My football shocker and an SNP team of duffers
SHOCKED by the omission of so many worthy Scots from the Lions rugby side as selectors chose their mates? Let me tell you of a more outrageous sports carve-up.
In Primary 4 one November, the school football captain arrived at assembly without a poppy.
This was a big deal at Rephad Primary, in Stranraer, which set great store by correct spelling, a grasp of arithmetic and a smart turnout – footling stuff SNP education policy now eschews.
I had two poppies and told him he could have my spare, if he picked me for the next game.
On went the poppy and up went the team sheet with me as centre forward. My skills meant I should have been left back – left back in the dressing room – but I laced up my boots.
With me, smallest boy in the class, as the target man up front we didn’t trouble the opposition goalie. I never played for the school again.
Team selection is on my mind again ahead of June’s General Election.
The Tories face a dearth of candidates, but have reacted smartly.
In target seats, Conservative Campaign HQ can impose a shortlist. There will be howls about accountability but with a Tory endorsement for an English constituency practically a ticket to the green benches, the party can’t field only ruddy colonels and gentleman farmers.
It’s a lesson for the SNP, whose vetting went awry in 2015. How else to explain the ineffectual crew dispatched so noisily to Westminster?
I’m always wary of anyone other than a medic who uses the title ‘doctor’. They’re show-offs, like Merchant Navy skippers who misappropriate ‘captain’, a Royal Navy rank. So my antennae twitched when Dr – his PhD is in social policy, whatever that is – Paul Monaghan rocked up as MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. Anyone who calls the Union flag ‘a butcher’s apron’ should not go to Westminster but ought to sit sullen, like Sinn Féin, outwith.
Journalists tend to make poor politicians (Joan McAlpine, anyone?). So George Kerevan (East Lothian), who thought Westminster ‘the heart of the enemy camp’, was always a risk.
His sanctimonious decision not to take a full MP’s salary lost its pious gloss when it emerged we pay his wife to be his secretary. His smirking selfie from inside the House amidst a terror attack deserves to haunt him. Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) could have been a breath of fresh air.
Instead, we got the fetid whiff of last night’s Tennent’s Super Lager and the oratorical grace of the fishwife. ‘You talk s***e, hen’ may not officially be unparliamentary language, but it ought to be.
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) was an experienced – if inconstant – hand, having racked up time with both Labour and the Tories. She did at least provide the TV highlight of 2016 when she told Question Time: ‘I am a representative of Scotland…’ David Dimbleby slipped a stiletto into that pomposity with: ‘You are a representative of the SNP.’
Angus Robertson (Moray) is lucky to speak after a Leader of the Opposition who is an unelectable Marxist scruff with a touch in front of an open goal not dissimilar to mine in that P4 match.
MR Robertson, rising in the Commons like Bagpuss from his slumber in Emily’s shop, has been ignoring the very many of his constituents who voted Brexit. They won’t forget.
And can anyone name me a single achievement by, say, Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) or Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South)? What did Philippa Whitford win for Central Ayrshire by flashing a Vulcan salute?
Will no one rid us of the scabrous SNP old guard – priapic Angus MacNeil (Western Isles) and philandering Stewart Hosie (Dundee East)? Must oafish insults by Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) continue?
If the SNP really does have the best interests of Scotland at heart, not even a free poppy should get this low-calibre crew on the candidates’ short leet.