It's equidistance, Jim, but not as we know it

I don't know if it's just me, but every time I hear Tavish Scott speak about the SNP government these days, I get the feeling he's mixed them up with the Khmer Rouge or the Ba'ath Party somewhere along the line. Is he cynically attempting to prepare the ground for his personal preference of an uncomfortable post-election alliance with Labour by relentlessly exhorting his party to view the alternative as unthinkable? Perish the thought. Here's the latest example of constructive opposition in the wake of Stewart Stevenson's resignation -

"Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish Scott said: 'The people of Scotland deserve an awful lot better than they're getting at present from the SNP.

'The first minister needs to stand up and take responsibility for the shambles his government is in.'"

"a lot better than they're getting at present from the SNP"...given the context, I can only assume he's talking about snow? If by any chance the Scott/Gray Dream Team is in harness by this time next year, that might just prove to be something of a hostage to fortune.

Dial 999 for ritual humiliation

One of my pet hates cropped up again today, with the police making a song and dance about a woman who called 999 to report a stolen snowman. Given the number of campaigns there have been over the years relating to the misuse of the emergency number, including TV adverts that feature recordings of actual 'stupid' calls, I'd suggest the main lesson we can draw from the persistence of the problem is that humiliating people doesn't actually work as a deterrent. Indeed, there's a danger it might deter the wrong people from calling - faced with a potentially genuine emergency, the more cautious among us might hold off for too long.

Instead of endlessly running campaigns that I strongly suspect serve the sole purpose of allowing everyone to have a self-indulgent "tut" at the irresponsibility of others, it would be a far better idea to give much wider publicity to the numbers that can be used for non-emergencies.

Google 1, Yahoo 0

November 30th has arrived.

Google UK logo : decorated with tartan and the saltire.

'Yahoo UK' logo : adorned with the words "2 days - England 2018".

Yahoo England, take a bow.

I could also point out that if London had experienced the amount of snow that Scotland and the north of England have over the last couple of days, it would almost certainly be leading all the news bulletins by now, rather than being tucked in midway through the pecking-order, but I presume that goes without saying.