USP

Looking after my grandaughter this weekend: with her dad and grandad she is a season ticket holder at Easter Road and she arrived after yesterday's match to tell me she is going out with her friends (in Gorgie) and I am to both deliver and collect her. I must be getting old...she is fourteen and it felt a heavy responsibility as I ran through all the reasons why she should not go - all mostly to do with my anxieties. She went: we arranged to meet at 10pm and she was only six minutes late...but I tell you for those six minutes I went to hell and back...she is a sweetheart but she is a teenager. I can remember everything I got up to at 14 years and who with...I wouldn't like to believe she could do the same.

Been reading about the SNP conference: they are enjoying their moment of triumph and are entitled to. It won't take long before the burnish of victory glows less rosily. It is the way of politics and life...nothing lasts, it is only a question of how long. They have had an easy start, made easier by Labour's disarray. I fear this could go on for a while yet. It is impossible to be more Scottish than the SNP and class politics, from which Labour is sprung, is apparently redundant in the new era. The turf is now social justice and economic well being and it is ground that is easily shared. Nationalism is the SNP's USP: Labour in Scotland must find another.