Mundell in a muddle.

On the face of it Tory MP David Mundell has an easy-peasy life. A lovely large salary, a great expenses package, lots of gorgeous cash to spend from Lord Ashcroft and the Tory party's slush fund for marginal seats, free flights in private jets up and down to thatLondon, then there is the open to interpretation 'Sponsorship or financial or material support' from blue chip company Caledonia Investments plc who 'support' David's constituency office. Add to this his rather extensive property portfolio; a flat in London, a flat in Edinburgh (a legacy from his days as an MSP), a flat in Moffat, and a home in Moffat where his estranged family live. It's all so terribly, terribly comfortable.

Of course his supporters would defend him as a busy, hard working local boy made good, once a Lib Dem councillor, he hopped neatly cross party into the Holyrood gravy train and emerged as a Tory MSP, then et voila yer actual genuine Tory MP.

My what a job he's made of it, he's never out the local papers across Dumfriesshire, Tweedsdale and Clydesdale (an area roughly twice the size of Luxembourg) if there's a bunch of old dearies wanting a photo of their committee members snarfing down a bit of home made Battenburg David's there fork akimbo, need an MP to belm at the camera when someone's cat goes missing, who you gonna call? You guessed it. He's got petitions a-go-go about trains, pubs, Border TV, post offices err that's about it...No wait he visits lots of sunny places on fact finding missions. Last year he visited Afghanistan, togged out in shades and armored vest he looked so macho, in a sort of tellytubby meets Rambo kind of way...The fact that poor sods, sweltering in the heat fighting for fuck knows what had to act as a human body shield to David and his Westminster posse,must have gone down great with the grunts. David also went on another fact finding mission to Rwanda, with his daughter. Again.

He's also Dave Cameron's 'Man in Scotland', he's the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, and as such, this is what caused him to appear on my radar, when he appeared on Newsnicht last week, and the following conversation between Dave and Glen Campbell took place:

Glenn Campbell: "The talk in this
interview is about the issue of
addressing unfairness - perceived
unfairness - within the union.
Would a Conservative Government
then look again at the proposed
cuts to the Scottish Budget over
 the next couple of years if
you were in a position to do so?

David Mundell: "Well I think it's
inevitable as when we head into
these difficult financial times,
when there is going to have to
be restraint in spending, that
there is going to have to be
restraint in spending in Scotland. 
And I think it's unrealistic to
pretend otherwise...
it's a sort of fiction that 
Alex Salmond and the
SNP promulgate -
the fact that Scotland
could beexempt from
the financial difficulties
and constraints that
the rest of the United 
Kingdom will have to face."

Soooooo, Mundell of Kandahar and Moffat is ok with Labour's plans to raid Scotland’s budget and in the process fuck up health, education, housing, environment, culture, enterprise and transport by introducing the first pukka cut in Scotland’s public expenditure since the Tories in the 1990's?

If Westminster under either Broon or Cameron takes money from services in your vast constituency Dave, who will you complain to, the Scottish Government or your pals in Westminster? We know who your constituents will blame.

Naturally this admission of being ok with taking money away from Scotland might embarrass him a little bit with his former Tory MSP colleagues in Holyrood, who, oops, voted unanimously for the SNP budget. However, fear not, because there is little love lost between Mundell and Big Bella's boys. Fergusson, can barely stand to talk to him, Councillor Peter 'I'm just big boned' Duncan, the former sole Tory MP in Scotland and Fraser Murdo or is it Murdo Fraser all hate him after he briefed Dave boy Cameron on the intellectual Tory behemoths in Scotland.

So the news this week that Dave Cameron has invited the redoubtable auntie Bella to don the tartan trews (she's comfortable with slacks) and join his cabinet team as a de facto voice from within Holyrood, really leaves poor David Mundell looking like a bit of a cock.