Apart from Scotland’s marvellous win at Croke Park on Saturday – which leads Alex Massie to award our national team the accolade of second most satisfying campaign of the Six Nations – most of the attention this week has, as ever, been on politics, with the small matter of an election in the offing. Neither of Scotland’s two main parties arguably have their troubles to seek at the moment, and this is reflected in some of the nominations on show in our mailbag.

The Purcell affair continues to resonate (not that you’d necessarily know it from reading Labour blogs, of course…) – with The Universality of Cheese and Planet Politics both weighing in with their tuppence ha’penny. Yapping Yusuf, meanwhile, prefers to look at the broader picture – what on earth, he asks, is the point of voting SNP at a UK General Election? He would say that, of course, but there’s no doubt that the SNP need to come out fighting and state a positive case for their relevance in a Westminster context. At SNP Tactical Voting, Jeff argues that Alex Salmond did exactly that (and read the comment thread, too).

The week also saw the passing of former SNP leader Billy Wolfe. Calum Cashley paid tribute to a friend.

And let us not – of course! – forget the Lib Dems. Stephen Glenn asks, quite reasonably, why ITV’s interview with Nick Clegg was shown in every region except Scotland. I am, for once, in full agreement: one can never have too much Mary Nightingale.

As the election approaches we can expect the Scottish blogosphere to become a more and more fractious place, so it’s probably good to know that there are some things that unite bloggers of left and right, male and female, Unionist and Nat. I refer, naturally, to the news, brought to use by Andrew Reeves, that Jack McConnell has been in negotiations with the Tories for a job in their new administration. There’s a prospect that can give us all the boak.

Is the BBC’s Question Time biased against the Tories? Braveheart’s Blog suspects not. Given the constant whingeing of Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, Nats, UKIPpers and BNPers about how terribly unfair the programme is to them every time they are on (or bumped from the lineup), it’s perhaps best to tune out all the complaints. Then again, given some of the dross that’s been on recently, a lot of people are tuning out QT altogether these days.

Wrapping up our political roundup, Lallands Peat Worrier considers what it is like to be a Scottish blogger in England ahead of an election which fills him, as he puts it, “with a species of mounting and mortal dread”. (Don’t worry, I think we all feel the same way.) Ideas of Civilisation considers Labour’s proposals to reform the House of Lords, after what seems like a century of dithering. And last, but certainly not least, Shuggy draws our attention to the latest legal action involving Scotland’s favourite son, George Galloway, who is threatening to sue David T of Harry’s Place.

Edinburgh University has been in the news for the “wrong” reasons this week, due to a minor spat over their admissions policy. I must say that I hadn’t previously marked them down as the most anti-English of establishments, given the frequency with which one hears the Home Counties bray in the student pubs of the Old Town (and the frosty reaction I got when I cheered this goal in the Teviot Union two years ago). But Tom Harris, at least initially, had a right go at them, before Alex Massie’s sensible piece prompted him to reconsider and issue a very magnanimous retraction.

And, while we are tangentially talking of football (or, at least, I am), Rob Marrs is picking his greatest ever Scotland XI. Jim Leighton in goal? Apparently…

Still on sport, and Doctorvee gives us his take on a forgettable Bahrain Grand Prix, the first of the season. Caron agrees: “dull, dull, dull”.

From motor racing, seamlessly, to the environment. Two Doctors is unimpressed with the SNP’s stance on a new power station at Hunterston, with each choice in this week’s three-option vote attracting an exactly even number of SNP MSPs. Meanwhile, from a slightly different perspective, Bishop Hill updates us on the reception for his book, and takes on some critics.

Mephedrone is the media scare story of the week. Caron shares what seems to this blogger to be sound common sense on the issue. On the other hand, I can’t say that I agree with Lena the Hyena when she says that Shakespeare should be booted from the Scottish curriculum, but do read and make up your own mind:

” Critics have heaped derision on Braveheart for tampering with historical fact but Shakespeare’s Macbeth is no different. Whether for political advantage or out of ignorance the story relating to King Macbeth of Scotland became corrupted and that distorted myth has become the accepted version of events throughout the world.

Shakespeare is revered as the most talented of Britain’s writers. Well that’s open to discussion. Sometimes a guy gets a lucky break and then it becomes a case of the Emperor’s new clothes… “

Neil Craig blogs on the extradition proceedings against alleged Bosnian war criminal Ejup Ganic.

Getting arty just for a moment, We Sink Ships has a lovely collection of photography on display here. Shirl’s Gardenwatch brings us some pics of a gorgeous sparrowhawk. To mark St Patrick’s Day, Joan McAlpine introduces us to The Orthodox Celts, whose music is certainly more attractive than their dress code. And the Edinburgh Rock Network reviews the Lostprophets at the Corn Exchange last Sunday.

Lastly on our nation’s capital, a quick quiz: where do you reckon this photo comes from? Beats me, I must admit.

And finally, the Flying Rodent takes exception to Times columnist and blogger Oliver Kamm in a post which, with due profanity warning in place, I heartily recommend. Kamm’s politics are probably rather closer to my own than those of the author, but we should all appreciate a good hatchet job when we see one. But be careful, Rodent: Oliver is bigger and fitter than you are.

That’s all for this week; but keep the nominations coming in, in the comments or by email, Twitter or any of the other methods on the sidebar. Cheers, all.

Anyway, my faux chumminess is probably starting to grate, so on with the show.

The major Scottish news story was the Gould report into the election fiasco back in May, and a rather curious saga it was, too, with Gould being forced to backtrack just a couple of days after the report’s publication, when it became clear that opposition politicians and hacks were misinterpreting his suggestion of “a notable level of party self interest evident in Ministerial decision-making” as meaning that ministers were allowing party self interest to influence their decision-making. Apparently this wasn’t what he meant at all; what he really meant to say was that no-one was to blame and it was just one of those things. Cynical Chatter from the Underworld reckoned that Scotland is a banana republic; the same fruit was mentioned more than once by Curious Hamster (who has moved; note the new blog URL).

Predictably enough this led to the usual party knockabout; Cllr Andrew Burns was pleased to see that STV was not being blamed for the problems, Kezia Dugdale was “blown away” by the pettiness and hypocrisy of the SNP, and I myself wasn’t too impressed with Nicola Sturgeon’s verbal contortions. 1820 had perhaps the most succinct observation: “Gould looks likes a patsy.” And, as Love and Garbage noted, wee Dougie Alexander can’t even run a poll on his own website, which takes a special kind of incompetence.

The Nats get plenty of airtime in this roundup; this weekend they celebrated their first conference in government by going up to – where else? – Aviemore. The BBC’s near-spherical political editor, Brian Taylor, wrote up the trip on his surprisingly good blog. There were also some observations from My Rambling Thoughts and a good account of the conference jollity from J Arthur Macnumpty. SNP Councillor Mark McDonald can’t believe that Wendy Alexander (pbuh) doesn’t have an opinion on Trident. Havering On is unimpressed by Eck’s plans for a seat at the UN, though.

The other issue bubbling away under the surface, as it has for some time, is the increasingly tense relationship between Scotland and England, and this was explored during the week by John Redwood (another surprisingly good blog, even if you don’t share his politics) and Beau Bo D’Or, whose new logo for the Scottish Tories is irresistible. Indygal often complains about the BBC’s pro-English slant, but on this occasion, it seems, her sister was just being a bit of a numpty.

Further afield, Adam Smith Was A Socialist (liar!) despairs at the right-wing rhetoric of Eastern European politics; conversely, A Place To Stand crunches some of the numbers in the immigration debate and comes to some interesting, and controversial, conclusions. Tartan Hero quite rightly takes Tony Blair to task for his crass suggestion that he’s “like a abused and bullied wife” (it can be arranged, Tone), and the Reactionary Snob takes a big stick to David Miliband for suggesting that referenda are “the refuge of dictators and demagogues”.

Rhetorically Speaking looks at the hypocrisy surrounding the abortion debate, Mike Power is unimpressed by the “revelation” that most BBC employees on Facebook describe themselves as “liberal”, and the Flying Rodent reacts with suitable sensitivity to the news that Princess Diana’s last words were, apparently, “Oh, my God”. And, in far away Washington DC, Alex Massie takes US journalist James Fallows to task for comparing the Armenian genocide to the English “subjugation” of the Scots.

Away from matters political, Kim Ayres has some thoughts on passing 40 – indeed, hitting 41. Calum Carr writes on a troubling incident involved Mrs Carr. Kevin Williamson bemoans the loss of yet another Banksy, and Clairwil has a go at teachers who make excuses for underperforming children when they should be teaching them to read. Whoopdedoo warns of the perils of hugging strangers in the street (they might pee on you). And, for no particular reason, a couple of dog-related items; on the merits of luminous dog sick, and a quite, quite brilliant talking Glesga dug (with appropriately NSFW language).

On The Outside Looking In takes an engaging look at a subject close to my own heart; swearing. “There’s nothing quite like the simple pleasure of exclaiming “fuck!” when something goes wrong”, he says, and he’s absolutely correct.

Finally, following criticisms of the Scottish Roundup last week for being sexist (guest host Indygal having had trouble following through on her original plan for a female bloggers’ special; Doctorvee writes about the controversy here), the Blog Ombudsman has informed us that we are also hideously Central Belt, so it is with great pleasure that I present you with two excellent posts from Teuchterland; Angus Nicolson on Sunday ferry services in the Western Isles, and Silversprite muses on the incredible record of Finland in international sporting competition. (I didn’t even know they had the internet up there, so we’ve all learned something, haven’t we?)

Anyway, that’s all from me. Next week, we have a special roundup focusing on fat foul-mouthed Greek bloggers living in Scotland. Nominations to the usual place.

Anyway, to visitors from outwith these fine shores, we should inform you straight from the outset that there is an election on, and indeed there are now just seven days of campaigning left – so where better to start than with an unprecedented release of sewage?

North to Leith, Alister and 1820 all had some observations on the stench emanating from the Firth of Forth. The Flying Rodent smelt it, too, and for some reason it reminded him of Michelle Malkin.

Calum Carr has an appeal for “democracy to be heard”. Yeah, good luck with that, mate.

Shuggy is, it seems, a little more circumspect. For him, the goals of democracy are to be expressed a little more modestly:

it is a system that allows for a change of government without the resort to blood-letting that most of the other options have historically entailed. It is a secret perhaps because it is felt this is too modest an ambition for a polity.

But it shouldn’t be, at least not for anyone acquainted with human history and the human condition. For it is the glory and wisdom of representative democracy to have turned something once thought of as treason into a legitimate activity – indeed in some sense even our duty. I’m taking, of course, about opposition. Our system pays politicians to oppose whatever government happens to be in power. A facade to some; genius, if you ask me.

It may pass off without bloodshed – though not if I run into the bastards who have been stuffing Lib Dem leaflets through my letterbox every day for the past fortnight – but that’s not to say there won’t be a measure of fraud. The new electronic counting system in place for the elections has none of the safeguards usually applied to such systems in other parts of the world, as OurScotland’s blog explains. Oh, and postal votes are also open to massive fraud because, as the Red Squirrel’s Lair reports, the new postal voting system in place for the elections has, er, none of the safeguards usually applied to such systems in other parts of the world.

So, who’s responsible for these two potential fiascos? Can you guess?…

Anyway, Fitaloon and Whoopdedoo both also had leaflets under the microscope this week – though luckily for their local candidates, neither seem to be as enraged by them as I am.

The polls certainly seem to point towards an SNP victory, but then again what do the polls know? As Holyrood Chronicles points out, two polls on the same day can say radically different things, which leads one inexorably to the conclusion that nobody knows anything. Meanwhile, SNP Tactical Voting crunches some numbers, as he’s been doing throughout. And Angus Nicolson looks at the situation in the Western Isles.

Assume the polls are right: what would an SNP win actually mean for Scotland? Over at Havering On, Richard’s view is that it will be almost entirely about kicking Blair. The Select Society noted that many small businessmen who should, you might think, be leaning towards the Tories, are actually backing Eck and his band of separatists, and suggests, correctly in my view, that this marks a real sea-change in business’ attitude towards the SNP. The Reactionary Snob suspects some businessmen are a little too close, though. Julie Hepburn is campaigning for the Nationalists, on the other hand, and says that the negative Labour campaign demonstrates that their time is passing.

High Politics sees the election as 1997 all over again. And DoctorVee points out what he sees as double standards from the SNP: parading celebrity supporters one day, and then deriding the other side for wheeling out Walter Smith to defend the Union. Scots and Independent, meanwhile, derides the other side for wheeling out Walter Smith to defend the Union.

At my own blog I had a bit of fun at the Nationalists’ expense by quoting the verdict of Professor Arthur Midwinter on the various parties’ manifestos. Worth reading not so much for my lefty-bashing, which was pretty boilerplate, or indeed my desperate attempts to big up the Tories, which were half-hearted at best, but more for the comments: a previous victim of Midwinter’s sharp tongue, Brian Monteith, popped up to put the boot into the good Professor.

For the sake of balance, C.B.Buckland saw the same article in the Scotsman and wasn’t the least bit impressed. In fact:

If I were doing policy for the Tories (don’t know how that might ever happen), policy number one would be spending about £8 million on getting Annabel Goldie a haircut. She has a fringe like an umbrella and a backcomb like Michael Bolton in a wind tunnel.

Well, I laughed.

Tartan Hero has the YouTube of Jack McConnell getting well and truly filleted by Bernard Ponsonby. It’s glorious stuff, unless you’re a Labour supporter, in which case you might want to look away now.

Robert Sharp had some searching questions after reading the Labour manifesto, too. And Clairwil is positively terrified. £5000 a year more? Who can afford that?

The splendidly-named Anastasia Beaumont-Bott, with whom I now confess I fell instantly in love after reading her great diatribe against the Lib Dems (“nobody likes you, everybody hates you, think you should just go eat worms. Big fat squidgy ones, itty bitty skinny ones, see how they wiggle and squirm. You heard me Liberals – p*ss off!“), has had leaflets through the door from the “Have You Had Enough?” party and, frankly, ain’t impressed with them either.

The Scottish Blogging Roundup is an ecumenical feast, so let’s finish with a little relgion. Some bloggers have tried, bizarrely, to link the gunman behind the Virginia Tech massacre to radical Islam – on the most spurious of grounds. Osama Saeed points out the absurdity.

Let’s also savour MediaWatchWatch putting the boot into the Scottish Christian Party, whose views on some issues are fairly… robust.

And finally, on a not unrelated subject, Bookdrunk has the lowdown on a frankly astonishing survey of British university students:

A third of those polled thought latex condoms had holes in them large enough to allow HIV to pass through.

You what?