PAM BONDI, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL

We have watched,  on and off, some of the 'testimony' of Pam Bondi,  Attorney General of the United States into the Epstein inquiry currently ongoing in America.

This lady should very clearly be in the psychiatric wards.

JONATHAN POWELL, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

Well,  you could have struck us down with a feather.  

We have just learned that Jonathan Powell,  former Chief of Staff to Tony Blair as Prime  Minister,  has been National Security Adviser to Keir Starmer since November 2024.  Powell has no qualifications whatsoever for the post other than being a fully-paid-up member of The Gravy Train.

Sums up Starmer's Government in one.

ANAS SARWAR MSP

Anas Sarwar,  Scottish Labour Leader, would-be First Minister of Scotland and self-proclaimed best friend of Prime Minister Keir Starmer,  brutally knifed Starmer in the back yesterday and told him to resign. He was fully expecting UK Cabinet members (particularly that traitorous creep Wes Streeting) to back him up and stick their own knives also into Starmer's back but they all refused so that Sarwar is all on his own - and with a Holyrood election coming up soon.  How about that for stupidity?

We have little time for Starmer for a number of reasons - (1)  his appalling lack of leadership  (2)  his appalling lack of judgement in (a) accepting a huge amount of freebie clothing from Lord Alli  (b) appointing  clowns like Angela Rayner,  David Lammy,  Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves to Cabinet (c) appointing a scoundrel like Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to Washington (d)  getting  elected on false promises and policies all of which he has had to reverse and (3) his dithering over everything.  That's quite a damning indictment. 

The plus side,  however,  is that Starmer is regarded seriously abroad in a way none of those other idiots would be and he has been a great friend to Ukraine.  Those matters must not be overlooked.  If we think we have problems with Starmer,  just wait till we've seen the rest,  Burnham included.  That really would be the time to get the hell out of the UK.

Anas Sarwar,  Iscariot, your time is up.  If you had any honour,  you would resign without ado and make way for longstanding MSP Jackie Baillie.  

It's Labour's only chance to rid Scotland of those perfidious nationalists.

CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

The Commentariat are in full-flow mode over the scoundrel Mandelson,   each trying to outdo the other with cries of 'The Biggest Crisis Of My Lifetime' or 'The Biggest Crisis Since Profumo' and nonsense like that.  Utter drivel.

The biggest crisis that we can recall in recent years is Labour winning the General Election of 2024 and our discovering thereafter of Starmer and Cronies accepting freebies from various sources such as Lord Alli amounting to millions of GBPs.  Trust in politicians,  already bad after the Parliamentary Expenses scandal,  has never been the same since and no wonder - and no wonder that the charlatan Farage has been able to make such inroads into the popular vote.

There was little criticism - if, indeed, any - by Opposition politicians at the time and the only realistic conclusion one can come to  is that the very great bulk of parliamentarians are at it,  take,  take, take.  In our view, Members of Parliament receiving gifts of money or in kind from outside interests must always, but always, be classified as criminal.

This current Parliament of all shades is rotten to the core.  That's a far bigger crisis than Mandelson every day of the week. 

CONTEMPT OF COURT !!!

We read somewhere the other day of a Sheriff's outburst at a young male appearing before him in court wearing shorts.  The Sheriff expressed his 'astonishment' at such audacity and publicly stated that this mode of dress amounted to 'Contempt of Court' and warned all and sundry that poor dress code in future could result in a jail sentence.

We find it difficult to assess what,  exactly,  the Sheriff was taking exception to,  whether it was the bony knees or the naked knees but, on any view,  it was a draconian and jackboot approach to the legal process.  In our eyes,  as long as the attire does not display anything  offensive or indecent,  anyone appearing in court is entitled to wear whatever he or she feels comfortable with according to whim,  weather,  or whatever.  It is,  perhaps,  our only remaining liberty in this crazy and intolerant country of ours called Scotland.

And what if the young man had been wearing a kilt?  Or,  in the utterly bizarre  trans man/woman thing gifted us by Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney, a mini-skirt?

In our view, the Sheriff must be rebuked for his outburst as this goes well beyond his remit.  At the very least,  'the authorities' should have a quiet word in his shell-like.

And to think  our prisons are stuffed full to over-capacity already!  No wonder with Sheriffs like this about!

BBC ALBA HOGMANAY TELEVISION BROADCAST 2025

Yesterday,  a week or two into the new year,  we saw for the first time BBC Alba's Hogmanay Television Broadcast of 2025 courtesy of a chip an old friend sent us.  Frankly,  we hadn't expected very much, perhaps because of Alba's dire Hogmanay Television Broadcast  of 2024 or whatever but,  as it happens, we were pleasantly surprised that this year's event was a greatly improved show all-round.

Superstar singer and West Highland beauty, Ellen MacDonald, along with fellow musicians of Gaelic supergroup Daimh,  gave a truly memorable performance well into the night and they are our nomination for very best act of the show.  Up-and-coming singing star Emma Scalpaigh Macleod had a brilliant night  also and,  no doubt,  we will see a lot more of Emma and her delightful, super-strength personality in the future.

We remain unconvinced about the presenters,  however.  As with 2024, we still see them as chatterbox-style presenters and lacking the gravitas that the first broadcast of the year demands.  Their style of presenting is much more suited to Rock Festivals and the like than hardcore New Year television broadcasts.

Let's hope for continuing improvement - but no more Robert Burns,  please.  The BBC should know that Burns's scribblings never fit well into West Highland Gaelic settings.  He was,  after all,  a Lowland Scot (Gall) to his fingerprints.

We prefer our very own Gaelic prose.

SANDIE PEGGIE v NHS FIFE BOARD and DR BETH UPTON

Admission. We fell asleep many times trying to make sense of the Judgement in this case amounting to a monumental 312 pages.  We gave up in despair.  The Judgement is both rambling in nature and untidy in form and no wonder.  The Tribunal obviously took the view that if one word was adequate to cover its deliberations they would multipy that by a factor of 100.  Verbal diarrhoea, it's called,  so that it is quite possible that the core of the legal arguments was lost somewhere amongst all that verbiage.

To cut a very long story short,  it is obvious that the Tribunal took a rather unfavourable view of the Claimant,  Nurse Sandie Peggie,  while taking a much more favourable view of the Second Respondent,  Dr Beth Upton.  Basically,  in upholding only Mrs Peggie's claim of harassment by NHS Fife Board - to which NHS Fife Board had no real defence - Mrs Peggie was successful only in the very minimum of her claim.  All other claims by Mrs Peggie were dismissed so that we may not have heard the last of this case after all.

Our own view is that much of this bizarre case  was utterly unsuited for arguing in Courts and Tribunals of Law as opposed to the application of sound,  common sense at the very beginning of the problem and long before it became an issue. Frankly, politicians were seriously at fault in passing legislation that could possibly be interpreted in the manner of the circumstances here. But, when it comes to Trans issues,  we don't expect politicians to show much grey matter,  do we? They follow the herd,  do they not?

That outrageous Scottish Government policy, basically that man and woman are interchangeable,  is one that,  in Scotland, has been applied with both vigour and vengeance by the Scottish Nationalist Government.  NHS Fife Board is,  of course,  a quango of the Scottish Government so  that that may explain a lot of what went abysmally wrong in this case for NHS Fife Board. While something going wrong happens all the time,  both for organisations and for individuals, the consequences in what happened to Mrs Peggie are verging on the criminal.

The only sanity we could find anywhere is the recent case of For Women Scotland Ltd where the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom gave,  as always,  a Judgement of superb intellectual  lucidity which,  sadly,  appears to have been largely,  if not entirely,  ignored in Mrs Peggie's case.  It has certainly been  ignored widely by the Scottish Nationalist Government for the simple reason that the Supreme Court decision turns on its head the Nationalist Government's desperation since it came to power  to pursue its agenda that a man and a woman are interchangeable.

Whichever way we approach it, we cannot agree with the Tribunal that the claims against Dr Upton should have been dismissed. It was Dr Upton,  a trans woman,  who triggered this problem in the first place by insisting on using a female-only changing facility when she was acutely aware of the problems her behaviour was causing. Her conduct could only have been deliberate towards her junior colleague, Mrs Peqggie,  and,  thus, actionable. Why on earth would a biological male wish to access a female-only changing room anyway?  That core question has never been addressed.

As for NHS Fife Board, it deserves utter condemnation for both its stupidity and its outrageous malevolence towards its employee, Mrs Peggie,  for whom it had a legal duty of care.  That malevolence,  and Dr Upton's poor conduct,  were glossed over by the Tribunal.  The Board was,  of course,  doing its master's bidding in the form of the Scottish Government but that's no excuse.  The Board is a legal entity of its own.

No woman should ever have to endure the indignity, humiliation and degrading treatment suffered by Mrs Peggie in  having  to share a female-only changing room with a biological male in the course of her employment,  an important factor  that appears to have escaped the Tribunal altogether. Add NHS Fife Board's very obvious malice towards Mrs Peggie and Dr Upton's deliberately bad behaviour and one is left to wonder whether the Tribunal was simply out of its depth or just took a flakey in dismissing so much of Mrs Peggie's claim.

Finally, let's not forget Nicola Sturgeon,  former First Minister of Scotland and principal architect of the Scottish Government's Trans policy,  for this omnishambles.  Her dreadful legacy is unravelling.

It's a mad,  mad world.