25 IS THE NEW 18

One of the SNP's pre-electoral tissue issues was that under them, education would improve by leaps and bounds. It would need to. A vital component of the Scotch megamyth that SNP love to cuddle up to is the overstatement of educational progress. Scottish education was the best in the world, we gave it to the rest, a school in every parish, blah, blah.

Facts lead elsewhere. HMiE (Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools) suggest that 12% of all council aided schools do not meet what they call 'positive criteria'. Also that 10% of secondary schools were 'weak'. In view of the fact that all children only have one shot at all-through education, the response of the SNP's education spokesperson to suggest that exam attainment is perhaps not so important as all that, meets with a certain opposition and irritation from newly irated parents. The fact too that Scotland tends to prop up most international tables of successful education attainment seems to mean little.

What is slowly becoming recognised as the phenomenon known as Brownian Motion, ie turning away from problems that seem intractable or insoluble, is becoming a feature of SNP policy. Quite apart from its perky suggestion that Scottish schools are excellent and taking comfort from the teachers' unions inevitably egalitarian reflex that even the thought of league tables is bad, the SNP have resorted to their now customary tactic of reversing manifesto promises. All class sizes would be capped at 18 children in Primarys One to Three, they trumpeted. Sorry about that: it will be pegged at 25 now in Primary One classes.

This must inevitably mean few increases in teacher numbers in schools yet there are plenty of young trained teachers hanging around street corners waiting for a position. All of whom have cost money to train. The Sober Thistle detects signs of Brownian Motion.

The news that The Leaping Salmond is prepared to throw his hat into the ring, one last throw of the dice, in calling for a referendum on independence comes as no surprise. It flies in the face of polls that suggest a 28% interest in the subject but that means little to The Great Leaper. What came with the announcement was that he intends to throw his 'child soldiers' into the frontline. His intention is to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in such a referendum.

The thinking behind this cynical ploy is clear. Many of the younger generation have a slightly naive approach to politics. That may be why so many have, not quite a romantic attachment to nationalism, but rather a pseudo-patriotic one, demonstrated in community singing of dirges such as 'Flower of Scotland' and showing off face painting at sporting events . It stems of course from the 'Braveheart' phenomenon, a work of fiction that has been transformed into apparent fact by its cultivation by nationalists. That it is historical garbage seems immaterial. When the manipulation of media sways all of us and propaganda falls on well prepared soil, anything can happen.

How will teenagers be rewarded for their presumed voting patterns in favour of nationalism, assuming that Westminster allows voting rights to be given to them because the final decision rests there? One thing that the Leaping Salmond cannot give them is a drink to celebrate victory if it happens. The New Calvinists have issued new licensing laws that have forced supermarket checkout assistants to wear badges that inform you that if you look under 25 you will be asked for your age if alcohol is involved with your shopping. More sinister than that, is their regulation that if an individual asks for alcohol before 10.00am, a description has to be written down of the person asking. What-ho for an independent Scotland! The promise of things to come!

Did I not tell you? The name of Scotland has a certain odour about it now that The Leaping Salmond and his sidekick McAskill have stuck by their guns. All that fussing and feuding in Tripoli, accompanied by a waved Saltire (horror of Horrors!), all the half revealed negotiations, all the sleazy goings on means that the good name of Scotland has been dragged through the mud and the sand too.

L'affaire Megrahi is not yet over. Whatever it has done, it has succeeded in exposing a teensy amount of the SNP/Moslem byplay that goes on out of the public eye, about which more later. Out of all the criticism that The Leaping One's activities have engendered, there are few more trenchant critics than Professor Tom Gallagher, Peace Studies, University of Bradford. Google his name for a good read about Scotland today on a number of websites.

I'M SCARED TO LOOK

I'm afraid to look. I'm afraid of what I am sure will be paraded across the media outlets of the world. I'm afraid that Scotland will be treated to derision and disbelief by onlookers and commentators from the five continents. The reason? Tomorrow the Scottish Parliament has been recalled in order to discuss Justice Minister McAskill's decision to release Al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds. What a comic has called 'a wee pretendy parliament' will demonstrate to the world that not only can you not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, it will show that cannot get rats out of mice.

Holyrood (always mispronounced 'Hollyrood' both by media and inside personnel) right from the start was a haven for local politicians who never in a month of Sundays or Mondays would have got past the police guard at the gates of Westminster. If any proof is needed, just take in the level of debate thoughtfully provided by the BBC and compare it to Westminster's. Chalk and cheese does not describe it. That's why the Leaping Salmond stands out so much in what excruciatingly passes for debate. In Holyrood, he is a big shark in a pool of minnows, while in Westminster, he was a small shark in an ocean of big sharks.

Regardless of this, I think he will take a more active role in the Megrahi Affair debate than he has done so far. His performance has up to now been muted, if in fact he has not been actually mute, leaving K.McAskill to face the flak, protected only by that tartan curtain he emerged from to let us know he was going to spring Megrahi. The Leaping One has re-developed signs of his cocky self-confidence over the weekend, achieved mostly by repeating the same mantra over and over again, and which I suspect will be shouted out in Animal Farm-like sheep chorus by the massed ranks of SNP MSPs. "Due process, clear evidence". The world will see what a devolved parliament can do tomorrow. No Taiwanese punch ups or Spanish gunplay. Just Scots jumped-up local politicians doing what they do best.

COMINGS AND GOINGS

Done and dusted. The flight of our most celebrated prison resident to his home territory rids us of an unwelcome guest. We are after all as K. McAskill puts it, a peoople who pride ourselves on our humanity. The downside is that the Scottish Executive will probably have a spin machine set up with the sole purpose of preening its ministers and the Greater Silent Salmond on their statesmanship, integrity, international understanding and associated baloney like that. It will not take into consideration the law of unintended consequences.

What are foreign observers to make of our devolved condition, when Scotland's minister for justice disagrees with the UK government's actions, not once but twice in the course of the most important speech in his career?It is hard to escape the conclusion that K McAskill, regardless of how slowly he was speaking, found it hard to avoid delivering the sort of nationalist gibes that the Silent One like to indulge in. Alternatively, foreign observers may start to ask themselves if an SNP administration is some kind of fifth column in the heart of the UK; allegedly devolved but proceeding along different paths in certain fields of public policy. And ask themselves how this can work and how such divergent paths can be reconciled. The Americans in particular are intensely annoyed at the SNP's 'Mouse That Roared' act. The consensus is that when next a variegated bunch of of Scots persons sashay down Fifth Avenue on Tartan Day, they may find themselves talking to themselves and listening to their own bagpipes. New Yorkers have little time for planes falling out of the sky on them. Nor for a country that springs the organiser of the drop-in from jail and calls it humanitarian.

What are we to make of the unwonted, almost evangelical tone that crept into K.McAskill's discourse? The conclusion reads as though one of the SNP's many spinners wrote it for him, with once again nationalist, even Burnsian echoes sounding through it. The strains of 'A Man's a Man... etc can almost be heard. "We pride ourselves on our humanity...." Yeah. If McAskill looks at footage of Al-Megrahi's exodus from Greenock and his arrival at Glasgow Airport, he will hear few cheers of approval from onlookers. Perhaps they were thinking of humanity falling out of the sky in December 1988.

The timing of Al-Megrahi's release carries eerie coincidences with it. His best efforts ensured the downfall of Flight 103 as its passengers were returning home for Christmas. Al-Megrahi returned safe and sound to celebrate the start of Ramadan. Watching his passage down the flight steps to the cries of "Allahu Akbar" makes one wonder how many times that sentiment has been expressed in that context at Friday prayers today. Certainly K. McAskill's actions will do no harm to SNP relations with the Moslem community. Salmond was not so silent when Glasgow Airport was invaded. He and his flunkeys made a beeline to the mosque to reassure Moslems that no one blamed them. The SNP has a history with the Moslem community and it will be interesting to follow the developments and voting implications of K. McAskill's compassion for Al- Megrahi.

Al-Megrahi was on the plane two hours after McAskill finished speaking, lock stock and Libyan intelligence men. After all, he was one of them. The American government is furious. Obama has frowned. Flight 103's victims relations feel cheated. Oil contracts have been signed with Libya. Tony Blair's fingerprints have been discovered. The whole thing stinks.

A NEW WORRY FOR THE TARTAN CHOSEN ONE

These must be uncertain times for the Leaping Salmond, what with the appalling weather on Saturday for the World Piping Championships; the, well, slow trickle homewards Homecoming; the Big Sister bullygirl in Washington laying it on the line for K McAskill re Megrahi, as a result of which he hasn't a clue what to do (does he ever?); calls for Holyrood to be recalled to discuss the whole Lockerbie situation.......the list goes on. What the Leaping One does not want at this time is too close an examination of the relationship of the ruling SNP junta with the Moslem community.

Readers may recall that one of the first actions to take place when a cold blooded attempt to take lives at Glasgow Airport was thwarted, after apparently the right of jurisdiction between Holyrood and the Metropolitan Police had been discussed, was for a rapid state visit to the Islamic community to assure its members that no one blamed them for the outrage. Well and good. It is not too unreasonable to assume that the SNP hierarchy maintains a soft spot for this minority group. What else explains the Mail on Sunday report that a handout of £400 000 for something called an 'IslamFest' to take place in June did not take place at all and that £128 000 has so far been handed back? Such largesse for a marginal cultural clambake makes for hard reading in financially strapped times.

Could it be that The Leaper might face some sharp looks and hard words from Moslem elders if the wrong decision is made about Megrahi? And how would that affect relationships ?

THE DISGRACE OF LOCKERBIE

No one can deny any longer that the whole issue of responsibility for the mass murder of 270 people in a jet over Lockerbie in 1988 is a national disgrace which in its turn has raised other questions, some of them concerning the position of the Scottish Executive within the framework of national foreign policy. Followers of the sometimes tortuous twists and turns of Scottish political life are used to its chief officials, especially Mr Salmond, visibly elbowing their way to the front row of every issue, always with a 'Made in Scotland' tag attached to their intervention. The recent visit of Mr McAskill, Justice Minister, to Ali Megrahi, convicted for the crime, should have had no significance, nor even any purpose. Now Scotland has been placed in the international limelight; McAskill is alleged to be about to make a decision on Megrahi's release; the American Secretary of State has applied a little pressure on him; Salmond is silent; and it now appears that the dog of Britain's foreign policy is being wagged by its devolved Scottish tail. Next week should be interesting.

Arise from your slumbers!

The Sober Thistle is stirring from his torpor. This almost Jurassic movement has been kickstarted by a comedic description. 'Our wee pretendy parliament'. What the comic failed to add was the cavortings of our rulers in that parliament. Watch this space.

Erubesco

According to unsympathetic critics, Shakespeare had little Latin and less Greek. If you are as one with this condition, the translation of the title is "I am blushing". Glasgow Airport sustains a terrorist attack by a Muslim group, with all the implications involved in that, and the reaction of the Scottish Daily Record is to be reassured that the would be assassins were not Scots. Bad enough, but again the national mantra is "Wha's like us? Deil the yin.' (Translate; Who is like us? Devil the one.) Reading this in Time Magazine makes it more uncomfortable. Then to read Time's comment that, 'getting fixated on national identities is a plan without a purpose' brings on the erubescence. The author of Times' piece let us off lightly, fixated as we are on national identity. Events have not.

Ensuring that the Muslim community took no fallout from this attack consumed enough political and media energy to change a few lightbulbs in Holyrood. Two examples of this. The Leaping Salmond and his Justice Minister Kenneth McAskill hurried to the chief Glasgow mosque to calm any fears that might exist over Muslims becoming whipping boys. BBC Scotland in an oddly titled and hastily stitched together 'special', 'Scotland After the Bomb', produced the usual format for such emergencies. A studio audience, a panel with two politicians, three Muslims and a presenter. The scene was set by the poster grandfather of Glasgow's Muslims asserting, 'The Islamic faith does not allow terrorism.' Things moved on to troops out of Iraq, back again to the peacefullness of the Muslim community, on to faith schools- do they help or hinder integration. The more familiar the territory the better. And on and on. Two things were missing. There seemed to be little representation of or concern for the people who were the object of the attack and no one really got to the core reasons why this group of professional persons tried to commit mass murder of people they did not even know.

Doing the Dhimmi Shimmy?

Whilst her desire to be civic and even-handed is admirable, yesterday's remarks by Nicola Sturgeon MSP, that 'Islam is a religion of peace' makes one wonder just where she has studied Islam to the extent that she is able to pronounce so confidently upon its theology.

I hesitate to use the expression, but is there not an Old Testament quality to her calling down wrath?