New Year-almost new blog

The last time I blogged was in April last year.Being elderly and lazy I have relied on my weekly column in the Chronicle & Echo(every Wednesday in case you didn;t know!) to convey my thoughts and ramblings.

However a new year,a new dawn,a new epoch ...enough of the new already.

I have decided to try and do a blog a week to supplement the Wednesday opinion forming experience.

It will also help whoever has taken to tapping into my thought processes.

Consider the following:

Last week my column was a consideration of the political shifts taking place in this country and in general I drew attention to the rise and rise of Alex Salmond and the SNP.

The SNP have reinvented themselves from twenty or thirty years ago when they were simply 'tartan tories', tartan clad eegits more concerned about knitting porridge and hanging about on grouse moors communing with their flying relatives.

Salmond and a determined left of centre caucus has changed them into a radical social democratic party that have moved firmly into the place that Labour used to occupy in Scottish politics.

I have never had much time for Scottish Labour, for decades they have been corrupt sectarian bastards who have sat in huge majorities and done fuck all squared for the people of Scotland.

They got a bit of a fright a few years ago when Tommy Sheridan and the SSP terrified the bejasus out of them with a string of election victories in the last MSP elections.

But the SSP was built on too many sulphurous tendencies and internal conflicts to survivelong (ever the fate of small left wing groups) and the SLP breathed again.

But never lost its machine politics core or its exclusive brethren tendency.

After all Labour has been seen for decades as a nursery for Westminster shoo-ins, after all if they couldn't win a central belt seat they must have been real numpties.

So Labour neglected its heartlands and its natural constituencies.

The SNP picked up quickly that Scotland would not be won in the Highlands and Islands,but rather in the great urban centres and the west of Scotland.Jim Sillars the former Labour MP from Ayrshire proved that to them decades ago.

So Scotland will progress to independence,or a at least to an independent nation in a federal structure.Scotland may remain in a lose federation with England,Wales and a united Ireland but it will in due course have its own membership of the EU,its own foreign policy and its own defence capability.

having written my warning to Millipede and given praise to Alex, low and behold -'The Times',the day before my column announces Salmond as their politician of the year!

Now this week, my column, yet unpublished,speculates that the Republican primary in Iowa,due tomorrow,might well throw up Rick Santorum,the mildly barmy evangelical as the front runner.

Now I'm the first to admit that Obama hasn't lived up to his promise, after all Guantanamo is still open-for Christ's sake! and there is always the danger if things get squeaky for him then a pre-emptive strike on Iran is not out of the question-but compared to the crazies running for the GOP, Obama is at least on this planet.

Never in the field of human conflict can so many misfits,social inadequate s,religious bigots, dim bigots and simply the last remnants of a mediocre food chain have gathered together.

The only common feature is that they are all very rich and most would prefer to eat poor folk than have them vote for them!

With that background,I suggested the rise of Santorum ,though just as mad as a box of frogs,might be seen as a stop Romney candidate

My old comrade Don from SF put these thoughts in my mind in a private e-mail.

So what do I find in today's Times?

A editorial piece by John Bolton suggesting that mad Rick might be the winner!

Now Bolton is the former Bush ambassador to the United Nations and is the spitting image of Mr Pastry(or Jim Harker) and has all the political skills of Mr Pastry-but it is spooky!

Now knowing that Murdoch owns the Times what is going on here?

Are they intercepting my copy as it does to the Chron?

Are they intercepting my thoughts as they emerge from the keyboard?

Or am I the world's first political psychic?

In which case, can I tell myself the next winner at Towcester?