Wheels falling off Salmond's bandwagon

This is a) happening, b) I appreciate not everyone agrees but this qualifies as good news for me.

It's happening in a number of different ways but the sacking of poor old Fiona Hyslop seems to have put matters into focus.

It's all very well complaning she didn't master her brief, didn't present the Scottish Government's position very well and was generally a bit shit - as a number of commentators have done. All true - but in fairness I would have thought even the slickest communicator would struggle to put a positive gloss on the Scottish government's position here.

The flagship policy of reducing class-sizes has sunk into the Leith, along with most of the SNP manifesto.

The Scottish government declared smaller class sizes, which means more teachers.

But teacher numbers are falling.

Recruiting teachers is the responsibility of councils, not central government.

But the SNP have carved up a deal with COSLA to freeze council taxes.

I know the idea was that the shortfall would be made up by central government but in the final analysis the complaint is that Fiona Hyslop failed to acquire to the centre powers that properly belong to local government. This is, presumably, what was behind her frustrated threat to wrest control of education away from local government.

Anyway, you'll have noticed everyone is a bit skint these days. Hardly Fiona Hyslop's fault really. 'Scapegoat' is the expression used in the peice linked above - 'lightening rod' was another used elsewhere. Sounds about right.