Scotland's First Minister, Henry McLeish, has a new nickname: Henry Houdini, political escapologist. He was not free with one bound - more of a slither and squirm. Over the past week, lip-licking headlines predicted his downfall: "McLeish damned", "Frantic McLeish rocked by crisis", "100 hours to save his career".

McLeish and his spin-quacks so crudely mishandled a comparatively trifling irregularity over office expenses - with no personal profit for himself [...]

In the Ealing film classic Whisky Galore, there is a scene that shows how far the tight little island of Little Todday is from the realities of warfare. The fearful Home Guardsman Duncan Macrae presents his empty rifle at a figure looming out of the Scottish mist and quavers in the utterly unthreatening lilt of the Hebrides: "Haalt - who isss going there?"

A similarly comic scenario will be played [...]

Not all the performers, prima donnas, posers, buskers and comedians have left Edinburgh with the end of the festival. The year-round Theatre of the Absurd reopened on 3 September in the Scottish Parliament, but the coming season will see a shift to more serious drama.

Most people missed the message, but the First Minister, Henry McLeish, has indicated a shake-up of his cabinet in the next few weeks and warned [...]

When Robin Harper became the UK's first Green parliamentarian, he raised a clenched fist and declared: "Keir Hardie was elected at the end of last century and the colour of his century was socialist red. For the next century, the colour for the future of the world has to be green."

But Harper did not become a member of the Scottish Parliament because Scots are more environmentally aware than other [...]

Reading the will is one of those ceremonies that can bring out the worst in people. When local papers used to report the estates of an area's worthies, it would keep the gossips going for weeks. Now, Scotland has become a nation of nosy parkers after the publication of the legacy left by the late Donald Dewar. Tongues clacked and heads wagged at the revelation that the almost eccentrically shabby [...]

The Edinburgh skyline at the east end of Princes Street is dominated by a noble-seeming Parthenon, whose pillars and pediments stand proud against the skyline. Proud, that is, except for its popular name: Scotland's Disgrace.

When you get up close, you realise that it is unfinished. It was intended as Scotland's national memorial to the fallen of the Napoleonic wars, but the money ran out, and it has stood [...]

Cardinal Gordon Gray, as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, once knocked down a photographer with his car in his panic to get away from the press. That could never have happened to his successor, Tom Winning, who died on 17 June. Winning was on first-name terms with the media and would convene a news conference at the drop of a biretta. Unelected though he was, he became Scotland's most effective [...]

John Reid, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is a patronising bastard. What's more, Brian Wilson, the new UK minister of state for industry and energy, is "a liability" who, when supposed to be in charge of African affairs at the Foreign Office, spent too much time in Dublin. We have all this on the authority of Scotland's First Minister, Henry McLeish - and we know that Helen Liddell, [...]

Well, did the earth move for you? In Scotland, there was hardly a movement between the sheets as election night dragged on and the slumbering electorate barely changed positions.

The political landscape in Scotland does not look much different. Labour's long-held ascendancy was confirmed; the Scottish National Party still bumped its head against its ceiling of less than one-third of the vote; Scotland is no longer a Tory-free area, but [...]

So this tourist lady asks a traditionally garbed Scotsman the traditional question about what is worn under the kilt. His reply: "Nothing's worn, madam. It's all in perfect working order." Hooch, wheech and och aye, the noo!

What do you expect, in this utterly predictable election? Maintaining interest in the current campaign has proved difficult, so the tactic has been to keep it light and knockabout or, in the case [...]