Magrit fracks with the truth

Magrit Curran, my lovely MP, has a tangential relationship to truth, reality, and indeed her electorate. On Monday the fragrant one – she reeks of hypocrisy and stinks of the rot of a socialism that died a long time ago – tweeted that she had voted to stop fracking. She had of course done no such thing, Magrit had abstained on an SNP and Green backed motion to have a moritorium on fracking. She had voted for a Labour motion to allow fracking, subject to a few minor qualifications that will not unduly trouble the energy companies. It’s a bit like claiming you’ve voted to ban television when you’ve supported a small increase in the licence fee, or saying that you’ve voted to ban smoking when you’ve abstained on a measure to introduce plain packaging.

But that’s Magrit for you, she tells you she lives in the East End when she means she lives in a posh hoose in Newlands over the river. When questioned on the discrepancy between the facts and what actually come out of her gob, Magrit claims she represented the aspirations of East Enders – who apparently aspire to live somewhere else. Or possibly, like Magrit, we aspire not to remember where we live. Life in the East End after decades of Labour misrule is so depressing that the best we can hope for is amnesia. Thankfully Magrit has amnesia by the bucketload. She constantly rewrites her own past so she can live with herself in the present. This would appear to be her sole qualification for the job as local MP.

Magrit also accused Alicsammin of being the only person who posed a threat to the Barnett Formula just a few short weeks after she herself said it ought to be scrapped.  She claimed she “wasn’t around” back when the Labour government of Wilson and Healey deliberately mislead Scotland on the true worth of North Sea oil, yet at the time she was in fact the heid bummer of Glasgow University Labour club and constantly name-dropping her close association with Labour’s senior figures and hobbing with Labour’s nobs.

During the independence referendum campaign, Magrit expended considerable time and energy – far more time and energy than she’s ever devoted to the interests of her constituents – telling anyone who would listen that if Scotland became independent her son in London would become a foreigner to her. Admittedly, “anyone who would listen” consisted of the Daily Record and much of the Scottish media, but that’s simply another illustration of the problem Scotland faces. None of the outlets which were so very keen to publish Magrit’s opinings on the foreignness of her adult son have been very keen to question her on her statement on fracking. But then that’s scarcely surprising as Magrit’s statement about her son being furren was of course complete and utter bollocks, as in the event of independence Magrit’s Scottish born son would still be a Scottish citizen even if he lived in outer space. And it would appear to be in the vacuum of the space between her ears that Magrit forms her opinions.

Of course, even if it were the case that Magrit’s offspring would have a different citizenship and a different passport from her in the event of Scottish independence and so she’d be alienated from them and unable to love them just the same, this is not an argument against Scottish independence. It’s an argument that Magrit is sorely in need of psychotherapy and counselling. Or more likely it’s an illustration of the fact that Magrit will utter any auld pish that she thinks bolsters her position without considering whether it’s logically rigorous, or indeed true. Which is another way of saying that she takes the rest of us for mugs.

Magrit is Labour royalty, and like members of the royal family suffers from sycophancy syndrome, which is what happens when a person of somewhat lower than average intelligence spends their adult life surrounded by Labour party hacks, and lackeys. Or in the case of Prince Charles, posh inbred dummies with long titles, and lackeys. Labour in Scotland is now also seriously at risk of inbreeding, as there are now too few of them to ensure enough variety in their rapidly evaporating gene pool. This is why Labour did not reveal the number of members who voted in their recent branch manager election – because the number is embarrassingly small.

Being patronised by Magrit Curran is like being lectured by a person who thinks they are an expert on the work of Steven Hawking because they read the star signs column in the Daily Record. But don’t expect that organ to investigate Magrit’s problems with accuracy, the paper is happy to inform its readers that Labour voted for a moritorium on fracking. But then the Daily Record thinks that fracking is a sexual activity indulged in by Tory MPs with orange segments and fishnet tights. Labour’s against that sort of thing, but only because they don’t get an invite to the party, and the Daily Record is against it, but only because it gives them an excuse to publish outraged editorials.

What galls me the most about Magrit Curran is that this creature supposedly represents me in the Westminster Parliament. The only person Magrit has ever knowingly represented is herself. Tell lies all the time, and no one believes you even when you tell the truth. With Magrit the trust deficiency has got so bad that if she had a pet dog she’d have to get someone else to call it for its dinner.

There are only 100 days until the General Election. 100 days left for Magrit’s political career. 100 more days of expenses claims. 100 more days of lying and being patronised. 100 more days of the Daily Record not noticing. I hope they enjoy them while they last, because the clock is ticking and the countdown has begun.

I told myself when I gave up the fags that I could have a cigar on a special occasion. There’s not been one yet, but when Magrit’s career gets well and truly fracked by the electorate of Glasgow East in May, I’ll puff away on a big fat cigar in celebration.  Frack you Magrit.

 

 

A diminishing pile of beans

It’s been one of those weeks.  I’ve not been very well, but am slowly getting better thanks to some nasty medicine.  This is more than can be said for the ailing Labour party in Scotland, which on top of its deeply unattractive warts and acne, its sclerosis and its mange, is now showing all the symptoms of dysentry.  That must be that Murphy bounce they keep telling us about then.  Labour are just nasty, and no medicine can cure them.

A new opinion poll places the SNP on a whopping 52% for voting intention in the Westminster General election, a figure which would see the party walk off with all but four of Labour’s seats in Scotland.  The SNP would even take Mr Hi Jumpy’s seat too, leaving the Scottish branch manager without an elected position and therefore, according to Labour’s rulebook, he’d have to resign as Keezha’s boss.   But then Labour’s rulebook exists mainly for the benefit of Labour’s leadership, so doubtless a fudge would be found.  Or if not a fudge then at least some tablet or a teacake, as Jim’s so very very keen to establish his Scottish creds.

Jim was most recently seen on the telly today volunteering for a foodbank and hoping that no one would notice that it was policies he supported when in government that brought about the need for foodbanks to begin with.  Jim Murphy helped to destroy the ability of thousands of folk to earn a living wage, but now he’s helping to deliver a tin of beans on the telly.  So that makes up for everything.

But the main news on Thursday was the sooper dooper tin of beans given to Scotland, on loan mind, by the Smith Commission.  It’s a lovely tin of beans, not as big a tin as the one we thought we were getting of course, but then Scottish people can’t really be trusted with bean governing.  We might not consume them after all, leading to copious amounts of Westminster gas, we might plant them and they could turn out to be magic beans which grow into a mighty bean plant leading to a magical land.  Before you know it the sound of Fi Fie Foe Fum I smell the blood of Davie Cameron would be ringing out across the country.  This is not a risk Westminster is prepared to take.

The Unionist parties have played a blinder in the Smith Commission, in the sense that they can’t see where they’re going and they don’t know where they’ve been.  It started with a vow to deliver the homiest ruliest devoest maxiest the world had ever seen.  Scotland was going to get the most powerful devolved parliament in the history of devolved parliaments – although it still wouldn’t have control of broadcasting, oil revenues, or most taxes and would have fewer powers than the Faroe Islands – population 49,000.

The bean pile was further reduced during negotiations, as Labour, Tory and Lib Dem bean counters on the phone to their London headquarters vied to remove a mung here and a haricot there.  Labour didn’t want Scotland to have control over abortion laws or the minimum wage.  The Tories didn’t want Scotland have control of anything much really, and the Lib Dems were just pleased that they got a ride in a ministerial motor.

Now the official bill has been put before Westminster, and a few more flageolets and favas have been removed from the pile.  Scotland isn’t going to get control of welfare powers after all.  The Scottish Secretary is to get a veto, the Scottish Parliament can only take action on benefits policies after due “consultations” with the Scottish Secretary of State.  This is a bit like a teenager being told that they can decide for themselves when they go to bed, but only after asking permission to stay up late from their mammy.

Anyway, if you’ve got a masochistic streak greater than that found in someone who gets his jollies from nailing his scrotum to a plank with rusty nails, you can read the entire document here.  It consists of 134 pages of managementwankspeak which promise vague nothingness, and which will in any case be further diluted in interminable committee meetings in Westminster.  By the time an Act passes its final reading, Scotland will be left with control of road signs and precious little else.  Its sole purpose is to give the Conservatives an excuse to introduce measures to prevent Scottish MPs from voting on “English only” laws, even though, due to the Barnett Formula, those “English only” laws very often determine the overall level of Scottish funding.

This is why it is vitally important at the next General Election that Scotland’s voters give the Unionist parties a kicking like they’ve never had before – and this essentially means we deprive Labour of their Scottish beans.

Labour counters this by claiming that Scotland needs to vote for them in order to keep out David Cameron, even though we voted Labour last time and got David Cameron anyway.  It’s pretty obvious that Scotland voting for Labour doesn’t keep David Cameron out, we have David Cameron as Prime Minister to provide the evidence for that.   Scotland voting SNP or Green increases the number of Tory seats in Westminster by precisely zero.  David Cameron might think it’s in his interests to destroy Labour in Scotland – but Labour’s doing a perfectly grand job of destroying itself in Scotland all by itself.

But it’s only by returning a majority of pro-Scotland MPs to Westminster in May that Scotland can ensure that our interests will be represented.  Labour MPs put party interest first.  It means that whatever machinations and manoeuvrings Westminster indulges in over Scottish devolution – and it’s a given that they will – will not enjoy the support of a majority of Scotland’s MPs and will lack a democratic mandate in Scotland.  It means that Scottish MPs have a real chance of holding the balance of power and then we can ensure that the Unionists really do deliver on their promises to bring in Home Rule.  And remember – home rule means at a very minimum that you get to control the TV remote control or it means nothing at all.

Vote Labour, vote to be powerless, vote for a diminishing pile of beans.

New edition of iScot now available

The new edition of Scotland’s best current affairs and features magazine has hit the press, or at least hit the interwebbies.  The January-February edition is now online, featuring an article by yours truly – and a whole load of other pieces well worth reading.

You can read iScot online here – but you can click here to subscribe to the print edition for a mere £48 annually or £5.99 monthly (including P&P) for which you’ll get a lovely glossy magazine delivered to your door.  You can read it in the bath and if you drop it in you can dry it out over the radiator – you cannae do that with an iPad or a Kindle.

www.iscot.scot read it, subscribe to it – and help create a new Scottish media.  God knows we need it.

Whoops there go my neurones

I went to visit a friend last night, who insisted that she had to watch her favourite telly show – Celebrity Big Brother. Katie Hopkins is in it, taking refuge from that part of the Scottish population which is overcome with the urge to force feed her a Mars bar deep fried in ebola. Which is to say about 5 million of us. But don’t let it be said that you cannot learn something from a telly show which is to intellectual insight as a Labour party manifesto is to political philosophy. I learned that there really are people on this planet who are more vacuous and attention seeking than Katie Hopkins, and not all of them are elected representatives of the Labour party in Scotland like Mr High Jumpy. Although to be fair, he’s still way more inflated than anything put into Katie Price by a plastic surgeon.

But after a wee while I could feel neurones in my brain giving up and taking early advantage of the Scottish Parliament’s proposals for assisted suicide. I’d not felt my IQ drop so rapidly since having the immense misfortune to watch Prime Minister’s Questions earlier in the week. This week’s Parliamentary bonfire of the synapses consisted of Davie Cameron and Ed Miliband each telling the other that they were either a chicken or were feart. Or rather ‘frit’ in Westminsterspeak, because they’ve always got everything Rs-first over elbow.

The topic of the yah-booh suckery being Davie telling Ed that he wasn’t going to take part in any televised debates before the election unless Caroline Lucas of the English and Welsh Green party got a chance to trade insults too. Ed said that this made Davie a free-market chicken, and Davie retorted that Ed was a chicken fritter, and another little bit of British democracy died along with a few tens of thousands of synapses. Westminster Parliamentary debates are even less satisfying than that wee pang of disappointment which you get when you take a swig from your mug of tea only to discover that you’d already finished it.

This development has nothing to do with Davie’s pre 2010 electoral commitment to be the greenest government ever, a commitment which went much the same way as the commitment of the Lib Dems not to raise student fees – and buggered off in the same ministerial motor. Davie’s new-found fondness for fecund Greenery has a lot more to do with countering the disadvantage he feels at being out-reactionaried by the grinning mug of Nigel to his right. So Davie wants the Lib Dems and Labour to have to deal with a leftish party which does actually possess some principles. It’s not so much that this will make Davie’s lack of principles look any more like he might actually have some principles, as it will help to drag Nick and Ed down into the murky depths of unprincipled Tory-dom alongside the other bottom feeders.

The only surprising thing about any of this being that Davie was worried that other people might have a high opinion of Ed or Nick that needed to be brought down a bit in public estimation. But then none of them ever spend much time in the company of normal human beings and naturally their views about what normal people think are about as accurate as Magrit Curran’s views on what constitutes a good telephone voice.

Naturally none of the parties involved really give a toss about the inclusivity of our political process. Neither do they much care about ensuring that the electorate is fully informed of the range of democratic choices before them. But mostly they were fully in agreement that that Nicla shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the proceedings. We’ll be having none of that nasty Scottish separatism spoiling a perfectly yah boo debate with that being principled stuff. Besides, they’ve heard how during the independence referendum she shredded a couple of Scottish secretaries and met Johann Lamont full on in stairheid rammying, and would, if pressed and received cast iron assurances that it was deffo off the record, confess in private that they wet their pants a wee bit at the thought of the prospect. And not in a sexy way.

But Nicla isn’t going to be allowed anyway, because despite the No vote in the indy referendum, being Scottish isn’t quite British enough. You can be the biggest party in Scotland, you can be the only party in Scotland, but unless you stand for election somewhere that people who write for the politics pages of the Daily Mail can actually pronounce, then you’re not properly British. Middlesbrough or Melton Mowbray yes, Milngave or Mauchline no.

The debates and the pointless point-scoring it generates only highlights the problem of a media which still thinks it’s the media of a centralised state. Yet Scotland is one of the constituent parts of Britain is it not – the BBC said so. An equal partner in the most successful union of nations in the history of anything narrated by Simon Schama.

But if there was a Scottish national broadcaster then the issue would be less politically toxic, because then we could have equal airtime given to the parties that people here are plausibly going to vote for. But the Scottish broadcast media is as toothless and senile as the Labour party which was its first and only true love and the Tories who constitute the official pantomime villains.

And this is why we are in the most peculiar state of affairs that no one finds it peculiar that the heid bummer of BBC Scotland hasn’t made it known that the leaders of leading political parties in Scotland ought to have the same right to representation in a British political debate as do leaders of purplish parties voted for by people in Purley or Penge. A whole lot of pee there, but then we are talking about UKIP and BBC Scotland. BBC Scotland is in fact exactly like the Scottish Labour party it fawns over so desperately. Neither of them actually exist.

So it turns out that the topic that has most bothered our political masters this week is the question of whether an imaginary broadcaster should host imaginary debates for imaginary political parties so that newspapers that no one reads can spin the proceedings in imaginary ways. And then they wonder why people are turned off and want to build a new political system from scratch. Even the brain dead denizens of Celebrity Big Brother aren’t that removed from the real world. Whoops, there go some more neurones.

 

 

Vote Dug

Voting is now open in Bella Caledonia’s indyref awards, because we didn’t win the actual indyref, they thought it would be a good idea to cheer us up with an awards ceremony. Thankfully this hasn’t proven necessary as the Labour party has been providing Scotland with endless amusement since the 18th of September, and looks set to give us the biggest belly laugh of 2015 when it gets its backside soundly kicked in May’s general election.

The ceremony is going to be non-glitzy, which means that the BBC won’t be showing it. Sally Magnusson will not be putting in an appearance in a big frock. But since Sally has never reported on anything else that Bella Caledonia has ever done, and the BBC has studiously ignored every press call that Bella has ever put out, that’s hardly much of a surprise.

Personally I am hoping that David Torrance will turn up in person to collect his award for pointiest pointy-heid, because I’m dying to know if the Hair is actually hair, or whether it’s cunningly constructed from layers of plastic and product. And it is the single most burning question in Scottish political commentary, does it take Davie longer to to do his hair than it takes him to write one of his articles moaning about Alicsammin.

Anyway this blog has been nominated in the category of funniest blog. It’s a tight run race though, I’ve got BBC Scotlandshire coming up my behind, which is a thrilling experience of the sort I’ve previously only had the pleasure of in the darker corners of some of the more obscure members-only night clubs. Some people pay good money for that sort of thing you know, and let’s be honest – we have to take our thrills where we can find them.

I voted for BBC Scotlandshire for two reasons – firstly because they make me laugh more than I make myself laugh, and secondly because it just seems dashed ungentlemanly to vote for yourself. That’s the sort of thing Jim Murphy does. ‘Nuff said. Not that I am going to cast aspersions on the good people who write BBC Scotlandshire, but there’s more than one of them, and I bet they’ve all voted for themselves – probably more than once – and so have their mothers. You know what these BBC types are like with their cunning ability to purge cookies from their browsers. My mother is still struggling with the Interwebbies, so I’m at a disadvantage before we’ve even begun.

But having said that – I’d really like you to vote for me if you’ve not already voted. I’m a nice person with a skin condition and am making a naked appeal for your pity. Give me your vote and your pity and I’ll put some clothes on, so you’ll be able to keep down the yum-yum and peake freens you’re enjoying with your cup of tea. Plus I’ll stop shedding flakes of dead skin all over your carpet and upsetting the cat. But think of the fortune you’ll save on shake-n-vac.

The dug has never won anything. While we still lived in Spain, he was entered in a local dog show for rescued dogs in the category of scruffiest mongrel. He didn’t win, being beaten in the winsome stakes by a one eyed spaniel collie cross with mange. Admittedly the fact that he’d tried to savage the judge’s labradoodle may have swung the vote against him, that and spending most of the afternoon trying to eat a yorkie. No, not the ones with the chocolate.

I’ve never won anything either, except for a turkey I once won in a raffle at my dad’s bowling club when I was 14. I don’t even like turkey that much. And bowling even less. Every time I hear the words Indoor Bowling from Coatbridge I break out in a cold sweat. So vote for me in a meaningless popularity contest with online voting that’s easy to pauchle. I love sausage rolls, and a collection of Greggs finest at the Yes Bar in Glasgow is the nearest I’m likely to get to an awards ceremony. Although I did get an invite the Oscar ceremony, it was when he married his boyfriend. Nae sausage rolls there though, cheap bastert.

Bella Caledonia, more coveted than a dead turkey, it might not be much of an accolade, but in the absence of a Pointless trophy I can stick on my mantlepiece, a pointless award will do just as well. So get yourselves along to Bella Caledonia, and vote Dug, not Dugdale.

Just click the following link –

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2015/01/11/bellas-indyref-awards-test/

 

Mortuary SLAB

I’ve given up – my plans to write about something other than the flustercluck which passes for the Smugurph’s leadership of the Labour party in Scotland have foundered upon the McTernan Rocks, a diminutive and unpleasant excrescence in the barren sea of Blair which previously sank the career of the leader of the Labour party in Australia, and dragged into the murky depths by the slimy tentacles of the cataclysmic Robertson monster with its remarkably small mouth.

Much as I criticise the Labour party in Scotland, I had assumed that they had an organ approximating a brain which permitted them to engage in a modicum of strategic planning.  A wrong headed brain, a selfish brain, a self-serving and hypocritical brain perhaps, but it was reasonable to assume that somewhere deep within the bowels of Labour party lurked something which could be described as grey matter.  But no, there’s just more crap and a fetid odour.  You’ll find plastic toys of infinitely greater value in a Christmas cracker, as well as jokes that are less stale.  Labour only gives us plastic toys like Wee Wullie Bain, and bad jokes like Magrit Curran.

The deeply gobsmacky thing is that Labour is after all a party which aspires to govern the Yookayohkay, and so you could be forgiven for believing that they must have some notion of the complexities of the task before them.  But you’d be sadly wrong.  The Labour party in Scotland is brain dead.  The only grey matter they have is corpse grey on the mortuary SLAB.  All they are interested in is trying, by whatever means necessary, to persuade enough information deprived suckers to mark an X by their candidate in the next election.  They don’t have a clue what they propose to do with power once they achieve it – other than, of course, to keep getting those salaries and expense accounts, and angling for cushy directorships once their political careers are spent.  What Labour won’t be doing is anything that approaches the redistribution of wealth and power.

It’s hard to imagine what reason a sentient body interested in responsible socialist tinged government might have had for appointing John McTernan, dwarfy pitbull stand-in and purveyor of jaggy underwear for Tony Blair, as the chief of staff for the Labour party in Scotland.  John is the embodiment of just about everything that has revolted people and turned them off Labour over the past couple of decades.  John represents a Labour party which is unremittingly negative, sneering, dismissive, and possessed of an overweening sense of its own righteousness which it believes provides more than ample justification for its childish vindictiveness.

John’s great political theory was the notion that the only way to beat the Tories at the ballot box is to out-Tory them.  So he enthusiastically spun and smeared for a party that tacked ever further to the right.  People like John believe that hating the Tories means it’s OK to be hateful, and in his hatred fails to realise that he has turned into the very thing he hates.  The irony is of course lost on him.  John doesn’t do irony.  He doesn’t do empathy, compassion, or understanding either.  That’s what makes him the perfect right hand man for Jim Murphy.

John was most likely behind the utterly ridiculous claim that under the Smugurph, Labour would recruit 1000 more nurses in Scotland than the SNP, and these nurses would be funded by a raid on a tax on London properties.  It’s the kind of nastiness favoured by John, who naturally assumes that everyone else is as revolting as he is.  The underlying assumption is of course that Labour supporters were attracted to vote Yes because they hate the English, and so can be persuaded to return to Labour if Labour promises to punish the English – especially those in London.  The policy is of course an utter nonsense, but it grabbed the headlines, so job done.  Health is a devolved matter, so no number of Westminster MPs is going to make the slightest bit of difference.  The only way that Jim’s nursing pledge could come to pass is if Labour wins an outright victory in May 2015 in Westminster and May 2016 in Holyrood.  Good luck with that Jim.  Meanwhile Labour politicians from London accused Jim of trying to buy Scottish votes by damaging the party’s chances of succeeding in gaining votes in London – where it also needs to succeed if there is any chance of it forming a government in 2015.  Ed Miliband must be rueing the day that he decided to back the Smugurph for Scottish leadership and wondering if Sarah Boyack or Neil Findlay would have been so bad after all.

The lovely John tweeted on Friday that his appointment had been condemned by the usual suspects – that would presumably be you and me then – but welcomed by the “right people”.  And this is perfectly true, right people were hugely enthused, John’s appointment was widely welcomed by right wing commentators who write for the Telegraph.

John’s strategy for Labour is founded on the need to bring “Glasgow man” back to the party.  “Glasgow man” is shorthand for West of Scotland male voters, who traditionally backed Labour, but who voted Yes in the referendum.  People like me then.  But if John McTernan thinks I am going to be attracted by his vindictiveness and his negativity, he’s in for a rude shock.  I’m not interested in “sticking the boot into London” John.  I’m interesting of ridding politics of nasty wee trolls like you.

It’s even harder to imagine the thought processes engaged in by the person who wrote the press release saying that the Scottish Labour party would henceforth put the needs of Scotland first when developing policy.  Apparently they were unaware that this was an admission that they’ve not put Scotland’s need first up until now – although admittedly this comes under the heading “so tell us something we don’t know”.  All this was bad enough – but what on earth possessed them to tell the papers that the party had christened the new doctrine Murphy’s Law?  Don’t they know what that means?

There hasn’t been a less appropriate name since General Motors launched a marketing campaign to sell a car called the Nova in Mexico, unaware that No Va is Spanish for “it doesn’t go”.  Labour doesn’t even have the excuse that they are operating in a foreign language.  Unless you count honesty, but that’s not a foreign language to them, just a foreign concept.
*****
My thoughts today are in Paris, as the city mourns its dead.  Let’s strive for a world where the only weapons are words.  Let’s strive for a world where the powerless have a voice.  Let’s strive for a world where the fanatics realise that a god whose honour must be defended with bullets, bombs and bloodshed is a weak and fragile god who does not deserve to be worshipped.

Je suis Charlie.  Je suis Ahmed.  Je suis juif.  Je suis musulman.

 

****

BellaCaledonia is hosting the IndyRef awards.  And this wee blog has been nominated as funniest blog.  Aww shucks.  You can vote here – http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2015/01/11/bellas-indyref-awards-test/

Skanktimonious sock puppets and the Smugurph bounce

It’s not easy being Saint Dougie the Diminutive, all those party colleagues and Guardian writers looking at you expecting a miracle, and all you’ve got is a box of party tricks that are as transparent as cling film on a mouldy piece and cheese. The poor wee lambie can’t even stand on a box to make himself look more imposing, not since the Smugurph blagged it to go off on his eggy magnetic tour and the Kirk of Scotland hasn’t obliged him with a pulpit for ages. Labour’s very own wee skanktimonious sock puppet has been bouncing up and down excitedly in the columns of the Guardian again – because Severin Carroll is on his holidays and the paper has to mainline Labour press releases instead of cutting it with filler to pretend that they’re publishing their own copy.

The occasion of Dougie’s holier than thou bouncing was the news that during the next General Election the Tories – boo hiss – are set to outspend Labour – boo hiss – by a factor of three to one. This is because the Tories are even more successful at whoring themselves out to big business than Labour is, news which comes as something as a surprise to anyone who has followed Jim Murphy’s career or who has realised why skanktimonious isn’t a typo when it’s applied to Dougie Alexander. But undaunted, St Dougie the Dwaarfie, patron saint of crotchless knickers, is promising that Labour is going to beat the Tories in the ground war and will outnumber Tory activists by the same margin on the streets and chapping on the doors.

To be fair, this will not be hard to achieve in Dougie’s constituency where the Tories can be outnumbered three to one by Dougie, his alter ego as a creeping Jesus, and his sister. That is if his sister is still talking to him, but the knife that he plunged into Wendy’s back does act as a very convenient hanger for election posters. In Dougie’s constituency and across the rest of Scotland, outnumbering the Tories isn’t difficult. Pandas have famously achieved it. The difficulty will be outnumbering the SNP, who have been breeding prodigiously and are to Labour as rabbits are to pandas. The Tory activists are demoralised, says Dougie, who has clearly confused them with his own dwindling band of unhappy Labour campers.

Not that anyone really knows how many activists Labour has in Scotland, since the party refused to release the full voting figures from their coronation of St Jim the Haloed. However what we do know is that there are 475 elected Labour representatives in Scotland – MPs, MSPs, MEPs, and local councillors, so if active party membership is indeed around the 7000 mark as estimated by Stu Campbell on Wings Over Scotland, then 6.8% of Labour’s active members are elected politicians, and a sizeable whack of the remainder are either related to them or are their personal friends. Allowing for each elected representative to have a significant other and at least six relatives or friends – although in the case of Ian Davidson that’s probably stretching it considerably – then 54.4% of the Labour party in Scotland is made up of elected Labour politicians and their personal contacts. No wonder they were too embarrassed to release the actual figures. Labour in Scotland isn’t a party, it’s a private members club. That explains the crotchless knickers then.

Anyway, Dougie is determined that Labour is going to surf the tidal wave of public anger and that’s going to carry them to victory, neglecting to take into account the fact that much of that public anger is directed at Dougie and his pals. So Labour will indeed be surfing the wave, in much the same way that the Titanic surfed that iceberg, straight down to the bottom of a mid-Atlantic trench with no way out.

However Dougie tells us that Labour is “engaging with the anger”, although he’s not actually explained how. As a voter in Magrit Curran’s constituency, I have yet to witness anything that might lead me to believe that Magrit was engaging with the anger of local people – something she could achieve quite easily by being locked into a pillory at Parkhead Cross and having stale yum yums, custard pies, and past their sell by date cream cakes thrown at her. But nothing with jam in it, because Labour would combust spontaneously if it was ever confronted with real jam. Jam and Labour have never been seen together in the same room. Jam is Labour’s kryptonite. Only invisible mythical jam does it for Labour. And definitely not eggs. Eggs are vile and dangerous weapons of hatred and soufle destruction. You could have someone’s eye out with a flan. Just ask Jim Murphy. His entire career is built on egg based aggression.

Meanwhile the Smugurph himself has been touting his inventive auld schtick again. No, not his expenses claims, the claim that we need to vote Labour in order to keep out Davie Cameron. In Coatbridge and Methil – are there any Tories in Coatbridge and Methil? Voting Labour to keep out the Tories worked so well the last time, didn’t it, and Jim wants us to stick with a winning strategy. Winning for him, that is, the rest of us are screwed anyway. I seem to recall that we voted en masse for Labour at the General Election in 2010, Scotland returned 50 odd Labour MPs to Westminster – and in some cases they were extremely odd indeed, Wullie Bain, ’nuff said – and we signally failed to keep out Davie Cameron. However we did give Magrit Curran and the Smugurph some lovely expenses claims and a John Lewis list, so it was all worthwhile really.

Scotland voted Labour all the way through the 1980s and 90s, and we didn’t keep the Tories out. We voted Labour in 2010, and we didn’t keep the Tories out. Vote Labour to keep out the Tories is one of the most pernicious myths of Scottish politics. Apart from the myth that Labour is a left wing party and Jim Murphy is a socialist. Voting for an anti-Tory party like the SNP or the Greens is not going to increase Davie Cameron’s chances of electoral success, it’s not going to make a Tory government more likely. An SNP, or Scottish Green or Scottish Socialist MP (OK, so I can dream) is not going to support a Cameron government. And neither, unlike Jim Murphy’s Labour party, would they support Labour’s Tory austerity with a sad face policies.

Despite the frantic spinning of the likes of Dougie and the Scottish media, Labour has not enjoyed a bounce in the polls following the election of Jim Murphy as branch manager.  We’ve seen Labour’s promises far too often before, and this time we see through the spin and the cant.  2015 looks like it’s going to be a momentous year. It’s going to be the year that Labour finally gets the message that Scottish voters have been sending it for the best part of ten years now. They’ll get the message when we vote the sorry lot of them out of office and replace them with politicians who prioritise the interests of Scotland and Scottish communities, not the City of London, the banks, and the defence industry. And no amount of excited spinning from a skanktimonious intellectual dwarf will change that.  The Smugurph bounce is Labour’s final leap into a well deserved oblivion.

Happy New Year Dougie.