SNP cock-a-hoop - now for the cock-ups!

A winker wins!

Alex Salmond and his nationalist band of merry men and women are celebrating winning the Scottish Parliamentary Elections. Smiles all round, excited talk and chatter, interviews about independence. But winning an election and pushing away from England are not necessarily the same thing.

People seem to have voted for the SNP as they see Alex Salmond as a surefire bet for taking potshots at the Cameron/Clegg Coalition in London (as he would say). They could not see the Labour Party led by doing anything good for them. As I write this Iain Gray, Scottish Labour leader, is waffling on about how nice the people of East Lothian are. Soft-soaping charlatan. You just scraped home by 151 votes!

So Salmond & Co will wait a while and then try a referendum on separation or independence as it is called. It won't happen. The economics don't stack up and the Irish Republic will be a constant reminder that tiger economies can get their hides tanned, teeth capped and their hands tied behind their backs by the European Union.

Better to have a ferret in the UK sack that a sick wandering tiger on the loose causing the vets a headache.