Jockistani Jottings

(Author's Note - I am not 'The Devil's Kitchen'; and this concerns the dank, fetid, sweaty world of Scottish local politics)

In a small, authoritarian country dominated by small, authoritarian minds, does Grampian Police contain the smallest and most authoritarian minds of all?

One only asks because at Alex Salmond's election count he was surrounded by a phalanx of uniformed cops as if he were the leader of a tinpot nation (rephrase that - leader in waiting of a tinpot nation; now it makes sense), when the Tartanissimo's chances of falling to the bullet of a crazed Unionist fanatic, a Charlotte Corday in twinset and pearls, must have been, at best, slim; as Alan Buchan of the 'North East Weekly' could tell you, Los Grampiones don't seem too keen on freedom of expression; their interest in illegal hare coursing might be considered to be misdirected when the likes of Joama Myers and Lyndon Chinnock are on the loose; and to cap it all, even although one might not necessarily think that Stuart Kennedy was engaged in a wholly wholesome or moral line of work there is absolutely no reason why the even application of one horse brain power should dictate he should be prosecuted for it - an utterly risible prosecution apparently motivated for no reason other than the desire of two people to really stamp their authority onto a third.

Mind you, the gaiety of the nation is much enhanced by the news that the SNP are making nice to the watermelons in the Green Party. Incredibly, such an alliance might actually produce something of a positive result for Scotland.

The Greens' Patrick Harvie is almost fanatical in his pursuit of totaligayrian secularism, once going so far as reporting the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow to the police for 'homophobia'. It will be very interesting to see just how he will be able to work in coalition with Bashir Ahmad.

Harvie is on the record as opposing state funding for denominational education (which in Scotland means 'Catholic schools'); while one of Ahmad's most precious goals is the establishment of state funded Muslim schools. Ahmad, elected for the SNP on the Glasgow 'List' as Scotland's first Asian MSP (after the 'Sunday Herald' reported a 'surge' in applications for SNP membership amongst Asians in Glasgow), once disrupted a Mass in support of this goal - the question of the fate that would befall a Catholic who performed a similar act in a mosque is best left hanging in the air.

State funded Muslim schools would inevitably act as a magnet for the Dewsbury School of Islamic thought; and although 'A man's a man for a' that' is a fine sentiment to drink to on Burns Night, it is not perhaps the most solid foundation on which one could build a national security policy.

So you join that coalition, Patrick; and let's see just how far your principles go. After all, what's sauce for the priest is sauce for the imam.

Britain must have a referendum.