A breath of fresh air

NATION 1 Faroe Islands – the connected nation https://youtu.be/5qinWJqgGMw via @YouTube

Having just viewed the excellent programme put together by the folk at Phantom Power and Lesley Riddoch called “Nation: Faroe Islands, the connected nation” as a committed advocate for a self-governing Scotland I feel energised. After about a week of watching my Twitter feed and Facebook depressingly being filled up with ideologues of varying viewpoints competing as to who can shout the loudest and be the most vocal and noisy about how their opinion is undoubtedly and absolutely the way to independence, pomposity and grandstanding seeming to be for some the order of the day, self-awareness possibly not so much, it gladdens the heart to see a snapshot of what is possible for a small nation to achieve, if as a country we have the will and confidence to grasp our opportunities. I don’t think any of us of an independent mind can argue with that one.

World class Wi-Fi all over the islands as far as way way way out to sea, better than Singapore, whose highly lucrative financial services rely heavily on communications technology, joined up infrastructure which makes living on several small land masses not a problem, its own airline, its own newspapers and amongst its TV channels one which produces news programmes of international news from a Faroese perspective, a parliament which makes decisions on the whole range of powers which an independent country should have, taxation, health, education, trading agreements, and more, but still tied just ever so slightly by the thinnest of wee thin threads to their version of Big Brother, Denmark. A thread they feel confident enough to cut, of their own decision, without interference from said Danes, any time in the future that they choose to do so.

We all know that the nonsensical statement that the Gordy Broon’s,the Baron Darling’s of Raspberry Roulade and Save me a piece of the crackling Cameron used to make about the post-Vow Scotland becoming the most powerful devolved parliament in the known galaxy has always been complete bollox, however the same could not be said for the Faroe Islands. They are the real deal, and all with a population the size of Falkirk with a bit of Larbert and Stenhousemuir thrown in, not all of it mind.

It’s always interesting to hear how folk of other countries see us, as Scots, and invariably it seems to me when the subject turns to sovereignty our friends from other lands tend to consistently project the same or similar views in their response. This tends to be along the lines of as politely and as inoffensively as they can questioning whether we are quite of sound mind letting another nation govern us.

We have a country with natural and renewable resources that any other country in the world would gladly accept having even a fraction of, we’ve got a world class established food and drinks industry with origin linked to high quality branded all over it and highly respected around the world, we’ve innovation in new technology, a first class tertiary education sector, tourism potential only others could dream of, a strong financial services sector and a geographically strategic position perfectly positioned to be a hub for all sorts of trade and service arrangements both with Europe, the Nordic countries, and dare I say it by continuing a trading partnership with a very close neighbour to the south, as part of that new mythical entity that has arrived on the scene, the one that gets flung at us as a threat these days, to be removed should we leave them, the ‘UK internal market’. That tall tale is clearly designed for the dafties of the Daily Mail. The idea that a remaining UK in a fit of pique would destabilise thousands of businesses with branches and subsidiaries all across the islands of Britain because the northern bit of the A74 happens to be in an independent country is beyond ludicrous and should be taken with enough salt to empty the Goderich salt-mine in Ontario.

Thanks Lesley, thanks Phantom Power, you’ve cleared away the temporarily scunnered factor in this ardent believer of an independent Scotland. Something as positive as this documentary clearly illustrates that Scotland will be so much better off in every way once it returns to its rightful state as an independent nation.

Building the will and the confidence in others to get us over the line is our job, the many thousands of grassroots advocates for Indy. I have no doubt we will do that successfully.

Sounding hollow

Ye cannae talk tae her in the street, ye cannae talk tae her about her party’s policies, ye cannae talk tae her about the content of a speech she has made. When her lizard overlords regularly attempt to crack funny amongst the Home Counties set with their latest attempts to austerrify the living daylights out of the poor and the vulnerable she disappears down a rabbit-hole somewhere until the heat dies down, But hey, she’s the sensible pragmatic people person of Conservatism. Wow, what a spin that one is.

Does anybody seriously, at all, think that any of the guff being reported in the Scottish daily sook-ups and the British state media in Scotland about Ruth Davidson (in a speech journalists weren’t allowed to ask her about) challenging her London masters policies on immigration limits and public spending, she’s standing up for the NHS and standing against the rich, is not contrived? You don’t think so? Would you like to buy the Forth Bridge?

This is just another episode of the longstanding strategy of Tory deception designed to somehow place an image in the minds of Scotland’s voters that the Ruth Davidson Party of Scotland, including its various weirdoes, far-right fanatics, racists and bigots, aren’t actually anything to do with the Conservative Party Central Office mothership. No, they are middle of the roaders, in fact they are nearly almost just about socialist if it wisnae for their fetish to bring back child chimney sweepers, hanging and workhouses.

The BBC online love-in report on the speech refers to Davidson’s words being “a sign of her growing confidence and stature within the Conservative Party”. I would suggest that self-confidence is not really something she has a problem with. She’s all for restoring faith in “centre ground values” in politics, is Ruth, according to her words. For us mortals that reads let’s get back to the days when the electorate were so disillusioned with politics that nobody really bothered or noticed that much that the two party inter-mingled neo-liberal trough munchers of Blair and Cameron were ripping them off asap, all of this independence nonsense unsettles the ‘wealth creators’.

Known as a serial flip-flopper on policy ( at various points in time over the last four years she’s held every conceivable view on Brexit apart from advocating a British Expeditionary Force taking part in a beach landing on the Costa Del Sol) we’ll see how long it takes before she’s back telling us that the wealthy have too heavy a tax burden and are being chased away from one party Scotland.

Ruth’s PR aides have obviously learned though from the past. The tactic of not allowing journalists to question her speech comes after an awkward interview with the state broadcaster last May on the subject of immigration when she appeared to be simultaneously suggesting that she wanted the overall number of migrants coming to Scotland to be reduced, increased and kept about the same level, all at the same time.

The house of straw

Oh, how it must grate the teeth of the unionist beast. Tortured, like being subjected to the confines of a small dark cupboard where someone is constantly scraping a six inch nail along a panel of corrugated iron, watching the First Minister of Scotland do what it is she has been democratically elected to do, protect the interests of her people, even the ones who didn’t vote for her, and her country. She does this very well and I think in these dire times of uncertainty she is becoming more stateswomen-like by the day.

Comparisons with her political opponents in Scotland reveal that Nicola Sturgeon is way out on her own in terms of capability and competence for her role. Her nearest rival is stuck in a Walter Mitty world where she sees’ herself as a down to earth right-on Woman of the People whilst at the same time she avoids having to deal with actual real people ( kind of like her boss in London in that sense), a fabricator of self-victimhood when faced with an inconvenient constituent, she is someone with a widely inflated sense of her own importance, and is, as my dear auld beloved grandmother would attest if she was still with us, “a bit of a blaw”.

As the leader of Scotland’s currently limited devolved government Nicola Sturgeon has endured many head shaking months of the brought to reality Ealing tragi-comedy of Brexit, observing with frustration the incompetence of a cabal of right-wing UK government euro-separatists, whose limited intellectual capacity exposes them clearly as not fit-for-purpose with regards to the complexity of the task in hand (divorcing the UK from the largest tariff-free market for its goods in the world, yet somehow avoiding financial suicide). She has, for the most part, kept her powder dry where time and again any possibility of co-operation on Europe in the fictional equal partnership that is the Union has been crushed under arrogant posh boy jackboots. She has done her very utmost, and is continuing to do so, to protect the democratic devolution settlement which Holyrood’s reconvened Scottish Parliament is built upon.

Her visit to Brussels yesterday, to open the expanded Scotland House, a hub for Scottish business in Europe, and to meet with the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, is a shrewd move which no doubt will attract the vengeful ire of the red, white and blue purveyors of tomorrow’s pizza crunch wrappers and the locally situated promoters of governance by undemocratic remote proxy, Mundell of the ermine earmuffs, that weird fellow who represents Aberdeen from Saddam Hussein’s throne, the wobbly football linesman who succumbs to imaginary sniper fire and others.

There is no sense to be had from London on Brexit, no inclusion, no consultation, apart from ticking boxes in various rounds of photo opportunity Joint Consultation of a titular nature, with the emphasis placed firmly on the first syllable where David Mundell was in attendance. There is no grand plan for the UK to take one great bound and be free and live out a return to mini- empire fantasy as Trump validators. The factional wolves are gathering in Whitehall, and the nearer it gets to March next year the closer it gets to the moment when they consume each other. Scotland needs to be ready for that.

Keep juggling the plates First Minister, keep making a high profile case for Scotland in the single market and the Customs Union, keep resisting Westminster on the destination of returned powers, keep pushing the fair and legitimate democratic case for Scotland to return to its rightful independent status, and surely, as the reckoning hour for Brexit comes upon the UK government, we will get our chance, and we will prevail.

Hysteria and mince

Plagues of marauding locusts darken the sky. There’s a twin tsunami hurtling up the Clyde and the Forth, engulfing everything in their path, the wind turbines of the energy renewable variety around the hills and our coastline have blown away in an unlucky passing sandstorm originating in the Gobi Desert, the extinct volcanoes under Edinburgh and Stirling Castles are making a strange eerie watery farting sound, and the British media’s Scottish area contingent have gotten a haud of the Scottish Government Sustainable Growth Commission report.

We’re all doomed! It’ll never work. 25 years it’ll take, 25 years I tell you, 25 years after separatism before strict plain bread rationing will be phased out, before granny can come out of the bomb shelter, grasping her pension book in her gnarled undernourished wee haund, suggests the always good for a laugh Hootsmon.

The winner of the pure brass neck award, as reported by the British state broadcaster goes to… yes you’ve guessed it, Colonel Ruth of the Ruth Davidson for Scotland Party, who in response to the detailed proposals and recommendations of the report, a report which have been prepared to promote a national discussion about strategies to improve the lives and fortunes of Scotland’s future generations, uttered “I’m not entirely sure that is enough for the people of Scotland to want to gamble their mortgage on, their pensions on, their wages on and their future on.”

Ruth of course works for a political party which over the course of the last three years have committed the entire UK to a truly dire economic nightmare through its mismanagement of its own fanatical right wing elements and its amateur and arrogant approach to relationships with its major trading partners, a prospect that may well result in a financial depression akin to, or worse than 2008. Her party of course have no detailed proposals or recommendations to handle any of this, other than hot air and old school ties. A gamble Ruth? It’s the difference between stepping off the Titanic into a life raft or standing to attention in the sloshing around ballroom whilst the band plays Rule Britannia.

There is much to welcome in the Growth Report for those of an independence mind. We don’t all agree with all of it. That’s kind of the idea. It’s a start point to a discussion. Nothing is set in concrete. Let those that want to rant, rave and attempt to disparage get on with it. Save your energies for the positive debate ahead. We’re on the road.

Coming up a wee bit short

Being of a certain age,and to use a well worn analogy, right now It feels to me a bit like the classic Scotland World Cup nearly-win moments when Stevie Nicol missed a sitter against a ten man Uruguayan team in 1986 or the aftermath of Archie Gemmill’s wonder goal bringing us within a goal of qualification only to be cancelled out by a long range Dutch thunderbolt in 1978.

The recommendation from the Growth Commission report that Scotland continues to use the pound until some unspecified time , in an ‘extended transition period’ is going to cause us, the grassroots foot-soldiers of the independence movement for Scotland, exactly the same set of problems we had before in convincing our fellow country folk that our nation is best served by a government who live there and have Scotland’s interests first and foremost in mind.

We’ll still be at the mercy of the London treasury and the remaining UK economy, Scotland will have very little control of the financial levers that we crave, and are so sure that given the opportunity we can manage as a small compact Independent European state better than Big Brother, and the economic Andromeda Strain of Brexit, short, medium and long-term that we would hope independence would buffer us against will still severely damage our economy as if we were still part of the UK.

All of the usual suspects are going to have a field day. Cue wheeling out Gordy Broon, Lord Roulade of dark eyebrows, Philly the bookie Hammond and brush down Gideon out of his box of mothballs for a round of the Sunday’s in the next few weeks.

The recommendation is that we do not enter a currency union but create the Scottish regulatory framework to carry out the function of the Treasury in Scotland. You can see how London will spin that one to the undecided. Why bother? Why spend the set up costs? We still control the currency and interest rates.

Don’t make the job harder for us please. We need to get this right. We need to be able to convince our friends that critical decisions about our country will be in our hands and out-with the reach of British state interference.

Winding themselves up

My goodness there is some serious ersesqueakery ramping up over the last few days in the minds of those with a vested interest in stopping Scotland returning to its rightful state as an independent self- governing progressive social democratic country in the 21st century world.

All of this hysteria has arisen since First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, almost apologetic in her attempts to portray low key, stated to Robert Peston that the publication of the long awaited Growth Commission report into the opportunities for Scotland of independence will start off a period of, she hopes, sensible debate about the independence question.

A subject that most of those unionist high profilers talk about almost endlessly seems to have set them off into paroxysms of anxiety akin to Clive Dunn’s Corporal Jones of Dad’s Army charging hither and thither shouting ‘don’t panic, don’t panic’ at the top of his voice when the First Minister mentions it.

You’d think she’d just called a general strike, recalled the SNP group of MP’s from Westminster, and announced a hundred thousand strong march to London to demand immediate independence by their reaction to her comments. I really think they are rattled.

The day after the First Minister appeared on the Peston show saw a unionist event in London, organised by one of the biggest and most influential right-wing UK think tanks, and publicised heavily in the state media, showcase speeches from those two good old ‘socialists’ Baron Darling of Roulanish and Jim ‘The Eggman’ Murphy, alongside Michael Gove and Ruth Davidson of the Ruth Davidson Scotland Party. Dearie me, what a dubious line up that is to haunt the same stage at the same time.

This mob are getting ready. There’s a lot of campaign money from wealthy unionist donors quietly getting squirrelled away for when the negative propaganda rocket boosters on Project Fear need to be turned to Max. Have no doubt, they are sensing a mood change amongst the undecided. They can take nothing for granted.

This bunch of fine examples of Proud Scots speeches at the event, however, suggested that they must think that their target audience, not those in the room listening to them, you, who the BBC, the Hootsmon, and the rest are disseminating their words to, must be high on a new and particularly mind altering form of crack cocaine.

Baron Roulade of the dark eye bush boldly announced in his bang up to date, finger on the pulse wisdom, that “there will not be another independence vote in the near future, and possibly not in my lifetime”. As someone on Twitter suggested the other day in response ‘ Really? I didn’t know he was ill’.

Jim Murphy, who seems to have been sprung from the temperature controlled cool room of a well known soft drink company, (he’ll soon be the only sugary thing left in Irn-Bru) apparently, according to him, isnae a unionist, and has never been one. “He’s a social democrat for whom the Union is a vital part of sharing risk and reward.” Reward being very big on Jim’s agenda.

Michael Gove, who surely has the pinup personality and look of 21st century right wing reckless economic isolationism about him takes the Kit Kat though with his assertion that Brexit has strengthened the Union, a precious Union he suggests with its progressive and liberal free speech contrasts with us dafties on the left who stilt individual success and keep working people, particularly the ones that his party’s austerity policies are ruining the lives of, down. I really do not know what planet he comes from. It’s certainly not anywhere close by the Moon.

At least we knew what Ruth Davidson would say, because we hear it often enough. Day job, give it a rest Nicola, don’t give them permission to have a referendum boss, all the usual diatribes.

All of them came up with the same conclusion. Publicly in their view the people of Scotland do not want a referendum on independence.

Tell that to the many thousands who marched just a few Saturdays ago. Tell that to the many more who support the belief that Scotland is best governed by the people who live there.

Nicola Sturgeon said on the Peston show the other day, and I paraphrase, that the work of the Growth Commission which will be presented later this week will explore the opportunities available to Scotland through independence in a positive, hopeful way, encouraging thoughtful questioning and debate, in sharp contrast to Brexit where the public are being asked to form opinions and plan for negative consequences with very little concrete knowledge of what is coming.

Undoubtedly every single recommendation in the Growth Commission report will be spotlighted, pilloried, top headlined by Jackie Burd skateboarding in the usual pet panel of unionist negative head shaking academic and business experts, and blasted in tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappers for months.

But Hope and positivity took a Yes Campaign in 2014 from limited polling numbers to very nearly pulling it off on 18th September that year. We are getting nearer the start of round two and being able to communicate what life in an independent Scotland can be like via the information produced in this report, and other sources, to those not yet convinced, is going to be vital. We must,and will,get that right.

Be assured, we’ve got them rattled good and proper.

Scotland will be so much better off, in every way, once it returns to its rightful independent state.

Just not credible

He’s on the extra strong glue again. Would this fella no’ just gie ye a severe dose ae the dry boak?

Golly gosh, we’re all looking at this the wrong way, this Brexit power grab thing. Aye, we’ve all picked it up wrong because, according tae Davie the London snake oil salesman, we’re just no’ bright enough to understand the subtleties.

Only right wing baw-faced trickle downers with designs on all-expenses-paid daily naps in a musty auld chamber for the rest of their puff understand all of this. It’s all just too ‘ technical’ for us wee nyaffs and peasants. We should just leave all of that stuff to them. We’ll only end up wae a sore head thinking about it.

He’s awful disappointed about the hoo-haa surrounding all of this, and the fact that us nasty separatists, keen to free ourselves from the quicksand of his adopted country, are getting all constitutional about his not nasty, but patriotic, separatists at Westminster trying to do the same thing to mainland Europe, (they think, entirely bizarrely whilst persuading Jacque, Pedro and Hans Foreign chap to keep allowing them access to privileges they currently pay for for nothing).

As usual, he’s also following that up by telling us what the people of Scotland want, without any remote qualification to do so, apart from the wee wrist band he wears at parties which says ‘ I’m the Secretary of State for Scotland, please don’t put your hands near my mouth’.

Davie has one job, one job only to do in Scotland, keep the public docile by pushing the agenda away from the important stories which impact their lives as much as possible. The man just isnae credible.

I’m half expecting him to appear on any of the state broadcaster’s propaganda platforms in Scotland around the time when his government officially ignore the democratic will of the Scottish parliament to tell us that a giant large-fanged farting rabbit has been spotted frightening the sheep on the Pentland Hills and the people of Scotland want something done about it. He’d be as well, it would make as much sense as any of the other diversionary nonsense he talks. I wonder how he sleeps at night.

An abomination

The lawn was in pristine condition. Freshly trimmed, cut to a uniform standard federal government regulation length, edges straight as a ruler, the lines clipped into the grass by an expensive sit-on mower were equal in their parallel impressiveness.

Out of the clear blue sky over the capital city came the thunderous sound of the bulky aircraft, its giant rotors powering down as its twin pilots laid the large navy helicopter’s wheels gently on the carpet-like green.

Immediately, and almost automatically, the aircraft’s door opened, a young man in military uniform unhooked a short four stair walkway, which was immediately covered by another young man in a military uniform with a red carpet, a carpet which extended 50 yards from the bottom of the walkway towards a large off-white edifice in the near distance.

The marine band struck up ‘Hail to the Chief” as a tall bulky business suited figure with impossible hair and a slightly off-putting glow to much of his facial colouring, the area’s around his eye sockets seeming lighter in hue to the rest of his face, emerged from the aircraft, waved, stepped down onto the lawn, and with a Hollywood style war movie salute to the serviceman standing to attention beside him, strolled along the red carpet, before stopping briefly for photos with an invited group of southern gentlemen of the Lord. Charismatic white men whose substantial blue-collar fire and damnation led congregations during stadium-sized sermons had contributed, some perhaps unwittingly, to the electoral success of the man now shaking their hands.

As the press-pack cameras flashed in the gathering shade of the late afternoon out of the corner of his eye the bulky man caught sight of a creature soaring across his line of sight.

A magnificent bird, a dove, its wings spread to float on any passing thermal, rose and swooped, circled, clean, innocent, beautiful. Its stark brilliant whiteness almost incandescent, it turned and gently landed on an apple tree 20 or so feet from the assembled dignitaries, watching, as if curious about what the fuss was all about.

The strangely coloured focus of the attention stared at the creature for a moment, before turning to the younger man who was only ever two steps away from him at any moment with questions. “What is that? Can we use it? Can we place it in a photo opportunity? Can we gain anything from it? Is it financially valuable to me? Could it add any value to my Presidency? Does it adore me, does it love me? Is it loyal to me? Would it die for me? Would it lie for me? Does it admire me, does it envy my superior intellect? Does it appear awestruck at my New York street smarts? Does it quake at my power? Does it feel dominated by me? Does it want to feel dominated by me?”

“No Mr President. It is just a bird, a dove, I think. We get those.”

The bulky man’s eyes narrowed as he spoke “Kill it.”

Illuminating the end of the Union

The Scottish parliament will vote to make a significant decision today which might just be the spark for the beginning of a series of events which will result in the declaration of an independent Scotland within the lifetime of the current parliament.

The British state, represented by its loyal acolytes in Scotland, David Mundell, Ruth Davidson, the spokesperson for everything, Adam Tomkins, et al, as is their function, continue to downplay the significance of their government trampling all over the devolution settlement in the name of taking back control from Europe.

The public aren’t interested in all of this, it’s peripheral to their lives, tetchy Davie of the ermine fetish tells us. Keep them ignorant, keep them docile. All of this uncertainty is clearly the SNP’s fault, reckons Tomkins. That infernal Sturgeon woman is up to mischief-making again.

They’d have us see First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as being on some sort of an ego trip, portraying her in a kind of an arrogant Jack Nicholson role, a Colonel Jessup in this movie version of ‘ A Few Good Men’ lording it up at the lunch table and suddenly turning nasty on poor Theresa May when she asks for cooperation to ensure that all those returned non-reserved powers coming back from Brussels end up resting with Westminster for initially seven years. ” Of course you can have that Theresa” The nasty First Minister would say. “You know I’m here to help you, don’t you? Of course you can have our consent, but you are going to have to ask me nicely.” (if you’ve seen the old movie you’ve just read that in Jack Nicholson’s voice).

The Scottish parliament not providing consent for London’s EU Withdrawal Bill will result in the democratic will of the people of Scotland being ignored, yet again, by Westminster, who will simply inflict a solid steel-toe-capped boot to the constitutional Holyrood stones, whilst telling everyone who will listen that they only agreed not to interfere with devolved powers in ‘normal’ times, and Brexit is not ‘normal’.

Overruling and entirely disrespecting the Scottish parliament will be spun as the only way to protect and safeguard all parts of the UK from the coming economic disaster of Brexit, which when it does happen, will still end up somehow being our fault.

The media will help too. They will try and persuade us that this noble patriotic act by Westminster is the sensible response to Scottish separatist intransigence.We’ll hear about all of this briefly, for a day or two, possibly in amongst vague intelligence briefings reported by the BBC about intangible security threats the country should be concentrating on rather than minor parochial regional issues like this, then they’ll try and lose the story, leaving us of an independence mind being accused of calling ‘grievance’ every time we mention it again.

The days of ‘don’t leave us Scotland, lead us’ are long gone. Today might just be the spark that illuminates the beginning of the end of the Union.

Peripheral to people’s lives

Reading in the Herald yesterday about London’s man in Scotland, Lord Fluffy-to-be, David Mundell’s, wee hissy fit over not getting his own way in the ongoing consultative, awfy joined up, transparent, on the level, cards on the table, full and frankly discussed, I think we’re making progress, we respect each other’s position, obstinate, arrogant, overbearing and superior, not us old chap, we’re British, saga about who gets ownership of all powers agricultural, fishing and other goodies being hauled back from EU regulatory control once the Tories consign the UK to a real life rerun of Boys from the Blackstuff.

The man is indeed a blawbag of a considerable magnitude. ‘Scots are fed up with constitutional nit-picking over post-Brexit powers and just want to see agreement’ says Davey employing his usual Scots think, feel, say, don’t want, have decided, opening salvo to any statement he makes, usually from somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere where he’s part of a trade jolly extolling the virtues of items like Tunnocks tea cakes, John Bull whisky and British square sausage.

Where does he get the idea that he is qualified to tell us what the people of Scotland want? He’s part of a formula, he comes out with this nonsense, and the Hootsmon, the Herald and the British state broadcaster publicise it, in the hope that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Naebody is bothered about this sort of stuff, it’s peripheral to people’s lives, reckons the Sheriff of Sookingham. He works for a government whose intention over these many months has simply been to stare down those from his own country who stand in protection of a democratic devolution settlement hard won by his countryfolk, a government which will not give a second thought to rolling back the years, returning powers that legally are not theirs to themselves, and selling out Scotland’s remaining fishing fleet and it’s farming communities in the name of swelling the coffers of London’s treasury.

Economically over the long term they need us more than we need them. Don’t let short term Project Fear snapshots of financial performance fool you. They need Scotland’s resources and exports. Until we decide to stop letting them take advantage of us they will continue to do so.

Davie thinks we should trust him. I really wouldn’t trust him to tell me that day follows night. In the past those in the role of Scottish Secretary could be relied upon to try and improve the lot, where they could, of the people of Scotland, even in Thatcher’s day George Younger was known to have talked the mad witch down off the ledge on some of the wilder experiments she was considering for Scotland, but this conniving individual? He’s an acronym which apparently stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt, but not in his case.