Especially for you...

... Alex Salmond, this one's for you.

It pleases me somewhat to think that this is in some way retribution for this. It's not, it's because the SNP-controlled local council is widely reviled. In a bizarre parochial way, I'm more delighted by this Fife by-election result than I am with the US election result.

Of course, the American peoples' choice is a big event. Mr Obama is a young man and is fairly new to the political scene (certainly here in Europe probably not many people had heard of him 18 months ago). And there's the obvious question of his ethnicity. If I was a big cynic, I'd say the financial crisis helped a long way into getting the Democrats' nominee elected. But whatever, let's just wish the President-elect well and hope he can live up to at least some of the weight expectations now on his shoulders.

But more importantly, let's get back to gloating at the Labour hold in Glenrothes. Normally that result wouldn't be news. Labour retains safe seat in former mining community. And? But after Glasgow East, a seemingly impossibly safe Labour seat, fell to the Nats in the summer, the Glenrothes campaign suddenly looked much more interesting (more so because it's bang next door to Gordon Brown's Kirkcaldy patch).

Well guess what Alex, some Labour seats still are safe. Looks like you still have some lessons to learn in politics. Is the honeymoon now over? Was there ever any honeymoon? In case you hadn't already guessed, I'm no big fan of the Nats. Don't go assuming that I'm a Labour die-hard though, because you'd be mistaken. The previous two Holyrood governments had their faults. But the current administration is busily 'cking up the whole wee country.

[Now Lis gets on her soapbox]

Let's look at their massively unclever but amusingly populist measure of freezing council tax. Yes, great move, well done. So what has happened since the Nats froze council tax? Households all over Scotland are paying the same council tax they did 18 months ago. OK, good. But councils all over Scotland are faced with huge budget shortfalls. My home council is £20m short this year. That means in order to balance the books, they are cutting services left, right and centre. Grants to voluntary organisations, often the providers of essential services that go a long way to "top-up" anything the council lays on, have been wiped. This means important services to the local population are or will be withdrawn or severely restricted. And folks' jobs are very much in the balance. Great work, Alex.

And I just cannot believe they approved the Trump golf course. 'ckers.