but not enough to go to the post, It was Tony B£air in runaway lead, followed at a distance by Mrs Thatcher, with Cameron in a respectable third place.

THANKS OLD CHAP, BUT WE CAN READ AND WRITE UP HERE

There are two main reasons, well official reasons anyway, why Mr Cameron has rushed, with what seems like indecent haste, to force a referendum on Scotland in 2013. 


Firstly he says he is doing it because he wants any referendum to be "fair, legal and decisive", because, bless his cotton Vicuña  socks, he thinks they "owe it to the Scottish people" to ensure that. 

That would bring a tear to a glass eye, would it not? 

Fine, and it's sweet of him to be concerned, but did it ever cross his mind  that we have people in Scotland who are trained in law.We have our own law officers, they understand the terms of the Scotland act, and it's more than a little patronising of him to assume that we don't. No one in the Scottish government was going to take liberties with something as important as this. No one has now, or has ever, had any intention of trying to hold a referendum that was unfair, illegal or indecisive. 

We have known since devolution, that any referendum we held would be consultative. The only person who can grant independence is the Queen, on the  advice of her London first minister. Indeed David McLetchie, a Scottish lawyer, and currently the Scottish Conservative's Chief Whip, Business Manager and Constitutional Affairs Spokesman pointed out several years ago that the only question that the Scottish government can put, must ask the voter if (s)he wants the Scottish government to commence negotiations with the UK government... I'm not sure what Mr Cameron was doing to miss that. Maybe it was before he was interested in politics. 

So to use Mr Cameron's own words: calm down dear, nothing to worry about. We weren't planning UDI. 

The second official reason was that the question of whether Scotland, in a few years' time, would be a part of the UK or an independent country, was causing uncertainty for business and for the markets.


We all know, of course, that Cameron doesn't want the referendum  held in the 700th anniversary year of  the Battle of Bannockburn, the year of Scotland holding the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, presumably things which he imagines will stir some pride in the nationalist soul. 


Instead he wants it to be held in the period just after Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games in London, events which doubtless he imagines will stir the spirit of the British Bulldog and good Old Blighty war time spirit, of Keep Clam and Carry On. He may even be planning get Vera Lynn out of retirement to give us her White Cliffs of Dover just to reinforce the image.

But to get back to the pretence.  If Mr Cameron thinks that business or the markets are so worried about uncertainty caused by whether on not a certain union will be in place in a few years' time, would it not be sensible for them also to be sure of the UK's position relative to the European Union. Maybe he could do this by holding a referendum on the same day? We might even trust him to do it fairly, legally and decisively (despite the fact that he really didn't stick to his word over the last one).

Oh, and while he is doing that, he might like to find out how the Deputy Prime Minister feels about his vetoing treaties. The uncertainty caused by the Prime Minister reading not just from different hymn sheets, but reading them in different languages must be far more damaging to the interests of business and the markets than little old Scotlandshire's issues.