This is an ex-blog. It has ceased to be.

Hundreds and hundreds - or more accurately, six - of you have told me some variation on 'haste ye back', but I have decided that the temporary cessation of this blog is now to become permanent. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but the point of this blog was not to have an audience or be on a soapbox. It was to vent.

"I blog mainly as catharsis" was the mission statement. I was more interested in the saying than the hearing, and I make no apology for that. You guys just happened to be along when I went for a ride saying some things I felt like saying. Where I live I can't really talk to an empty room because the walls are too thin. I've already had the neighbours complain.

Lately I've just not felt I've had much to say. This could be good or bad and as with all things is in reality a mixture of both. Nothing has happened to make me want to finally kill it off, I'm just now finally getting around to saying what I decided to do a fair few weeks ago. Good luck to everyone else in the wonderful little world of the blogosphere. I may pop by from time to time, but probably not very often.

Going for a snooze

I started this blog because I wanted to get things off my chest. I wanted to moan, to praise and also to say things that I felt like saying. More and more I just don't have time, inclination or the option to do that and so, like Doctor Who again, this blog is taking a break. You probably noticed that there haven't been many posts recently anyway.

This isn't vanishing suddenly into the night Kez-style, and it's not fishing for hugs Tory Boy style. I'm just hanging up the boots for a bit and going for a snooze and thought it was more polite to say.

Tory Conference Round-up 1 of 1

Like hell and that heading makes David Cameron sound like the Cylons.

This is the only coverage the Tory conference is getting here.

Lib Dems have a good idea - what's the catch?

Tavish Scott thinks there should be an independent body to arbitrate on the distribution of funds and presumably the operation of the Barnett convention. Right now it is one verbal contract that isn't worth the paper it's written on.

I'm sure I've heard that idea somewhere before. I should charge, I really should.

At least this one wasn't a word-for-word lift without permission, unlike some people I could name.

Chatham House rules - about as secure as the FSA

I felt a bit doubtful about mentioning anonymously what one professor said in a roundtable discussion in the last post. It's nothing compared to Iain Dale, who has delivered a little bit of a blow to the idea that what happens on the Conference fringe stays there.

In that wonderfully English nationalist (small n) way he blundered into an account of the most sensitive - we are talking angels dancing on the head of a pin - issue in Scotland - the constitution. His account suggests quite plainly that amongst his assembled Tory conference fringe crowd only a trickle wanted extra powers - which the Scottish Conservatives officially support - almost half wanted the status quo, while almost half wanted the return of direct rule from Westminster.

My own experience of Conservative members and activists (and I went to St Andrews, I know a few) reflects that distribution. Personally I think it's a bit sad to see the Tories espousing a view on the constitution they don't really believe in. I also think there's trouble in store when the Calman Commission reports and tries to find a coherent set of extra powers to devolve that has the backing of two very reluctant participants - as Labour are no less grudging than the Tories.

While I welcome their official line moving in a more devolutionist direction I am also reminded of the Declaration of Perth where Ted Heath famously backed devolution, only never to even try to deliver it. Even more perfidious was Alec Douglas-Home telling Scots to vote down the Assembly on offer in 1979 because the Tories would give them a better one. In 1997 they were simply too shellshocked to campaign openly for the No vote that in their hearts they wanted to see.

I don't agree with the Conservative Party on much, but on the constitution I don't trust them either.

Flyover at your peril

Just this week I began a Masters course part-time at the University of Glasgow. One of the more controversialist Department of Politics professors at an introductory roundtable session argued that the US-dominated world expected after 1991 hasn't ultimately materialised.

Reflect on that particular opinion - not in a radical minority in the discipline - as you watch the news of whether the US federal government will bail out the financial markets, then watch whatever US import on Four or Five is your preference, and maybe surf over to www.fivethirtyeight.com to see what's current in the American Presidential elections.

OK, I concede that the last one is a bit more geeky - but how many times have you seen the US elections talked about in our political discourse?

So on that subject, let me add in to the Scottish blogosphere another take on the tied election scenario mentioned by Malc in the Burgh. Given the plausible hypothesis that there could be a 269-269 draw in the electoral college if Obama wins the Kerry states and gains Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada but nowhere else, it is important to look at Nebraska, one of two states that do something very different to the usual winner-take-all electoral college system.

Along with Maine, Nebraska gives its electoral college votes by congressional district. A presidential candidate wins one vote for each district they win, and two bonus electoral votes for winning the election across the state as a whole. Step forward the Nebraska 2nd.

Mostly made up of the city of Omaha, which is roughly the same size as Edinburgh, the 2nd is the least Republican and most cosmopolitan of the three districts. However, as this is Nebraska, that's not saying much. Kerry lost the district by 60% to 38%. That was then and this is now. With a staff of fifteen the Obama campaign isn't giving up. Fivethirtyeight.com:

This past weekend in Omaha, Republicans knocked on 11,000 doors. Two weeks ago when Barack Obama's permanent office opened, 1,100 volunteers showed up for the office opening. Eleven hundred people. "We essentially shut down midtown," said John Berge, Obama's Nebraska State Director. Omaha -- land of one precious electoral vote -- is not being conceded.

Even though Obama is pulling ahead in the popular vote right now, since McCain isn't even really trying there it might still all come down to one congressional district in eastern Nebraska and a 270-268 Democratic victory. Wouldn't that be an amusing payback for Florida in 2000?

Putting the cart before the old warhorse

So five minutes after he decides to even go to the debae McCain appears to have ads saying he won it?

The guy really needs to get better staff - starting from the bottom and going all the way up to the big spangly jet laden with reporters from Vogue and GQ that houses his running mate.