I'm back!!

I am back after my brief blog hiatus.

Don’t know about the rest of you, but the lead up to the election and the election itself just zapped all my energy and it has taken until now to recover.

The SNP has wasted no time in setting about government and have announced a series of voter pleasing policies. Re-instatement of A&Es, scrapping of graduate endowments and cutting of class sizes have all been announced in the last month. Who said government was hard?

A hard choice that will no doubt be coming down the track faster than another reality TV show is who is going to be the next Labour leader. Jack McConnell is making all the right noises, “I like opposition,” etc etc, but the writing is surely on the wall for him. Who will be voted in to try to halt the SNP juggernaut? Wendy Alexander? Andy Kerr? John Reid?

One position that has definitely been filled is that of Prime Minister. As Teflon Bliar prepares to hand the baton over to Gordon Brown, will anything actually change? Will Brown continue to bribe Scots as Bliar admitted to only last week? He said that giving Scots a higher percentage of funding via the Barnett Formula is a small price to pay to keep us in the Union.

But is the Union not in terminal decline anyway? Now that we have different parties controlling Holyrood and Westminster, we are now seeing the different directions the two parliaments are taking. Scrapping endowment fees for Scottish students, reducing class sizes, rolling out cervical cancer immunisations. It is all taking its toll and the English BBC are doing their best to draw it to the attention of people down south.

One thing they would be better focussing their attention on is the shocking statistic that 10% of Scottish kids live in “severe poverty”. Now, while severe poverty doesn’t mean the same as it did a couple of generations ago, it is all relative. I’ll be interested in seeing what the SNP’s plans are for this after they have got all the easy decisions out of the way.

One man with big plans is Gordon Smith, the newly appointed SFA Chief Executive. In recent interviews he has, amongst other things, talked about tackling cheating and potentially lifting the alcohol ban on Scottish football grounds. Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, announced that the alcohol ban would be lifted at Murrayfield for rugby internationals and Smith hinted at the same for Scottish domestic football games. Sounds good to me. I could have down with at least 10 pints down me watching Ross County last season.

Join in the debate on Scottish life and politics at Our Scotland.