We took a stroll around North Queensferry last week. It wasn’t much of a stroll because it’s not very big. It must be the best location in the world for viewing iconic bridges, though. It lies slap bang between the two famous ones over the River Forth.

The following two pictures were taken from the same spot. The angle between the photos is about 60⁰.

They’re doing some repair work on the Road Bridge which, thankfully, you can’t see from the road.

The next time I drive over it will be more scary than usual now I know all that is going on below.

Pictures of the northern cable anchor point and a support pillar are on my flickr site.

Looking west we could see the trans-North Sea ferry berthed at Rosyth.

There was an aircraft carrier at the Royal Navy base too. I had thought we no longer had any of those, or was it just the new ones the Coalition Government planned to scrap? My camera isn’t quite good enough for the distance involved but it was definitely an aircraft carrier. It had that upward sweep at the bow.

Yes, Vince Cable should not have said he’d block the Murdoch takeover of Sky but the other stuff is totally unremarkable. It is perfectly obvious to one and all that had he resigned from the government at any point up to now then the coalition would have been in deep trouble. (The same may no longer be true due to the fallout from this.)

However, the fact that he was entrapped is what bothers me. Moreover it ought to bother anyone who might have to contact an MP about a constituency matter.

This underhanded piece of agent provocateurship does a profound disservice the democratic process as it operates in the UK. (What passes for a democratic process.) Anything which undermines what little restraint or influence constituents can have on their MPs between elections is to be deplored.

I heard some journalist on the radio saying that everyone understood that if as an MP you said you were talking “off the record” then that would be adhered to. If you didn’t – and Vince hadn’t in those terms – then you were fair game. That totally ignores the fact that Cable did not think he was talking to a journalist; he thought he was talking to a constituent. There is a world of difference.

Of course he would not have said these things to a journalist. But most people say things to others they don’t necessarily mean. In some cases it’s known as being polite.

Also, things said in private may not always correspond to public utterances. An employee, for instance, may be less than enthusiastic about his/her employer when not at work – sometimes even at work – but never to the boss’s face.

We are not, here, discussing criminal behaviour (where such tactics by journalists may be justifiable in uncovering wrongdoing) but about the interaction between a representative of the people and his constituents. Cable had, I believe, not even done anything against the ministerial code of conduct as he had not yet actually made his decision about the takeover. It certainly hadn’t been announced. He was guilty only of boasting, puffing himself up; as I suspect most MPs would/do in these situations.

An MP has the right to expect that those who come to him for help as a constituent are who they say they are. Otherwise it will be difficult for him or her to do their job properly.

This journalistic sting succeeded in that it revealed Vince wasn’t too happy about aspects of the Government’s programme.

Hmmm.

Didn’t we know that already? And that other Lib Dems felt similarly?

Who potentially benefits from all this fuss about nothing?

Murdoch and News International.

That tells us a lot.

I see that there has been transport chaos in England today. Roads and airports have been closed and motorists have been stranded in their cars overnight.

I trust that Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray and high profile Scottish Tory David McCletchie will now be demanding the resignation of the relevant UK Minister as obviously he (or she, I’ve no idea who has that responsibility, if anyone) is to blame for this totally avoidable occurence.

What do you do when all around you are screaming, “We’re doomed!”?

It seems the answer is to add to the screams.

When one country starts to make cuts to its spending, that doesn’t matter too much. When they all do….?

Wasn’t this the sort of thing that brought about the Great Depression?

What sense does it make to take jobs in the public sector out of the economy when the private sector is manifestly incapable of taking up the slack? Not only do you not make as big a saving as it might seem – you lose the income tax on the pay of those who are not employed to fill any vacancies and possibly have to pay out benefits instead on top – you also lose the spending power of those jobs in their local (and the wider) economy and so lose the stimulus they might give.

It seems daft to me.

Wasn’t it government spending that brought an end to the Depression? I read recently Congress delayed the US recovery by several years by kyboshing some of FDR’s plans for a stimulus.

Savage cuts and an increase in VAT are both things I had a premonition near certainty about under a Conservative government.

Plus ça change….

Double dip recession (and worse?) on the horizon?

Yesterday, despite them being a running background to my adolescence, for the first time ever I went on a demo. It was for the Fair Votes (Take Back Parliament) campaign and took place in Edinburgh.

This is the (slightly sparse) early gathering.

The procession was from St Giles Cathedral to New College on The Mound.

At The Mound

An MP (Mark Somebody – I didn’t catch his surname) addresses the multitudes.

Purple Flags

The purple stands for liberty it seems – or was it justice? I wore a purple shirt.

There might have been about 300 hundred people taking part. Not bad for something organised within a week. Along with the organisers the police were given a vote of thanks. Hardly a revolutionary mob but you’ve got to start somewhere.

What do we want?

Fair Votes!

When do we want them?

(Well, preferably about thirty years ago. But hey: it’s never too late.)

And guess what?

We have an unelected Prime Minister.

(Well, I didn’t vote for him.

Only 33,973 people actually did.)

There has been an extremely unpleasant sub-text to the criticism Gordon Brown has suffered ever since taking over at No 10 – and even before that. He has been subjected to torrents of intolerant abuse; mainly, perhaps, because he is Scottish. We shall need to see what the future holds but at least until England has some sort of constitutional arrangement similar to those holding in the rest of the UK it may be that no Scot nor Welshman may ever be PM again.

I thought nothing became Gordon Brown so much as his leave-taking of office which was dignified, restrained and a rebuke to those who have characterised him so badly, but did play a bit too much on sentimentality.

And so we have a coalition government. I can only hope that the Lib Dems will be able to restrain the excesses the Tories would undoubtedly have inflicted had they governed alone.

But this is what government should be like. It hasn’t done Germany any harm. With coalitions we would almost certainly have had neither the Iraq War nor the Poll Tax. I also don’t think electoral reform would be in the offing without it.

The posturing of some Labour MPs unwilling to countenance a deal with the Lib Dems or, still less, PR was purely for party advantage reasons. They reckon Labour would some day be back in power on its own and to hell with the country and the depredations a Tory government might inflict on it in the meantime. (A similar consideration applies to those Tories opposed, but in the reverse sense.)

P R – even the minimum requirement of the Alternative Vote – is still not here, though. I wouldn’t put it past the Tories to find some way of sabotaging the proposed referendum. There will still be Labour MPs voting against it too.

As I write I have no idea how the talks between the Tories and the Lib Dems to form a “stable” government are going.

NIck Clegg is, though, treading dangerous ground. If he trades principle for a Cabinet seat and does not at the least get from the Tories a commitment to a referendum on a proportional voting system for Westminster elections and he subsequently actively props up a Mr Irresponsible premiership I suspect a large segment of the Lib Dem core vote will abandon them at the next election. Or before if any arrangement manages to last: there are elections to the Scottish Parliament next year, plus local elections.

Even with such an agreement many in Scotland may still do so.

BBC Scotland is tonight screening a programme titled Why Didn’t Scots Vote Tory?

I know 17% of those who voted in Scotland did actually do that very thing but why devote a programme to the subject?

I can answer the question in one word.

Thatcher.

It is almost impossible to overestimate the size of the scar her administrations left on the Scottish political psyche. The swing to Labour in Scotland on Thursday is a reflection of the abhorrence with which Scots voters still regard the possibility of a Tory government inflicting such depredations on the country again. It is almost in the nature of a folk memory. Parents probably imbibe their children with it along with their mother’s (or their formula) milk.

Similar feelings pertain in large parts of the north of England too – witness Rochdale staying Labour despite Bigotgate and a credible Lib Dem challenge.

Symptomatic of this feeling was a caller to a BBC Scotland phone-in with Annabel Goldie (the Scottish Tory leader) who asked apropos of a putative state funeral for the so-called Iron Lady, “Does she have to be dead first?” It can be found on the BBC iPlayer. It’s about 33-35 minutes in.

Elvis Costello perhaps summed it up best. (Warning. He swears in the preamble.)

After all that money spent, all the hoo-hah, all the ferment, all the hyped up blatherings of the TV news types – don’t they just love all this? I think they think it makes them important – all the discussion of change, it turns out that Scotland returned exactly the same balance of representation to the UK Parliament as it did five years ago.

It kind of makes you wonder why we bothered.

But of course what Scotland overwhelmingly voted for it didn’t get.*

Does that remind anybody of anything?

I noticed David Mundell (the only Tory MP in Scotland and so the only candidate for Secretary of State in a Tory minority government, God help us) claiming that since it was a UK election the Tories would have a mandate to rule Scotland.

I hope we hear nothing from him then about MPs for Scottish constituencies not being able to vote on matters that come before them that pertain only to England, as that would rather undermine his argument, would it not?

*Neither, of course, did England. (At least, not yet.)

I’€™m not sure I want to wake up on Friday morning. I have this terrible feeling that Mr Irresponsible will win an outright majority.

It’€™s not that I’€™m in favour of Labour, though. Because of the nature of Labour in Scotland, I couldn’€™t bring myself to vote for them. But for all their drawbacks in the UK sense (Iraq, ID cards, other infringements of personal liberties, failure to bring the bankers to heel, not scrapping public private partnerships, intense relaxation about people being filthy rich) they are still better than the Tories. To take one example of their success, the NHS is immeasurably better than it was 13 years ago.

The reason that I dread a Mr Irresponsible premiership – more accurately I fear a George Osborne chancellorship -€“ is experience. The Tories have a track record. They seem to take a visceral delight in the cutting of public expenditure. But it’€™s all right for Cameron and Osborne; they’€™re well off and won’€™t be affected. (In fact, due to their inheritance tax plans, they’€™ll be even more quids in if their parents snuff it.)

It’€™s other people who will suffer, people who can least afford cuts, either in their benefits, their pensions or their jobs.

I know the other main parties are also saying they would make cuts but they are more likely to make efforts to mitigate the worst effects.

And don’€™t tell me the Tories are the party of low taxation. I well remember them during the 1979 election campaign denying claims that their plans would require the rate of VAT to be doubled. In their first budget after the election they raised VAT from 8 to 15%! (In subsequent Parliaments they raised it further to 17.5%.) VAT is a tax which hits most those who can least afford it.

I also fear for the BBC. It’€™s a great British institution which happens to be tremendously good at what it does. I would go so far as to say at everything it does. We would all miss it when it’€™s gone. I know we all have to pay for it almost willy-nilly but it is amazingly cheap at the price. The Tories are in Rupert Murdoch’€™s back pocket (as well as Lord Ashcroft’€™s) and he would like nothing better than to see the BBC dismantled or at least curtailed. Sky would not be able to give us such sterling service. It never could, because Murdoch is only seeking to turn a profit. I would rather never watch TV again than contribute to his coffers.

I know my vote is not going to make a difference. My sitting MP (Gordon Brown) has a huge majority and I can’€™t see it being overthrown. Besides when was the last time you heard that the incumbent PM actually lost his (or her) seat?

I genuinely don’t know for whom I’€™m going to vote; only that I will. Too many people fought too long and too hard for my right to do so for me not to honour them. But it will not be Tory or Labour.

If Mr Irresponsible should win on Thursday then, in the words of a prominent 1980s politician, I warn you not to be old, I warn you not to be ill, I warn you not to be poor.

The trouble is that, down the line, you (and I) are likely to be at least two of those things, if not all three.

I wasn’t going to post about Politics again so soon but I see Gordon Brown has been getting pelters for referring to a voter as a bigot.

Is that really the story here?

Which of us has not said one thing to somebody for the sake of being polite and yet revealed a contrary opinion when in private?

For this is the crux. Gordon Brown’s “gaffe” was uttered in private. It was not for public consumption. The fact he was miked up at the time does not negate that.

So who is in the wrong here?

I would say that it was those journalists who were eavesdropping on his private conversations and did not immediately switch off their receivers nor forget what they’d heard.

Let us not forget that the man is – for the moment – Prime Minister. The journalists had no right to listen in to his private conversations. If they had such a right we might as well forget all about the thirty year (or is it twenty year now?) rule and wire the Cabinet Office for sound right now and be let in on those deliberations.

That the journalists did listen in is contemptible. To then reveal the content is politics of the lowest variety.

And for what it’s worth Gordon Brown was right. The woman was – is – a bigot; at least in what I heard her say to him.