Ordure, Ordure

As if the venerable institution that was once the Labour Party could get any more muck under its fingernails, along comes Michael Martin to do so.

This case seems to be symptomatic of how far the party has fallen, and the fact that it involves someone who should know so much better, or used to know so much better underlines this.

As with most charges of corruption against the party, it is rather difficult to pin any evidence of definitve wrongdoing on the Speaker, but everyone can see that there is something most rotten in the state of John Smith House - just as they could with Sister Wendy, just as the could with Lobbygate, just as they could see with all these Lanarkshire 'Red Rose' dinners.

If I could be most unlike a little Scotlander at this moment, and praise the relative integrity of the UK's Parliamentary system, because we are fortunate that it does set the highest standards of its members, and when they are found to be lacking, they are generally dealt with. What the Labour Party should stand accused of in my eyes is undermining that system, with its incessant bending of rules that , in many cases it seems they have intentionally created so as to be as malleable as possible.

That's why the SNP victory in May was so special. For the first time in more than a generation, the autocrats, and their floozies at the heart of the once all-powerful Labour Party will now have to be on their toes, for they're getting found out all over the place.

And therein lies a lesson for us gnats - please can we never ever reduce ourselves to this simpering level of impotence and irrelevance?

Save Our Wendy (S.O.W)

Quite who in the Labour press department thought it would be a good idea to get Wendy down to Gorgie City Farm we will never know, but I guess they are finding it hard to get the staff these days....

That is not my point however. I would just like to call on all my other fellow gnat bloggers to leave Wendy alone - she's suffered enough. Rules were broken, but she didn't mean it, ok?

She's doing a great job for us, apart from anything else, and there is plenty time for us to see Andy 'Can't Read, Don't' Kerr, Cathy Jameson or Magrit Curran, entice the great Scottish Public back home to Labour with their stirring oratory and commitment to social justice.

Calum Cashley thinks he's onto a winner with his 'It has to be Helen' campaign, but I've got a name for you big man - Karen Whitefield. She ticks all the boxes, and even has her own website. She likes cake decorating too, and once worked in America. Yes, America -she's an internationalist to boot. Anyone having a look at her video on the Parliament website must surely agree she is the leader-in-waiting.

The best small-minded country in the world...

Now, it is hard to argue with some of what John McTernan said in his email to that well known beacon of enlightenment, Karen Gillon: Scotland can be narrow, and it can alas all too often be racist. We are often content to sit on our laurels, and point to things happening doen south like the rise of the BNP, or the success of the Tories’ anti-immigration policies, as an example of our success in being so enlightened.

It seems we have come along way from the time when black footballers were roundly abused at matches – but we cannot say that they are no longer abused by a small minority, or even by their fellow players. Scotland, outwith Glasgow, and I could argue, outside Pollokshields and the surrounding areas, is still remarkably white. It is often the most striking thing that friends from the south or abroad notice. It is sobering when out canvassing, to come across the (thankfully rare) people who seem to have immigration on the top of their agendas, even if they live in provincial towns where you will be hard pushed to find a non-white face.

But that does not mean we are ourselves especially narrow – every country in Europe has had to deal with racism in some sort of way, and any comparison can only end up sounding shallow down the line. While Sweden has been far ahead of us in introducing a whole raft of progressive legislation, we do ourselves a disservice by forgetting that we are far ahead of other supposedly progressive places.

What McTernan’s musings do make me think, after the initial acknowledgement that he does have a certain point, is that the Labour Party fundamentally distrusts the Scottish people. Those Scots who have ventured south to work for Labour do tend to look back on those of us up here as the unfortunates, stuck in narrow, Presbyterian Scotland. Unionists, seeing the world as they do through their own narrow Atlanticist prism, forget that Scotland would be more than happy to prove them wrong, and that cutting ourselves loose from our current London-centric axis would allow us to rejoin the world on our own, broad, terms. If only the folk at the top of the Labour Party in Scotland were genuinely interested in creating the ‘One Scotland’ they liked to talk about so much, we would be closer to the day when an advisor to a Swedish Political party could email a member of the Riksdag to commend Scotland as a place to go.

And finally, what was that Presbyterian bit about? It may have been written five years ago, but I can’t for the life of me remember what seemed particularly Presbyterian about Scotland in 2003. A walk down any High Street on a Friday or Saturday night, or indeed Sunday, and a cursory knowledge of our woeful teenage pregnancy statistics would make anyone think twice about calling us Presbyterian - That and the fact that the Church of Scotland is largely impotent in the public discourse, and has been for years. For the fire & brimstone rhetoric around the issues of gay marriage or abortion, you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be Cardinal Keith shouting loudest, and not whatever mild-mannered soul happens to be Moderator at the time.