For those of you who stubbornly STILL don’t follow us on Twitter, this is our favourite still from the trailer for Grand Theft Auto V, the latest instalment in the blockbuster series from splendid Edinburgh-based videogame developers Rockstar North.
(This is AF #54, if you’re keeping track. We know we weren’t.)
This is getting spooky now.
Scottish Labour quasi-leader Johann Lamont at FMQs last month.
Relaxing at the splendid American Museum high on the hills at the outskirts of town tonight, celebrating Independence Day on a glorious summer’s evening with a few Budweisers, a barbecue and a couple of hundred ex-pats and well-wishers.
Our turn soon.
We haven’t seen anyone giving due kudos to BBC Scotland’s graphics department for this splendid bit of work on last night’s Newsnight Scotland yet, so we’ll do it now.
As “vicious insidious pied-pipers of cybernats”, we appreciate it especially.
London-born, Los Angeles-resident singer Rod Stewart in today’s Scottish Sun:
“Proud Scotland fan Rod Stewart revealed he’d hate to see the break-up of the Union. Rock idol Rod, 68, hopes Scots will snub independence by rallying behind the ‘No’ push in next year’s referendum.
(We note with passing interest and without comment the paper’s own description of Rod as a “Scotland fan” rather than a “Scot”, and that a few lines later in the same piece he says “as I don’t live there I shouldn’t comment on independence”. Whoops!)
Hmm, what could have brought that on all of a sudden?
Seasoned readers will be aware of our as-yet-undiscovered mole at “Better Together” campaign headquarters. This morning the intrepid fifth columnist has managed to scan us the cover of the group’s handbook for activists (and forthcoming YouTube movie).
We’re sure more pages will be on the way soon, most days in the papers.
Never been prouder of my adopted hometown.
If that's not the best opening sentence you read today, your money back.
With apologies to both The Jungle Book and Animal Farm.
But seriously – how DOES one tell Tories and Labour apart nowadays? Policies?
(JOKE.)
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending, for the sake of a change of scenery and a few convivial drinks with the estimable Lallands Peat Worrier and others, a meeting of the Oxfordshire branch of the Green Party. The subject of the meeting was Scottish independence, which as you might imagine is something of a niche interest in Oxford (let alone among Greens in Oxford).
I don’t precisely recall the number of people who turned up (see “convivial drinks”), but if it wasn’t more than the Scottish Tories drew to the above meeting, hosted by party leader Ruth Davidson, it was certainly within two or three people of it.
For some reason nobody filmed us for the telly, though.
This select gathering is all the Scottish Conservative conference delegates who were interested in discussing the party’s approach to devolving more powers to the Scottish Parliament in the event of a No vote in the independence referendum of 2014.
Readers far more cynical than ourselves may find the picture a useful gauge by which to measure the true degree of interest the Tories have in more powers.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
