MONDAY
THE Greens are engaged in an intense damage limitation exercise following the Sunday papers’ publication of those photographs I gave them of Harvie and Slater at an illicit Petrol Party. As Special Advisor on Sustainability, I’m asked to sit in. “Carbon Chameleons” screams the Daily Record. “Fossil Fools” yells The Sun. The Herald is rather more sedate: “Green Chiefs Face Backlash Over Petrol Porn Party”.
Initially, I feel a tad uncomfortable, but this is a dirty job and Harvie and Slater are no slouches at spreading the ordure. The way they stitched up M------ D-------- after he’d been photographed dancing with the CEO of BP at a private party in Azerbaijan was cynical. Especially as he’d been ordered to go there to give a speech on how to transition to clean fuel. So, I don’t feel too bad.
Harvie told him his conduct was unacceptable because he’d flown out on a Jumbo 747. “But how else was I supposed to get there? You only gave me three days’ notice.”
“You could have taken an electric car. We’d have given you a map of all the plug-in points across Europe. Even a hybrid would have been acceptable,” Harvie replied.
The Greens have hired the services of Hepzebah the wood sprite, who performs rituals at celebrity gender-reveal parties to ward off negative spirits. She blesses the group and asks Pan, the Great God of Nature, to help them defeat the forces of unclean consumerism which are trying to wage spiritual warfare on their co-leaders.
“Great spirit of Pan, deliver your blessed disciples Patrick and Lorna from the evil forces of fossil fuels.
“Consume their enemies in the flames of your righteous vengeance and cause evil journalists like MacWhirter and McKenna to choke on the porridge oats of your fury.”
TUESDAY
I REPORT urgently to Peter Murrell whose black-ops people have been tasked with keeping the Greens on-message. We meet at midnight in the Greyfriars Kirkyard (pictured). “They suspect you’re behind the Petrol Porn plot and are threatening to quit the coalition,” I tell him. “They now want to support Monica Lennon’s amendment on the National Energy Company.”
“Oh is that right,” he replies. “By the time I’m finished with them, they won’t know their parsley from their peach melbas.”
And at that he produces a sheaf of photographs from underneath his black cloak. They’re worse than the Petrol Porn snaps. They’ve been taken with a long lens on what looks like a grouse moor in Sutherland. And they show Harvie with a shotgun in his hand standing over the carcass of a beautiful Highland stag.
“You tell Mr Harvie,” he hisses, “that if he doesn’t do what we tell him to do and vote down Lennon’s amendment, these prints will appear in Friday’s papers. We own him now and he better get with the picture.”
WEDNESDAY
WE have a problem. A delegation of top nightclub owners met with the First Minister today. They’re very unhappy about the Vaccine Passport scheme and have accused her of threatening the future viability of the industry. The FM is her usual calm and reasonable self with them but says she must do what she thinks is best for the people of Scotland and that she has a clear mandate from the electorate to do just that.
At this point one of the club owners steps forward, a large, gregarious fellow with a rather fetching Chivers & Knowles blue velvet smoking jacket.
“First Minister, with all due respect,” he rasps menacingly. “As you well know, several of your elected members have been regular patrons of my various establishments down through the years. What if I were to tell you that I have a very entertaining collage of photographs of their various exploits on these occasions. They’re a very lively bunch and seem to have very weak bladders occasioning them to visit the restrooms on an unusually regular basis.”
“Are you threatening me, Mr M------?” she replies.
“I most certainly am, First Minister.”
THURSDAY
I’M summoned urgently to a meeting with my mysterious and taciturn handler “H” who doubles as a minister in the Scottish Cabinet. He suspects that our regular meetings in the New Street car park are being watched and so we meet beside a pillar in the furthest corner of the Castle Terrace car park at the other end of Princes Street.
“We need to devise a plan to stop Nicola making a speech at the COP26 conference in Glasgow,” he says. “She’s planning to announce a suite of measures that will make Scotland the most progressively green country on the planet, but only if it becomes independent. It’s very clever and will attract billions in overseas investment and make an independent Scotland financially viable and even desirable. This can’t be allowed to happen.”
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