Iain Maciver writes …

To be able to see is a wonderful gift. It would, for instance, have avoided Alistair Darling having to squirm and admit his blunder in the Commons after imposing a whopping eight per cent excise duty on terribly fine whiskies like Old Inverness in his Pre-Budget Report.

He claimed it was an oversight as he thought he was only trying to keep the uisge beatha at the same price because of the wee cut in VAT. He giveth and he taketh away. It would have been the biggest jump in duty since the 70s. Crimson-faced, if he can be under the perma-tan, he then had to trim back the increase to four per cent.

Now you may think that was only with the benefit of hindsight because Angus Robertson, the MP for Moray, a constituency of 40 distilleries producing many vats of whisky and many tons of tax revenue, accused the chancellor of playing hide and seek in the fine print with the tax hike.

Robbo then slammed it as the second smash-and-grab raid by the chancellor in a year so Darling finally came to his senses two long days later. If only he had more foresight.

There have been quite a few people in the last few days who have been careering towards disaster and humiliation with eyes wide shut. They should all have been intelligent enough to have enough gumption and foresight to see that a big bang was coming up around the bend.

And I’m not just thinking of Timmy Mallett, much as I would have liked to have force-fed the annoying squeaker that crunchy insect broth myself.

Take Gordon Ramsey, for example. Never mind the allegations, which he denies, that he has been over-egging some pudding. It is what he said ridiculing the saintly Delia Smith that will get him roasted. You simply cannot laugh off allegations like that by saying you have a lovechild - certainly not with the national treasure who penned the lifesaving How To Cheat (at cooking).

Methinks he should also remember the lady also developed the handy mini-chopper.

If insight is indeed the capacity to discern the true nature of a situation, it has been in particularly short supply lately. Why am I now thinking of senior Met Police officers, bankers and social workers? And politicos?

Actually, what I think they all need is the second sight. Like the Brahan Seer had. An Uigeach, such as I, Brown Kenneth is said to have peeked through the famed blue stone and seen the Uists changing before his very cornea to a land of guffawing geese and squawking Sassennachs. I think I got them in the right order.

I can vouch for the invasion of geese but Middlequarter is not quite Middle England yet. In Sgoil Lionacleit you can still hear the Eochar enunciation, the Locheport lilt and the Torlum twang. They still say they are going up sous when they go down to Sous Yewist and they are still about the kindest people in the known universe. So there cannot really be many from south of Carlisle then.

And do I have the second sight? I hear you ask. Of course I do. I just have to hold up to my eye one of my wife’s doughnuts, they are as hard as any rocks I have known, and I can see wondrous things through it. Let’s see now. Look, I can see the happiest man in Scotland right there skipping out of the swirling mist. It’s, it’s, it’s … Mr James Ogilvie.

I have mentioned the self-styled laird of Ogilvie Towers (currently not open to the public) before but I must tell you about what has happened to him. After a lifetime of being very short-sighted, as of two weeks ago he can now see absolutely clearly. A miraculous 15-minute op to remove a cataract, two days before he was 64, has simply changed his life.

He wore thick jam jar glasses for 55 years. Now he has just tossed them aside and can see us in all our glory and, without the specs, we too can finally see what he really looks like. Okay, not a pretty sight, James, but it is an improvement. No more can unscrupulous publicans shortchange him and when he is looking for the pub toilet we can no longer direct him to the door to the broom cupboard.

Now those who have been rude to him over the years are for it. One such lady met him the other day and said to Jimmy she thought it was him but, without his thick glasses, she wasn’t sure. His response was he had always wondered what she was really like but now, without his thick glasses, he was very sure.