Why this blog?

Having a bit of time on my hands, and a long term interest in current affains, as well as a need to bring into the public domain some of the injustices perpetrated by the establishment in Scotland, in the name of child protection, I decided to turn my hand to writing regular comment. I spent over fifteen years writing the Spectator column in the local paper, commenting weekly on anything that happened to take my fancy that week or any time really, hence the name Spectator.

This blog will be written from the perspective of a hard line, uncomprimising Scottish Nationalist at a time when we could be entering one of the most important periods in my lifetime. Having spent over 35 years in the SNP between 1955 and December 1990, when I left over policy differences over the EU, my political commitment to the cause of Scottish independence has been life-long. I believe we could be in a period where we have the conditions for the "perfect storm". The SNP has an absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament, despite the voting system having been drawn up with the intention that such a thing could never happen. The Lib/Dems are deeply unpopular as a consequence of having gone into coalition with the Tories and, Labour and the Tories each have new female leaders.

While we like to pride ourselves on having moved on from the time when women were considered to be inherently inferior to the male species, it is still a fact that any woman who aspires to do well, particularly in politics, will be set different hurdles and certainly be asked to mount higher hurdles than her male colleagues. At the moment neither leader gives the impression of having either the charisma or the ability to mount those hurdles and, thus the SNP has been presented with the best opportunity it has ever had, to take the Scottish people to independence. I do not feel confident that the party has the commitment to do that. I have known the party leadership, at its various levels, for well over thirty years in many cases and I know the history of the individuals involved. Some of them are what I would call Nationalists, with an inherent capacity to see the unfolding of events from a "Nationalist" viewpoint, while others are "economic Nationalists" by their own admission whose commitment to the freedom of Scotland no more than skin deep and would cease as soon as they believed it might cost them. Yet a few others are not Nationalists at all, believing that Devo?Max, as they call it now, is as far as Scotland needs to go to satisfy their ambitions for the country. I intend to comment regularly on all of that.