"The killing of million of Jews is abhorant and a dark shadow on modern history. However, the Clearances and the Glencoe massacre has more of an effect on our (Highlands, Islands and MacDonalds) pyschie than Aushwiz, if you see what I mean." - Dave from Barra

HOLYROOD STOPPERS ALCOHOL BAN

The Scottish Parliament yesterday delivered a stinging rebuke to the SNP administration on their plans to ban under-21s from Scotland's off licences. Despite passionate pleas from the Justice Secretary Kenny Macaskill, a Tory motion rejecting the plans was passed with support from all three other opposition parties.

Tthe Conservatives' spokesman Murdo Fraser said: "We all accept that Scotland's communities do indeed face problems with violence and disorder related to alcohol abuse. However, this hare-brained scheme from the SNP would fail to deal with those issues while simultaneously creating a whole new set of problems."

Defending the proposals, Kenny Macaskill urged Holyrood to consider the "extraordinary benefits to communities" that trial programmes have led to in West Lothian, Fife, and Central Scotland, brushing aside concerns about the evidence from those trials. He said: "Other parties oppose these plans, but have nothing to put in their place. If they fail to back us, they will face the judgement of the people of Scotland."

Speaking for Labour, Richard Baker, a former student president, said: "The real problem with licencing is the failure to implement existing legislation effectively, and whatever the question is, criminalising increasing numbers of young people is the wrong answer."

Green MSP Patrick Harvie described the move as "a misguided and ill-conceived idea, designed to get headlines rather than to find solutions", and urged the SNP to look instead at local measures based on the Local Licencing Forums introduced in 2005.

Long before the vote was taken it was clear that the Parliament would reject the Scottish Government's proposals. SNP backbenchers rose one after another to condemn the opposition parties as irresponsible and isolated from their electorate, with their attacks becoming increasingly shrill and combative, but in the end the motion passed by 80 votes to 47, with one abstention.

Welcoming the vote, Tom French, coordinator of the Coalition Against Raising the Drinking Age in Scotland (CARDAS), said: "This vote has to be the death knell of this profoundly illiberal and disproportionate proposals. Students and young people across the country will be, in a responsible manner, raising a glass to the sensible majority in Parliament."

BACKGROUND

Kenny Macaskill is himself no stranger to drunk and disorderly allegations, having spent the 2000 England-Scotland match in a police cell, but has since repositioned himself as the scourge of alcohol-related disorder.

With his populist attacks on two-for-one deals, and his description of Tennents as "cooking lager", he has sought to claim ownership of on a issue which has long been neglected by politicians at local and national level.

The SNP administration believes this idea would resonate with communities with experience of the misery caused by drunken young people. However, it came with a clear price tag - it's hard to imagine a policy more likely to upset student activists and other young voters.

This is the real reason Parliament has called time on the SNP proposals, which seemed inevitable once concerns about the methodology behind their pilot projects had been raised. Whatever Ministers say, Scotland's 18-21 year olds can be assured that their freedom to drink is safe for now.

The highlighter pen got quite an outing. Tackling climate change and airport expansion, opposing nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and reversing rail privatisation all got blue-inked, and that's just from our key pledges. 

Some of these are understandable, especially nuclear weapons. But airport expansion in Scotland is a planning matter for local authorities, Scottish Ministers, and the Parliament. And why did the regulation of supermarkets not get highlighted? Or the defence of civil liberties? Given Westminster leads on the abolition of civil liberties you might have thought otherwise.

Anyway, I was interested to see what they made of us. And it turns out it's not just the radical Greens who had The Treatment. The equivalent exercise was also conducted on the SNP, the Liberals, where the author speculates fruitlessly about coalition, those dangerous constitutional rebels, the Tories, and even the Scotland Office's supposed friends in Scottish Labour.

Impact on relations with the UK? We all do it, apparently. And now you know a little more about the constructive way the Scotland Office spends its time.

"What troubles me most is that we have been given no credible assurances that this plan will work. We could very well spend $700 billion or $1 trillion and not resolve the crisis. Before I sign off on something of this magnitude, I would want to know that we have exhausted all reasonable alternatives. But I don't believe we can do that in a weekend."

Now, they've got absolutely the wrong end of the stick about the plan. Republican Senator Jim Bunning said the plan was "financial socialism, and it's un-American". I always thought socialism was about giving money from the rich to the poor, not the other way round as per the Bush/Paulson/Bernanke plan, but perhaps I misread Uncle Karl. While their specific concerns are not the same as mine - 180 degrees away, in fact, given my sympathies are with this lot - the conclusion was the same. This plan is bonkers and it won't work.

But now even the Republican opposition has collapsed - presumably they finally worked out that the plan was a massive give-away to their pals - and it'll all go through. Will the credit ratings agencies now do what they'd do to anyone else picking up these toxic debts, and mark down the US Government for the first time from AAA? If you're looking for signs of the impending end of the American imperial phase, that would be a pretty clear one.

Ecuador has extraordinary natural riches to protect, including the various iconic inhabitants of Galapagos (like the sealion cub pictured above). Constitutional rights might not be the most immediately obvious way to deliver those protections, but it's an interesting idea, and I hope we get a chance to see how well it works.