Tories, Christians, bankers, bombs and crises – all in all, a jolly week

The Holyrood Tories won’t play with their new leader. That’s because they really, really wanted to be independent of – sorry, separated from – Westminster, and Ruthie is Big Dave’s pal, and the Wee Laird O’ Drumlean’s her pal, and he was Maggie’s pal. Ruth might as well sing Puppet on a String at FMQs. What will Alex make of her? Surely he’s to kind, too avuncular to make fun of her? Oh, Bella, where art thou?

Michael Kelly wisely stays away from politics today and gives us advice on what to do with carrots. I have advice to Michael on what he can do with a carrot, but I fear the Scotsman would reject it as unsuitable for its delicate readership.

The rich man who founded The Alpha Course, Ken Costa is appointed by the Bishop of London to reconnect bankers with ethical values. Aye, right …  And religious nuts terrify kids at a school in Crieff with threats of burning in hell, “come on down now”, and all the usual fundamentalist stuff. The school authorities who let these people loose on the children of Crieff, faced with outraged parents, claim to have been bamboozled by talk of practical learning initiatives, etc. They’ll never learn – all these irrational creeds have a superficial front-end smokescreen of reason to hide the rapid descent into superstition that rapidly follows.

The flight from reason and scientific and political reality continues apace in America, as right-wing American republicans continue to deny scientific evidence of man’s contribution to climate change and advocate prayer as the remedy. The Symposium on Stratospheric Ozone and Climate Change winding up today in Washington D.C. had scientists shaking their heads in disbelief at the lethal irrationalism of senior Republican politicians and the credulity of the American public.

And Doctor Strangelove is alive and well, and worried about Iran and its progress to a Bomb! The US and the UK don’t have a Bomb – they have a nuclear deterrent, not to mention a closely similar mindset. A nice little global war might just solve the world financial crisis – think of the armaments profits! And there would be fewer people demanding political freedom and justice and the mega rich would be safe – if lonely – in their bunkers.

But there is hope – up there, at the north end of Europe, a little nation that has shown the way out of superstition and enslavement of the mind and the body across the centuries, and that has punched above its weight scientifically, morally, intellectually and culturally, moves cautiously but determinedly towards its freedom. If there is going to be a dark night across the globe, one light may still shine …