Attack shark

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a ministerial portfolio must be in want of a fight. Richard Lochhead has therefore decided to pick one with Iceland and the Faroe Islands over mackerel. Quite right too - it's about time the Scottish Fisheries Minister showed his teeth. As far as Calton is concerned, Lochhead should quit circling round with his talk of a mediator and go in for the kill. If he wants an example of how it's done, he can always take a look here.

Aye right Willie!

According to Willie Rennie, his party is making an impact on Scottish politics. Eh? What on earth gave him that idea? Just what policies have the Scottish Libdems influenced in this parliamentary session? They are having about as much impact on the SNP as a snowflake. (Now Calton is aware that a lot of snowflakes can make quite a snowstorm but 5 MSPs is hardly critical mass.) Alex Salmond has no bother brushing the Libdem leader's questions off at FMQs and with the SNP's majority government Rennie hasn't a snowball's chance of making a difference. His attempt to mobilise moderate England in support of the Union is unlikely to do him any favours up here either. That's the whole point of the independence debate - self-determination for Scotland rather than being told what to do by England. Doh! It seems that only a desire to spite his opponents is stopping Rennie and his party in their slide into self-annihilation.

QE costing Scottish jobs?

Not only is the Bank of England's policy of keeping interest rates low hitting savers hard, it now seems that their policy of quantitative easing (QE) may be partly to blame for the collapse of Dawson International last week. The BofE itself admits that while QE "has a broadly neutral impact on a fully funded defined benefit scheme", "schemes that were already in substantial deficit before the financial crisis are likely to have seen those deficits increased". Quite. Exactly what has happened to the Dawson pension scheme, resulting in the company going into administration and putting 180 Scottish jobs at risk. The idea of a Scottish bank, based on old-fashioned values of thrift and probity, and our own currency should we become independent, is becoming more attractive by the day.

Not all doom and gloom

Sadly, the ray of sunshine which Calton was hoping for in the form of a Murray win at Wimbledon today did not happen and so the capital remains a dull and gloomy place this evening. On the plus side, Andy played a great game against a tough opponent and managed to win the first set before losing the next three. Maybe next year! It was also good to see the Saltire flying outside 10 Downing Street in recognition that Murray is Scottish. Most encouraging of all were the young boys who Calton spotted playing tennis in the street instead of watching the match - future Wimbledon winners?

Keep Scottish water

If anything could convince climate-change sceptic Calton, it's a drought warning for the west coast of Scotland. The rainy day he experienced in Kintail recently must have been the only one this summer, unlike Edinburgh. Faced with the prospect of another wet weekend in the capital, Calton is now seriously considering relocating his eyrie to the north-west of the country. The only ray of sunshine on the horizon is a Murray victory at Wimbledon on Sunday. Perhaps Alex Salmond shouldn't be too quick to think about exporting water to England - we might need it all ourselves!

No to Scottish emotionalism

So there's going to be a pro-independence 'Yes Scotland' website. So what? Unless it can provide concrete answers to questions like What currency will an independent Scotland use? Will we still be part of the EU? What about defence? How much of the oil money will we actually get? Calton is not interested. What he wants is hard facts, not emotionalism. If he was into the latter, he'd go and watch Braveheart.

Man the lifeboats!

If you're wondering why Calton has not been posting much for a couple of days, it's because he was doing this week's Scottish Roundup of blogs. Head on over to Scottish Roundup and have a read - there are a lot of good blogs out there. Unfortunately one of Calton's favourites has hung up his keyboard - the Wee Red Squirrel is sadly missed.

Looking further afield, the Greeks seem to be heading for another election, which will effectively be a vote on their continued membership of the Eurozone. The EU is steaming into uncharted waters now and the iceberg of Greek and French public opinion is threatening to sink the Euro. Calton would not be sorry to see it go, were it not likely to pull the UK down with it. Man the lifeboats!

Stop experimenting with education

Calton thoroughly agrees with the idea of promoting Scottish studies in schools, if only to educate the likes of the caller to Radio Scotland this morning who thought that nothing of any note happened in Scotland before the Parliamentary Union! However the real priority has to be making sure that our young people leave school with the right skills to enable them to find a job. It is particularly depressing that a significant percentage of employers find that school leavers lack basic literacy and numeracy. They also seem to lack the soft skills so essential to enable them to fit into the workplace such as teamwork, problem-solving and communication. Calton hopes that the Curriculum for Excellence lives up to its name because we cannot afford to fail yet another generation of children by playing around with their education. It's time politicians realised that our schools are not laboratories for their political experiments.

Mushroom politics

Scottish Secretary Michael Moore looks like he has been attending the Alex Salmond School of Question Evasion, judging by his performance at Scottish Questions earlier today. So now, not only do we not know what independence will mean for vital areas like defence and pensions, we also do not know what we might be offered in terms of devo-max if we vote 'no' to independence. Wonderful. Being kept in the dark and fed a load of manure might be good for mushrooms but it is not the way to treat the electorate. One bombastic, blustering minister is bad enough. Two, on opposing sides, is a nightmare. Come back Jim Murphy - all is forgiven!

Protectionist? Moi?

Calton is generally in favour of free tuition in Scotland however he does not see why we should be providing it to students from other EU countries when more than half of those countries charge fees to Scottish students studying in their institutions. Predictably, there has been a rise in the number of EU students coming to study in Scotland and a drop in the number going to England since England introduced tuition fees and Scotland scrapped them. If Scotland becomes independent but stays within the EU and England does the same, we will also then have to provide free tuition for England students since they will be a fellow EU country rather than a part of the same country, as they are now. Scottish students studying in England would pay English tuition fees as they do now. Of course the solution would be for Scotland (or the UK) to leave the EU, which is Calton's preferred option. Protectionist? Mais oui! Given that EU students are costing us £75 million a year, can we afford not to be?

Stushie now stoking anti-Scottish sentiment

Calton does not think that the debate on independence is advanced by dubbing those who oppose the SNP's referendum plans as 'anti-Scottish'. Rookie MSP Joan McAlpine really needs to be reined in by her party, otherwise the whole discussion on Scotland's future will descend into the saltire-waving emotionalism described in the article referred to yesterday, which is not a good basis on which to make such an important decision. Of course that may be exactly what Alex Salmond wants. Independence at any price, whether or not the economic arguments stack up or the consequences have been thought through. It's certainly beginning to look like that, given the deafening silence from the SNP leadership regarding Ms McAlpine's comments on Thursday.

Is the stushie stoking anti-English sentiment?

Calton does not, as far as he knows, have any English blood in him (although an ancestor with the surname Winchester has some explaining to do) however he does not believe in blaming the English nation any more than he would blame the Cameron clan for the activities of one David Cameron. It was therefore with some concern that he read the comment on his recent post on independence. If the current stushie between Holyrood and Westminster causes an increase in anti-English sentiment in Scotland then the sooner it is settled the better. We don't need that sort of bigotry and we don't want people who are making a positive contribution to Scotland to feel unwelcome here just because they are not Scottish. What is the definition of Scottish anyway?