Hokey-Cokey-Gate

Michael Matheson, my local MSP (and probably the Nat whose victory gave Salmond the plurality in the Parliament) has brought fresh ridicule on himself and his master, by condemning the children's song The Hokey Cokey as an anti-Catholic tract.
Salmond has been grubbing around for votes amongst Scotland's Catholics for a few years now, making the right noises around issues such as abortion and genetic research, hoping to gain traction amongst Scotland's traditionally Labour supporting Catholics.
Sectarianism is Scotland's greatest shame; the pathetic Matheson is adding fuel to the fire. Speaking of which, as bonfire night celebrates the burning of a Catholic terrorist Guy Fawkes, should Catholics take further offence and call for prosecutions of those who celebrate the 5th of November?

Ground Control to Major Salmond

I see the Nats are bigging up the idea that an RAF base in Moray should be the Scottish space centre. Other than recommending that they perhaps deal with the important issues of the economy (jiggered), health (woman giving birth on the floor of the ERI) or education (teacher numbers falling like a stone), this is an interesting idea
Perhaps they can persuade Jimmy Krankie to take the first flight - funny how the Krankies disappeared from our screens when Eck and Sturgeon came to power - you never see them all in the same room!

The Social Fund and Credit Unions

Three points on the recent storm over whether Credit Unions might manage or distribute some of the Social Fund emergency payments the government makes to people on benefits:

• The association of credit unions with the "poverty industry" is deeply damaging to the prospects of growing the CU movement; for as long as government sees us as the Poor People's Bank and assumes that we are only there to deliver banking services to the poorest in society, we will never build the capacity or the critical mass we need. CU's need to attract depositors from across the communities they serve - it is socially better, it is economically better and it provides access to a far greater skill set for volunteers to draw from.
• The CU movement needs to show some independence from government and not be seen doing its bidding or trying to implement social policy. The Growth Fund was the worst example of that imaginable - CU's handed out public money to non-members with little prospect that they would become engaged in the CU movement, with little hope of repayment (the delinquency rates on these loans are horrifying) and probably with a significant portion of the funding being spent on drugs - that is the anecdotal evidence anyway....
• The decision of ABCUL to press government to lift the upper rate of interest a CU could charge has now been shown to be a PR disaster. The Scottish League vehemently opposed this and our member credit unions continue to charge at the traditional rate of 1% per month on the reducing balance of a loan (12.6% APR). The APR figure of 27.8% which has been widely quoted in press articles has been deeply damaging to the movement as a whole as it has enabled the less well-informed of the commentariat to claim that CU's are charging the same rate as Doorstep Lenders - hardly! The rates are comparable with a credit or store card, but I imagine those ill informed commentators cannot imagine that real people in need often face an APR of 100%+ with doorstep lenders or loansharks.

Sutherland No More

Can this be serious - the Scottish Executive under the control of those who claim to understand our nation's history, are planning to give £10MYN of taxpayers' money to the family at the heart of the Highland Clearances? Salmond clearly has no sense of irony.
We also need a sense of perspective - no matter how fine a work of art the Titian is, in the current economic climate, what chance the Duke of Sutherland finding a buyer at any price let alone the fixed £50MYN he started off at - call his bluff and see if he can find a buyer on the open market.
Perhaps Eck with his two salaries could make him an offer?

Sports Personality

Surely Lewis Hamilton should have been up for Overseas Personality?!

AS Roma 3 - 2 Cagliari

Fantastic finish, fantastic result. Not too sure about the 2nd half performance - Vucinic played with the touch and composure of a wrought iron mangle for most of it.
But what the hell, an injury time winning goal where the striker rips off his shirt and his shorts can't be too bad.

Downfall

Not as funny as the Walter Smith version, but the Jeanette Krankie remark made me laugh out loud!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hYq-vC5mxNQ

Bridge to Nowhere

The payoff to Souter has finally arrived - Eck is giving him his very own bridge over the River Forth!
That half million bung before the election has certainly helped to write the Nats policy platform.
I presume we can expect the reintroduction of Section 28 before long.

AS Roma 2 - 0 Bordeaux

Brilliant turnaround from the diaster of the opening defeat to Cluj. Hopefully the hammering meted out to Chelsea at the Olimpico means that Roma have got the English monkey off their backs. Perhaps a cheeky bid to buy Michael Owen in January - Roma play the ball on the ground and hit it in front of the strikers for them to run onto, so Owen may fit in perfectly!
Good to see Il Capitano walloping another CL goal home.
Here's hoping for Sporting Lisbon in the last 16....

HBOS

I had a cheque returned by the bank marked "Insufficient funds" so I called the bank manager and asked "Does that mean you or me?"
The anti-merger campaign seems to be missing the point of the collossal failure of the HBOS business model - not content with an enormous share of the home mortgage market, HBOS also had significant equity stakes in many housebuilders and funded all of this with short term borrowed cash. Sticking in taxpayer funding to prop this up is not the answer - the business needs to be fundamentally re-engineered and the sooner the Tartan Taliban realise this, the better.

Football Crazy

Nice to see the Nats are focusing on the important matters of government again - http://news.scotsman.com/politics/SNP-accused--of-sticking.4769757.jp
this is right up there with Linda Fabiani complaining on Good Morning Scotland that she couldn't watch the Scotland matches on telly - presumably Fat Eck is too cheap to fork out for Setanta.
What I really want to know is: what does Eck do at Hampden when the crowd sing "Stand Up if You Hate England".
(Though, after the booing he got when he tried grandstanding at the Scotland v Croatia game, it may be some time before he braves the crowd again....)

Populus Poll

Tories down to 39% - looks like the British public is catching up with the very perceptive opinion of Obama on Do-Nothing-Dave - "Jeez, what a lightweight!"
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2008/12/cameron-obama-europe-president

Scottish Futures Trust

I didn't know how it worked - thank heavens for this!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9W0bmqg1owI
That makes it all clear....

The People Have Spoken.... The Bastards

Without intending to, I found myself on my first ever ballot paper - I had achieved other "elected" positions simply by being the only person standing - and I tried to convince myself that the result did not really matter. I had not intended standing for the position, indeed, had only put myself forward to "gender balance" the application of a colleague.

Bugger!

Now that I have lost, it really does matter! On the bright side, a huge number of people I have never met did cast a ballot for me...

Next time....