Salt n Vinegar

It's all going very well, isn't it? "A Scottish firm has revealed how it was forced to abandon all trade with Europe after Brexit hammered the “nail into the coffin” of its export business. Andrew Duff, who runs butchers MacDuff 1890, said it’s now easier to export to Hong Kong than it is to Europe." (source - https://www.thenational.scot/news/23161092.lanarkshire-business-forced-stop-trade-eu-due-brexit/) About time too.

I understand that there's a few in Raith for the wraith to choose from...

The Brexit mob will claim this is a Brexit benefit as it will "encourage" British tourists to holiday at home, thus boosting the British tourism industry. Jacob Rees-Mogg will be dancing in the streets.

Susan? SUSAN? The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster (blessed be his noodly appendages) will have your guts for garters!

Oops. Labour doing better in the polls.... right on cue, the determination to screw up their election prospects appears... former leadership candidate David Milliband hints at return to the Commons. Can't imagine that the Tory leaning parts of the press will make anything of that, no siree!

Careful now. You have possibly offended those folk who think that the planet's winds come from huge disembodied heads or from huge caucasian swimmers only just keeping their heads above water. (Other opinions are available.)

Hmmm... Must confess to being a bit conflicted here. What's the difference between paying fees and moving into the catchment area of a "better" state school by buying an expensive home that "ordinary" folk couldn't afford? As I heard (dunno if it's true) that a Labour education convener in Edinburgh did... Boroughmuir, I seem to recall. Will the state also ban aspirational parents from buying extra-curricular tuition for their kids? If it is not tax free presumably that unfair advantage for the parents of better off kids is fine and dandy. So that's ok then. Is it? Taking away the vat aspect purifies the inequality? Don't think so. Education - like (laughably) religion - has been seen in tax terms as a public good, therefore justifiably in receipt of tax breaks. If questionable benefits to wider society are the the determining factor for tax breaks I'd much rather that religion lost its tax advantages first. I am a member of a Scottish charity which has education as a major aspect of its charitable status justification and none of it relies on myths and legends or claiming knowledge about the origins of the universe that, frankly, no mammal can possibly "know" to be true. Maths and physics delivered in a particular sort of school - no tax break. Burning bushes, talking snakes and women turning into salt - tax break? GTF! Yes, drink has been taken. Danger of a rant developing so I'm off to my kip! Oidhche mhath!

As I understand it, it can be quite difficult for voters to know that he is in the Labour Party as he appears not to make much mention of that minor detail on his election material . (So I was told by my younger laddie who lived in his constituency for a couple of years. Urban myth?)

Starmer has just announced the campaign for the next general election... "Vote Labour... keep Brexit". That'll go down well in Scotland .

? 'kin ell. If you listen really, really carefully you should be able to hear the sound of my late parents spinning in their graves.

What would be really interesting would be if as usual Sinn Fein didn't take up their seats and a combination of Labour and SNP/Plaid Cymru MPs could outvote Tory, Ulster Unionists and Liberal ones but not do so without them. No deals Starmer? Aye, right.

Kind of weird that some see us as too small or economically insignificant to even be "allowed" to ask ourselves the independence question at a time of our choosing. Just as well that these "gotcha" issues didn't apply to Malta, Tuvalu, Kiribati, St. Lucia, the Solomon Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Grenada.

Never, ever underestimate the ability of the Labour Party to shoot itself in the foot and of the Maily Dail, the Empress and the Torygraph to con the voters. The Tory media mandarins will have had their staff hoarding tittle-tattle about the Labour hierarchy for years, all ready to dump on their readership a month or so before polling day.

I realise that I could be accused of slight bias, but one part of legislation I'd look at amending would be the list of reserved matters in Schedule 5 of the 1998 Scotland Act so that the mother(etc) of Parliaments couldn't just stick its fingers in its ears and shout "lalalalala" after every election held in Scotland.

There aren't any. It seems to me that the ruling by the Supreme Court contains a further, puzzling, undemocratic element. As I understand it, it cited a decision of the Canadian Supreme Court about Quebec, and the UK version said that the right to self determination did not apply to Scotland as such arguments were limited to situations involving colonies or foreign occupation, “none of which applies to Scotland”. At face value, that seems to suggest that the right to self determination would only apply to Scotland if we had been successfully invaded or colonised. Repeated electoral demonstrations of political aspiration is viewed by the court as irrelevant. One might say that if one was forced into a marriage, either party can leave, but if one agrees to a marriage, one party is locked into it in perpetuity. It seems to me bizarre that the 21st century rights of a people to determine their own future next year depends on the circumstances under which a decision was taken on votes cast by 110 members of the Scottish Parliament - an entirely undemocratic body with members appointed by the Monarch or holding a hereditary title - almost 316 years ago. I’ve been unable in the brief digging over lunchtime to find detail of the limited pre-union “electoral” process, but as Monty Python might have put it, a three centuries old gaggle of placemen is hardly an ideal form of a decision-making body that seemingly fetters the political aspirations of a 21st century population.