My first response when the good lady informed me of Michael Foot’s death was there goes Plymouth Argyle’s most famous supporter. Come to think of it he was probably the only supporter of their’s I’d heard of.

He was very proud of the fact that he’d been registered for them as a player on his ninetieth birthday. (To play only on the left, of course, never the right.)

Quite what his view would be of the ridiculous advertising campaign for an insurance company that seems to take the Albion’s supporters in vain I dread to think.

His other incarnation (as a politician) reached its peak when he was elected leader of the Labour Party. Unfortunately for him, or perhaps fortunately as I don’t think he ever really wanted to be PM, this was at the time the Thatcher juggernaut was in full swing.

There was a confected furore when he arrived at the Cenotaph for the Remembrance Day observances in 1982 wearing what was dubbed a donkey jacket but was more like a duffle coat. This was taken to be disrespectful of the dead – mostly by those who’d never been within miles of a battlefield themselves. (He had himself volunteered for military service in the Second World War but been turned down due to his chronic asthma.)

The Queen Mother – no left winger – apparently thought differently as she is said to have told him, “Very wise. It’s cold today.”

In all of his utterances he always seemed to be one of the few politicians who are genuine and mean what they are saying.

Michael Foot: 23/7/13 – 3/3/10. So it goes.

There aren’t many things that can make me sympathetic to the Scottish Labour Party…..

But the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in one of its periodic fits of pique is certainly up there.

Apparently Cardinal Keith O’Brien has accused the government of undermining religious freedom. (That would be the UK government, though. The Cardinal seems to have forgotten the SNP is in power in Scotland now.)

Well now; the last time I heard, people of all faiths (and none) in Scotland and indeed the whole UK were free to go about their business as long as it was within the law.

I don’t see any evidence of persecution nor of churches being forcibly closed down by the forces of the state. The Cardinal has had no difficulty in putting his point across* and has been widely quoted. So where is this infringement of freedom?

The churches have as much, and therefore as little, right as anyone else to have an input or a view on political matters. What they don’t have, and, despite the Cardinal’s and Secretary Of State Jim Murphy’s, strictures, ought not to have, is a superior right, which I fear is what the Cardinal is advocating. He seems to want freedom for his views but not for others’.

*Edited to add: He was given yet more air time on today’s Reporting Scotland.

The Digital Economy Bill seems to be the latest step in the UK Government’s apparently ongoing project to restrict and undermine the civil liberties of its citizens.

The bill contains provisions to remove internet access from alleged illegal file sharers even if they have not been convicted of any such offence. This strikes at one of the most fundamental underpinnings of the justice system.

Charles Stross puts the argument against the bill here.

There is also a petition you can sign up to – if you’re a UK citizen (sorry, subject) – on the No. 10 Downing Street web site.

With the release of a tape of a telephone conversation between Jacqui (sic) Janes and Gordon Brown it has become blindingly obvious that the hoo-hah surrounding his letter of condolence has been entirely confected; part of a sting operation against the Prime Minister almost certainly constructed for narrow (party) political purposes.

I do not buy for a single moment the notion that this is all about one woman’s grief or indeed supporting the troops in Afghanistan. It is solely about providing a bad press for the Prme Minister.

Not the least of the disturbing aspects of this affair is the revelation of the contents of the telephone call. Was Gordon Brown informed he was being taped? If not; is it not an offence to record someone over the phone without informing them that it is being done? This makes Ms Janes a law breaker and the Sun an accessory at the very least. (May we look forward to a prosecution?)

Moreover, due to these dubious circumstances – after all, which citizen, without ulterior motive or inducement, has the necessary recording equipment readily at hand, just in case? – I am inevitably led to the suspicion that Ms Janes may be rewarded financially for such deceit. [For the record: this is a suspicion that I would be delighted to be proven unfounded.]

However, I now have no sympathy whatever for Ms Janes.

Quite apart from Gordon Brown’s poor vision – which may make writing difficult for him and hence, also, his script difficult to read (and many people, myself included, have appalling handwriting) – how can Ms Janes object to his spelling when she, or her parents, cannot even spell her own name? The traditional form is Jackie, not Jacqui.

She not only spurned his initial letter – which he did not have to write; when, for whatever reason, he made another gesture of condolence by telephoning her, she was ungracious enough to reject this too.

It sounds very much like she is flailing around desperately trying to blame anyone for her son’s death.

Now (this is not to disparage the Armed Forces and it is especially galling to be writing this on Armistice Day) but Britain does not have a conscript army. Her son had to volunteer. Squaddies know the risks when they enlist. And unfortunately, if necessary, the duty they sign up for is to die. So to put it brutally, the only person to blame for his death is himself.

But perhaps she feels she could have stopped her son joining up and wishes now that she had, and so herself feels guilty for not doing so.

Whatever the truth of all this, the Sun’s complicity in her actions is despicable. She should have been left by them to grieve in peace; not driven to higher heights of denial and torment.

If the Sun’s intention was to make people less likely to have sympathy for the Prime Minister then in my case it has backfired spectacularly. It’s almost enough to make me consider voting for Gordon Brown. (And, unlike most people, I am actually in a position to do so.)

The man has done the decent thing twice over; and been pilloried for it.

He would have been damned if he hadn’t and he was damned that he did.

So, how likely is he in the future to write letters to the relatives of dead soldiers?

Wisely, David Cameron steered clear of this at PMQs today.

Jacqui Janes, mother of a British soldier killed in Afghanistan, has been in the news because a letter she received from Gordon Brown apparently misspelled her dead son’s name and, she is quoted as saying, was, “hastily scrawled,” forbye.

Just one thought. Who does she think she is?

She received a letter of condolence from the Prime Minister. Hand written, no less.

I appreciate that in her grief she may not have been in an accommodating frame of mind. But…..

The letter wasn’t delegated to a minion. It wasn’t typed or word processed.

Does she imagine for a moment that Lloyd George or Winston Churchill personally wrote a letter of condolence to every member of the armed forces killed on their watches? I very much doubt Margaret Thatcher did so for each soldier, sailor or airman killed in the Falklands.

So who exactly is disrespecting whom? Whatever anyone thinks of Gordon Brown as PM the man is in an exacting job with many demands on his time.

If I had received such a letter I’d be grateful that he’d taken time from his schedule to even think to do so. The mere fact he wrote it shows he was thinking about her loss.

Btw: If I had a penny for every time my name had been misspelled – or mispronounced – I would be a very rich man indeed. I’m sure the same could be said for Ms Janes.

I almost feel like enjoining her to grow up.

It is desperately sad that her personal tragedy has been diminished by a sordid descent into PM bashing.

As it is, I cannot escape the notion that she has been used. And that is the real disgrace. A gross disrespect to her son by those who used her, much more so than a mere misspelling of his name.

See my previous rants about politicians and poppies here and here.

Well. This year Jack Straw sported one in the House of Commons on the 20^th October!

That’s ridiculous. It’s at least 20 days before Remembrance Sunday (or 27 if it’s the Sunday after the 11th November.)

Doesn’t the Queen get to pick which Sunday it will be if the 11th is on a Wednesday?

Edited to add. I spotted Gordon Brown with one at Prime Minister’s Questions on the 21^st (yesterday) yet on the lunchtime news yesterday it said Dame Vera Lynn was to launch this year’s poppy appeal.

How come politicians get there first?

Re-edited: The Conservative spokeswoman on last night’s Question Time on BBC 1 had on a quite ridiculous effort: not the standard issue at all. It was as if she was saying my poppy’s bigger than your poppy and so I’m better than you. (Or more patriotic; or something.) It was actually more like the special ones the Queen wears. I’d have been more impressed if she’d had on a normal one like the general public buys – no green leaf. That would have been enough of a contrast with the other panellists.

My point about right wing Republicans not accepting Democrats as legitimate Presidents while the same is not true of Democrats vis-à-vis Republican Presidents has been underlined by Michael Tomasky in Monday’s Guardian.

There is just no end to the lunacy of some people.

England has no Parliament.

It hasn’t had since the Act of Union was given the Royal assent over 300 years ago.

Yet a lot of people – including English and Scots MPs alike – labour under the misconception that it has, that the Westminster Parliament is its direct successor and that the English Parliament subsumed that of the Scots. The reality is that both ended at the same time and were succeeded by the present Westminster body, the Parliament of the UK.

Any rumblings of unrest among some (English) MPs about Scottish representation at Westminster arise in part, I’m sure, out of this misunderstanding – if it’s not just deliberate mischief making.

Yes, there is now an imbalance in that English MPs have no say over devolved matters. Note, however, that no Scottish, nor Welsh, nor Northern Irish MPs at Westminster are in a different position in this regard. All are MPs of the UK Parliament and all are as unable to vote on devolved matters as any English MP (except insofar as they may be a constituent in Scotland, Wales or N. Ireland – when their influence is as minimal as mine – unless they happen to be a dual member.)

But this imbalance is only a corollary to that which prevailed before devolution, when English votes could override any combination of Welsh, Irish and Scots.

But that is actually still the case, the more so since the number of Scots MPs was reduced after devolution. If every English MP so decided they could easily all vote one way on any particular issue and to hell with the Celtic fringe.

However, that would be to deny that there is a union and that the constituent parts of the Union ought – while the union exists – to be aware of the interests of all the other parts. It was precisely for this reason that Scotland’s number of MPs was, before devolution, much higher than it ought to be on a strict head count.

In this regard, the US system whereby the lower House (of Representatives) is elected on a by-head basis and the upper House (the Senate) where each state – no matter how big or small – has two senators each, is just such an attempt to reconcile the rights of parts of the federation with the whole. (The position of the District of Columbia is an anomaly.) Whether it succeeds or not is another matter.

That’s the point. Every system is imperfect. Short of a federalised UK where the representation of each of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland was more or less equal (and how likely is that to come about?) or similar devolved powers being given to England (and Wales and NI) as now exist for Scotland – which would mean the UK Parliament needed a large reduction in size (a consummation some quarters would no doubt fervently desire but for which MPs are not going to be turkeys voting for Christmas) – we won’t be getting one.

For the moment (or, do you think, until a Tory UK administration conspires with the SNP to remove Scotland from Westminster completely and therefore embeds its English hegemony in the rump UK Parliament that would be left?) we’re stuck with the situation as it is.

And that means the answer to the West Lothian Question?

Is, “So what?”

I’ve no idea whether Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, was guilty of that offence or not. There are certainly grounds for believing he was innocent, high among them the fact that the main witness against him is said to be living the high life in Australia bankrolled by US government money. Megrahi was also quite probably sacrificed by the Libyan leader, Colonel Ghadaffi, for the sake of normalising relations with Britain and the US at the time.

There are many aspects to the whole murky affair which are strange; not the least of which is Kenny MacAskill’s – in best Rev I M Jolly mode – peculiar invocation of a higher power. The only conclusion to be drawn overall is that nobody’s hands are clean.

However, and this is the key point, even if Megrahi was/is guilty, to show him compassion is to demonstrate a sense of morality, of decency, way above that of someone who places a bomb on an aeroplane in an attempt to kill everyone on it. That a provision for such a release exists in the Scottish justice system is something to be proud of.

In this regard the phrase “to temper justice with mercy” comes to mind. Surprisingly, as it’s more the sort of thing to be found in the New, it comes from the Old Testament; which tends to be more fire and brimstone, not to mention vengeful, on the whole.

Some of the American relatives of those killed on the plane have stated in interviews that, in letting Megrahi out of jail, justice has not been done. Well, it has; as the Scottish system allows for compassionate release. 28 out of 31 such appeals have now been granted in Scotland in recent times. (One of the three not allowed was an earlier one for Megrahi when his condition was not so serious as it now seems to be.)

In any case, to keep someone in prison when they have an illness that is terminal smacks to me of vengeance rather than justice. If vengeance was the equivalent of justice then the law would sanction vendettas.

There has also been a lot of outrage expressed over the reception afforded to Megrahi on his return to Libya. (Insert alert about reprehensible cultural stereotyping here.) Personally, I thought that for middle Eastern types the greeting was remarkably restrained.

The waving of saltires has been commented on in disapproving terms. The thing that struck me there was, who’d have thought there were any saltires at all in Tripoli?

But… especially to those Americans who are complaining about Megrahi’s welcome home. You do exactly the same!

Remember my prediction that Barack Obama would be plagued by Republicans questioning his right to be President from the moment of his inauguration?
I was taken to task by someone in a comment for the temerity of my suggestion.

However, I have now been borne out not just once, but twice*. And he’s only been President for six months!

*For, apparently [thanks to Almax for alerting me to this – unfortunately Alastair's (extremely good) blog is restricted to 35 readers] there are folk saying Obama wasn’t born a US citizen and so is an illegal commander-in-chief. They are called Birthers and want to see his birth certificate.

This is part of what Almax wrote:-
“In the land of the cranks free there’s now a certain amount of steam behind a campaign based on the proposition that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore cannot constitutionally be President.

The proponents of this view are called ‘Birthers’ and they have taken to erecting billboards like the one above, demanding to see the President’s birth certificate.
The latest development is that one of the Birthers, United States Army Major Stefan Frederick Cook has, via his lawyer, the superbly-named Orly Taitz, filed legal proceedings in the District Court of Georgia, for a restraining order to prevent the Government deploying him to Afghanistan.
While there might be lots of good reasons for not going to Afghanistan (eg I’m scared, mammy), here is the one advanced by Cook and Taitz -
‘Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Cook would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command. … simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties.’
Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. Hawaii became a US State in 1959.
Here is the birth certificate in question, which naturally Birthers say is a fake.

Well, that might be a fake, but slightly more awkward is this August 1961 entry in the Honolulu Advertiser -

Some Birthers say that Government agents engaged in time-travel shenanigans and recently warped themselves back to ‘61 to insert this notice ex post facto.
America? Dontchaluvit?”

In the greatest democracy in the world^© it would seem some Americans are not democrats at all. Even with a small d.