How many roads .....?

I have not blogged for a few weeks, the combination of family matters and an unseasonal downer have put me off entering into print; but today is shiny, sunny and at last the trees are agreeing spring has come to Galloway with new leaf and blossom - a new hope for this year.

In the meantime I have watched from the sidelines as the Better Together campaign wound themselves into an even tighter spiral of negativity, of detestation and hyperbole. There was the farce of the 500 questions, none of which they could answer if you changed independence for Westminster. This led in turn to a number of amusing spoof questions such as 'Would an independent Scotland ever win the World Cup?' and 'Will zebra crossings in an indepndent Scotland be black and white or white and black?' Next up there was the Ms Calman 'death threats' from supposed cybernats of which there was no evidence in either Ms Calman's twitterfeed or blog pages. Iain Taylor and Vitol's payment to 'Better Together' has not gone away and continues to dog Alistair Darling's every step and London have been very helpful in bringing up a referendum on the UK exiting the EU just when 'Batter Together' (a misspelling but somehow prescient) were making a big play about an independent Scotland would be 'kicked out of Europe'. Then there was Boris Johnson's appeal to Westminster to subsidise London even more than they already do, next up the £20 billion North/South Crossrail for London, rather than giving a pound to Govan or something like that.

Amidst all this grating howling and gnashing of teeth by the Better Together harbringers of doom, disaster and despondency a voice from the dark times of New Labour arose like Saron's mighty Orc war leader - Reepicheep, the white hand mark on his face (where his wife had slapped him to wake him up), the mighty Gorgdon, the political behemoth of Scotland arose from his slumbers (or was it jet lag) from amongst the big wodge he has been earning - rather than representing his constituents - and stepped up to deal the 'Yes Campaign' a mighty, thunking, crushing blow. With all Gordon's usual powers of oratory and high intellect he missed the target completely as he brought forth his big new idea to save Scotland for the Union which when you picked through the internable New Labour speak and appalling grammar said, We hate the Tories and UKIP, they are not nice people, so Labour in Scotland is setting up a separate 'United Labour' campaign in an attempt to prevent New Labour spending the next 100 years at Westminster as the opposition. We will still agree with Better Together on all things and policies but we are not Tories, how does that sound? I will stay friends with Alistair but we'll not really be friends. Being Gordon this of course took two hours to say and would have taken longer if some one had not pointed out he was not on £50k an hour, in fact he would be lucky to get a cup of tea and an Abernethy biscuit out of this gig.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, in the last quarter Scotland's economy grew by 0.5%, unemployment fell in Scotland, those in permanent employment rose 1.1% to a new high for over two decades, we still have an NHS worthy of the name, the UN said of course an independent Scotland would be a member, NATO will be open armed about an independent Scotland joining and money traders in Hong Kong were offering a better exchange rate for £Scots than £Sterling.

Now come again Gordon and Alistair, just how many roads must a man walk down, before the empire strikes back?