Christ is risen!

Ish, maybe, certainly, or not! Delete as your own cosmological preferences tend.  Whether redeemed or unredeemable, thirsting after righteousness or thirsting after a breakfast Chablis, I invite you this lustrously distilled Easter round-up of the Scottish blogosphere’s  obsessions, hobby horses, private feuds, political commitments and existential reflections. Welcome to the just and unjust alike - let’s just hope it doesn’t rain. As with most weeks when politics is under scrutiny, it has been seven days of fools, sacred and profane – with more mischievous comment from the sagacious souls of Scottish blogging than you can shake your jester’s rattle at. Hopefully I’ll do all your labours justice.

April Fools!

Without further ado, in case you missed a gentle chortle or two at the traditional April Fools’ lies and distortions, All Media Scotland has the scoop on some of the ardent fooleries that bubbled up in the Scottish press on the first of this month, while Mr Eugenides takes us chastely by the hand and leads us down the wider ways of April foolery.

Holy Fools!

For comment on the ongoing, international discussion of culpability and the clerical abuse of children, see Martin Kelly on an article in the Irish Times, which he enlarges upon eloquently. In other matters divine, I used Good Friday to produce one of my very favourite paintings by El Greco, and mused a little on the message of Good Friday, Christ and our would-be Christly politicians.

Meanwhile, in Scotland’s august halls of learning…

Ian Hamilton QC has a worthwhile thought of two on history as an emetic – and throws an elbow at “Holy Tom Devine” while he’s at it, rejecting the pious historiography symbolised for Hamilton by the history Professor’s “mouth clenched over many resplendent chins”. Staying in the fustian cloisters of Scotland’s universities, the heroically named Hector MacQueen, professor at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Law and arch-servitor of the Scots Law News blog, heralds the call of Edinburgh novelist and former professor of medical law, Alexander McCall Smith, into the convocation of the sainted that is the Faculty of Advocates. It is understood that McCall Smith will not be hearing the siren call of practice, nor playing the aged junior by grubbing about for briefs under Parliament Hall’s beamed roof. Alan Trench, again of Edinburgh University, has ruminated, cogitated and digested the Scottish Government’s consultation paper on a Scottish independence referendum. Here is what he has to say. Outwith the Arts and Humanities, Neil Craig has bestowed a report of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow Lecture upon us, as delivered by Professor Anne Glover, the Scottish Government’s Chief Science Advisor. Craig was “not impressed” by the good lady professor’s remarks on on global warming.

Holyrood & Local Matters

“Purcell saga, is that it then?” Asks Jeff, after Glesca Cooncil rejected the idea of an independent inquiry into the broader implications of Purcell’s collapse by a vote of 23 for and 48 agin.  Joan McAlpine argues that Glasgow’s “Tammany Hall never died, it just had a makeover”, advocating an illuminated Beowulf to slay this Cain-marked morass of favours, secret dealing and the complex place purchasing that a political culture based on patronage fosters. Extending and much enlarging on the point, the resurrected Moridura (or should that be rescuitated, along more Lazarushian lines) has composed an extended contemplation of externalisation, corruption and the Labour-dominated council’s activities. Subrosa also has more on the local authority’s range of Arms-Length Organisations and the suspicions attaching to their remunerated, comfortable positions.  Mike Small, of Bella Caledonia, puts the indictment crisply: “Huckster nation”, he writes. Scottish Labour’s Yousuf Hamid, meanwhile, and in a wholly unrelated matter, makes his case for a bit of rejigging in our public life, by directly electing mayors for our cities.

In a judgemental, teacherly hand, Mr J Arthur MacNumpty MA has written up his termly report card on Holyrood’s attendances, absences and rebellions in the Spring Whip. Over in Edinburgh, the folk who want Leith to be a mite Greener pose a number of questions concerning Forth Energy’s scheme for a biomass power plant on their local Leith docks. Matters of magnitude and concerns of residents are raised. Meanwhile, in other civilised pursuits in Scotland’s capital, Jade Dickinson helpfully provides the curious with a few suggestions about how to embroider the simple pleasures of treading Auld Reekie’s cobbled streets and avoiding the rain under the poised stones of its dark dust wynds and closes.   Also, for those who appreciate longer papers, and wish to wile away the hours of this Easter Sunday but are tired of the Gospels - you know how it all ends after all, which was always bound to diminish narrative tension - Gerry Hassan has tacked up a critical piece composed by Eric Shaw and himself, on the “Doctrine and Ethos in the Scottish Labour Party”.

Suitably Despairing suitably despairs about trying to interact with our European representatives, but has a good word to say (shock horror!) for the little elves and sprites that do service for Struan Stevenson MEP. Finally, Subrosa blogs on the two-brace of our august Holyrood tribunes, who are being catapulted across the Atlantic on business-class flights to have a chin-wag about “climate change, sustainable transport and opportunities around the green economy”. Rosie is not impressed.

Of Mephedrone…

Scottish Socialist Youth report on the resignation of yet another government expert this week. Eric Carlin, from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs fled the scene over the Government’s hasty criminalisation of mephedrone.

Westminster General Election Ballyhoos & Mischiefs

Richard Thomson, prospective Westminster parliamentary candidate for the SNP in Gordon (this always struck me as a terrifically pretentious phrase, by the by…) noted in ‘Picking Fights – Part XVIII’ – that “We all know how the SNP Government picks endless fights with London – it’s all the party exists for.” Stephen Glenn, would be yellow-feather deputy for Linlithgow and East Falcrack, detected a candid admission that “if that is all the party exists for then they really are not a political party but a prize boxer.” Not so, riposted Thomson, who insists that the protuberance which Glenn spots in his hamster-like cheek is merely his tongue. Simple irony, simply misunderstood by the pecking Liberal Democrat canary.

Speaking of yellow birds, this morning Andrew Reeves relays melancholy news for the Tories in Glasgow South West, whose candidate has thrown in her particular electoral towel, cursing what she styles “a nest of vipers” within her party. A Gallus Glaswegian – which to some will strike the mind as an obvious tautology – continues the speculative discourse on hanged parliaments (if not parliamentarians) after the Westminster general election. Political Dissuasion proffers some matters, worthy of political attention, that he suggests are being sorely neglected in the plodding Westminster General Election campaign, including  the Olympics, Trident nuclear missiles and the ongoing loss of life attending the continuing British military expedition in Afghanistan.  Meanwhile, one of the boys in blue, New Right’s Dean MacKinnon-Thomson argues, contra a screeching philistine harpy in the Times, that the state has a role and public coffers a place in fostering ‘the Arts’. Banking collapse should not result in a bonfire of subsidies, he submits.

Stephen Glenn opines that “Grayling Not fit to be Home Secretary” in the light of reports in the Observer about the Tory MP’s views on the justness of Bed and Breakfast exceptionalism on the vexed question of whether proprietors of doily-decorated dwellinghouses should be permitted to turning away same-sex couples from their doors on conscientious grounds.  On the same subject, Bill Cameron, who to my understanding is generally of a warmish conservative disposition, thinks that the Tories are “trying to have it both ways on gay rights” and that Grayling’s remarks should be repudiated from the centre post-haste.

Boom and Bust contends, contra to the claims circulating in other quarters, that the SNP can win Glenrothes, and offers suggestions on how this mighty task may yet be realised. Young Yousuf also indulges in a bit of a partisan tweak of the Maximum Eck’s low-hanging nipples, suggesting that Salmond will pocket a Westminster resettlement package of £60,000-odd because he anticipates imminent electoral defeat. An Easter nest egg to see him through the impending Labour triumph. Innocents can dream, I suppose! On the Salmond’s swagbag, however, SNP bloggers have been equally unimpressed, Jeff coining the brutal phrase that it “doesn’t look great that he’s receiving his own personal fiscal stimulus while so many suffer, while bankers have bonuses frozen and senior civil servants’ remuneration curtailed”. No election is complete without the tangerine phizog of Tommy Sheridan gurning from the platform. This week, with a sliver of Hamlet, I discussed the law’s delay and the Sheridans’ ever-pending trial for perjury, which will now commence in September.

On which note, I will draw this fitful fever of comment and conversation to a close and wish you all a placid, tranquil Easter weekend, and happy reading in a Wordsworth-time worth saying of that:

“It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is as quiet as a Nun,

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the sea.”

This being Scotland, of course, the evening is apt to be loudly galeful, dreich and drookit, and breathing like your proverbial asthmatic nun, her every gulp of air a restive rattle. Despite this, lounge surrounded by your spent chocolate-wrapping halos and enjoy yourselves.

Cheerio till we meet again!

~ Lallands Peat Worrier.

Summer has set in with its usual severity. The stampeding cattle of politics have made haste to pastures new, while hotfooted journos goad their nags into lazy haste, in glib pursuit. For those left behind, without the warm exuberance of the nimble and sweet Tuscan air, the only consolation is to flagellate out their frustrations on necrotised political ponies. And the choice of equine punchbags this week seems limited – but unsurprisingly Scotland’s bloggers have wired into their rich internal resources, and have kept up peddling their views despite the (relative) absence of an easy story cycle to steal into.

The first lights of the last seven days have been mouth-watering of anticipation of the Glasgow North East By-Election in early Autumn. Despite SNP attempts to play huntsmen and lay snares in the House of Commons, the Labour will carried the day. Calum Cashley donned his anorak and explored some of the procedural detail of this parliamentary vacillation.

One would-be beneficiary of the by-election is the now infamous David Kerr, who must enjoy opening each morning’s crisp newspaper to see what calumny or discord will consume his candidacy next. For most of the week, much of the hullabaloo has run a principled race from the particular to the general, and asks, does it matter that Mr Kerr is a devotee of the Catholic subset Opus Dei?

Various politicians nudged and winked, discreetly, suggesting that it made Kerr a loony. Forward insists that religious intolerance has no place in our civic life. Similarly, Richard Thomson defends Kerr. SNP Tactical Voting couldn’t understand what provoked the mischief, while Scottish Unionist tabulated and catalogued the public disquiet about Kerr expressed by the infamous, greater-saltired Cybernat. Stuart Winton explores the issues more generally, as did that Sassenach man of piety, Cranmer.

Old master MacNumpty, by contrast, with an eye for the political narrative elbowed his readers back towards the forgotten image of loaf-haired Ruth Kelly MP, who shares Kerr’s enthusiasm for the Work of G-d. Where is the historical consciousness, he asks Labour’s innuendo-smeared cadet – and what the price of making a bit of bigoted mischief. To my mind, it is really a question of priorities. If one is disposed to place certain issues of public concern high on your list – Opus Dei membership is an issue. As this heat-and-light generating bloggish discourse has, I trust, revealed.

The pistol at dawn for Kerr this morning, related in the Sunday Herald, finds pictorial representation over at Scottish Unionist, and is reduced to text by Stuart Winton.

The other big ticket item of the week was the Norwich North by-election, in which Labour got thumped. Scottish Tory Boy has the full breakdown from the count. In related electoral crowing, James of Two Doctors sends a huzzah to Brighton, where his Greenie cronies romped to triumph in the council by-election.

No huzzahs for Auld Reekie’s Toon Cooncil frae Kezia Dugdale, who roundly abuses the SNP-Liberal Democratic leadership on the issue of rubbish collection, and their handling of the local dispute. Staying with localness in the Lothians, Scotland’s Liberal Democrat blogging contingent paid their fond tributes to the disappearing tribune John Barett MP, representative of the people of Edinburgh West, who is flinging in his political dishcloth at the next election. Both musing Caron and Linlithgow’s Lib Dem Voice opine on the departing Barett.

Since the end of summer is an appropriate season for leave taking, Stephen also discussed the possibility of DIY Devine MP’s repeating Iain Gibson’s trick in Norwich North, and joining the Chiltern Hundreds to shaft his summary-justice dispensing party, and provoking further electoral activity with further by-elections.

In the balmy winds of the Scottish summer, friendliness and cooperation has broken out, Scottish Unionist playing host to a fulsome article from Doctorvee on Federalism, Devolution and Scotland. Meanwhile, John Swinney has raised the issue of a Scottish oil fund again this week, Subrosa dealing with the idea in her post here, while the freshly-sunned, Egypt-warmed Yousuf returns to muse on the crude stuff here. Although far be it from me to impugn the tastiness and culinary vivacity of Tennents Lager – recalling one of Mr MacAskill’s most amusing comments – that Tennents was “cooking lager” – Jeff discusses the fact that the booze’s brewer, Wellpark Brewery is up sale.

Another consequence of August’s imminence is that Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill will have to make up his mind on the Libyan request that Megrahi be transferred out of Scotland. Robert Black QC maintains a blog with all of the recent developments here. Worth a look for those of you curious about the legal wrangles and seeking to understand the difference between prisoner transfer and compassionate leave. To end of the theme of justice, I have a post here about the Cirv project, and how a muscle-pumping police strut may not be the answer to youngsters getting embroiled in violent gangs.

And that, as they say, is that for the immaculately polite and discursively elevated crew of Scotland’s political blogging community for this week. Do send in your suggestions for inclusion next week – its all too easy to follow the same old bloglines and overlook the worthy and the thoughtful.

Ta ta!

The clocks have been fierce this week. Just as one second had wreaked its political vengeance against the Westminster Government, it was replaced by another stalking beat, with a blow of its own to land. Thanks to modern telecommunications, death is re-experienced hourly in sixty cut units. Commentators scrabble for their knife sharpeners as they find their typically lackadaisical scalpel-hand aching and sore from unexpected use.

Excitable Scots bloggers prove no different, and in an anarchic spirit of incessant commentary, have generated a stonking great wedge of posts this week on the elections to the European Parliament, the hour-leaping events pirouetting outside Westminster palace and the gloomy, abiding presence of Mr J. Gordon Brown, First Lord of the Treasury and his merciless beleaguerment.

Little mercy is shown, either, to your poor host for this week’s roundup. Casting aside any lasso-wielding hope to sum up fully, I’ve instead determined to follow the approach indicated by Labour backbenchers, and wield a darting foil instead, striking for the flanks and generally leaving shifts of time and narrative to tend to themselves.

Brace, good friends, for political hyperreality.

Let us commence with a flaccid protuberance from last week, and with the news that the Maximum Eck’s prose-poem about escapees from Scots Prison – criticised by some Labour stylists for having one escapee too few in it – has been submitted to a panel of expert judges for their artistic analysis. Subrosa discusses the triumph of Mr Gray.

Meanwhile, from the pre-elective phase of the week, Alan Wallace, an independent candidate standing for the European Elections in Scotland with the Jury Team decided to buck the trend, advising we flabby electors on why we have to vote. Apparently, if the whispering room where Jeff makes his nest is to be believed, the voters of Glasgow didn’t read Mr Wallace’s post, and stayed-in in their droves. Will voting levels really plummet to a stupefying 7%? We’ll have to wait and see. Alex Massie suffered similar pangs about electoral participation, but ultimately relented. Consult his reasoning here. Kezia, by contrast, points out that a Labour activist cannot live by bread alone. While love and charity are optional extras, hope is a must when plodding Scotland’s grey-paved streets. Finally, Malc of Old Reekie relates an amusing jape from the cosmological democracy genre.

My own school’s motto was “Veritas” - amusing in the context of its pervasive culture of bourgeois dishonesty. However, blogs are splendid when they draw the eye to the things the media neglects. Although a partisan outpouring, Subrosa’s borrowed clip indicates that even the media, with blood on their dentures, control the direction of news. Blogs can wonderously disrupt that.

Speaking of disrupting structures of conscientious oppression, Neil Craig discusses the Tianamen Square protests of 1989, and draws critical comparison to what he regards as wur ain Government’s oppressions and tyrannies.

Lest we forget, Stephen the Lib Dem Laird of Linlithgow reminds us that even in phases of repose, the Welsh and Scottish Nationalist motion for the dissolution of the Westminster Parliament, hangs threateningly, like the butterknife of Damocles.  On the local election results themselves Councillor Macpherson does a spot of Liberal Democratic gloating and speculates about how the break-down of votes might unfold in first-order elections to Westminster next year. Completing this Lib Dem triad, Caron thinks randomly on the Brown reshuffle, and is good enough to share them with us.

In Glasgow, Yousuf daintily pulls a tartan garter up the electorate’s leg, commenting on the three Scottish cooncil by-elections on Thursday in Bishopbriggs South, Coatbridge North and Glenboig and in Drumchapel. Labour’s three new councillors defied national trends by donning red rosettes, and simultaneously sustained three victories, sending three defeated Sir Politick Would-Be’s from the SNP’s west-coast contingent back to their day jobs. In other council news, Duncan pulls on a thick pair of gloves and rummages through the freshly published expenses frae Fife Council. Irate constituents can peruse over the detail at their leisure.

Meanwhile, the ragged banshee of Westminster MPs expenses continues shriekingly to pursue recalcitrant members. This week, Jim Devine MP of Livingston’s ears must be bleeding from the echoing cries which follow him. The (allegedly) doltish Devine is up before the beak, and the sharp-toothed inquisitions of Labour’s National Executive Committee “Star Chamber”. Jeff speculates on Devine’s shovel work, while Clairwil has a pointed question for the footering tribune.

Craig Murray discusses an interesting, but frequently neglected aspect of education policy. What relationship ought there to be between education and business? Mind work and cash generation? Craig quotes extensively from his rectoral installation address at the grand old University of Dundee, and is sharply unimpressed with the collapse of universities policy into the penny-pushing purview of Lord Mandelson and his business-driven diary.

I suspect I’m the last man in Scotland interested in the Calman Commission. Like all lonely souls, I’ve tried to gather cronies for the warmth. Needless to say, membership remains small.

Young Yousuf also raises the question of “small party” press coverage. Personally, the way the BBC use the word “other” to designate parties they happen to regard as minor drives me up the wall. For an alterative view – and an animated field of comments – read up here. Ex-regular bloggette, now regular Scottish parliamentarian Indygal reveals what happens when SNP MSPs meet Labour MPs. While it isn’t the foul-mouthed mudwresting I’ve been lead to believe, it’s a touching little vignette. Meanwhile, Mr Tom Harris MP HND, Indygal’s musical interlocutor, asks a question and Political Dissuasion answers it.

For everything else, consult every political blog with one’s callused finger consistently poised over the “refresh” button, engaging every five minutes or so. With European Election results impending, heaven knows what will happen imminently. Perhaps Hazel Blears will be brought back into the Cabinet as “Happiness Tsar”, with all being forgiven. Or Caroline Flint will be appointed “Women’s Officer” or alternatively “Officer Woman” in the Cabinet Office.

Or I’ll be invited to step in and form a caretaker government, from my seat in the Lords.

As ever, send your notices of electoral support, calumniations and ermine catalogues to lallandspeatworrier@gmail.com. Ta ta!

Hostile hams, kurkis polished up to a wicked political sheen, expenses paper cuts which run to the bone. Yelping, squalling, wheezing. Wide eyed denial. Implausible support.All in all, a fairly typical week in political life, where never one day passes, but some poor heart does break. Typically to general hilarity.

From the Scottish blogging perspective, however, the learned texts rustled up this week are remarkable for theirs sprightliness and individuality. Gentle supplication and relenting submission to the pounding agenda of the news media is singularly not in evidence. Perhaps it is just me, but self-important regurgitation of half-digested media epithets isn’t the glee of a blog. Cheerfully, we happy Scottish blogging few are a wild roving lot and the bill of fare this week offers the curious bloggee a decidedly spicy mélange.

Perhaps naturally, however, comment could not be avoided on the perilous porcine affliction, which has stolen into the country. Personally, I can’t help but feel a spasm of pity for the wretched holidaying couple, who have the happy cheer of becoming poster persons for this “swine flu”, but also have been condemned forever to embarrassment when any well-meaning, romantic soul asks them about their honeymoon. Ho hum. Leery eyes fixed on the broader social significance of the prevailing pig-provoked pandemic, Ideas of Civilisation pens a Voltairean analysis of the eschatological character of media coverage of the outbreak. With a similar, broad-minded view, Neil Craig of A Place to Stand considers the outbreak in the historical round, with a reflective, global eye. Meanwhile, in a crisp, splendidly tart post, Jeff of SNP Tactical Voting reminds us of the silent fate consuming millions haunted by diseases which prompt only yawning silence from the media. Finally, to slap a kilt on the tale – this dainty, ankle-revealing garment being the Scottish equivalent of Obama’s lipstick for the pig  – Brian Taylor gives wee Nicola Sturgeon a pat on the back for striking the rights notes in her public pronouncements on the spread of the illness. Shrill and febrile panic, for the main, deftly averted.

Alternatively, the other tale animating political faces this week has been the unexpected trashing of the Labour Government’s position on the settlement rights of Gurka soldiers. Cooncillor Fraser Macpherson of Dundee discusses his local Labour Member’s dancing and weaving on the issue. Craig Murray and Subrosa are sharply unimpressed that among the rebellious contingent of Labour MPs who dissented in the vote on the Liberal Democrat’s motion, not a one of them were from Scottish constituencies.

Speaking as one of the line-toeing souls, Tom Harris MP’s remarks have caused a bit of a fizz. Although the aforementioned doughty tribune has recanted a drop or two of his vinegary sentiments, allegedly composed in the drear hours post-vote, Harris also questions whether the co-packaging of the Gurka “victory” with the Tories was really the best which the slightly-sweatsome Nick Clegg could do. From this little parliamentary dilemma, Political Dissuasion explores more general questions of the representative functions of our Deputies, laying on the whip, and how closely the exhortations of the personal Goddess, Conscience, are heeded. Weakness, quoth he, seems the order of the day.

Further on the theme of Conservative electoral smarm, North to Leith’s keen eye has espied an apparent south of the Tweed bias in the recently released footage of the Conservative scheming chamber. Political Disuassion warns the Tories that the political equivalent of revenge sex lacks the sustaining fire and honesty of true love.

To widen our smarming net, Jeff finds the Liberal Democratic attempts to woo him in Leith rather ineffective, while Richard Thompson of Scots and Independent goes the whole hog (too many pig metaphors, do we think?) and envisions a parallel Scotland altogether.

Talking of the parallel, Two Doctors smartly points up the hideous alternative universe which the Metropolitan Police Service seems to live in. Also a dashing instance of brevity being the soul of wit, yon post. Yousuf cheerfully cites Labour’s bye-election victory in the vault of warlike, quasi-Celtic stupidity - “wi’ Bruce an’ Wallace” – as bad news for the Maximum Eck and cronies. Gallant boy,  Yousuf.

Marching down the witsome lane, Kezia dumps dreary political screechery for literary reflection. Highly civilised. En route, she might well encounter Moridura’s personal – and characterful – reflection on the final departure of Scots playwright Tom McGrath, a creative and powerful force in the Scottish theatrical scene. 

Returning to the cosy cloisters of the more political, Stuart Winton conspired to keep a cautious eye on the old Calman Commission, while I discussed Margo MacDonald MSP’s proposed bill on assisted suicide in the Scottish Parliament, with a bit of criticism and context about what the legal position on that issue is in Scotland at present. Booting her reader’s attention to the westward limits of the “Celtic Axis”, Caron‘s spirits are rightly askew about the pernicious blasphemy proposals troubling the Irish Oireachtas. As a small aside, one probably ought to get even more vexed about the Scottish position, since blasphemy remains, primae facie, a crime in Scots law already.

To end on an appropriately pigletty note, Clairwil lightens the collective load by tempting us all with the animating prospect of bilious Boy George with his bits out, enjoying a splash of company in the prison showers with a chap called “Jack Tweed”, erstwhile squeezer of the dearly departed Goody (Jade). As the academic feminists have it, “the personal is political”. And who am I to argue?

Well, that is us! The bracing finale for this, my baptismal go at the round up. As per usual, send your nominations for inclusion to the thingumywhatsit, your insulting critiques to lallandspeatworrier@gmail.com, and your bribes for inclusion next week to Jeff of SNP Tactical Voting!

Discreet brown envelopes only, please…