The only thing you can say about Hazel Blears is that she jumped before she was pushed.

She was said on the Six O’Clock News last night to have timed her resignation in an attempt to cause as much damage to Gordon Brown as possible. To my mind it has done the opposite. It reveals her as petty, mean-minded and childish.

The fact that she wore a badge which said “Rocking The Boat” to her resignation meeting with Brown only adds to that effect. To me it appeared to be a reference to the recent film about the pirate radio stations of the 1960s rather than to a shipwreck. A rather juvenile gesture at best, and totally undignified.

The government is well rid of such playground antics.

One of the ironies of the recent murder of the abortionist George Tiller is the description of the anti-abortion stance as being pro life.

I heard one of the main anti-abortion campaigners on the radio news saying, “He was one of the most evil men on the planet … He deserved … a legal execution.”

After searching on the internet I found a reference to this in this article.

Tell me. How can you possibly be pro life and yet at the same time be in favour of execution?

Among the leaflets we received was one from the No To EU party.

At least I think it’s from the No To EU party.

What the leaflet actually says is no²eu – all in lower case! – which I read as no squared, eu; or perhaps n, o squared, eu. Of these, I only recognise N as an SI unit. (Even then it would have to be a capital letter.) The remainder are gibberish.

I suppose it’s meant to be text-speak (no2eu) – which is a less than serious way to communicate with voters I’d have thought – but this mob can’t even get this right as the 2 is superscripted, thereby becoming the mathematical symbol not for the number two but instead the indication that the preceding symbol is to be multiplied by itself (squared.)

So, mathematically, we have no x no x eu, or n x o x o x eu which (expanded) become n x o x n x o x e x u and n x o x o x e x u.

What a glorious example of shooting yourself in the foot. I didn’t bother reading the rest. If they’re not prepared to engage with me as a literate and numerate adult I’m not going to treat them with respect either. I’ll just take the piss.

They do, however, give the lie to Nigel Farrage (whose surname is only its final vowel away from an apt description of the man) of UKIP who said in their PPB that UKIP was the only party standing for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Well, what do you expect from someone who looks and sounds like a sinister double-glazing salesman?

The Labour and SNP leaflets barely mentioned the EU at all, the Tories only to bash it in derogatory language. The Lib Dem leaflet was the only one that came anywhere near a programme for engagement with the EU.

There was nothing from the Greens. That’s my vote sorted then.

Yesterday I drove my son and his girlfriend to Prestwick for them to pick up a flight to Belgium. Lucky so and sos.

It was a good day for it what with the sun splitting the pavements (as my father used to say.)

To break the trip up the good lady and I dropped into an antique centre at Garrion on the way back. The centre, which is part of a complex including a Garden Centre, various retailing ventures and the obligatory tea/coffee shop, is named after the two bridges which carry the A71 across the Clyde a couple of hundred metres west from there.

We didn’t actually buy anything yesterday but I include this link just in case anyone wants to go.

The bridges themselves are quite scenic so I took a few pictures.

This is the older bridge (the northern of the two.) Due to the short distance between the two bridges I couldn’t get the whole of this one in a single frame so this is actually a stitched together amalgam of two photographs.

This is the newer bridge which has a nice arched span. It was built in 2001. The two act as a kind of roundabout a bit like a motorway flyover. Westbound traffic takes the new bridge, eastbound traffic the old one.

Here’s the view from the southern bridge.

Scotland in summer. Don’t you just love it?