I THINK I have worked it out! Of all jobs, an MP at Westminster, for all the downside that incumbents may claim, is a pretty good number.

Nice money, lots of perks, nice pension. Right now, not all, but many, Tory MP’s, have throbbing heads of blurred photographs, their leader toasting yet another lockdown party in Number 10. Photos taken whilst constituents were dying of Covid. These Tories know a General Election tomorrow, would see them lose their seats. No wonder Graham Brady’s letter box is not stuffed full of letters expressing no confidence in Boris Johnson. It is all about the individual doing well, and the rest of the people? “Really? That’s nothing to do with me. Inflation. Why are you whining so?”

Speaking of letters, the editors who deal to letters to The National have, kindly, printed many of my missives, not all of them, for example in February, a week before Putin’s forces began to kill Ukrainian people, I wrote a piece called “Engage be Interested”. The title came from a speech I heard Ailie Ross-Oliver make outside our Parliament, on the dreadful night that Scotland was torn out of the European Union.

Ailie’s speech was powerful, she spoke of young Scots, and she said “we are engaged, we are interested”. The rest of my article was a global tour of dictators, and the first was Vladimir Putin. The question I posed: Does Boris Johnson have dictatorship dreams?

I love listening to Mhairi Black, and understood exactly what she said, when she said that the UK is sleepwalking, ever closer, to fascism. I refer you to paragraph one above. Where the people in Government may seem to care more for their own salary, than they care for their constituents, and their country.

Scotland has our longest serving First Minister, respected around the world. We have more mandates for indyref2 than a hedgehog has spines. Our Parliament is working all the time currently on these subjects: Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform), Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood), European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation), Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles, Gender Recognition Reform, Good Food Nation, Hunting with Dogs, Non-Domestic Rates (Coronavirus), Scottish Local Government Elections (Candidacy Rights of Foreign Nationals) Bill, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation).

In the meantime, down in Westminster, the Prime Minister is so “humbled”, and has “learned such a lesson”, from Sue Gray’s Partygate report, that the only action he will take is to STAY IN OFFICE. After all, “Murray Ross” says “there is a war on”!

It is not only Johnson who has no shame. His, so-called, deputy Domenic Raab, could not take it on the chin, and own up to his own failures over the debacle, which was the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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Instead he neatly side-steps, allowing civil servant Sir Philip Barton to absorb the shrapnel.

What a contrast to 1982, when Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, resigned over the invasion of the Falklands. He said that he had misread the intention of the Argentine’s. He had been at work at the time, with his attention focused, and not on his holidays!

All of the above and, unbelievably, The National reported last week, that John Curtice said Yes for independence is only at 45%.

Hey that is a better start than we had for 2014!

You do also have to ask why the UK Government are so afraid to publish the data from the polling they undertook, but dear Tommy Sheppard has rattled that cage so hard the UK Government are employing a “mega-bucks” lawyer, James Eadie, to keep the data safely locked away.

A vote given to any Tory candidate, is a vote that, in some way, supports a horde of despicable behaviour, and is a vote of confidence in a barrel-full of legislation, that by and large, is unhelpful to the people of Scotland.

If you are Scottish, you have a chance, every time, you vote, to change Scotland’s destiny for better, or for the worse. A vote for the Tories is vote for more embarrassment at the hands of Johnson and colleagues.

You can use your vote to make it clear that we, The Scottish People, expect the highest of standards from those whom we elect to govern us.

So be engaged be interested, for there is an abyss before us. Most Scots understand that if our country does well, we can all do well. Life should be more than a game where the individual who gains the most wins.

I think it should be that our whole society does well so we all do well.

Cher Bonfis via email