Coronation sicken

The beginning of May would be a very good time to escape the country, if you can afford to seeing as how the energy price cap comes to an end in April and millions of households will be struggling to afford their gas and electricity bills, a Westminster created utter disgrace…

Winning a de facto referendum is within our grasp

A major new poll for The National has found that a clear majority of voters would back pro-independence parties if the next UK General Election were to be used as a de facto independence referendum. In such a scenario total of 54.4% of voters would give their votes to either the…

The Twilight Zone

Alister Jack has spent the past week or so refusing to explain his reasons for blowing up the devolution settlement by making unprecedented use of a section 35 order to veto the Gender Recognition Reform Bill passed by the Scottish Parliament after extensive debate and consultation and with cross-party support. As…

The Trojan horse

Alister Jack, the Viceroy of the Province of North Britain, has compounded his contempt for the Scottish Parliament by refusing to appear before a Holyrood committee to explain his reasons for his unprecedented use of a section 35 order to veto a Holyrood bill relating to devolved matters which was passed…

Prime Minister’s Quarrelling

There’s pointlessness, and then there’s Prime Minister’s Question, where democracy goes to kill itself, who needs to stare aimlessly at peeling wallpaper when every week we are confronted with this joyless exercise in futility. There may once have been a time when the Prime Minister gave a serious and informative response…

Scotland’s future in SNP members’ hands

Rish! Sunak brought his exclamation mark of ambition on a visit to Scotland last week to patronise the locals, but it couldn’t disguise the fact that he is as clueless in his assertions about Scottish politics as the Pope. Last week Pope Frances claimed that ‘the English’ had resolved the Scottish…

Delaying the inevitable

On Tuesday the Scottish Parliament held its first debate of 2023, a year in which, if democracy in the UK was functioning properly, there should have been a Scottish independence referendum. But as we have all learned to our cost, democracy in this Greater Englandshire which likes to be known by…

Tweedledrear and Tweedletrump

On Wednesday it was Rishi Sunak mouthing vague patronising platitudes, and not to be outdone, on Thursday it was the turn of Keir Starmer. Conscious of my obligations to the readers of this blog, I tried to listen to the speech all the way through, fully intending to jot down notes…

Simple arithmetic with Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak, remember him? He’s the latest unelected Prime Minister, a man who was rejected by his own party and who was awarded the job without any vote after the previous unelected incumbent tanked the economy in just two weeks, and cost the public purse some £60 billion in the process…

Scotland has the energy : it needs the power

On Tuesday a major new report about Scotland’s energy was published by an independent think tank, Bottom Line. You probably heard nothing about it because this was a report from an independent think tank which showed the importance of Scottish independence if Scotland, which remains an important producer of oil and…

2023 could be an election year

Well, here we are, another year, and no doubt another Conservative outrage against democracy and decency just around the corner. This is the year when Scotland ought to have been having another independence referendum, but we all know that isn’t going to happen – at least not this October – because…

‘Tis the Season to be easin’

It’s that time of the year again when we eat too much, drink too much, and wake up the next day with a killer hangover, which is just your body’s way of saying :”Go and stay in your room young man/lady, and think very carefully about what you have done.” This…

The Aye right reflex

Well I am back online again, thank you to everyone who helped. I have lost some data, my own fault for not backing everything up for a few weeks, but it’s nothing I can’t live without. The problem was that the SSD drive in the old laptop gave up the ghost….

Tech disaster

Sorry, but there won’t be a new blog post today or for a couple of days. Unfortunately I have had a major tech disaster. My laptop has died and I am going to have to buy a new one. There’s nothing sinister going on, it was just an elderly machine and…