I should know better

I`m being pressured to join the SNP. Rejoin, that would be, for I`ve been a Nationalist voter for as long as I can remember - and that`s a long, long time. Heavens, I can remember being delighted by the adventure of the Stone......... at my age, if I think back far enough I can probably remember Bannockburn.

I have always been a political animal. I don`t write a political blog because there are far too many of them already. But I was brought up to politics. My father declined over the depresion and the war from a communist inspired by Red Clydeside and McLean into a determined socialist; my mother`s politics were so blue they glowed in the dark. How they ever got together is a very romantic story - another time, maybe. But while other couples fought over money and the Other Woman, my parents fought over fiscal and foreign policies.

They fought over history too. One well worried bone of contention was Churchill. To mother he was a wonderful war leader: to my father he was a monster who squandered lives at the Dardanelles during the first war so that the navy could have "a good show", and who said that the starving poor could always eat their children, having so many. Eventually the Beeb ran a serial history of World War One and in those days the Beeb was always right. Myparents watched it in nail-biting silence, and I can still remember my mother, pale and shocked, whispering - "your father was right about the landings!"

My view of Churchill? An evil old anachronism who was indeed a very efficient war leader - but what are you to say of someone who wanted to seed Germany with anthrax spores?

You can see that my views don`t exactly lean to the right. Anyway, Tories in Scotland are not only dead - they have become part of mythology, something to frighten children with:

"And then the wicked unreconstructed thatcherite gobbled up Red Riding Hood`s grandmother, and hopped into bed, disguised as a credible candidate......."

But I am so tired of the seedy complacent Labour corruption that haunts this part of Scotland. We have a sort of a parliament, and I feel it would be more of one with MSP`s committed to Scotland - and that leads one to Nationalism.

No, I don`t think I will ever see an independent Scotland. But independent of Blairism will do for now.

I`ll think about rejoining. Meanwhile I have dogs to wash.