Lest we forget. Let me take you back to thursday the 7th of June 2007. The Tartan Overlord called for an emergency session in Holyrood to read out and answer questions pertaining to a 'memorandum of understanding' that Tony Blair, the then PM, had signed with Col Gaddafi in Libya about an exchange between each countries nationals held in the other country's prison. As we all know, there was only one Libyan national held in a Scottish prison.
Blair, his spin doctors and lackeys in the British media kicked up an almighty fuss claiming that this was nothing to do with Mr Al Megrahi. The Libyans went on record saying that Megrahi's case was the whole point of the meeting. Gaddafi's son claimed "When Blair came here we signed the agreement. We signed an oil deal at the same time. The commerce and politics and deals were all with the prisoner transfer agreement."
The Unionists in the Scottish Parliament for the one and only time in nearly four years agreed unanimously that Blair had no right to make decisions which directly affected the process of Scots law without consultation with the devolved Parliament. Within hours the London knives were out for Jack McConnell for having the temerity to agree with Salmond.
BBC Newsnight brought out the big guns in its defence of Blair and unleashed Kirsty Wark on an unsuspecting nation.
The question posed was simple, which government was telling the truth the British, Scottish or Libyan?
Now thanks to Julian Assange, we know. Libya and Scotland were telling the truth. The discredited Labour Party in England and Scotland were guilty of lying to the electorate, their friends in the media were guilty of bombast, disinformation and promoting the lies of their friends.
When will Richard Baker, Iain Gray, Tony Blair, Douglas Alexander, David Miliband, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Jim Murphy, David Cairns, Elaine Murray, David Mundell, Russell Brown, Tavish Scott and Annabel Goldie apologise to the Scottish and British electorate?
Suggestions by some scurrilous types that the Papal cavalcade when it traverses Edinburgh en route to meet Queen Brenda Windsor, Prime Minister Lord Snooty and our very own Tartan Overlord at Holyrood palace, will have to drive through the area of Edinburgh known as the Pubic Triangle, are surely at the whim of a good driver and a decent twat-nav. If the entourage manages to avoid the torrid display of strip joints, 'saunas' and Costas, there's bound to be the odd discrete red lit window on the Royal Mile that'll give the occasional Bishop or Right Reverend a lascivious come hither wink. Possibly there may even be a discount at some of the capitals many pole dancing clubs, for men with a small angry devil under their cassocks. All of which serves to remind me of a recent trip to the Bodensee or Lake Constanz as we call it in English, wherein I saw the above beautiful lady, Imperia. If you've never heard of her allow me to enlighten you. In 1993 the good burghers of Konstanz (I know these crazy foreigners and their different names for their own towns) decided to commemorate the papal Council of Konstanz back in the 15th century by commissioning renowned sculptor Peter Lenk to create an outstanding art form to overlook the town and the Bodensee.
The Council served to unite the Papacy behind one of three rival Popes and Pope Martin V was duly elected. Apart from starting the Hussite wars and banning Jews from selling Christian slaves (all other religions were ok) Martin V created a bit of a stir when the Council visited Konstanz between 1414 and 1418. During the interminably dull periods of ecumenical debate, he had a few opponents offed, notably Jan Hus, the radical free thinker and philosopher who was burned at the stake for daring to question the legitimacy of his Papacy.
He settled what remained of the Western Schism and stomped on any remaining rights of Paganism. The arrival of the Papal circus was a great boost to the local economy, having the entire hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church decant to Konstanz was the equivalent of hosting the Olympic Games, the World Cup and a Beatles reunion every day for four years. Konstanz was already an imperial city subject only to the Holy Roman Empereor, a neat ecclesiastical loophole allowed clergy to live affluent tax free lives, it was estimated that up to one quarter of the population claimed clerical dispensation. Add to this mix of lavish wealth, randy apostolic brethren a pornucopia of prostitutes, pimps, potentates and pederasts and Konstanz resembled a scene of unrivalled Bacchanalian orgies.
La Belle Madame of them all was Imperia, who had men wilting at her very touch. Herr Lenk, knowing that Emperor Sigismund had personally thanked the city of Konstanz, in writing, for providing 1,500 prostitutes for the period of the Council's stay, decided to take Imperia as his muse. Inspired by Honoré Balzac's novel, 'La Belle Imperia', he devised this homage to the greatest hooker of them all.
Imperia stands ten metres high on a rotating plinth, weighing in at a svelte 18 tonnes, in each hand she holds an effigy of Pope Martin V and Emperor Sigismund, both are naked except for their Crowns.
She was assembled in place overnight, under cover in great secrecy. When she was unveiled the next day there was universal outcry from the good burghers, they had at least expected something a tad more restrained, devout and sacred, not some giant tart, with her boobs hanging out, holding up two naked old buffers. The Bishop of Freiburg almost fainted and had his advisor's send a strongly worded letter of condemnation. Demands were made to pull it down, plots of subterfuge from fundamentalist Christian groups threatened to blow her up and sink her in the Bodensee. The plinth is cited in the harbour which is owned by German Rail company Deutche Bundesbahn, who in turn told the critics to travel and copulate. To this day she is the foremost tourist attraction on the Bodensee and Konstanz, I'm reliably informed still has more than its fair share of cathouses.
I'm not suggesting that Pope Benny avail himself of the plethora of pleasure palaces that infest our fair city, when he visits next week, just that the whole event isn't choked up with hypocrisy, that a Papal letter regarding the child abuse scandals is issued and that an explanation is given as to why Mass is being charged for and the Pope is allowed to wave at the people of Scotland and drive by the Scottish Parliament, but is not allowed to enter...Do I detect the cold dead hand of former Secretary for the State of Scotland, Jim Murphy MP?
When he's not saving poor old women from out of control cars and rescuing kittens from trees, Jim Murphy the sepulchral Secretary for the State of Scotland never misses an opportunity to profess his love of football.
In fact it struck the very essence of awe into me one evening when watching Rep Scotland to see SuperSpud, man of ra peeple, nonchalantly wander into an honest-it-wasn't-pre-arranged vox pop (honest) to give his views on the latest Scotland performance to a beeb reporter.
What concerns me most about Mr Murphy and football, was starkly brought home to me yesterday afternoon when I took my elderly; Alzheimer suffering, retired miner, former trade union leader, former Labour supporting, father-in-law, Tam, for a wee drive in the nearby countryside to marvel at the clear blue skies.
We stopped outside the former Dungavel prison, now home to all these pesky people who believed this to be a land of opportunity, the kind of people who risked life and limb to get here only to find themselves subject to racism, intimidation and a home for them and their children behind, barbed wire fences and bars.
As we parked, near the 'detention centre' a van pulled out, an advert on the back, read, 'ARCO, Britain's Leading Supplier of Personal Protection Equipment'. One can only imagine that what the driver delivered wasn't for the inmates protection.
However, I digress, Tam, came out of his small-stroke dwammy to tell me that when he was captain of Muirkirk Juniors in the 1950 and early 1960's they would often play games against the prisoners at Dungavel. Sounding like something out of 'Porridge', a handful of prison officers would lead the prison team and a couple of hundred prisoners across the road to an immaculate little ground where the lags got the opportunity for a bit of a stretch and some legal assault on the opposition. Nobody ever thought of legging it as they were in the middle of the moors between Muirkirk, Strathaven and miles from civilisation.
The football pitch is still there, albeit it in a less than pristine condition.
Whilst wandering over the field to take the above photo, a thought struck me that this pitch was not being put to the best use. Jim Murphy, nearly two years ago famously claimed that as Secretary of State he was committed to ending the practise of housing the children of failed asylum seekers in Dungavel. Since then there has been a slew of campaigns highlighting this very practise, most recently the on going case of Florence and Precious Mhango. Mr Murphy has yet to either comment or make his commitment good.
Looking at the broken cross bar and the fit to be ploughed field, that was once a beautiful wee pitch, Tam turned to me and said "It's a pity that they cannae let they foreign folk and their weans in the prison out for a wee kickabout on the pitch on a grand day like this." I agreed and we went back to the car and drove home.
Not so long ago on this here blawg, I posed the following question, "How soon before Mr Purcell's £5,000 a day crisis management team manage to sell his exclusive, 'How the Evil Cyber Nats turned me into a Cokehead.' story to one of the Scottish tabloids?
It seems that the answer was exactly 21 days, a mere three weeks, during which time the Scottish bloggeratti and our meeja have hummed, hawed, empathised, condemned, cajoled, conjectured, postulated, fumed and become increasingly exasperated at the drip, drip, drip of real news and the veil that the Labour party and their establishment and media friends have attempted to draw over the whole sorry mess.
In a spectacularly badly timed reappearance for the Labour parties re-election chances, Mr Purcell has popped up in Ireland en route back from Australia, to set the world to rights, fess up to coke use, boozing, blethers with senior plod and err falling through the ice. So much for the supposed munificence of his big business Caymen based backers...
Anyhoo, this past weekend saw the Labour Party spring conference lose money by hiring a decent sized hall at the SECC and throw a hugely expensive cordon of security around it to protect the Prime Minister. In reality there were more security people there than delegates, the applause during Brown's leaders rallying call was simply embarrassing and probably attracted less people than a kiddies birthday party for young Peter File.
The weekends sound-bites for Labour politicians Brown and Murphy, when grilled by the oleaginous GlenCampbelly and Paxman on buns, Brian Taylor, about Purcell, was that this was, " a personal tragedy" - the absurd anti-SNP "don't knock Glasgow" - "no evidence of wrongdoing, move along please."
David Dinsmore, 63, the editor of the Scottish Sun appeared on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland this morning and threw out the remaining vestiges of what journalistic integrity he might ever have possessed (stop snorting at the back) with the early morning bathwater.
In an interview lasting a mere three minutes, Dinsmore 72, appeared like a toddler looking for approval when handing its mother a fresh pooh, he trumpets that his paper triumphed in getting the story that every other journalist wanted. His 'confession' that Purcell was both a contact and a personal friend (note past tense) was no barrier to Disnmore, 87, crushing Purcell with hard hitting questions normally reserved for celebrity rapists and footballers burdz. Listening to the interview was like reading a Labour party press release, rather than that of a man who is supposed to show loyalty to his readers and employers. The lines between hack and Labour acolyte have been seriously blurred here, how can Dinsmore, 59, seriously not see that Purcell and his ilk don't choose to be friends with tabloid editors, they schmooze them and abuse them whenever possible. Naturally it's a relationship that works both ways. What was reprehensible was for Dinsmore, 68, to ignore the web of deceit, lies, patronage, bungs and favouritism that his colleagues across the 4th estate have exposed, which he in turn dismisses and undermines.
The one piece of PR fluff that sticks out, (I have a talent for these things) was his contention when asked about an inquiry into the wrongdoing, that just about every thinking person in Scotland has demanded, that there was "lots of smoke but no fire." Naturally he parroted out the Labour lines as if somebody had a hand up his back. It was a "personal tragedy", his readers can't fail to have "sympathy for Purcell" and so on. It's really vomit inducing stuff.
Of course, there'll be questions as to how much Steven Purcell was paid for his 'exclusive' interview? Our BBC man funnily enough didn't ask this question. Loyal Labour supporters have also got to question Steven Purcell's tactical nous and loyalty to the people's party. By selling his story to the Sun has he just had his Graeme Souness Hillsborough moment? The Sun down south have come out for the Tories. How can they support British Labour here but not British Labour down south?
So in tribute to the sad end to a beautiful friendship that saw Steven and David smile coyly across the table at James Mortimer's Rogano, shared smiles and laughs no more, a fleeting brushing of hands as they reached for their respective coats in the cloakroom. I give you the saddest music in the world, ever.
It's alleged today that Glasgow City Councillor Stephen Purcell has decided to stand down as Council Leader, due to stress.
It's a great pity that people who decide to devote their time to serving in public life fall by the wayside like this. The burden of carrying Glasgow City Council and the Labour Party on your shoulders must be an immense task, particularly for one so young.
I was discussing with a friend recently how Scottish politics has simply boiled down to this macabre game between politicians and journalists, where the journalists intrinsically do not believe the politicians are of a calibre that the title has traditionally merited, and politicians in a desperate attempt to appear capable, strive to come up with more and more ludicrous 'visions' to ensure press coverage and their justification for the use of the title.
Naturally this leads to the question of why otherwise sensible people get into politics. There are very few, from any party, that I've met, that do not work more than 39 hours a week. Family life and personal life are put on hold, whilst the politician puts their all into, what is in essence a very stressful popularity contest, where, increasingly, adherence to party dogma is of paramount importance.
I suppose politics has really moved away from discussion about the principles and theories best suited to good governance, to capitalising on attracting those stirred enough from the general malaise and apathy of the electorate, to actually get to the polling station and put their X against the candidate they feel best represents them.
As to Stephen Purcell's 'resignation', as the leading light of the Scottish Labour party machine, I imagine the only Labour politician in Scotland who will benefit from his removal from the spotlight is none other than the Secretary for the State of Scotland, and future leader of the Labour Party in Holyrood, the not so shifty Jim Murphy MP.
Well just when it looked all dignified and a done deal, the rumour mill goes into full effect, aided of course by the news that Councillor Purcell has engaged the legendary Scottish PR guru Jack Irvine of Media House to handle all press enquiries for him. A pricey ticket no doubt.
The latest sniff is that a former chief executive of a certain Labour laden quango did not go gently into the night, preferring to toot in his tuppence that stress is one of the symptoms of the modern age and hard put upon executives have to resort to all sorts of aides to get them through the night.
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