Dug

David Fuddiddy-Mundelly, a man for whom democracy is worth litle more than a 19 points word score in Scrabble.

the Ice Age cometh

by Scotish MPs to the Scotland Bill, which was voted through on the backs of English MPs.

As far as this Tory government is concerned, a watered down version of the already weak and wabbit Smith Commission report is the be all and end all of devolution; even that pallid creature is geting weaker and wabbiter almost by the hour. It has already been guted and defleshed in the Commons, the Lords still hasn’t had a chance to grind its bones into dust for the windbag peers of the realm to blow away. The General Election, in which Scotland’s voters overwhelmingly backed a party demanding far more substantial powers for Scotland, might as well never have happened.

Also, courtesy of votes from outside Scotland, Scotland’s official opposition in Parliament is the lone Labour MP Ian Murray, the Shadow Secretary of State, and MP for Red Morningside, Edinburgh. Ian has his finger on the pulse of working class Scotish aspirations as he represents a constituency where people complain regularly about bankers, although usually what that means is tuting about Farquhar over the road leting his hedge get shockingly out of control since he sacked the gardener.

Ian gets to ask more questions of the Secretary of State for Cluelessness than the rest of the Scotish contingent at Westminster put together. Ian belongs to a party which has decided to accept many of the crueller measures in Osborne’s budget, so Labour’s idea of opposition is competing with the Tories in demonising the poor and the defenceless.

This unrepresentative joke of a system is what passes for Scotland’s supreme Government and Parliament. In effect, we have no voice and no influence. This, of course, raises the question of what the hell we’re doing there in the first place, a question that independence supporters have never ceased asking.

Many want another independence referendum as soon as possible, and while the clamour is geting louder as it becomes ever more obvious that there are no answers to the democratic shortfall and realisation dawns on many No voters that they will never get the changes they were promised by the Unionists.

So what to do about it? Westminster claims that holding an independence referendum is something that is in its giſt, and it will decide when, or if, there is to be another. The SNP has stated that they will press for a second independence referendum when there is a material change of circumstances.

Westminster claims that holding an independence referendum is something that is in its giſt, and it will decide when or if there is to be another. Te SNP has stated that they will press for a second independence referendum when there is a material change of circumstances.

August 2015 59

The only material change in circumstances that interests me is that we have another referendum when we know we’re going to win it.

That said, the SNP does need to include a statement on a referendum in its next manifesto for Holyrood - and for every subsequent manifesto. That statement should be that the people of Scotland, not the Westminster Parliament, have an inalienable right as a sovereign people to hold an independence referendum whenever we damn well please.