Leaders debate and onwards to Polling Day

Well I forced myself to watch through the leaders debate and to be honest following the #spdebate posts on twitter was more interesting. Though pain drying came a close second.
Bernard Ponsonby ably demonstrated that he is no Gordon Brewer, and although the latter gives me the "dry boak" as they say at work, I'd vote for him over Ponsonby any time.
The audience weren't much better and quite how STV gathered a collection of folk so caught up in their own individual tales of woe is beyond me. I have every sympathy for the woman and her daughter on her on-off apprentice scheme (I bet the real story isn't so straightforward as she makes out), and for the supply teacher (and at this point fair do's to Bernard for trying to get Gray to admit that 2/3 of the teachers jobs cut were by Labour councils), and for NHS folk caught up in job vacancies not being filled and all their assorted concerns, but they were very much caught up in their own lives and were allowed to dominate proceedings and sadly Bernard didn't redirect very well back to the bigger picture.

Unless things have changed very much since I was politically active, and I admit that was a generation ago, most people have made up their minds by this stage anyway and the "don't knows" in opinion polls are merely reflecting "won't vote anyways" or indeed "I'm ashamed to say who I AM voting for". Which does lead me to think the Labour vote won't quite be as low as the 27% in the STV poll on Thursday itself. But on the other hand their leader did them little service by getting aggressive with the audience - that rarely comes over well.

I am not known for having being a fan of Alex Salmond . He has many faults as do we all and his biggest failing in my opinion has always been his assumption that anyone proposing the opposite point of view to his is automatically wrong. I worry about the "one man band" perception that some have, despite the first class team of senior ministers that surround him: Nicola Sturgeon, Kenny Macaskill, Alex Neil stand head and shoulders above their Labour counterparts. But Salmond is, in my humble view, truly a politician who has finally found his era and if ever an SNP politician leads us to Independence in the way that once I thought Jim Sillars might have, then he's the man to do it.

So on to Polling Day. Rain forecast I believe - the commentators will have a field day predicting the effect of that - I don't think anyone has every researched it properly though. I do think it will be closer than the polls are suggesting but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong. A majority in favour of an Independence referendum will do me whether that involves an influx of Greens or Tavish doing a somersault. On one thing I think most people will agree. Taxi for Gray!