Know your onions

See the graph above. I've now decided that "onion farmer" is the one thing I will not permit my children to be. Surely if the price of onions varies from time to time, then the idea of making a living through growing and selling them becomes a ridiculous and unattainable dream? Let your heads rule your hearts, girls, I'll say. The notion that you might make a living through the propagation and sale of onions on a commercial basis, coping with price fluctuation by means of, say, some kind of budgeting exercise, is fantasy, pure and simple. Some dreams must simply remain unlived.

And don't let that fat liar Salmond tell you otherwise. Him and his madcap plans for allium husbandry. 

See:

• Maximising the Return from Oil and Gas in an Independent Scotland
• 10 Facts About Scotland's Oil and Independence
• The Economics of Independence (Full Version)

The road not taken

Driving instructor: Good morning Mrs. Smith. You want to sign up for some lessons, I believe?

Mrs. Smith: That's right, yes.

Driving instructor: Great. OK, if we could first of all just....

Mr. Smith [muttering]: Bloody waste of time.

[Pause]

Driving instructor: I'm sorry?

Mr. Smith [loudly and challengingly]: I said: “Bloody waste of time”!

Mrs. Smith: Darling, we agreed that...

Mr. Smith: “Agreed”? Ha! I didn't agree anything. You didn't give me a chance. You just decided. [Muttering] I never get a say in anything any more.

Mrs. Smith: Darling, we agreed that I'd do this.

Mr. Smith: Yes yes. All right. Don't go on.

[Pause]

Mrs. Smith [to the instructor]: So where do I sign?

Driving instructor: If you could...

Mr. Smith: Are you saying I can't drive?

The Squillion Pound Black Hole

Black holes are really interesting, aren't they? “But I wonder”, I thought, “just how big black holes actually are? How 'big' is something so unimaginably dense that it sucks even light into itself? Is that really, really big or really, really small?” And then I thought “Where on earth am I going to find THAT out? What entity will possess the combination of wisdom, gravitas and expertise in matters astrophysical that I need?”

I thought, of course, of the two obvious answers but NASA was less than helpful, frankly. Their answer to the question “How big are black holes?” is: “Black holes can be big or small.” “OK”, I thought, “Better Together it is then”. 

A humbling tale of everyday folk

Better Together recently announced that it had received further donations, amounting to £1,121,000, from six donors. Blair MacDougall, campaign director, is reported in today's Sunday Herald as saying that “we know the money that we have managed to raise ourselves is dwarfed by the almost limitless funds available to the Nationalists”. He is said to have described himself as “humbled” by the actions of supporters who have managed to scrape together a donation in these “tough times”.

Tough times indeed. I was listening to Radio Scotland's Headlines this morning to stories of one person deemed fit to work despite the recent discovery of a cancerous tumour and another who had her benefit stopped because she'd mistakenly applied for only 27 jobs instead of the targetted 28 (and this seems to be that woman's own story). And we are of course all in it together. So, who are the generous heroes, willing to hand over cash even when faced with these kinds of mind-numbing stresses and pressures? Who are the selfless six, fired by a sense of injustice, who will stand up for the poor and downtrodden against the vile Nationalist onslaught? Just how horrific are the stories of personal hardship and sacrifice that so moved even an old cynic like Blair?

Stemming the tide

Youngest child: Daddy! I can't sleep. Will you tell me a story?
Daddy: Of course. Love to.
[Pause]
YC: Come on then.
Daddy: Hang on. I'm trying to find Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
YC: Oh no, please. Not that one. It gives me the creeps in more ways than I have time to explain.
Daddy: To be fair, I know what you mean. So. What's it to be?
YC: Well, I did say "tell" not "read". Would you tell me a story? Remember it. Maybe even make it up. At least embellish on one half-remembered from your own childhood. Like a proper parent.
[Pause]
YC: Well?
Daddy: Em...ok. I don't see why not.
[Pause]
YC: Well?
Daddy: Hang on. I'm thinking.
[Pause]
Daddy: Did you have one in mind?
YC: Can it be ANY story in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD?
Daddy: Of course it can.
YC: Oh BRILLIANT! My most favourite story in the whole wide world is the one about that man. That man from a land by the sea. That powerful man. Powerful, but not as powerful as he thought he was or wanted others to think he was. That man who was so puffed up and carried away with his own sense of self-importance that he lost touch with reality. He was so silly that he thought he could stop things from happening when he couldn't stop them at all. He thought he was so powerful that he could stop things over which he simply had no control. Not just no control, in fact. Not even any influence. But still, he said he would stop them. Insisted that he could, and would, stop them.  And when he did say he would stop those things, and when he did try, everyone could see how silly he was and they laughed and laughed at him. Laughed and laughed.
Daddy: Ah! I like that one too. But do you know? The funny thing is that actually King Canute didn't think he could stop the sea. He knew that he couldn't. He was commanding it to stop so as to show his courtiers that there were limits to what even a King could command.
[Pause]
YC: No. Not that silly, deluded man from a land by the sea who everyone knows isn't as powerful as he thinks and who threatens to do things he simply doesn't have the power to do. The other one. Carwyn Jones.

Hold fast, comrades, in the face of the coming onslaught

Ruth Davidson really did drill down forensically to the nub of things when she announced, presumably to a stunned and sombre audience:

"The SNP simply cannot guarantee that we'd still get Dr Who after independence."

(It was that "simply" that was particularly devastating. Plain-talking, exasperated Ruth telling it like it is.)

Well she's right. That fat liar Salmond simply cannot guarantee that we'd still get Dr. Who after independence. Or that we'd still get the Clangers after independence. Or that we won't stop getting Dr. Who anyway. It's happened before. Or of course that we won't be invaded by actual Daleks. Or actual Clangers.

However, I still think we can do better than Ruth's sad counsel of despair. It's back to deductive versus inductive reasoning. They "get Dr Who" in Angola, Botswana, Myanmar, Uruguay and elsewhere. The BBC wants the world to see its programming. Hence the World Service. Britain wants to project soft power. We own part of the bloody BBC.

So, on balance, I think we'll get Dr Who. I also think we won't get invaded by actual Daleks. However, I am prepared to accept that neither outcome is guaranteed.

And so, then, it comes to this: courage. Courage, my friends. There will be many dark and difficult days like these ahead, as the ruthless British state unleashes its mighty arsenal against us. Take heart that it feels compelled to deploy its big guns, like the "You simply cannot guarantee that we'd still get Dr Who after independence" argument, so early in the campaign. Look, and see. Have hope. For they falter! They falter!

Unexpected comedy hypnotism - tickets still available

I still think that George Galloway's bravura performance before the US Senate Sub-Committee on Investigations, facing down the turncoat Norm Coleman , was one of the most engrossing, exhilarating and ultimately gratifying exchanges between two human beings that I will ever see. I'd certainly have paid money to be in the room. On the other hand, I grew up in Dundee and I remember George. I'd not, even it was him paying me, sit in a hall listening to him explain his reasons for opposing Scottish independence. However, I may have misunderstood his offering. If his "Just Say Naw Tour" is in fact not an exercise in pompous, self-regarding windbaggery but a series of evenings of "comedy hypnotism" (and from the URL at Groupon, it seems that it is), and if you can still get two tickets at half price (and it seems that you can), then I  just might actually think about it.