HE'S BACK...

Big Beast. The Liberal ex-Chief Whip

When the London government replaced Michael Moore as Scottish Secretary with a man they called a big beast of politics, we were promised that he would wade into the debate and turn it around.

Godzilla, as he was nicknamed would be the death of all the independence nonsense and would put Alex Salmond’s gas at a peep in the blink of an eye.

I didn't know him. Indeed I’d never heard of him. But it wasn't long before I found out that they might be accused of a wee bit of exaggeration when describing his abilities. In fact, he turned out to be less King Kong and more Old King Cole, a chubby old soul from up north who stuttered his way through unconvincing tales of Britishness. (The spell-check says that should read Brutishness… does it know something that I don’t?)

 

Taking a mauling with a smile, bless him.
That was before the tears

Anyway, when his time came to face Ms Sturgeon, as inevitably it had to, we were expecting him to do a lot better than his predecessor whose poor performance against the deputy first minister was said to be the reason he was removed. I’m sure Nicola was shivering in her shoes, as images for the famous film flashed through her mind, prior to going out there live.

But, we were to be sorely disappointed. If anything he was worse that poor old Moore. She wiped the floor with him, and he seemed, at times, to be close to tears and pleading with the adjudicator to call off Nicola, who had him by the throat.

I was just today wondering what had happened to him since then.

After all, for the English cabinet’s top man in Scotland; Mr Cameron’s right hand gorilla, only 7 months away from the day, he’s been hell of a quiet.

We’ve had the honour of all manner of English toffs from the very top English public schools up here telling us how pathetic we are. People who only ever come here to shoot animals, and here they have come to very nearly talk to the people. Well the top people anyway.

 

Lord Snooty slumming it

We’ve had Osborne, May, and that long faced skinny one from defence who laughed at British soldiers on duty at Edinburgh castle. We've even had wee Willie Hague in Glasgow taking time off from telling Putin a few things. We even had the Eton Boy himself, fresh from the floods in England, and right into the North Sea to inspect an oil rig. (I suppose they had to keep him that far form ordinary Jocks. Eton Boys probably don’t have immunity to the kind of bugs you catch from jock plebs. We even had a complete cabinet meeting here. For the first time in 90 years the lower reaches of the English aristocracy came en masse on a private jet to hide themselves behind locked doors and hold a cabinet meeting.  Worth it or what!

But no attack dog in the form of Carbuncle.

Not to fear though, because he is back. Oh yes. He ventured as far north as the Daily Torygraph offices to give them an interview in which he told them that there was no such thing as Scottishness or Englishness.

He accused Alex Salmond (as if he was the only one to point it out) of trying to make out that there are Scottish values and English values and said quite clearly that there were not. We were the same.

John: What's Gaelic for "sod off you plonker"?

He failed of course to explain why, if we are so similar, we vote so differently, to the point that the majority party in England is represented by one solitary (and rather pathetic) specimen in Scotland, and that’s bang smack on the border. Nor did he explain why our MPs voted against all the horrific policies on welfare, never mind whether they were SNP or Labour while the MPs in England pushed them though and made them law.

First we had that funny little aristocrat who gave up being an MP in the middle of his term to take a big prestigious job as George Bush’s lickspittle in Nato, (you know, the one that comes from Port Ellen on the island of Islay, where they speak Gaelic), telling us that we didn't have a language, and we didn't have a culture, and now we have this third choice Scottish Secretary telling us that there is no such thing as Scottishness, and thinking that that will go down well with us.

Where exactly do they get these half wits?