Homecoming Scotland 2009

I nipped across to the Scottish Government (no, no longer The Executive, but a Government). A clan gathering in Edinburgh. Edinburgh? Celtic Connections in Glasgow. Hey ho. No doubt there'll be more out of the central belt. Highland dancing and the continuation of Victorian colonisation. Brigadoon. Golf. Trump. St Andrews. Don't mention the Clearances. The poverty and social unrest. The lack of a spinal dual carriageway. Destruction of the landscape to build superpylons and wind turbines in places of natural beauty. British companies that refuse to deliver to the Islands. Some that won't even deliver to the Highlands.

Come home in 2009, get your hair wet and your boots muddy. Get away from all the cr*p. You'll feel better for it out of the bus and in the fresh air. And at the end of the day, sit down with some relatives and have a dram, watching re-runs of "Scotch and Wry" and discuss David Tennant's 1993 appearance in "Rab C Nesbitt".

Here's what the First Meenishter Salmond wrote.