... Alan Trench writes of the Scottish options, read ...

... the full article here, plausible.

He finishes with ...

"... if the Unionist parties want to challenge them, they need to offer a credible alternative."

The Scottish Unionists might wish to challenge the assumptions highlighted by Mr. Trench, I think that while some UK politicians might enjoy the horse trading that the "Trench Game" offers, others, the more realistic, the pragmatists amongst the electorate, see the political gamesmanship of Salmond and the SNP as something to finish soon.

How can our government meet the 21st century challenge to create a fair society, when the Salmond effect prances around the periphery, how does the Prime Minister explain the the electorate the Scots must be made a special financial case, when he tells us we need extra prudence today in England and Wales.

I remember Hans Christian Anderson's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", the plot below is taken from wiki ...

"On his birthday, a boy receives a set of 25 toy soldiers and arrays them on a table top. One soldier stands on a single leg, having been the last one cast from an old tin spoon. Nearby, he spies a paper ballerina with a spangle on her sash. She too is standing on one leg and the soldier falls in love. That night, a troll among the toys angrily warns the soldier to take his eyes off the ballerina, but the soldier ignores him. The next day, the soldier falls from a windowsill (presumably the work of the troll) and lands in the street. Two boys find the soldier, place him in a paper boat, and set him sailing in the gutter. The boat and its passenger wash into a storm drain, where a rat demands the soldier pay a toll. Sailing on, the boat is washed into a canal, where the tin soldier is swallowed by a fish. When the fish is caught and cut open, the tin soldier finds himself once again on the table top before the ballerina. Inexplicably, a boy throws the tin soldier into the fire. A wind blows the ballerina into the fire with him; she is consumed at once but her spangle remains. The tin soldier melts into the shape of a heart."

This tin soldier is the UK, and whilst our country will melt down and reconfigure itself eventually, probably in the shape of England and Wales, it can do without the journey, it can do without the actions of the Scots grown Troll (Separatist Salmond) ...

The best action is to cut short the expedition, shorten the Scots passage of rights, ignore the contemplations of the professional political "experts", constitutional or otherwise, and most important, reject every request that Salmond makes from today in a very public way, but please remember to include the independence referendum in the Scottish Bill.