A poll of local people by a TV company found that around 60% of respondents in Berwick-upon-Tweed (just across the border with England) would prefer to be legally Scottish rather than English, whilst the local newspaper’s polling found the figure to be nearly 80%. Well, they’ve swapped allegiance over a dozen times in their history aleady, so why not again?

Well, one reason to hesitate is that the reason given most to pollsters was to take advantage of Scotland’s more generous social benefits, more than a burning cultural allegiance. In other words, greed. Do we really want to encourage a new form of economic migration by foreign spongers? Oops, sorry, got a nasty touch of the DailyMails there!

More seriously, there are certainly questions to be asked about how long-lasting this new loyalty might be. For example, if Scotland were to elect the Conservatives to power and England put George Galloway’s party into Downing Street (hey, stranger things have happened - though admittedly not many) would they then want back again? I think as part of any referendum they’d have to sign up to some sort of covenant swearing they wouldn’t change their minds within, say, 100 years.

And more seriously still, why stop there? It’s often been suggested that Newcastle might prefer to join Scotland than England, for example. After all, it’s far closer to Edinburgh than London geographically, and many would say culturally too. Has anyone actually done the polling to find out? And while we’re at it, what about Manchester? Birmingham?… Guildford?… Heck, who’d want to be administered by London?!!

The Scottish Government has just decided that their drugs policy will henceforth be based on “promoting abstinence”. Good plan guys!

This from the same politicians of course who themselves mostly take hard drugs almost every day. No, I’m not accusing Uncle Alex of being a junkie. Just pointing out that alcohol is by far our most serious drug problem. Violence. Accidents. Public nuisance. NHS costs. Bereavements. The ill-effects of heroin, ecstacy, and cannabis combined aren’t even in the same ballpark.

This presumably takes its inspiration from the storming success of the US-led War on Drugs, which as we all know is close to achieving a formal surrender by the Great Leader of the Drugs Army. Well, there has to be a drugs army doesn’t there if there’s to be a war on them… I mean, you can’t wage war on a category of products. Or is this perhaps a sign of hyperbolic muddled thinking?

Let’s take this further…

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Maybe we should ban McDonalds in return? (Hmmm… not a bad idea, come to think of it…)

The importation of our national dish, the haggis, has been banned by the US Department of Agriculture since 1989, ostensibly as a response to the BSE crisis. So for nearly two decades, US consumers wishing to celebrate Burns Night (or indeed their Scottish heritage on any old night of the year) have had no choice but to track down a locally-sourced alternative.

Now the problem with this, of course, is that the haggis itself is a native species, found only in the high mountains of Scotland.

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Donald Trump’s plans to build a massive housing estate on a coastal nature reserve north of Aberdeen is still very much alive. The (unelected) Chief Executive of Aberdeenshire yesterday publicly backed Alex Salmond’s decision to “call in” the democratically elected local planning committee’s rejection of the plans. Our First Minister wants to overturn (oops, ‘review’) that decision, after private meetings with Mr Trump’s people which have been widely criticised as ‘sleazy’.

Doubtless the lure of a billion dollars (sounds bigger in US currency) “investment” in the local economy sounds great to planners responsible for easy ways to create ‘jobs’… especially when dressed up as a glitzy golf course (for which we’re currently so badly provided in Scotland). And I can almost understand how provincial media, politicians and bureaucrats are so easily seduced into permanently destroying our priceless heritage by the supposed glamour of dealing with an experienced developer like Mr Trump.

But I feel let down by Alex Salmond. Perhaps naively, I’d have hoped for better from him. This sort of ‘development opportunity’ asks big questions about the sort of nation we are, and want to be. Do we really just see our future measured only as consumers of economic output, selling our real long-term assets for a quick buck, knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing. Or shouldn’t we be thinking more twenty-first century? Isn’t Scotland a place where ‘quality of life’ should count as well as ‘standard of living’? Can’t we shape a nation in which irreplaceable nature reserves that give our natural landscape its character are recognised to have real value, even if the economists can’t count the tourist dollars? Come on Alex - be a Local Hero!

Another year over, a new one just begun. And for the first time in years, midnight found me not at home with my nearest and dearest, but as a ticket-paying guest at one of the official events put on by our capital city’s Council. It certainly made me appreciate Auld Lang Syne…

Not many years ago, Hogmanay in Scotland was an authentic celebration of friends and neighbours, where ‘first-footing’ with a dram and more in hand went on through the wee small hours, and everyone’s door was open. (I know, as more than once I’ve stumbled through the wrong one, only to be welcomed into the party regardless!) Here in Edinburgh anyone seeking a larger crowd met by the Tron Kirk on the Royal Mile, where for centuries a few thousand folk would find their friends amid the throng, and greet the bells with a genuine outpouring of rare communal friendship.

But of course, this made no one any money (bar a few pubs and offies). And sadly, to the great and good of Edinburgh City Council, that meant it had no value.

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