Envy is a Terrible Thing

Seeing photos this week of David Davis and Alex Salmond together in happier times reminded Calton of something we seem to have lost, in Scotland at any rate. Gone are the days when politicians of opposing parties knocked seven bells out of each other in the House and then met for a pint afterwards. Gone is respect and admiration and, in some instances, genuine friendship between political opponents. Gone is agreeing to disagree. Instead we have Nicola Sturgeon who quite clearly hates, loathes and despises the leaders of the other parties. There is no mutual respect or friendship there, which is why the lift sketch featuring Sturgeon and Davidson was so cringe-worthy. During an election debate Sturgeon didn't hesitate to drop Dugdale in it by revealing a private conversation on national TV. Political advantage trumps personal loyalty and general decency every time with Nicola. She doesn't even bother trying to conceal her dislike of Willie Rennie even although the two of them share common ground on the EU.

Most telling of all is the way in which the First Minister has not only dumped but tried to destroy her mentor Alex Salmond. Her reasons for doing this have never been very clear, especially if we are to believe that he was her friend, however the whole thing becomes more plausible if, in fact, the friendship was all on Salmond's side and Sturgeon was just using him as a stepping-stone to the top. A genuine friend would have been happy with his aquittal. Instead, Sturgeon keeps casting doubts on it even as she says she accepts it.

Nicola Sturgeon has lots of slavish followers but seems to have few friends, all of whom are in her own party. She is trying to rubbish the Westminster intervention by David Davis this week by characterising it as the "old boys club", knowing the friendship that exists between Davis and Salmond. Envy is a terrible thing. Sturgeon has also made a big mistake in trying to smear Davis. David Davis MP is a man of principle and a well-respected politician. Calling him "shifty" just makes her look bad, especially after her evasive answers to many of the questions put to her by the Parliamentary Committee recently. It was an ill-judged act of desperation from a woman who is losing the trust of the Scottish people. If recent polls are right and she fails to get a majority in May, she will have very few friends supporting her after the election and she will only have herself to blame.

Mad and Bad

Since his last post, Calton has decided that Nicola Sturgeon is both mad and bad. She has also appointed herself judge and jury over her own behaviour which is a bit worrying. Correction - very worrying. After the First Minister's astonishingly unwise outburst on Wednesday in which she questioned the outcome of Alex Salmond's criminal trial, Calton was not the only one who was concerned. Jim Sillars wrote to the Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans complaining that Sturgeon had breached the ministerial code. Instead of receiving a reply from Evans, he got a zinger from Nicola which you can read here, along with Sillars' measured response. Extremely measured, given the provocation of Nicola's rude reply to his first missive, but quite rightly holding to the fact that she has broken the ministerial code and should self-refer to James Hamilton (again) since no-one else seems to be able to refer her. No wonder people are starting to talk about Scotland being a failed state or a banana republic without the bananas.

We have a First Minister who is increasingly out of control, using a Covid briefing to attack an opponent, making ill-judged comments about our judicial system and then firing off a reply to a letter that wasn't even addressed to her. She has issued dire warnings to any of her supporters caught reading Wings Over Scotland, presumably to stop them reading articles like this. She accuses her opponents of a scorched earth policy when that is precisely what she is doing to the SNP. Lastly, and most egregiously, she has accused Alex Salmond of not backing up his claims with evidence when she knows full well that he is prevented from doing so for legal reasons. That's not just mad - that's bad, in Calton's opinion.

Scottish National Pyromaniac

Calton is not sure whether the almost light-hearted bravado of Nicola Sturgeon's performance on today's briefing indicates total confidence that she is untouchable or the start of a descent into madness. Or both. It certainly made the case for the BBC pulling the daily Nicola show all the more imperative. She used it today to attack Alex Salmond in a way which, to Calton's non-legally trained mind, might be actionable when she stated that "Alex Salmond is innocent of criminality, that doesn’t mean the behaviour they claimed of didn’t happen." ('They' being the alphabet women.) For the First Minister to stray into such dangerous territory, and for her to even answer questions on the Alex Salmond affair in the Covid briefing, was very unwise.

Another worrying indication of Nicola Sturgeon's increasing isolation and failure to grasp reality is the account of the SNP NEC meeting at the weekend which Sturgeon attended via zoom. According to Iain Lawson, she spent a lot of time on dire threats for anyone caught sharing Wings Over Scotland and pushed through a definition of transphobia which will exclude women like Joanna Cherry and Joan McAlpine from the party. Neither of those actions will help heal the divisions in her party - quite the opposite. The SNP leader is behaving like a pyromaniac in a straw-filled barn. Needless to say, her diktat re Wings has been pointedly ignored by Chris McEleny and Angus McNeil who have both posted articles on Wings since the NEC meeting.

Sturgeon is keen to stick to May 6th for the election so it seems absolutely crazy for her to be purging her party with less than 3 months to go. The SNP is haemorrhaging members, there's no money in the bank and Salmond's accusations are now making front page news. Even the London-based MSM has finally realised there's a problem in Scotland. She's presumably hoping that she can capitalise on the false impression that she's handling Covid well (or at least not as badly as Boris) with an early election, however the backlash to her route out of lockdown rather gives the lie to that idea.

If Nicola Sturgeon wasn't in charge of the country at such a crucial time it wouldn't matter that she appears to be losing the plot and is spending more time dealing with Alex Salmond than Covid. Unfortunately it does matter and it also matters that there doesn't seem to be anyone within the SNP with the experience and gravitas to have a word in her shell, as happened with Margaret Thatcher. So it looks like we will have the unedifying spectacle of a desperately damaged First Minister clinging on to power unless or until she is voted out. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.

Birds of a Feather

The last few days have seen a tectonic shift in Scottish politics which has resulted in an interesting realignment. Instead of the SNP and the Greens on one side, with a supporting cast which included Wings over Scotland, versus all those who wanted to stay in the UK on the other side,  we now have the SNP split down the middle with one half teaming up with Wings, who now has a number of pro-UK people sharing his articles, and the other half desperately trying to distance themselves from Wings and support their beleaguered leader Nicola Sturgeon. And if you are still managing to follow Calton here, well done! It's not been easy to keep up with the shifting allegiances lately. Indeed some poor SNP supporters just don't know who is the goodie and who is the baddie now.

It may seem very complicated but, at heart, it's very simple. Birds of a feather flock together and so, on one side, we have those for whom truth transcends, and on the other, those for whom independence transcends. That's why unionists like Calton have been tweeting posts from pro-independence blogger Stuart Campbell recently. That's why "wheesht for indy" has become a thing. That's why SNP members are finally breaking ranks and speaking out, in spite of the infamous SNP gagging rule. The trigger has been the inquiry into the handling of complaints against Alex Salmond but the rumblings have been going on beneath the surface for some time now. Calton expects a full-scale eruption next week when Salmond finally testifies to the parliamentary inquiry.

The Words Matter Even More

Nicola Sturgeon continues to use the phrase "I do not consider that I have misled Parliament" (or "broken the ministerial code"), a fact which Calton has already highlighted. At first hearing it seems a strange turn of words to use but, on further consideration it becomes apparent that, by using this particular phrase, the beleaguered First Minister is leaving the door open to someone else considering that she HAS misled Parliament, the most obvious person to do so being James Hamilton, who is currently looking into the matter and who will hopefully report by the end of the month. Having paved the way by her choice of words, and her refusal to say whether or not she would resign if she was found to have broken the code, she can then employ the tactic of 'my truth vs your truth' - 'I consider that I have not broken the code, you consider that I have'. Who is to say who is right in this post-truth, through-the-looking-glass world which is Scotland 2021?

Sturgeon will get an easy ride from the Parliamentary Committee investigating the botched handling of the Salmond case when she appears in front of it next week, thanks to her fan-girl Fabiani. If necessary the whole avian and animal kingdom will be summoned to aid in deflecting questions from Murdo Fraser, Alex Cole-Hamilton and Jackie Baillie. Possibly even flora too - 'Oh look - a snowdrop' - if things really start looking difficult. The coup-de-grace will be the post-truth argument. Nicola is right because she is right. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. Even in the face of utterly damning evidence she will not resign. This is where we have got to and it stinks.

Those who voted for this woman and who continue to support her should hang their heads in shame. Truth matters far more than independence or party loyalty.

Independence Transcended

Back in October Calton wrote about how independence transcended everything for Nicola Sturgeon. It looks like he was wrong. Sturgeon seems to have cynically used the fact that independence transcends everything for other people to cover up a stitch-up of her predecessor Alex Salmond because what really transcends everything for her is power. Once she had it, she wanted to keep it.

According to Craig Murray's sworn evidence on the Salmond affair, Alex Salmond "said that he believed that Nicola was banking on his loyalty to the SNP and to the Independence movement, thinking that he would not split the party by revealing what or who was behind the allegations against him." In other words, she thought she could smear him with impunity because he wouldn't do anything to hurt 'the cause'. If that is true, she was wrong. Salmond may be out for revenge, and, if so, who could blame him? But he also, more importantly, wants the truth to come out and so do many others, Calton included. This has not made the former SNP leader popular with some in the SNP who still think that 'the cause' is more important than the truth. He is supposed to fall on his sword, or at least wheesht, for independence. Thankfully he has declined to do so, because, when truth becomes secondary to a cause and the end justifies the means, we are all in big trouble.

The Salmond Inquiry has already done, and will continue to do, damage to the SNP but that is not the fault of Alex Salmond. It is the fault of the current SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon for whom it seems power transcends independence. It is hard to read all the evidence now in the public domain, much of which can be seen on Wings over Scotland, and not come to the conclusion that Sturgeon conspired against Salmond with several of her team and is now desperately trying to cover it up. If independence really was the most important thing to her, she would resign because she is damaging 'the cause'. The fact she is still doubling down and clinging on tells us all we need to know.

The Words Matter

Nicola Sturgeon has said "I do not consider that I misled parliament, but that is for others to judge." Interesting phrase. Why didn't she just say "I did not mislead parliament" or "I did not lie to parliament"? Perhaps because such bare faced lies are beyond even her? Very few of us can lie effectively. Instead, we tend to deflect, obfuscate, confuse or conflate. Note how the rebuttals of the charges of lying, which Alex Salmond has placed at Sturgeon's door, introduce the idea of a conspiracy, only to rubbish it. Who mentioned conspiracy? This is typical deflection. The point at issue is - has Scotland's First Minister lied to the Scottish Parliament, yes or no?

What Calton finds even more egregious is the way in which Nicola and her followers are framing the Salmond/Sturgeon war as an attack on a poor, innocent woman by an awful man. This is nonsense and dangerous nonsense at that. By inappropriately appropriating female victimhood in a situation where the female is the First Minister of Scotland and the supposed victimiser is a political has-been, Sturgeon and her female supporters, like Kirsty Blackman, are doing women in general a huge disservice. There are many situations where women are bullied and harassed by mysogynistic men and, when this happens, it needs to be called out by both men and women, but this is not one of them and to suggest it is, prejudices genuine cases of sexism and mysogyny.

Calton has already blogged about how the SNP is not good for women. Neither is Nicola Sturgeon.

Cherchez La Femme

The more the sorry Salmond affair drags on, the more Calton becomes convinced that the former First Minister was right - there was a conspiracy against him instigated by his successor. You don't have to look far in this whodunnit to find the femme fatale. Nicola Sturgeon had both the means (his admittedly poor behaviour) and the motive (his declared intention to return to Scottish politics) to stick the knife into Alex Salmond and #metoo gave her the ideal opportunity. She has rubbished any suggestion of conspiracy, saying that she has nothing to hide and would cooperate fully with the current inquiry however court action has been raised to prevent publication of part of a conversation between Sturgeon and a senior civil servant about Salmond. The Scottish Government has also failed to meet a deadline to provide its legal advice to the inquiry and is treating a parliamentary vote on the same with contempt.

What really stinks about this whole thing is the way in which senior women in the SNP and the Scottish Government seem to have been happy to put up with Salmond's behaviour when it suited them, in the run-up to the 2014 independence referendum for example, but then cynically used the #metoo movement as a vehicle to prevent Salmond making a come-back. That is not the action of committed feminists. Women suffer daily from the actions of sleazy guys in positions of power and are entitled to have their complaints treated with respect and investigated properly, not used in some internecine party war, which, in Calton's opinion, seems to have happened in this case.

Alex Salmond won a court case against the Scottish Government over their handling of the complaints against him and he was aquitted of all criminal wrongdoing at his trial. He is now out for revenge against his successor. Nicola Sturgeon has said that perhaps he is angry with her because she refused to collude with him in covering up his behaviour. Calton wonders if perhaps Alex had good reason to expect collusion from Nicola based on her previous attitude to his actions and was disappointed to find that her attitude had changed. Or perhaps his anger stems from being put through months of hell and a court case. Hopefully we will find out when the man himself appears in front of the Holyrood committee. Calton doesn't hold out much hope of the committee getting anything out of the First Minister, except a plea for our sympathy as a wronged woman.

Nicola is no Boudicca

Calton has stopped listening to Nicola's lunchtime briefings. Her anxiety is palpable and it's infectious. Instead of leading the Scottish people our First Minister is pleading with the Scottish people. It's not a good look. No wonder some nationalists are casting about for another leader and their eye is falling on Sturgeon's predecessor and nemesis, Alex Salmond. The fact that there doesn't seem to be any other obvious candidate highlights the paucity of talent in the SNP. A leadership election in the aftermath of Salmond's resignation in 2014 might have highlighted what is now blindingly obvious even to some SNP members - Sturgeon's ultra-cautiousness and inability to be decisive is a huge drawback. She is a career politician, not a leader. She's the queen of spin in a sharp suit but she is no Boudicca and it is unlikely that she will ever lead the Scots to independence. She just doesn't have what it takes. If she did manage to take Scotland out of the UK we would be a nation of wee sleekit cow'rin tim'rous beasties just like her and we would indeed be too wee, too poor and too stupid to succeed as an independent country because that's what she will have made us.

No Votes for the One-Party State

Calton managed to stay up last night until after the exit polls, which he treated with some scepticism. He went to bed but woke up at 3.30am, by which time Robertson and Sheikh had already gone and Salmond was soon to follow. Calton's joy would have been complete if Wishart, Blackford and Cherry had joined them but it was still a good night - and there's always next time. Which may come sooner than we all expected due to the dire overall UK result (for Theresa May that is - and anyone who likes stability and is in favour of Brexit, like Calton). It was definitely Corbyn's night down south, just as it was Davidson's up north.

What is clear, to Calton, is that the British public do not like the idea of a one-party state. May's biggest mistake was to try and crush the opposition. That did not go down well in England just as Sturgeon's attempts to appropriate the Scottish voice to her party only did not play well in Scotland. It may also be that the British public, being a lot less liberal and PC than politicians and the media would like to think, just don't like bossy women running the show with nobody to oppose them. That is not a view Calton agrees with (he does not have a problem with strong women, as his twitter followers will know) but, sadly, it is out there.

Like it or not, coalition government is here to stay because that is what the public wants. What Ruth Davidson needs to do is learn from the mistakes of Sturgeon and May and not become proud. (And if you want to hear hubris personified, just listen to Sturgeon's speech at lunchtime today.) Strong government is good but so is strong opposition. Sturgeon's acknowledged mentor Alex Salmond successfully negotiated a minority government from 2007-2011. She has been unable to do likewise and has suffered as a result. Will she learn from this? Calton thinks it unlikely. Expect more SNP losses in future.

They don't get it, do they?

Politicians just don't get it, do they? OK, so Alex Salmond is very magnanimously going to donate one of his salaries to charity if he succeeds in becoming an MP in addition to being an MSP next year. Big deal. The real problem with Alex and others like him, such as Cara Hilton (MSP and Fife Councillor), is that they are hogging two jobs when a lot of people can't even get one. They are also not giving the best service to the people they represent, who deserve an MSP who is not also an MP or a councillor. We want full-time elected representatives, not part-timers dividing their time between Holyrood and Westminster or Holyrood and a local council. If Salmond manages to get elected to Westminster he should immediately resign his Holyrood seat and it's high time Hilton resigned her position on Fife council. Her Labour colleague Alex Rowley did so as soon as he won his Cowdenbeath Holyrood seat. Perhaps Hilton is not as confident as Rowley about retaining her seat in 2016. Calton would have thought she was pretty safe but, it has to be said, Dunfermline has swung every which way but Tory in the last few Holyrood elections. Perhaps 2016 will be James Reekie's year. Oh hang on ... Calton has just spotted a pig flying over the other side of the Forth.

A good day for debtors

Today was a good day to be a debtor. First we had the news that Wonga is writing off the debts of 330,000 customers and then our First Minister used FMQs to announce that councils would be prevented from pursuing poll tax debts from 20+ years ago. No doubt there will be a lot of happy people tonight however there are also a lot of unhappy people, Calton amongst them, who don't take out loans they can't hope to repay and who do pay their taxes. If having their payday loans written off made people less likely to get into financial trouble in the future, that would be good, however Calton suspects the reverse will be true. The possibility that your debt will magically disappear due to your lender having their knuckles rapped must surely be an incentive to some people to take out a loan. As for Alex Salmond's poll tax stunt - it is a totally transparent attempt to continue stoking anti-Westminster sentiment and buy left-wing votes. It is also another example of SNP-led Holyrood arrogating local council powers. It should be up to individual councils to decided whether or not it is worth pursuing old debts, bearing in mind that the poll tax non-payment campaign left huge holes in council finances, which meant that those who did pay their dues ended up paying more than they should have done. Now, councils are facing a double whammy of the council tax freeze and a prohibition on recovering poll tax debt and our services are suffering as a result. It's time for Holyrood to butt out of council affairs and the only way to ensure that this happens is to vote out the SNP.

An hour in the sun

The SNP got their majority in Holyrood, they got their referendum, they lost it and they are now showing themselves to be constitutionally incapable of accepting the result. Alex Salmond couldn't do his speech accepting defeat without inserting the words "at this stage" and now his probable successor Nicola Sturgeon, while ruling out Eck's more fanciful idea of independence without a referendum, is talking about another referendum some point in the probably not too distant future if it's in the SNP manifesto and they get another majority. Calton would have thought that that was one sure way of getting kicked out of Holyrood but the DFM's chutzpah is such that she may well go for it. One can only hope......

Meanwhile the SNP leadership non-contest is looking very like the succession of Gordon Brown to the Labour Party leadership and post of Prime Minister after years in Tony Blair's shadow and we all know what happened then. Nicola should enjoy her hour in the sun because Calton predicts that it won't last long.

A lost opportunity

Calton thinks that MP Andrew George's Affordable Homes Bill is eminently sensible and is glad to see it making it through to the next stage in Parliament. If the measures contained within George's bill had been included at the start, much of the controversy over the "bedroom tax" would have been avoided. Calton has always said that he doesn't see why taxpayers should be paying for people to stay in homes with more bedrooms than they need, however, cognisance should be taken of the fact that the disabled have special needs and also of the fact that we are in rather short supply of one bedroom council houses in some (most) areas of the country. It is hard to understand why all but one Conservative MP voted against the bill given that, if it succeeds, it will spike one of Alex Salmond's guns i.e. the promise that, in an independent Scotland, the "bedroom tax" will be abolished. The reason the spare room subsidy legislation is so hated in Scotland is because it is seen to penalise the disabled and those who are unable to find a smaller property in their area. Sort those problems with the legislation and it becomes altogether more reasonable. It's a pity that the Tory Party seem unable to put their hands up and admit that, in this case, they got it wrong. (And it's even more of a pity that, after all their criticisms of the "bedroom tax", only 2 SNP MPs were at Westminster to vote for today's bill.)

Independent, defenceless and broke

Calton listened to last night's debate rammy on the radio while simultaneously trying to follow it on twitter. Not being very good at multi-tasking, he therefore missed some of the finer points of the argument but he couldn't help noticing the persistent use of the phrase "sovereign will of the Scottish people" and the word "mandate" by Alex Salmond. The First Minister is obviously trying to strengthen his negotiating hand on the currency union he so desires if there is a yes vote. He was also very clear that, if he doesn't get a currency union, he will walk away from Scotland's share of the UK's debt. Now, turning his argument on its head, if an independent Scotland were to refuse to take a share of the debt, what's to stop the rUK hanging on to all the assets? The roar of RAF Typhoons as they pass overhead on their way south over the border would be matched by the cheers from the workforce at Portsmouth and the corresponding wails from Rosyth. Starting life as an independent country with no debt may seem like an attractive option but we would also have no air force, no navy, no embassies, no central bank and just you try getting credit without a credit (i.e. debt) history! Salmond managed to score points off Darling on child poverty but he would have little chance of making a better fist of it in an indy Scotland with no money. In terms of shouting down his opponent, Alex won last night's debate but in terms of providing real and realistic answers, he lost.

It's crystal clear

It is now crystal clear what voting yes in the independence referendum really means, in spite of all the assertions to the contrary. It means a return to the banking system of the 1700s, with no central bank and no bank bailouts. The Adam Smith Institute seems to think that this would encourage banks to be more responsible. Sounds a bit like putting a fox in charge of the hen house to Calton. Would you really trust a bank with your hard-earned savings in those circumstances? They may tell you that they have enough English banknotes in the vault to guarantee the Scottish notes they are printing but could you believe them? Would you? Meanwhile the SNP continue to cling to the idea that they will get a currency union with rUK in the event of a yes vote, while rumours circulate on twitter that today was possibly Alex Salmond's last FMQs. Oh, that it were true! Calton would jump for joy.

Lies, evasion and FMQs

First Minister's Questions are a total affront to democracy. How is it that Alex Salmond is allowed to get away with not answering the question? Is it because the Presiding Officer is ex-SNP? Was it really a good idea to select a PO from the governing party, against the usual precedent? Or is the position basically toothless? Marwick is quick enough to jump on anyone accusing the FM of telling lies but doesn't seem to be able to make him tell the truth. Evasion, evasion, evasion was the order of the day yesterday. Well, if the leaders of the opposition parties at Holyrood can't get Salmond to spit out the startup costs of an independent Scotland, maybe a petition from the people will have some effect. Or maybe not. If the latter, you know the answer - vote NO. After all, would you buy a car without knowing the cost, and not just the cost to buy it but the cost to run it? Calton thought not and yet that is precisely what the Yes Campaign are expecting us to do. Their £1000 bonanza is based on increased immigration and increased productivity in an independent Scotland but where are these jobs going to come from? Thin air? We can't manage to employ all our people at the moment, particularly our young people, and so, unless all the immigrants Salmond wants to welcome here come with enough capital to start businesses and employ Scots, Calton just can't see increased productivity happening. It's a mirage. As is the idea that, on the 19th September, Scots will "come together" regardless of the outcome of the referendum. Dream on Tricia.

SNP groupthink heading straight for the cliff?

Of course we can still have the pound if we vote for independence. What we can't have is a formal currency union with the rest of the UK. Osborne and Balls have made that quite clear and Calton sees no reason to doubt them or to think that they will change their minds. It is therefore truly sad to hear Salmond continuing to peddle the same old "bluff and bluster" nonsense, while, at the same time, threatening to walk away from the UK's debt if he doesn't get his way. It is even sadder to hear those in his party trot out the same line, as Angela Constance did on the BBC's Any Questions? on Friday night. Do they not have either the brains to realise that they are talking complete rot or the guts to defy the party line and come out with something more sensible? Do they not realise how idiotic they sound, parroting their dear leader. Are they all going to follow him over the cliff, lemming-style? And can Calton be there to pick up the scraps when they do?

Annabel Goldie did a good job of demolishing the SNP party line on Any Questions? - it should be required listening for all SNP MSPs.

Salmond's preening is premature

Is anyone else embarrassed by the First Minister's threats to walk away from the UK's debt if they don't let us keep the £ after independence? Now, he's crowing and preening himself as if he's done something great when, actually, his posturing has threatened to spook the bond markets and has resulted in today's announcement by the UK Treasury that it will guarantee all UK Government debt issued up until the date of independence. Salmond's blinkered brinksmanship in pursuit of his goal of independence is now threatening us all. If the UK Government has to pay more to borrow, we'll all have to pay more to borrow and, since even a small increase in the cost of borrowing at the moment will push many families over the edge, it's no surprise that the Treasury has acted definitively. To do otherwise would have been irresponsible. Would that our First Minister had a similar sense of responsibility to the people he governs. If we vote yes later this year (and Calton sincerely hopes we don't) the road to financial stability as an independent nation will be rocky enough without Salmond's threats and bully-boy antics. He has blown out of the water any hope of an amicable divorce in the wake of a yes vote and we all know what that means - the only winners will be the lawyers!

Back to the 19th century?

We have a shortage of housing, unemployment (and, in particular, youth unemployment) is high, it can take 3 weeks in some parts of Scotland to get a doctor's appointment and NHS dentists are scarcer than hens' teeth - so would someone please remind Calton why we need thousands more immigrants from Eastern Europe? Unfortunately, unless we leave the EU (which is Calton's favoured option), we are powerless to stop a new influx in two days' time, regardless of what some Conservative activists may think. Even if we succeeded in delaying the ability of Romanians and Bulgarians to move here until 2018, that is just postponing the problem. The Tory activists are at least right in one thing - more immigration will only fuel tensions, particularly in poorer areas where people are already struggling to find homes and jobs and to access vital services. Calton is not against immigration per se - he is against unlimited economic immigration from poorer countries within the EU and one look at the graph in this BBC News article will tell you why. The number of Eastern European workers in the UK has gone from less than 50,000 in 2003 to 800,000 in 2013. There are areas in Glasgow where one bedroom flats house 15-20 people. That's a higher population density than when the Victorian tenements were built! If this is the sort of Scotland which Alex Salmond and his party wants, Calton's response is "no thankyou". A return to overcrowded tenements and streets overflowing with rubbish hardly seems to be progressive - it's more like a regression to the 19th century. Is this really Scotland's future?