Is Martin Amis in the Year 3000?

Maybe Martin Amis has been watching too much Futurama when he came up with his statement about euthanasia booths. But to come out with the suggestion of such contraptions on street corners at the end of a week that Margo MacDonald produced a sane and grounded bill on assisted suicide in the Scottish Parliament is crash mistiming on the authors part.

While Amis talks of a 'silver tsunami' and a 'civil war' between young and old and lays out a retail mentality. Margo has safeguards in her bill to prevent Scotland becoming like Switzerland and a home for assisted death 'tourism' by including the 18 month residency and registration with a domestic GP for 18 months. Margo also has build in safeguards the GP and psychiatric appraisals at least 15 days apart, and the proviso this is only insists that the patient must be diagnosed as terminally ill and finds life intolerable or be permanently physically incapacitated to such an extent as not to be able to live independently and finds life intolerable.

Margo maintains the human element, and the rationale. The GP must minister the lethal dose and it cannot be administered by a family member. Amis will just have a machine carry out the deed, no feed back no last minute chance to back out.

Of course Amis is never one to shirk controversy as his comments show:

"They'll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years' time.

"There should be a booth on every ­corner where you could get a martini and a medal."

Of course dementia sufferers are actually excluded from Margo's position as the old legal requirement of being 'of sound mind' is one which in legalese is still important. It shows that Margo has put 18 months of thought into the specifics while Amis was just making an off the cuff comment. Maybe he really shouldn't have watched the pilot of Matt Groenig's sci-fi series just before giving the interview.

Stealth Unmasked from Within and Without

If you go down to the 'Rood# today, you'd better go not in disguise

If you go down to the 'Rood today, you'll not get a big surprise

For every Nat* that ever there was

Is gathered there this morning because

Today's the day the SNP launch their stealth bomb.

I say stealth bomb as this is basically what Independent Nationalist MSP Margo MacDonald called the SNP's tactics with the Referendum Bill, launched today on St. Andrew's Day. Indeed from someone who has supported independence for Scotland all her political career, she was quite scathing in Saturday's Times about the whole scenario, calling it 'half-baked' and saying she would only vote for it through gritted teeth.

She went further by saying:

"I will hate the Referendum Bill because the strategy and tactics which have gone along with it have been so wrong.

"The SNP have failed to make the case for independence; they thought we would get there by stealth. What we are asking the Scottish people to do is not a stealthy thing, it is a big bold brave thing."

Of course getting on the bus this morning, there is news breaking that another Nat blogger has been exposed, this time Universality of Cheese.It is not often that the Blogosphere dominates the front page of any newspaper and then has a two page spread inside. But as the blogger in question, was apparently working for Mike Russell, the veil of anonymity to launch potentially libellous slurs is similar to the Draper-Gate scenario that hit Labour earlier this year. However, I don't think there is going to be anyway to totally control all cyber contributors to the political debate.

As Jeff was quoted as saying across the MSM:

"My personal belief is, as mentioned in my previous post, blogs and new media are overall a good thing, potentially a great thing, and if you believe what you’re writing is true, fair and can be backed up then go for it but if you’re indulging in rants and venting untapped rage behind a pseudonym, then maybe you should think about another hobby."

There is a certain grain of truth and commonsense about that. Looking across the main Lib Dem blogs not only in Scotland but also the whole UK, there are less
pseudonym's in use. There is less hiding and the words are easily traceable to an individual. There are still rants on such blogs but they do tend to be more carefully structured. The anger that is expressed from being a known entity is still there on occasion but is grounded in fact, stating your case through argument of the case rather than creating fictitious attacks. The end result of course is that people who comment also realise they have to win the argument in such a way rather than creating a rant.

The question is are the SNP attempted to rule by stealth? A strange position for a ruling party to take. Surely stealth is more a position for the losing side, Guerrilla warfare etc. Labour were losing the argument so thought that Draper and McBride's stealth in the cyber-war would work. The SNP may have kept up their cyber stealth campaign since taking office, but also seem to be doing it in Government. Margo MacDonald doesn't like the tactics employed, indeed she is echoing the sentiments of Tavish Scott about this Bill being a backdoor stealthy approach to Independence.

Is Alex Salmond really running scared? Surely Bute House isn't some cave in Tora Bora?

# Truncation of Holyrood.
*Not Cyber.