NOTEBOOK: LIGHTWEIGHTS AND HEAVYWEIGHTS MAKE POLITICS A KNOCK OUT

She told MSPs: “As we have just seen, I have big political differences with Douglas Ross, but even I am not as derogatory about him as his own Tory colleagues.

“The comments that he is ‘not a big figure’ and ‘a lightweight’ [from Jacob Rees Mogg, no less] are not just personal insults directed at the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, but say something much deeper about the Westminster establishment’s utter contempt for Scotland. If they cannot even show basic respect for their own colleagues, what chance do the rest of us have?

“Westminster thinks that Scotland does not need to be listened to and can be ignored, and now we are being told that we have to follow a Prime Minister whose own colleagues think he is not fit for office.

“Independence is fundamentally about empowerment and aspiration, but an added benefit of being independent is that we will no longer have to put up with being treated like something on the sole of Westminster’s shoe. Today, I suspect that even Douglas Ross finds that a really attractive proposition.”

For the word “something” in that sentence substitute the word faeces  I believe the scribes of the Scottish Parliament Official Report kindly changed that for her.

I am sure that faeces was the word I heard from her lips at FMQs.  Bluntly, they consider us shit on their shoe, or so Nicola would have us believe.

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Talking about  faeces, there is plenty of it around these parts — and it’s not just from people like West Dunbartonshire Council’s SNP administration leader.

Big McColl attempts to pass himself off to the Lomond Ward electorate as a person who knows what he is doing in regard to local politics.  However, for his achievements you only have to look around you at what he has done and what he is currently doing for this area.

His “maybes aye, maybes naw” response to Flamingoland is one that is still festering away in Balloch.

McColl, pictured right,  is a smearmeister in the mould of Boris Johnston. He is a chancer who tells lies and imposes bans and boycotts on the media because he fears that  one of these days he will be found out.

Freedom of the Press and democracy are anathema to him.

I believe he has already been exposed and that his chances of winning the Lomond Ward for the SNP at the May elections are, as they say in the Haldane, a dug’s and nane.

On my way to Balloch this week, I found myself driving behind one of those huge articulated lorries which ferry faeces into the hills above Jamestown and Balloch and dumps it there. The contractors are, of course, paid handsomely by the Council for that work.

When I looked later at the West Dunbartonshire Council website I couldn’t but notice that the name on the on the lorry I had followed was there for all to see as one of the Council sponsors.

If I were McColl,  I might wonder about how that looks to the punters. Perception can be everything in politics. I would take advice about what to do when I was in a hole. Stop digging comes to mind.

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First time I have been down the town in the dark for a while. The High Street was the usual shambles with cars and vans parked everywhere including up on the pavements, some of them without lights.

That was bad enough but it was when I got to Church Street and the Burgh Hall, I laughed out loud at the the choice of curtains and blinds for the Council headquarters in the Burgh Hall.

It was the colour of them that struck me most. Red. It made the place look like the red light district in Amsterdam.

Bringing the council headquarters from Garshake into Church Street did not do what the Council anticipated it might when they splashed out £16 million on the refurbishment and the aim of that was to increase the footfall in shops and businesses.

Predictably, they failed to do that. In fact, things got wose.

If they keep the red light district theme going though then that might be just the thing to bring the shoppers and the tourists back to the town centre in their droves.

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It’s not so much Boris Johnston lying through his teeth that gets me. It’s all those creeps such as Michael Gove lining up to give him their backing. And the fact that these two galoots were once journalists, who are renowned for telling the truth. Most of the time anyway. Boris should be gone by Monday once the Sunday papers wring out of his detractors every ounce of the details about the “industrial scale” partying in Downing Street. If you have a moment catch up with Nick Robinson interviewing the footballer Gary Neville on television and BBC Radio 4 this morning (Sunday). He puts the boot in, calls Boris a bluffer and recommends the Tories give him a free transfer.

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Writing about fishermen today, I Woke up to yet another annoying campaign for change slipped into what we can and cannot say these days. We have to refer to people working in the industry or simply those fishing on the Firth of Clyde, Loch Lomond and elsewhere as “fishers” and not fishermen. No word of any change yet in regard to ladybirds. Can any of you come up with an alternative that will shut up the Woke brigade? Or will you just be dismissing it as daft?