WHAT about that Alistair Darling interview? What a cracker. Twice voted the most boring politician of the year, our chancellor, newly invigorated like anyone who spends even a night on Great Bernera, showed his new true grit.
He had us all agog recounting how he possibly fell in while fishing, his time as a secret school pupil and being forced to listen to the most horrendous torture while, gasp, clinging to his father’s knee.
No wonder the shockwaves were reportedly shaking the very foundations of Whitehall.
Throwing caution to the wind, Darling made it crystal clear to an island reporter that he believed the economy would continue to grow. And he didn’t agree there was a recession on the horizon. Fabulous. A colossus of clarity and conviction, we obviously have the next leader of the country under our very noses.
Meanwhile, some other hackette from some tawdry national rag was made wobbly by the fresh air. She claimed he told her our economic times are the worst in 60 years. As if, missus. Would the best chancellor we’ve had since Gordon Brown really say that? Darling, according to the snooty London paper, says the crisis will go on and on. What flipping crisis?
Are we supposed to believe he’d say that one day then utter the complete opposite the next? Not a chance. Why? Because he’s from Bernera, that’s why. Or half of him is.
No such analysis has prevented the bolsheviks in the media, particularly at the BBC, poking fun. They have devised silly sketches where, if they are not making him out to be a cross between the Milky Bar Kid and Groucho Marx, they call him really rude names like The Badger. BBC Scotland’s latest unfunny ditty is a play on Charlie Is My Darling entitled Darling Is A Charlie. These people. Honestly.
The beautiful water in Bernera helps you think clearly. Has he killed off his political career forever or, more realistically, showed the strength of character to tackle tough situations – our very own premier in waiting? You decide. Personally, I think the same HO that got me through the 11-plus is still working its magic today. Did you know Berneranians only buy whisky to savour the splash?
The Stornoway media glamour puss obviously got on better than the visitor from the smoke. Dispensing with unimportant considerations like the respect which some think is due a senior minister of the Crown, the homebred interviewer refers to him as plain Alistair in her article. Familiarly Hebridean that.
We were aquiver as the occupier of 11 Downing Street told how he went fishing for cuddies and had an unplanned plunge at Stornoway harbour. Curiously, what he actually says is he fell into the pier. Not off the pier. Can you fall into a pier? Maybe. Anyhow, he recalls an unnamed friend peering down at him covered in muck and gunge and oil and sheen.
The young Darling was briefly a Nicolson Institute pupil. Really? That’s a new one. Mummy Darling apparently thought those few weeks were the secret of his success. Not the three or four years at high-achieving, horrendously expensive Loretto School in Musselburgh, then? Nor Aberdeen University? Nor law school? Good, that’s cleared that up, then.
Less-meticulous journals have claimed he holidays in Uig. Arrant nonsense. Breaclete is in Bernera. Great Bernera, that is. Breaclete, never Breasclete, which as everyone knows has no one famous except Jim McCulloch the taxi driver, is not just the geographical centre, but is also the administrative hub of our paradise island.
Breaclete has a shop and off-licence, a filling station, a post office, a church, the community centre with its café, a museum, a fire station and a doctor’s surgery. And, now, the Second Lord of The Treasury of the United Kingdom.
Great Bernera might technically be in Uig parish. And we may grudgingly share our councillors and that sort of thing, but when we are in the limelight we are just Great Bernera. OK? Scots Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy is currently not British and we are certainly not Uigeachs.
In the more informative local coverage, Darling ruefully admits he failed to master the Gaelic. He had a good grasp way back, which is more than most Stornoway people have ever had, but he lost it through lack of use. Daddy Darling tried to learn Gaelic, but tortured the language so badly the whole family pleaded with him to give it up. Mummy Darling spoke Gaelic to his aunts, but only when she didn’t want the wee Darlings knowing what she was saying.
How handy that would be, Alistair Darling is probably thinking today. If he had learned the language, he could give these candid interviews in Gaelic. Less chance, then, of Gordon Brown throwing these wobblies.
Published in the Press and Journal on September 3, 2008
Like this:
Be the first to like this.
