Beyond delusion

Aye, they were most definitely out in force last night in the Commons. Full moon or not, the hooray howlers and self-serving wailers were in maximum frenzy mode as the madness beyond satire which is Brexit continues unabated in the parliament of unacknowledged exceptionalism.

As we all know, as we have all known from the very moment Boris Johnson and the caricature who requires no caricature, Michael Gove, turned slightly pale at the result and scurried into the back of revving up BMW’s (built in Berlin) with expressions on their faces as if to say ‘ they actually fell for it, no, really they did, what are we going to do now?’, yes, we all knew right then that the poor old Europeans are for it.

It was inevitable. The EU are about to get the blame for the more than two and half years of breath-taking incompetence displayed by the British state in regards to securing a future relationship with its closest trading partners of the last half century.
 
This shambles is not so much about the UK government shooting themselves in the foot, it’s more about them cutting each toe off both feet individually one at a time by mistake whilst trimming their toenails, then chopping what’s left of one of their feet off with an axe whilst trying to shoo a curious midgie away from the open wound where their pinkie toe used tae be. However the propaganda, as is always the case in the British media, tells a different story.
 
Following the voting on proposed amendments to the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, or sitting on your hands if you are a Labour MP (what is the point of Labour again?) the Daily Hate Mail is trumpeting Theresa May as the hero of the hour, saving old blighty when the chips were down, the scourge of shifty-eyed garlic smelling foreigners in dark business suits. Their editorial team only just stopping short of calling for a Falklands style Taskforce to be launched from Portsmouth by Saturday to sail up and down the coast of France and Spain shouting ‘Who are you looking at?’ through loudhailers every time they pass a small fishing boat or pleasure craft.
 
In a wave of national euphoria the right–wing press will have the ‘Strong’ and ‘Stable’ Prime Minister, fresh out of weak and wobbly, carried shoulder high around the playing fields of Eton, to cries of “Bravo old girl” and “ We’re England, can’t they see?  Damn their eyes old Totty”, then lifted on to a waiting helicopter of the Queen’s Flight bound for Brussels, where she’ll be met on the tarmac by the band of the Coldstream Guards, playing Colonel Bogey, a squadron of the Household Cavalry in full gleaming breastplates and tassels, and right at the back, the staunch lads and lassies of the Boyne and Billygoat drum majorettes, all of whom will accompany her in triumphant procession to the European Parliament buildings.
 
As she approaches the front entrance of the imposing den of euro-crats our wondrous leader will see ahead of her scores of Bordeaux soaked red-faced ‘foreign’ diplomats in expensive suits, and the odd Irish man and woman, diving for cover amongst foliage in the surrounding gardens, anxious to escape the powerful wrath of a slumbering Empire roused into action.  She will let a slight smile cross her visage at this as she waves to the bewildered crowds of Belgian peasants on both sides of the impressive pageant.
 
To trumpets blaring, and a rousing chorus of thon dirge about scattering enemies, Marshal Wade and crushing rebellious Scots, she’ll emerge from her open-topped Daimler (designed in Stuttgart) and take the few short steps to the imposing front door of the building. As if by magic the pantomime dressed figure of ‘Black Rod’ (parliamentary traditions must be observed, Order! Order!) will appear by her side, take out his big pointy stick and gie it laldy rat-a-tat upon the polished wooden door.
 
As the door slides slowly open the modern day Boadicea will see before her the appearing faces of Messrs Barnier, Tusk and Juncker, looking somewhat bored.
 
‘Ahh gentlemen. I bring you the joyous news that you are held in great affection by Her Majesty’s Government, and Sammy Wilson.

Secondly ,in light of the fact that undisputedly we are British, and you are not, I call upon you to disregard all of the nonsense I previously came to you with, and we both agreed upon, about protecting one of your community member’s from economic strife and a possible return to cross border violent mayhem, and instead agree to this blank piece of paper I’m handing you now. C’mon, what do you say? You can trust us.’

Right there, right then, will be the moment where the Mail’s fantasy will turn sour….
 
As Michel Barnier thinks to himself ‘I really must get some WD40 into the hinges on that door’, as he firmly closes it behind him.
 
C’mon Scotland, there is a farce playing out here that you need to walk away from, and soon.
 

Whistling in the wind

My late, dear departed, and much lamented, grandmother had a phrase or two for it. Phrases which sum up the behaviour of the increasingly desperate bunch of professional politicians, both right-wing and their pretendy left-wing friends across the chamber at Westminster.

Both are committed to a two party duopoly in the maintenance of their power, both are only interested in their own little internal party power struggles, to the extreme detriment of the future economic and cultural prosperity of the UK. Gran would have said of the likes of Boris Johnson, Gove or Big Snooty of the 18th century “ He’s a Blaw of Hell! He’s far too full of his ain self-importance” and she wouldn’t have been wrong.
 
The Downing Street Disco-Dancing and Robotic Repetitive Sound Machine Festival continues this week as frantic efforts are made, mainly involving turning over rocks to see what creeps out from underneath, to convince the extreme end of the Tory Party and some Norn Irn bigots and flute players (the ones who appear to be confused about what the bribe was actually for) that the option is somehow open to discard or amend any arrangements for the so-called backstop which helps protect the rights of the EU citizens who will remain in the part of the island of Ireland which isn’t included in the new isolationist mini-empire, ensures that the Good Friday Agreement isn’t about to be torn up which would result in the horrific mayhem of the past returning to the north of the island, and in fact gives Northern Ireland an economic advantage over countries like, em, Scotland.

This is an advantage which the self-flagellating unionist politicians of that part of Ireland would rather not have, preferring a Queen’s Jubilee tea towel and a bowler hat autographed by Prince William, signed “ Best wishes from King Billy to be” instead. Go figure.

Neither of these groups will take much convincing on the intended spirit of the proposal. The big problem will be convincing them that Theresa May and her ever growing band of Brexit Ministers, some of whom apparently who have only recently found out that they live on an island, can actually do what they say they can do, which they can’t and they won’t.
 
Somebody in the meedja asked those nice, but thoroughly confused, and now totally bewildered, people at the EU, sick to the back teeth of popcorn and prone to automatically turn their TV’s to the Le Peppa Pig Channel at the very mention of the word Brexit on their local news channels, what they thought about Britain coming back to them at this stage to amend the provisions of the backstop arrangement.

The reply, a resigned predicable and regretful, (and I paraphrase) ‘It’s the UK’s choice to leave, we would rather they stayed. We’ve finished the negotiation phase. The EU has accepted the arrangement Mrs May brought to us. Effectively Britain’s political chattering classes are chattering amongst themselves only, and for very little purpose’.

However, by the end of the week the BBC will be telling you that the complete disaster which Brexit is increasingly looking likely to be is somehow the EU’s fault.
 
Aye, Gran knew her stuff.
 
Scotland has a way out of this. Let’s do it. Let’s do it soon.

Let off the hook

In these times of grave uncertainty, where chaos and malign self-destructive acts of a political nature are becoming the norm, it is at least reassuring, if predictable, and somewhat depressing, that the editorial perspective of the media arm of British nationalism, entrenched in their perpetual role of maintaining the established constitutional position, have not deviated one iota from their mission. In fact, obviously feeling pressured by the sound of a juggernaut starting to rev up over their northern horizon, they’ve stepped up their campaign to discredit all that threatens the Great British norms.
 
We’ve moved on from Salmond, then Salmond and Sturgeon, then SNP civil war (again) then SNP crisis, then leadership crisis, then SNP ‘heavy weights’ urge FM to re-consider as there is no appetite for a second Indy Ref, now we’re onto Chief Executive of the SNP, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell. It’s relentless. Anyone would think they were trying to divert attention away from a real crisis somewhere else.
 
Meanwhile the disco dancing droner of Downing Street continues on her merry way (now surely running on near spent exhaust fumes alone) in her ultra-repetitive drive to run down a self-inflicted clock on a ‘deal’ that nobody wants, neither Leavers, Remainers, hard line Brexiteers or EU negotiators want it.

She has suffered a defeat of an unprecedented magnitude for a sitting Prime Minister in Parliament, a defeat that would have seen any other premier (in what were considered normal times before Brexit) resign and toddle off to a quiet life of jotting down memoirs, corporate stipends and lobbying for multinationals. Yet she carries on like everything is on track, and this, and the many other humiliations she has suffered over the last couple of years, never happened. Her position should be untenable.
 
The question needs to be asked. Why are the media letting this government off the hook? Can there be any clearer indication for those swithering one way, then back, on the subject of Scotland’s future, that something smells more than a bit off in the reporting coverage of the long slow agonising  downfall of a failed state? A failed state incapable of moving on from a bygone imperial past, completely unable to modernise and genuinely work in partnership with others, both abroad and with its closest neighbour to its northern border, for the common good, not just their own.
 
Independence for Scotland now. Let’s get to it.
 

A bigger priority

There is no optimum moment, no perfect time, to launch a campaign to return responsibility for the governance of the country of Scotland to the people of Scotland.

If we are waiting for that elusive moment when the ducks are all lined up perfectly we are wasting our time and energy.

Achieving a consensus by majority that Scotland’s future is best served by disentangling itself from the rule of its southern neighbour will only ever be achieved once a date to consult the views of Scots on their constitutional future has been fixed, and the case is convincingly made for a country where the interests of Scotland’s people come first.

Scottish voters not wedded to self-government, not attuned to the premise that Scotland as part of an entirely mis-named Union is simply considered an asset to be used for whatever purpose London’s Westminster government deems necessary to perpetuate the retention of the wealth and power of an entrenched elite, need to be persuaded, by being exposed to convincing, well communicated, supporting facts, to encourage them to undertake their own research, their own personal journey to Yes.

I really do hope that during all of the lengthy farce of Brexit the SNP have quietly had some clear thinking strategic minds working away in the background on campaign planning, on communication strategies, on countering Project Fear, on proposals to support grassroots groups through a campaign, on a draft consultation Constitution for an independent Scotland to be shared with voters, on alternative strategies to proceed once our lords and masters tell us we can’t be consulted again about our future because ‘now is not the right time,’ on making preparations to set out comparisons between what Brexit will mean in terms of impacts on every day life against how things may be living in an independent Scotland which has taken over the warm seat at the EU table which rUK has given up. (they could be forgiven for not getting too far with that one just yet,no one really knows what the impact will be further down the line).

Importantly too, using Brexit as a learning exercise, and by understanding the experiences of countless former imperial colonies seeking and eventually achieving independence, ways must be found to counter and bypass the endless procrastination, inertia, bluster, repetitive obstruction, incompetence and arrogance of the British nationalist mind when placed in a position of government and power.

Clearly, when it comes to the constitutional question this time, our auld pals in Project Fear will attempt to use their own leadership’s handling of Brexit, both in government and their official opposition, as a scare tactic against independence. I can hear it now ‘ See how hard it has been to leave the European Union. Imagine how long and how hard it would be for Scotland to try and leave the UK, Naw, we’re better together.’

We need to be ready and able to counter that statement, and counter it convincingly. Let’s hope someone is working on that.

I fully understand the First Minister’s position on a second Brexit ‘ People’s’ vote, in terms of genuinely doing her very utmost to protect all of the UK from separation from Europe. My goodness it’s a wonder she can stand straight upright the amount of accommodating contortions she’s engaged in in order to demonstrate that she has been more than reasonable in her dealings with Westminster’s government in the last two and a half years.

The media and British nationalist politicians like to talk about us in the Yes movement continually promoting a ‘ grievance’ agenda. If you chronologically record every step the Holyrood government and our MPs at Westminster have made to protect the people of Scotland, and England, from the impact of Brexit since June 2016 I think grievance doesn’t quite cover the injustice and inequity experienced.

At this point I think our leaders should be saying the following to the rest of the UK (with regards to the divorce from the European Union).

You cannot dispute that we’ve tried as best we can to help you, and we will continue to do so as the opportunity occurs and allows, but we have a bigger priority, primarily Scotland is best served returning to its rightful independent status. The people of Scotland are sovereign and by democratic majority they wish to stay in the EU. The Scottish government’s priorities are first and foremost to carry out the instructions of the people who gave us the mandate to govern, and that is what we intend to do.

Let’s get a date fixed to seek a further decisive instruction from the people of Scotland. Let’s do it soon.

We see you Scottish media

News that First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon is so intent in her quest to ensure that transparency, fairness and natural justice are respected in Scotland’s political bubble that last week her left hand reported her right hand to an independent panel for signing a document (it turned out to be a birthday card to her great-auntie in Foxbar) without informing the rest of her body, are greatly exaggerated.

However, undoubtedly the unionist meedjaa are going to milk, like a Friesian coo, the conversations she had with the former first minister, in the early stages of their latest mob handed pitch-fork and torch wielding pursuance of his reputation, for all they are worth.  
 
Did she give him a dig out? Is she working to undermine him? Did she quietly put a spanner in the works of the investigation in order to get him off the hook? Why is she protecting the civil servants involved?

What they really mean is, can we use this to make the SNP disappear, and then we can all get back to cosy lunchtime troughing at the best restaurants on the expense accounts of local labour politicians, all eager for us to write nice things about them in the paper so that their London leaders might notice them and set them on the next rung of becoming the next generation of those on the Premier league gravy train, like that well known radical socialist republican Alistair Darling, or wee right-on-comrade red George Robertson, who was so incompetent they had to send him to NATO on a promotion, before parking him back in the Westminster higher chamber of deep slumber and expenses? (Men, and women, who have principles, and if you don’t like those ones, they have others).
 
Oh for those blissful days, cry the hacks of the BBC, STV, the Herald, Hootsmon, Depress and Record. Life was so much easier then. Troosers were bigger around the waist but life was good.
 
Meanwhile, apart from the near Watergate level scandal, SNP civil war, and government crisis going on in Scotland (it must be a crisis because Sarah Smith says so. She was particularly miffed that she couldn’t find any SNP activists who were prepared to stop throwing out of date Forfar Bridies at each other long enough for her to ask them if they’ll be supporting England in the world badminton finals) there is absolutely nothing of any consequence going on politically round and about the place which might have any impact on Scotland. Nope, not a thing.

Yup, everything about the overall power-wielding central government which oversees the countries which make up our glorious and equal union going about its daily diligent work, steering and controlling all of the economic and financial levers which keeps Britain so entitled to call itself Great, is just peachy, they are pure in control.  Oh wait…..
 
In all seriousness the allegations against Alex Salmond are best left in the hands of the police, in full consideration and respect for those making the complaints, and of course Alex Salmond. This will be resolved, one way or the other. I hope he is innocent. Time will tell.

However the level of bluster, rumbling up of a storm that isn’t actually there, and the repetitious full blown emission of foul bowel wind engendered by the Scottish media in their efforts  to try and drag Scotland’s First Minister, her government, her party, and by extension, the wider Yes movement, into a false scenario in which they think they can see off our rightful claims to return to being a self-governing sovereign country is unforgiveable.
 
We see you Scottish media. Things will be different soon.

Another phoney war

Fear not, dear friends, as the thunderous roar of the gathering storm builds dramatically over dear Alba yet again!

Peace (or several chopped-ham-and-pork and tamata peeces) is, or are, not in any grave danger, as the Scottish unionist media, consistent to a fault, herald in the next instalment of the entirely false and manufactured #SNPCIVILWAR.

This is yet another attempt to try and eviscerate the independence movement by conjuring up some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and another blatant attempt to pull the red, white and blue wool over the eyes of their readerships and their viewing public.
 
Like a mob of jealous children in the school playground goading two close friends into a square-go the miserable hacks of tomorrow’s chip shop wrappings, and the channels we used to watch before Netflix, are trying to set First Minister against former First Minister, citing factional sources of a locked horns rammy of near catastrophic proportions.
 
I have some news for them. This tactic has never worked for you before, and it certainly isnae going to work for you this time either. If you looking for a real storm and a catastrophe taking place I would suggest that you turn around and face yourselves in a southerly direction.
 
Meanwhile, as always happens in these situations the massed ranks of Scottish Indy folk have resorted to their usual light hearted response to such nonsense, belying our reputation, a reputation given to us by the likes of the Daily Hate Mail, The Depress, and The Hootsman, as nasty Nats.
 
Therefore as of midnight last night the uneasy truce and ceasefire called after the last conflict is aff.

Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, pick your sides. Anyone looking for vegan sausage rolls bring them yerselves, Wee Jinty in Condorrat says she knows where they keep the key tae the warehouse where they store aw the Outlander costume clobber, and has suggested that the first one in with an offer of a place on “Love Island” gets the info.
 
Up and down the country today fortifications are being prepared (patriots, on both sides of the civil war, in places like Duns and Eyemouth please note that the rules of war state that at this stage your sandbags should still continue to be placed facing only north of the town for a few months yet).

Tatties, ingins, gravy, square sausage and a gallon of HP sauce are being industrially stewed intae a central mush in a hut somewhere around Auchterarder for distribution as provisions (like the Viet Cong and their dried rice) to the many roving patrols around the battle zone, much against the will of some of the leaders of the conflict, who fear that freedom fighters carrying half a stane of stovies about their person are in danger of drowning should they encounter a burn or gently flowing river in the dark.
 
Already some of the regiments who fought so bravely in the last conflict, some having taken many casualties due to out of date Co-op pies, allergies to the new formula for Irn Bru and typhoid, have recalled their troops to barracks. By nightfall, anticipating the call to arms, the Star Bar on the Fife coast was overrun by elements of the 1st battalion of the Methil Mounted Horseguard. This followed a skirmish which demonstrated much of the horrific acts of previous SNP civil wars (a bit of singing, some pipe tunes, a scarcity of scampi fries by 9 o clock, and wee Tam the barman getting sent to the cellar tae change the lager barrel).
 
Who knows how this will end. During the last conflict it became clear that the despicable introduction of night time carpet-bombing of major towns, cities, and Bonnybridge, with real carpets,was a deciding factor in bringing both sides to the armistice table.

Let’s hope there is no need by either side to resort to the banned practice of mortar shelling deep fried cheese and ingin pizzas in aboot the front line trenches of their opposing forces. As many of you will be aware this practice was banned following an intervention by the United Nations Security Council during the last SNP civil war due to the toxic and deadly calorific values involved.
 
Dear Scottish unionist media. SNP civil war? Where? Really?

Do you think they are worried?

My goodness, they really are feeling threatened at the moment, the denizens of the crumbling, wildly spinning off its axis planet, Precious Union Minor.

As if they didn’t have enough on their plate to occupy themselves with, two and a bit months out from the prospect of end-to-end Eddie Stobart trucks attempting to enter the Guinness Book of Records by achieving the longest traffic jam ever known to mankind, the media onslaught on those that promote the view that it is perfectly natural, and normal, for a country such as Scotland to be mature enough to have confidence in groups of capable individuals who actually live, work, love, and bring up families in Scotland (of whatever political party the majority of Scots favour at any given election time) to make all the important decisions for Scotland, is incessant.

The spreading of fallacious bile never ends, it just goes up and down the propaganda Richter Scale, depending on what day it is.
 
We’ve had a Sunday newspaper, who for a few years there thought they’d make a few bob out of ostensibly promoting the idea that they were being ‘impartial’ on the subject of the Scottish constitutional question, only to blot their copybook during the summer celebration of the thousands of tramping feet around Scotland’s major towns and cities, and then having to eventually come clean that naw, their Sunday edition is as biased in favour of unionism as their daily version, despicably, in an article about one of the many communities which make up Scotland’s people, supposedly feeling uncomfortable about living in Scotland, using a photograph of the First Minister on a poster which had been defaced with the worst possible kind of hate symbol.

The subliminal message for the casual reader, of course,not being that whomever defaced the poster was probably a nasty piece of work but that the SNP were some sort of evil extremist group. Cheap and nasty tactics indeed.
 
We’ve had a journalist rehash a story he first produced for an antipodean readership a few years ago to somehow go one better than the John Lennon controversy of some decades past when the hype around the Beatles popularity at the time was compared to the popularity of Christianity. Apparently the decline of the Kirk in Scotland is more than coincidentally linked with the rise of the civic nationalist movement in Scotland, according to Mr Massie. I’ve heard in all now. That even beats the one from 2014 when it was asserted by somebody or other of a precious Union mind that independence would destroy tourism in Scotland because no one from abroad would be able to read gaelic road signs or place names.

I think if Alex Massie is looking for someone or some cultural change to blame for the decline of the Church, in all its forms in Scotland, not just the Kirk, the selfish greed and the seeds that were sown by the me-me society of Margaret Hilda Thatcher would be much nearer the mark than the increasing numbers of Scots who have opened their eyes to reality, to see beyond relentless propaganda designed to maintain the view that another country should make Scotland’s decisions for it, for its own purposes.
 
We’ve had pundits trying desperately to conflate the recent harassment of a Tory politician in London by Brexiteering protesters (have we learned nothing from the death at the hands of an extremist moron of Jo Cox) with the behaviour of the Yes movement in Scotland of 2014. This is simply ridiculous. Crowds of grannies, papas and young lassies with weans in their buggies walking quickly away in the opposite direction from an increasingly sneery Jim Murphy pleading with them to throw eggs at him ( He even brought his own eggs) does not compare in any shape or form with the nasty insidious hatred, the vile bigotry and nationalism, (the bad kind, the very bad kind)the fascist salutes, the violence, on display In George Square on the 19 September 2014.

I remember thinking, reading the BBC Scotland’s news report on the events in the square online that day, my goodness there must have been several re-writes of that article and much scratching of heads in the editorial room during those hours.

I’m paraphrasing, but the gist of the highly innocuous few words that were used to report what was going on were something like “ Emm, there’s been some teensy weensy, very minor clashes, between some nice, boy next door, clean cut ex-public school graduates celebrating the magnificent result, the continuing glory of our wonderful Union, and those nasty separatists. P.S the Polis are there on horses”. Meanwhile anybody with an internet connection could view  dozens of photographs of what looked like the CGI generated army of trolls from the Lord of the Rings marauding around the square, disturbed and frightened Polis horses up on their back legs, batons being drawn and flares lighting up the scene.

If ever there was a day that absolutely proved that the BBC is biased, that was it.
 
Now, in the aftermath of yesterday’s decision in the courts regarding the Scottish government’s investigation into the allegations against former first minister Alex Salmond, we’ve got the Herald’s leading headline stirring it up with  “Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond at war over 500k legal case”. As soon as the STV reporter asked Nicola Sturgeon if she had confidence in the civil servant involved in the management of the complaint process, and she replied yes, I think we could all say we could see that headline coming. They’ll now try and goad Alex Salmond into criticising her response. Do you think we’ve got them worried?
 
Oh for the days of independence to come. Dissolve that Union, and let’s get to it soon. We have a renewed vibrant country to build into a huge success, and we’re all champing at the bit to get on with it.

They are a bad joke

How much of a laughing stock are the British state prepared to make of themselves in the cause of pursuing an imaginary future where their nationalist exceptionalism magically transforms into a golden era of post-European pseudo-colonial pomp and greatness?

Isn’t it supposed to be us, according to the fallacious media propaganda, who are supposed to be the nationalists?

2019 is starting the way 2018 finished in terms of bewildering behaviour from the robotic disco dancer of Downing Street, who clearly thinks that if she continues to run down the clock in the same manner she has for virtually the last two years, to doomsday, that the flock of self serving miscreant wasters who sit behind her in the Commons will come back into line, and vote with her, in fear of the dreaded ‘No Deal’.

Yet again, she’s trying to look busy, diplomatic and important by cutting about Europe pretending to seek further clarity on the clarifications that were previously clarified in much needed clarification talks about clarity.

There is no truth in the rumour that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has asked doctors in Berlin to place her in an induced coma for a week in order to avoid listening to yet another round of beating around the bush droning repetitive ‘Brexit means Brexit’ pish coming out of the London leader’s mouth. Ms Merkel who at one stage, way back in these discussions, was heard to ask Theresa May “What is it you actually want?” is still waiting for that answer.

Donald Tusk, the European Council President, his ears bleeding, is apparently so emotionally drained by listening to her dribbling on that he is considering retreating to a remote Tibetan monastery where the wifi isnae awfy great and Skyping is impossible.

It’s all just window dressing, for public consumption. As much as the BBC tell us otherwise you’d need to be pretty naive to think it is anything else.

Meanwhile David Davis, the original man for all Brexits, the man who telt us all it would be a scoosh, an easy negotiation, John Foreigner needs us far more than we need them, said Davy, (that’s why he told the British public that his team had done hunners of analysis on how Brexit will impact different sectors of the UK when actually they hadn’t done any analysis and had spent all those months playing Jenga, Buckeroo and the X-Box instead) is urging Theresa to delay the “meaningful vote” on her Brexit deal for a second time, because she’s still gonnae lose.

Davis, in his little Englander exceptionalism, insists that we shouldnae panic because a deal will surely be reached “at the eleventh hour” on Brexit. (This from a man who ran away from the job of sensibly extricating the UK from its commitments to the EU when it all got too hard for his wee brain to handle).

He thinks Europe will come to heel because they are frightened Britain will renege on their committed financial responsibilities associated with divorcing themselves from the largest free trading bloc in the world.

What an arrogant attitude. At this point Europe just want Britain to do what they said they will, leave. Flashing yer knickers at EU Commissioners or kidding on that you are a hard man on day release fae the Bar-L is kinda foolish and lacks credibility at this stage.

It is always important to remember that (against the will of Scotland’s people) It was the London government’s choice to leave the EU, not the EU’s choice to leave them. Europeans are scunnered wae the whole thing. Keep yer HP sauce. They don’t want it.

More important than that we must never lose sight of the fact that Scotland has an escape chute from this potentially epic economic, social and cultural disaster. The mandate is there.

I hope that the impacts of Brexit don’t cut too deep before it becomes very apparent, to very many, that independence in an internationalist progressive Scotland is the way forward, the way out.