Tuesday 18 March

Ok. Hands up if you’ve had enough of indyref for a while. This week has been no different from the week before. Someone else telling us what we can or cannot do. Labour promise to tax the rich if we vote No [is that an incentive? Didn’t work for Denis Healey and his squeaking pips].The Tories promise to cut taxes for ‘everyday grafters’ if we vote No.  Andrew Marr upsetting the First Minister – he’ll never work in Scotland again.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, we’re still looking for MH370 and its 200 passengers, Ed Miliband ruled out an EU referendum – or not, three larger-than- life characters have left us, Tony Benn, Bob Crow and on Saturday in the ERI, Clarissa Dickson-Wright.  Crimea voted to go back to Russia and moved with indecent haste to get there…

So let’s look at some other, mostly off-message, stuff…

A NATIONAL INSTITUTION…

If you’ve forgotten how the second Viscount Stansgate morphed into Tony Benn, David Coffey had a reminder for us in the Observer. “The Peerage Act 1963, allowing renunciation of peerages, became law on 31 July 1963 and just 22 minutes later he[Benn] became the first peer to renounce his title”.

Benn’s eldest son Stephen still inherits the title, but ironically can’t take his seat in the Lords until another of Labour’s hereditary peers dies, because under Labour’s own House of Lord’s Act, their number is limited to 92.

Lots of hagiography of course, but perhaps the best way to remember Benn is through his own words. Here’s Peter Kellner’s choice of Benn’s finest speech in his Huffington Post blog and here are 10 best Benn quotes  chosen by Guardian readers, including the ‘Five Questions for the Powerful’ in his last Commons speech…

LET THEM PAY TAXES…

Enjoy giving the government 40% of what you earn?  Chancellor Osborne [heir to the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon in the County of Waterford] thinks you do. Just when business is crying out for a rise in the threshold that now pushes quite ordinary workers into the higher bracket, the D Mail on Sunday  reported  Mr Osborne having had a ‘Marie Antoinette’ moment at a meeting with Tory MPs and saying it’s good for people to pay more tax – it makes them feel successful and aspirational.

[BTW, did you know that our Chancellor was actually named Gideon Oliver by his parents, but at the age of 13 decided he didn’t like Gideon and wanted to be called George after his grandfather?]

He might not want support from an ex-con, but he got it anyway.  Chris Huhne appeared in the Observer [got to earn a crust somewhere, must be almost down to his last million] accusing middle Britain and the Daily Mail of whining –“Just 15% of taxpayers earn enough to pay the 40% rate, and they do not pay the higher rate on their entire income but only on the extra income above that starting level. It is absurd to describe anyone in that top group – barely one in seven of the tax-paying population – as part of middle Britain…middle Britain is nowhere near being caught by 40% income tax rates, and anybody who suggests that it is should be frog-marched to the Plain English Campaign for a refresher in reading, writing and arithmetic.”  So there, cough up and smile.  You’ve arrived.

MORE SCARLETTS PLEASE…

Friday’s City AM liked the new Scarlett Johansson film Under the Skin, which was filmed in Scotland – but not, the article noted, in the highlands or the dramatic barrenness of the western isles or the bronze light that illuminates the Grampians every evening but in obscure ring-roads on the outskirts of Glasgow. “An alien (played by Johansson) arrives on earth from some distant planet, hijacks the body of a beautiful young woman and sets about luring horny Glaswegian strangers into her deadly force-field…many of the street scenes are filmed with real people using hidden cameras dotted around the car. The authenticity is startling…”

 In Thursday’s Conversation, Robert MacPherson, Director of Screen Academy Scotland, looks at the Scottish film industry and says it’s a pity more like Under The Skin aren’t being made – “It’s rare that we see a Scottish-set or Scotland-originated story on our screens – big or small. So when a film like Under the Skin comes along, especially in the wake of recent box office hits Filth and Sunshine On Leith, it’s unequivocally good news”. Home-grown film making encourages and inspires young people, he says – “The evidence from around the world suggests that the fortunes of a country’s filmmakers are intimately connected to their success in the first place at telling stories that work for their home audience”. A thoughtful piece from someone in the know…

LEFT HAND DOWN A BIT…

This will chime with those of you unfortunate to be old enough to remember The Navy Lark.  Lieutenant Phillips and Commander Povey are alive and well and living in Devonport.  Last Wednesday afternoon, according to For Argyll, namesake warship HMS Argyll, while on a training exercise, “accidentally” let fly a 9ft long 45kg Test Variant torpedo into the wharf-side at Devonport, which is her home port.

“The Royal Navy’s discreet description of the incident”, says the on-line newsletter “was that the torpedo had been ‘jettisoned unexpectedly’. This happened while Argyll was moored, with the missile suddenly shooting out of its starboard side and flying 200 yards through the air before going through the security fence and impacting on a metal storage container”. As well, says one of the on-line comments, that it wasn’t nuclear tipped or it could have been goodbye Devonport, goodbye Plymouth and large tracts of Dartmoor.  Woops doesn’t quite do it.

PARLIAMO GLASGOW, YAH?

Good little piece by Rosemary Goring in yesterday’s Herald on the niceties of accents. Prince Charles has admitted defeat with post-5 o’clock Glaswegian. “The west of Scotland, however”, she says, “is a bastion of clarity compared to the obscurities of the Doric, into which linguistic arena I was thrown as a child. This was Scots as I'd never heard it before. I could tell it was beautiful, like the sound of pibroch or a Gaelic lament, but whether they were asking if I wanted another buttery, or needed a lift into town, I hadn't a clue”.

Accents, she says, are for the working class ; there is a certain irony, she thinks, in the one-ness of the accent of the Prince and the aristocracy across the land from the Hebrides to Kent –talking as though they had billiard balls, let alone marbles in their mouths…

NEXT TIME YOU’RE ON BEN NEVIS…

Watch out for the low-flying ladybirds!  Jasper Copping in the Sunday Telegraph revealed all sorts of things about the little critters that you never thought you needed to know.  Like they can fly at 37mphand reach over 3,600ft. There are 46 varieties in Britain and they are capable of staying in the air for two hours, which means they could travel 74 miles between take-off and landing.  And they’re not the only high-fliers – the cuckoo apparently can fly at 21,000ft and the guillemot at 50mph. Eat your heart out British Airways…

GREEN AND PROUD OF IT…

Some political ideas are simply stupid, says Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute, and goes on to attack the one coming from last week’s LibDem conference that would ban all conventional cars by 2040 and allow only electric and ultra-low emission vehicles on the roads. There’s already a tax – the fuel duty escalator - that keeps CO2 emissions in check, says Worstall, “here's what we're trying to do. We want to prevent people doing what causes more damage in the future than that thing produces benefits in the present. And we also want people to carry on doing things that produce greater benefits now than damage in that future. Because this is the method by which we maximise utility over time.

Which is what the carbon tax achieves. People are priced out of doing things with greater costs than benefits while still enjoying those actions which produce greater benefit than cost.

Then along comes some nitwit who says that even though the use of petrol engines will produce greater benefits than costs we must still ban them…” We’ve done what we were supposed to do, he argues, anyone who doesn’t realise that shouldn’t be let loose near policy-making. Discuss.

MORE RUBBISH…

The march of the wheelie bin across the land has become an ugly feature of modern life. But it isn’t just ugly, it’s also very expensive. Particularly the way some councils go about it.  In Fridays Conversation,  Professor Graham Cookson of Surrey University took a swipe at the kind of public sector procurement that allows waste of taxpayers’ money.  Instead of buying different coloured bins for every household, he says, let’s buy plain black at £5 a bin cheaper, and put different coloured lids. Simples. So why isn’t it done? Prof. Cookson is scathing about the Department for Local Government and Communities ‘50 Ways to Save’, some of which he says is downright silly.

All this waste of course, doesn’t apply in Scotland. Or does it?

IF YOU MUST…

Well. OK, just one wee indyref if you’re suffering. Try this from David Black in the Scottish Review. It’s suitably off-beat for this week…

AND FINALLY…

Cats hate water, right? Wrong – at least for this one in a Huffington Post video.  Can’t get enough of the stuff.  Just don’t scroll down after you’ve watched it – there’s a whole lot more funny felines and you’ll be there all day…

Honey's away from the hive next week - so we're welcoming back our occasional guest reviewer Vera McFly ...