SMILE ON SATURDAY

ONE OF THESE IS THE FUTURE PRIME MINISTER

Smile! Think of your GO HOME vans or denying unaccompanied refugee kids access to UK, or throwing Australian families out of Scotland. Yep, that's not bad considering it's you.

Unfortunately, it's not the turtle that's standing.

Nice going, Crabbie.
At this rate you'll be able to retire before the contest and save us all some sleepless nights.

You can't have one without the other...
Oh, and we can't forget Adam, can we?

Did she borrow her wellies from Theresa?
Maybe she was prompted to put her name forward because she's called LEAD SOM(E). Can't think of any other plausible reason.

Has the Conservative Party abandoned that name in Scotland?

Are they now the Ruth Davidson Party?

When Annabel Goldie stood down as leader of the Conservative Party's Scottish branch, because David Cameron and Fluffy Muddle wanted her gone (presumably because they couldn't walk all over her), there were two main contenders for her job.

They were Ruth Davidson and Murdo Fraser.

Murdo stood on a ticket on changing the party in Scotland, losing the toxic brand, and the automatic agreement with everything London dictated, and becoming a new, right of centre, distinctly Scottish party. Many in the party agreed with him. Many outside the party agreed with him. 

Ruth, on the other hand, was David's woman. She areed with every word he said and he used all the power he could muster to have her elected, including supplying her (allegedly), against the rules, with his own PR people. (Not that they are up to much.) 

Ruth disagreed with changing the name or the brand... She arrogantly asserted that the toxicity attributable to Mrs Thatcher should be water under the bridge. Why, she (Ruth) was just a girl when Mrs Thatcher was prime minister.

It was insulting, of course, to those who had lost their jobs, their futures, their dignity and their health becasue of Thatcher's ideological reforms, and it missed the point that the Tories became even more toxic under John Major. Indeed it wasn't until 1997, some 6 years after Thatcher had been shown the door by the Tories, that they reached the depths. In that election they had zero MPs in Scotland. In that respect they have recovered a little since then, having one MP... well, more or less. (As my old boss would say: Half a man is better than no man at all!)

Ruth showed herself as an arrogant and immature 33 year old who needed to do some growing up. But with the help of David Cameron she was duly elected and led the party to its worst result in 100 years in the UK elections of last year.

Well, now she has grown up. And there's an irony in the fact that she isn't  any longer talking about the Tories at this general election. The toxicity has still not gone away, so she's selling herself.

Ruth Davidson for opposition. Quite apart from the fact that conceding defeat some 3 weeks before the election is pretty disturbing, it seems that she has come to the conclusion that she was wrong and Murdo was right.

Murdo must have a warm satisfied glow.

Ruth is counting on being the second party. The official opposition in parliament after the May election.

By pinning her party's fortunes so firmly to her own identity, she must realise that any failure in this regard is likely to fall fair and square on her shoulders

If Kezia Dugdale remains the leader of the opposition for the next five years, will Ruth fall on her sword?

WE'RE BORED ALREADY

Goodness me. We are half way through the first day and already we are bored.

We vaguely listened and dozed through the Today Programme and later listened to a week in politics (after which Munguin threw the radio across the room). 

If this is the standard of debate, then it makes the Scottish Referendum campaign, and Project Fear, sound relatively adult.

Please, please Mr BBC DG, don't let's have Michael Forsyth all over the radio and telly until whenever, just becasue he's the only man standing who was close to Thatcher (her of the words NO NO NO and the actions YES YES YES!) and was party to her inner thinking on the Union.

Apart from Mental Micky,  all the commentators we heard were English, and it was interesting to hear how many times folk intimated that "England" would be fine on its own (if only). The Tory MP from Berwick, Ann-Marie Trevelyan was gracious enough to expand that to "Great Britain" and while the woman  was sickeningly sycophantic to Cameron, she was most certainly not having any of his "special relationship" nonsense.

Our favourite side-splitting comment was that Europe never listened to anything that the UK had to say, so we should leave. This despite the fact that the First Ministers of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have asked the UK to delay the referendum until the national elections are over, so that this one topic should not overwhelm the campaigns which are about so much more. 

At the time of writing, no such undertaking has been forthcoming. Maybe we should leave.

We thought some of these pictures would cheer you a little before tomorrows Soppy Sunday, when we promise there will be no mention of Europe!

Update!

So, now we know who will find themselves demoted if the answer is stay; and promoted if the answer is go. It's a calculated risk!

Sanjeev Kohli ‏@govindajeggy  30m30 minutes ago

David Baddiel should not be confused by the British Prime Minister David Bad-deal.

Update 2:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Chez Duncan Smith...?

A proper lantern.

Labour painting the road signs? 

Education, Education, Education...

One way to get them to sleep!

How to be the coolest kid with the best ever lunch. 

Labour sign writers get everywhere!

The return of Mrs Thatcher.

Munguin wishes a Happy Halloween to all our readers!

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE LAST FEW DAYS: CHINA, NORTHERN POWERHOUSE AND EVEL

The last day of the charade that is the Golden Era celebration will be over today. After Mr Xi takes a trip to what the English call "The North", he will escape back to China.

In OUR United Kingdom though, "The North" isn't Shetland or Orkney, nor is it the Hebrides, Highlands, Central Belt, nor even the Southern Uplands. 

Nope, it is far south of all of these things. 

It's almost like the Brits drew a map and replaced the word Scotland with "Here be Dragons". Or Haggis!

This is where I left the kid.

The North is Manchester, some 200 kms south of Scotland, from where the Brits are going to build a Northern Powerhouse, presumably with Chinese money, becasue they have none themselves.

The cornerstone of this powerhouse will be, if they ever get it started, the High Speed Train from the centre of the universe that is London, to "The North". HS2.

The costs of the line are difficult to pin down. Having started off at a reasonable price of around £16 billion, the building of the line is now estimated by the English Transport Department to have risen to £43 billion. But we all know thay can;t count much after 20, so it is wise to look at other estimates. Boris Johnson, the London Mayor and MP, has it at £70 billion, and the Institute of Economic Affairs at £80 billion.  Bit of a difference there...

TGV Network running into Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland

A House of Lords Committee has suggested that the cost of building the line will be nine times more expensive than the French equivalent. The French of course had the foresight to build high speed trains (TGV) across the country decades ago when Mitterrand was president and Thatcher was favouring roads and private transport.

You might rub your hands together with glee, thinking that if Mr Osborne was pouring all this money into "The North" then there would be benefits for Scotland in the form of Barnett consequentials. But I fear you would be wrong.

There will be no consequentials, just as there were not for Crossrail or the Olympics.

This despite the fact that the negative impact of the line on certain areas outside of England (particularly including Eastern Scotland and South Wales) will be severe.

And now that we have EVEL, Scottish MPs won't even be allowed to vote on this railway which will have such a negative effect on our country. 

It's not just English foxes that will rue the passing of the EVEL bill last night and the second class status now accorded to our MPs.

(I wonder if that means that Muddle will be excluded from Cabinet when English matters are being discussed, or if the English Members of the Scottish Affairs Committee will now be excluded from the Scottish Affairs Committee... and, given that Scotland was excluded from this state visit, did Muddle have a meeting with President Xi... OK, silly question.)

The last few days have shown where the London government (which we can now reasonably call the English Government) places the Scots in OUR United Kingdom, the one that Cameron goes on and on about ad nauseam.

Roll on the next opportunity to, like Mr Xi, escape from this ridiculous and pathetic little third rate union.

FOTOS ON FRIDAY

Thanks for the advice, Grand-mama.

Thanks for the advice, Mama.

Hum...  Nope.

The Labour Family Business.

And the programme that they gave the dopey one of the family.

Who would have guessed it? Bet we have the most food banks too
See, the UK is at the top of a lot of lists.

Aye. Vow now Brown cow...

Took him a while but he's a true blue now.

You would have thought that even a UKIP candidate might have been expected to knowthe name of his potential constituency.
He's standing for ARLESEY.

I hope with all my heart that it gave them all indigestion.
Funded by the UK government!

I will not pretend I liked Johann Lamont.
But she was worth ten of this pillock
who is trying to blame his mess on her.
Man up, you slimy creep. You'll make no
friends that way.

You LOVE them, dontcha?

Not a huge difference between them
Ed would rather do business with Dave, than Nicola.

Love the idea of Pickles as the fat monk.

Well done Jim. Quite a turn out.

Well done Nicola. Quite a turn out.

Absolutely right. You politicians are nothing special
You are our staff.
Some would do well to remember that.