The man sacked as Alba's General Secretary three months ago for "gross misconduct" appears to now be working - at public expense - as a policy advisor for Alba's "Holyrood leader". This is not a sustainable situation.

Thanks to Anon on the previous thread for alerting us to the fact that Chris McEleny has a new job - and having consulted his LinkedIn profile, I can confirm that he does.

Don't worry - this doesn't mean that the Scottish Parliament collectively has lost the plot.  It almost certainly just means that Ash Regan has hired him to work for her at Holyrood, albeit paid for from the public purse.  But let's set aside the incomprehensible corporate gibberish about "collaborating with stakeholders to drive impactful promotion" - the fact that he's advising Alba's so-called Holyrood leader on policy is pretty astounding, given that he's just been sacked by Alba's real leader for gross misconduct.  Part of that gross misconduct was, I believe, making controversial pronouncements on policy matters (such as his notorious asylum seeker-bashing comments) without authorisation.

I've speculated a number of times that Regan and McEleny may be preparing the ground to go it alone with some sort of fresh breakaway party.  This new appointment would be consistent with that theory, because Regan seems to be doubling down on joining herself at the hip with a man that the Alba leadership regard as Public Enemy Number One.  An alternative possibility is that she's trying to set up a sort of Dual Authority system in Alba with herself as the 'other leader' - ie. she's banking on the assumption that she can't be sacked for disobeying authority, because without an MSP MacAskill doesn't really have a party.  So she'll just come up with whatever policies she wants, employ whatever staff she wants, and basically just act as if she is the leader and as if MacAskill's authority doesn't extend to her.

If that's what she has in mind, it's not going to end well.  The Alba branding has always been toxic and it's arguably more toxic than ever now.  There are good reasons why Eva Comrie outpolled Kenny MacAskill in Alloa & Grangemouth last year, and one of those is that she stood as an independent while MacAskill was weighed down by Alba's baggage.  If Regan stands as an Alba candidate next year, she's highly likely to lose her seat and the special status she's able to exploit for now will be gone within just twelve-and-a-bit months.  She will very soon become expendable to MacAskill, to the Corri Nostra (who already publicly treat her with contempt) and to the Tas Tyranny.  She'd be much better advised to ditch McEleny and start working out some sort of credible non-Alba option for defending her seat.

The Rev's in a Stew: astounding scenes on X, formerly known as Twitter, as Somerset's favourite clergyman *does his nut*

My faithful Somerset stalker, such a thrillingly foul-mouthed man of God, always assures his dwindling band of readers that he can't possibly be stalking me because he only tweets about me twice a year.  But even if he hadn't already long since vastly exceeded his quota of two tweets for 2025, he'd have done it more than twice over today alone with at least five characteristically well-adjusted tweets, in which among other things he calls me a "pathetically cowardly little weasel".

The main purpose of his rant was, remarkably, to out himself as one of this blog's much-loved gang of anonymous trolls who I have to clear up after on a daily basis, and to share some obsessively-collected screenshots of the troll posts that I later deleted (very un-stalker-like behaviour on his part, I'm sure we can all agree).  This will not be a major surprise to a number of the regulars here who have long suspected that they can see the "Stew Style" in some of the Anon comments.  There was one lengthy comment in particular a few days ago that someone thought was Stew, and if it was indeed him, the remarkable thing is that he appeared to be completely unaware that Panelbase (a firm that both he and I commissioned polls from on many occasions) has rebranded as Norstat.

Stew is a man after the heart of the "Crossmaglen Columbo", because he clearly wants to believe that his comment in the early hours of this morning was some sort of ingenious "Gotcha" that was only deleted because there was no possible answer to it - as opposed to, y'know, because it was merely one of the dozens of anonymous troll comments I receive on an average day, and if I tried to answer them all I'd never get around to eating dinner or getting my shopping done.  But just this once I'll humour the blessed West Country cleric and answer the comment that seems to be particularly close to his heart.

Basically he was responding to a post in which I pointed out the contradiction between his claim in December that there was "zero chance" of the pro-indy Holyrood majority being retained in the 2026 election, and his claim two days ago that the SNP are well on course for five more years in power. He tried to pray in aid a point of pedantry by saying that it's possible for the SNP to stay in power while losing the pro-indy majority. But as I pointed out to a rather more civil commenter who made an identical point a few hours later, Stew has already conceded in a blogpost a few months ago that there is a real chance of the pro-independence majority being retained, so it's rather puzzling that he appears to be reverting to trying to hold the line on a claim that he's long since repudiated.

But let's humour him and assume hypothetically that he really is trying to thread the needle and claim that he knows with a high level of confidence that the 2026 election will definitely fall within the relatively narrow band of possible results in which the SNP retain power but without a pro-indy majority.  There's an obvious logical problem with that, because he specifically says that the reason for his belief that the SNP will retain power is the current state of play in the opinion polls, and yet the vast majority of those polls suggest the SNP and Greens between them are on course to retain the pro-indy majority.  So he'd have to be saying that the opinion polls are right that the SNP are in the lead, but wrong about the scale of that lead.  Is he saying that?  If so, why is he saying that?  I'm not sure he even knows himself.

Indeed, the polls would have to be overestimating the SNP lead by a truly spectacular degree, because for Stew to maintain that there is "zero chance" of a pro-indy majority, the SNP and Greens would have to currently be nowhere near even striking distance of a majority.  That clearly is not the reality of the situation, unless the polls are systemically wrong - and if you believe the polls are systemically wrong, why would you be so confident the SNP are in the lead?  It just doesn't make sense, Stew, and you know it doesn't make sense.

He finishes his rant with the following:

"However much you know you should ignore him, it really is hard not to laugh at someone whose debating skills are as hysterically brittle as this."

Hmmm.  Are you quite sure that's the hill you want to die on, Stew?  After all, you're the chap who boasts about your instablock policy for anyone who disagrees with you on Twitter.  You first blocked me in 2016 because you couldn't cope with me pointing out that the standard 3% margin of error in individual opinion polls doesn't apply to long-term polling averages - a point that even your devoted fan Rolfe (Morag Kerr) picked you up on too.

And you're also the chap who was so unable to cope with a single short comment from Douglas Clark on this blog that instead of responding to it, you got your solicitor David Halliday to send me menacing messages at the dead of night with all sorts of implied threats about what would happen if I didn't delete it.  Anyone would think you didn't have a credible defence to Douglas' claim that you disgracefully blamed the Hillsborough victims for the 1989 disaster.

No, I'm afraid no-one can even hold a candle to you on the "hysterically brittle" stakes, Stew.

McEleny's victims left bemused as he announces Alba should be a "tent big enough for all" just three months after his sacking as the party's Chief Executioner. Damascene conversions are always lovely but the timing of this one may be just a tad convenient.

Chris McEleny: "Alba is a broad church with the raison d'être of restoring independence for Scotland so it needs the support of all of Scotland & has to appeal to all of Scotland.

That means voices of the left, a pro business offering & a tent big enough for all."https://t.co/ysmV8o7eRV

— Christopher McEleny (@ChrisMcEleny) April 10, 2025

That's a fine-sounding sentiment from Chris McEleny, variously known to Alba members as "Disgruntled Employee", "Conduct Christopher", "Mad Dog McEleny" and "That's Mad Dog PRIMUS To You", but it's not really consistent with the industrial-scale purges he carried out during his tenure as Alba's General Secretary, which only ended with his sacking three months ago.  If he's now abandoned his previous mission to make Alba a narrow, paranoid, authoritarian sect, and has instead embraced the wisdom of big-tent inclusivity, his Damascene conversion may have come just a bit too late.  But cynics may also wonder if since his sacking he's in fact been saying a great many things he doesn't actually believe, as he tries to reinvent himself in preparation for whatever the post-Alba vehicle for his ongoing political ambitions turns out to be.

His tweet is in response to negative media commentary about Tommy Sheridan's election to the Alba NEC.  Some have wondered if Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh might in some way have quietly encouraged that negativity.  That's purely speculative, but to my mind there's an ongoing mystery about Tommy's limited involvement in Alba's internal politics until now. Before McEleny got me expelled, I stood for the Alba NEC in three consecutive years, and on two of those occasions Tommy was initially listed as one of the candidates - but was mysteriously missing from the list when the ballot actually took place.  He was also strongly rumoured to be standing for Alba in the 2022 local elections, but again that mysteriously came to nothing.  I've asked around a few times to try to find out why his name always seemed to be removed, but nobody knows for sure.

Tommy has been going through some tough times in recent years, so it's possible he just decided to withdraw for personal reasons.  But given that we now know from Craig Murray and others that Alex Salmond had a habit of manipulating Alba internal elections by making phone calls and pressurising candidates to withdraw, it's at least plausible he did the same thing to Tommy, and indeed that he did so at the behest of Tasmina - who started her political career as a Tory candidate and who still holds right-of-centre views that are light-years away from what Tommy stands for.

If this theory is correct, it begs the question: has the Tas Tyranny been weakened just enough that she wasn't able to block Tommy's candidacy this time?  And if so, is she now continuing her war against him by alternative means?  This could be a major faultline that's worth keeping an eye on.

I don't know if I'm the only person who does this, but when an election takes place in a foreign country, I often look up the parties involved on Wikipedia and decide who I want to do well by seeing how left-wing they are described as being in the "political position" box.  I was slightly bemused after my expulsion to see that Alba's political position is listed on Wikipedia as "centre-left to centre-right".  I'm not sure how on earth I ever ended up in a party that could possibly have the "centre-right" label attached to it.  I certainly would never have joined Alba in the first place if I had thought it was going to be anything other than a social democratic party in the mould of the Salmond-era SNP.

But it's hard to deny that Alba has mutated into something different since 2021.  Partly that's due to the prominence of Tasmina and her Tory views, partly it's due to McEleny and Ash Regan pushing for Reform-style right-wing populism on certain issues, and of course it's partly due to Shannon Donoghue's notorious decision to take part in a far-right podcast. Tommy Sheridan is certainly needed to balance things up just a touch.

The Speeding-Up Of Evolution

Stuart Campbell, 3rd December 2024: "We’re going to call this one early: there is zero prospect of a pro-indy majority after the next Holyrood election. None. Barring a nuclear war or an alien invasion or some equally implausible revolutionary event, it’s simply not happening"

Stuart Campbell, 9th April 2025: "the SNP, a party which has been in uninterrupted government in Scotland for almost 18 years and which current polling suggests will remain in power until at least 2031, taking that number up to 24 years"

OK, I'll throw it out there - does anyone recall a nuclear war or an alien invasion in the four-and-a-bit months between 3rd December and 9th April?

Stuart Campbell, 11th June 2023 (and every other day): "You know I'm always right."

Doomsday poll for Labour has them in a distant third place on just 22% of the vote - and Rachel Reeves is almost as unpopular as Donald Trump

Regular readers will recall the oddity of the monthly Freshwater Strategy / City AM series of voting intentions polls, which are almost invisible - even City AM themselves don't always seem to report the results.  However, the latest poll is such a horror show for Labour that I thought it would be remiss of me not to dig it out.

GB-wide voting intentions (Freshwater Strategy / City AM):

Reform UK 28%
Conservatives 27%
Labour 22%
Liberal Democrats 14%
Greens 5%
SNP 2%

Until very recently, 22% would have equalled Labour's post-election low, but More In Common have recently reported a new record of 21%.  But 22% is still an abysmal figure, and given that it puts Labour six points behind Reform *and* five points behind the Tories, there's a case to be made that this is the worst poll for Starmer so far.

I've gone through the records to see how Labour's current predicament compares with how the party performed under Jeremy Corbyn.  The lowest Labour vote share I can find during the Corbyn tenure was 18%, which may well also be the record low for Labour since the Second World War - I'm not aware of comprehensive records being available anywhere, but I can't think of any other period since 1945 (including even the early 1980s) when it's remotely likely Labour would have dropped so low.  Even under Corbyn, only a tiny percentage of polls had Labour sub-20, but nevertheless it did happen occasionally, so technically Starmer can still claim to be not quite as unpopular as Corbyn was at his absolute lowest points - but the way things are going, he may not be able to make that claim for very much longer.

There are net approval ratings for leading public figures, and both Starmer (-39) and Rachel Reeves (-43) are very nearly as unpopular as Donald Trump (-44).  What will be even more alarming for Starmer is that on the head-to-head question about whether he or Kemi Badenoch would make the best Prime Minister, Badenoch is the clear winner by a margin of 40% to 32%.  That's the question that is often considered more predictive of election results than even headline voting intention numbers.  I'm very surprised to see Badenoch ahead, because the public's reaction to her has been tepid, so it must be assumed she's only ahead by default because Starmer is so loathed.

One of the reasons these Freshwater polls are going largely unnoticed is that they do not appear in Wikipedia's list of polls.  There's a very confusing discussion on the Wikipedia Talk page about the rationale for excluding Freshwater - it basically boils down to the fact that Freshwater are not members of the British Polling Council, but the Wikipedia users can't even agree with each other about what they had previously agreed their policy should be on non-BPC polling firms.  I'd have to say those who are claiming that it was previously agreed to include non-BPC polls must be correct, because Lord Ashcroft polls have appeared on the list for years, and Ashcroft isn't a BPC member.

One user claimed that if they included non-BPC polls, they'd soon find themselves including self-selecting Twitter polls, which is a piece of absolutely hysterical hyperbole.  There are about a billion increments between a BPC poll and a self-selecting online poll.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 in January, and so far the running total stands at £1830, meaning that 27% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

What would be the consequences of Reform taking power in Wales next spring?

As I always point out, YouGov's Scottish subsamples are of more interest than those from other polling firms, because they appear to be correctly structured and weighted (albeit they still have a very large margin of error due to the small sample size).  The latest one is healthy enough, giving the SNP a big 14-point lead, and with Labour in third place - but behind the Tories rather than Reform UK.

What I'm not sure about is whether YouGov follow the same practice with their Welsh subsamples.  If they do, alarm bells should be ringing, because these are the up-to-date numbers: Reform UK 24%, Plaid Cymru 23%, Labour 23%, Conservatives 15%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Greens 3%.  Those are Westminster numbers, but nevertheless they're within the margin of error of the recent full-scale Senedd poll from Survation which gave Labour a slender three-point lead over both Plaid and Reform.  They're also very similar to the last full-scale Welsh poll from YouGov themselves a few months ago, which famously had Plaid in a one-point lead over Reform.

It's clear there is a genuinely competitive three-way battle for first place at next year's Senedd election between Plaid, Labour and Reform, and it's difficult to read what is most likely to happen.  There's actually an argument that Reform might do even better than the polls suggest, because their support base skews older, and it's older people who turn out to vote most reliably.  But the counter-argument is that Reform voters are largely Brit Nats, and a fair few of them are actually English immigrants to Wales, who might not see much point of voting in a Senedd election.  So if anything next year will be a home fixture for Plaid, and they might just out-perform the polls and dramatically clinch first place.

One way or another, though, this looks like being a major story and predictably it's barely even being covered by the London media.  Reform's first chance to take power, with control over (among other things) the NHS and education, will not come in 2028 or 2029, but as soon as next May.  And that thought must privately fill Nigel Farage with absolute horror, because if they make a complete hash of ministerial office in Wales, as they probably would, it might well destroy their chances of winning UK-wide at the general election.

In which case, the good news for Farage is that Plaid, Labour and the Lib Dems between them will almost certainly have the numbers to freeze Reform out if they so choose, even if Reform are in first place.  It remains to be seen whether such an arrangement would be under a Labour or a Plaid First Minister, which is obviously of huge psychological and symbolic importance.

That would be the ideal scenario for Farage as 2028/9 approaches - the status and momentum of first place but without any of the responsibilities of power.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 in January, and so far the running total stands at £1800, meaning that 26% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

If you're in the Corri Nostra, it's not only forbidden for you to lose, it's literally impossible for you to lose. The final nail in the coffin for the Alba Party, as Chris Cullen, having been rejected TWICE by party members in elections to the NEC, simply appoints himself to the NEC anyway. A nice set-up if you can wangle it.

Last night, the "Alba Founders" Twitter account claimed that Chris Cullen, despite having been soundly defeated in the election for Alba's Local Government Convener, and soundly defeated in the election for Ordinary NEC members, had then simply been appointed to the NEC anyway due to a convenient change in the party constitution giving an automatic spot to a local councillor.  

I've asked around, and although everyone I spoke to thought the story had the ring of truth to it, nobody could give me definite confirmation.  But then I tried a different tack.  I checked the full text of the constitutional revision that was presented to the Alba conference as a fait accompli, and sure enough, buried in there is a short, newly added sentence giving an unelected place on the NEC to not just one but TWO local councillors.  Rather cosily, Alba has precisely two councillors at present and one of them is Chris Cullen.  So his appointment is automatic.

It gets even better, of course, because as long-term readers of the blog know, the constitutional revision was authored by the eight-member Constitutional Review Group, of which Chris Cullen was a member, and his immature fiancée Shannon Donoghue was another member (but the latter was only there on a 'lucky loser' basis after one of the elected members of the group resigned in protest at repeated breaches of the existing constitution).  I was also an elected member of the group until last September - but I ceased to be a member for one reason only, namely that Chris Cullen, his fiancée Shannon Donoghue and others jointly submitted a spurious complaint about me (more specifically about this entirely innocuous blogpost), which ultimately led to my outright expulsion from the party by a kangaroo court.  As far as I know, I was never replaced on the group, which meant that Chris Cullen and his fiancée Shannon Donoghue (who also just happens to be the daughter of Corri Wilson, the party's new General Secretary) had successfully contrived to make themselves a full two-sevenths of the Constitution Review Group, which then went on to write a provision into the constitution making Cullen himself an automatic appointment to the NEC until May 2027 - when, barring miracles, he will lose his seat on South Ayrshire Council.

Cullen then proceeded last month with the pantomime of standing in no fewer than two sets of elections for positions on the NEC, knowing full well that he had already ensured he was going to be on the NEC regardless of whether he won or lost - but of course he didn't bother mentioning that little detail to the people he was asking for votes from.  "No matter how you vote, you'll get me anyway!" is never the most promising of election slogans.

I mean, there's cynicism, and there's nepotism, but there's only one word strong enough for this latest stunt from Cullen, Donoghue and the wider Corri Nostra - and that word is corruption.

To recap, the following is what Cullen and Donoghue made sure was NOT in the constitutional revision after my expulsion:

* One member one vote for NEC elections

* Direct elections for the all-powerful Conference Committee

* Direct elections for the Disciplinary and Appeals Committees

* The removal of the leadership's right to directly appoint top-up members of the Conference and Disciplinary Committees

* Direct elections for the Party Chair, currently an appointed role

* The introduction of either a Policy Development Committee or a Policy Development Convener, to put an end to the ad hoc, back-of-an-envelope approach to Alba policy formation

And the following is what Cullen and Donoghue ensured DID make it into the constitutional revision after my expulsion:

* That Cullen should have an automatic place on the NEC regardless of whether he wins or loses elections to the NEC.

You've gotta admire the Corri Nostra's sense of priorities.

Angry James’ skewed version of events in his many blogs are entertaining for some, but there’s less fiction in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland https://t.co/dS2Wum5EV8

— Chris Cullen (@chris_cullen83) March 31, 2025

This of course has been the Alba leadership's go-to tactic in response to any of the details I've revealed in my blogposts - ie. make very vague and generalised claims that I'm either lying or exaggerating, but without giving any specifics at all about what they're alleging the inaccuracies to be or what they're claiming the truth is instead.  Which is hardly surprising, because on the rare occasions they've been drawn into discussing specifics, they've ended up looking more than a little tongue-tied.  For example, when Alba HQ's Robert Reid claimed it was ludicrous to suggest that the "ordinary Alba members" who had expelled me were involved in some kind of leadership-directed stitch-up, all I had to do was ask him "Robert, is it true that precisely four members of the Disciplinary Committee voted to expel me, and of those four, three-quarters were either directly appointed by the leadership or are your own girlfriend or your own mum?". And he kind of went "er, um, well, erm, could we talk about the Appeals Committee instead?"

But in all seriousness I do take exception to Cullen's tweet, because in accusing me of writing fiction he's quote-tweeted his fiancée making a string of allegations against me that are a work of fiction from beginning to end.  I've already corrected most of Donoghue's lies, ie. she's interacted with me on more than two occasions, I did not scour through months of her Instagram posts (too grim a task even for me, Shannon), the parody comments using her name were not written by me, and I did not pre-approve the publication of those comments because pre-moderation on this blog is almost always switched off.  But one lie I haven't yet corrected is her claim that I have "made reference to her looks".  From the start I was 99% sure that was untrue, but I didn't want to directly accuse Shannon of lying about it until I was 100% sure.  And now I am.  I've checked thoroughly, and I've also asked several people whether they can ever remember me commenting on Shannon's looks, even in a throwaway remark, and the answer is a resounding no.  It never happened.  Shannon has lied.  And unlike the other lies, she doesn't have the alibi of being able to say she was misinformed by others.  She lied knowingly and deliberately, and her motivation for doing so was profoundly cynical.  It wasn't a fiction Lewis Carroll would have been proud of, but it was a fiction just the same.

Incidentally, just to dot the remaining 'i's and cross the remaining 't's, it'll be no surprise to anyone to hear that Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh was quietly reappointed Party Chair on Saturday, and will therefore remain Alba's unelected Tyrant-Queen for yet another year.  That's ultimately what most of the bullying and the purges and the lies and the stitch-ups and the double-dealing has been in aid of.  I hope you think it was all worth it, Tas, because I can promise you that hardly anyone else will.

Scottish Curling, brought to you by "British Curling"

I have quite an impressive track record of getting myself in the Daily Express (complete with irate quotes from the Scottish Conservative Party!) when I post about curling, so as Scotland won the World Championships overnight, I thought it might be a good moment to have another go, and dig out some photos from my trip to the Scottish Championships in Dumfries two months ago when I got to see Team Mouat in action.  Of course they didn't actually win that week, and if the traditional system had applied, that would have meant they wouldn't have even represented Scotland at the worlds.   That long-standing tradition was scrapped relatively recently and replaced with a selection panel.  I get the impression from listening to other people milling around in Dumfries both last year and this year that most of the curling fraternity fully expected the panel to still take very strong account of the results of the Scottish Championships, but it's absolutely clear they're not doing that at all - Team Henderson and Team Whyte have won the women's and men's Scottish titles respectively for two straight years but on both occasions they've been passed over.

Of course any new and controversial selection policy lives and dies by its results, and now that Team Mouat have won for Scotland, nobody will be complaining.   But for better or worse, one effect the new system undoubtedly has is to downgrade the prestige of the Scottish Championships, which is in danger of starting to look like no more than a warm-up competition.

Regular readers may recall that I got a sort of 'exclusive' at last year's Scottish Championships because I was sitting within earshot of a Scottish Curling bigwig who was speaking very loudly about the controversy over the BBC's last-minute decision not to livestream the competition - he revealed that BBC Scotland had been perfectly happy to go ahead, but that in the finest traditions of the British state broadcaster, they had been overruled by their masters in Salford.  This year, amazingly, I found myself sitting in similarly close proximity to a bigwig from "British Curling", and I wondered if I might get another exclusive, but alas he was speaking more softly.  I did pick him up saying that "grown-up decisions will have to be made starting in April", which I presume was a reference to Olympic selection, but I doubt if there's any earth-shattering revelation in that.

But given that the British Olympic Association seemingly put totally inappropriate pressure on Scottish Curling to allow "British Curling" to form the selection panel that chooses Scottish teams for the World and European Championships, and given that Scottish Curling inappropriately agreed to that demand (presumably they felt they had no choice for funding reasons), it did leap out at me that this particular British Curling bigwig had a strong south-of-England accent and that during hours of sitting watching the Scottish Championships he repeatedly used the words "British" and "UK" but only used the word "Scotland" once - and that was within the context of "BBC Sport Scotland".  I looked him up online when I got home, and his biography describes him as having a "strong connection to all three nations of the mainland United Kingdom".  Who actually talks like that?  What in the name of heavens is "the mainland United Kingdom"?  Does it mean the island of Great Britain?  It reminds me of the Newspeak language used at Conservative Party conferences in the 1990s when delegates from Buckinghamshire used to queue up to denounce devolution by saying "My father fought in the Scots Guards and my great-grandmother was once rumoured to have been on holiday in Monmouth and thanks to Labour's devolution policy I am TOTALLY CONFUSED ABOUT WHO I AM!  We're all one glorious mixed-up UNITED KINGDOM PEOPLE, surely?"

Actually he seemed like a nice enough chap, but it should be an absolutely unbreakable principle that the selection of the Scottish national teams in any sport is done by the relevant Scottish governing body, not contracted out under pressure to some sort of supranational body.  The English FA would never agree to hand over selection of the England manager and team to UEFA, or to a Frankenstein "UK Football" body.

The Olympics are next year, so if Steve Cram is commentating for the BBC again, brace yourself for him to make endless claims that "this Great Britain team are the reigning world champions" without any clarification that the team was actually representing Scotland when they won the World Championships.