Scotland, what is it good for ?

..bar haggis, and Kenny Dalglish

I just don't get this devolution thing.
As I see it, we in England, allow Scottish MPs to come down to Parliament and vote on all sorts of crap that affects us, especially tax, service cuts, budgets and nasty stuff like that. They then piss off to Scotland, where English MPs can't go to vote, and repeal just about every nasty thing the English parliament just agreed, so it doesn't apply to Scots.
They then allow free "everything"....(prescriptions and university spring immediately to mind), and use nationally collected (i.e. English) taxes to help fund it...and the Welsh are getting in on the act too.
Am I missing something here, or is someone taking the slap.
And, despite being in the EEC, only English students are exempt from free university places.
If you're Belgian, no worries.
There is an answer.
If every English student simply told the Scottish universities where to stick their courses, they'd only have non EEC income to help fund them.
Anyway bar St Andrews, which is very pretty, but bloody cold, the rest are dumps.....I know, I've played football at all of them...Stirling is the ugliest and Aberdeen is just effing freezing.
How about rebuilding Hadrians wall a lot bigger, and let the Scots try to fund all that by taxing just themselves. That gas won't last for ever, although Salmond seems to be a likely natural reserve for some years to come. Now there is a pillock.

Christmas...humbug wouldn't do it justice

Times are hard. They must be because Lord Young was sacked for suggesting otherwise.

A look around our local temple to retail sitting twinkling by the iced over Ship Canal would suggest he may have had a point.

Considering we're broke, I've never seen traffic like it.

As always at some point in mid October the merchandising started, and Christmas trees appeared in mid November. Six sodding weeks of traffic congestion for yours truly, as I try to get home after eleven hours of dealing with the viral load of my punters.

Crikey, the orange skin, micro-minis and "A bit like" Uggs are well on display, as the population who are struggling to cope get stuck in to the usual Christmas excess.

The only things they seem to be struggling to cope with, are walking whilst their jean's gussets are around their knees, or speed texting whilst both hands are full of ten shopping bags from Monsoon, Hollister, Superdry and some other over-priced designer tat.

The Apple store is as busy as an Afghan soup kitchen, and Selfridges looks as though someone's announced they're giving away free money.

Old Gordo seems to have achieved something before he buggered off, he's got us trying to spend our way out of recession.

Might as well, my savings are devaluing faster than I could spend them

Problem is boys and girls, it's all made in Japan and China !!

Now, let's have a look at that Korean built Stratocaster.

Global warming

So, here we are, second winter on the trot where we get the big freeze. Football off, Scotland paralysed (do we give a crap any more after their smug approach to tuition fees......we're still paying good cash to run your country you bastards)

So, here's the rub. I'm led to understand that the fact that a polar bear would be planning on moving South if he lived in Glasgow, does not fall out with the continuing scientific belief that we're all going to be kebabed within the next two hundred years, but if that's really true, let's get on with it.

We get ten year pulses of this sort of winter apparently.....in which case it would be worth getting a bloody good fleet of snow ploughs. They can't have an operating life of much longer than that, so we could recycle them afterwards.

Here I am in Cheshire with a city full of salt three miles away, and yet the main road into town yesterday was a white out.....we only had three inches of snow for God's sake......can do attitude ?....fought and won in the Falklands?........stiff upper lip?

It may be stiff, but that's because it's minus bleedin' ten.

If global warming means I need snow chains two months a year, or have to buy a gas guzzling 4x4 (whoops !), sobeit. If it means I get two or three ski trips a year, even better...although clearly that means six plane flights (whoops)....

But and it's a big but......could someone change the timing of the football season (we don't all play at The Emirates) and get a transport system that doesn't stop when we get four inches of snow and the temp hits minus 10

...and don't get me started on bloody Christmas