Robert the Bruce, He Ain't
The Times – Cometh the hour, cometh the man with the cheeky grin. Magnus Linklater: Political sketch
He could have come before them and read the electoral register for Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber and he would still have got a standing ovation. The Scottish National Party has waited 73 years for this – 79 if you go back to the first stirrings of nationalism in 1928 – and the delegates who packed the conference hall were not going to throw away the opportunity for some well-earned ecstasy.
Alex Salmond strode onto the stage, his classic cheeky grin in place, to be announced by his deputy as the first leader in the history of the SNP who could be introduced as “First Minister of Scotland”. The hall, packed to the rafters, erupted. From ancients in kilts and hairy sporrans who can recite the Declaration of Arbroath in their sleep, to youngsters who scarcely know where Arbroath is, they roared their approval.
I’d feel much better about all this if it weren’t Alex Salmond.
(Alternate title: Is There a Bruce In the House? But I decided against it.)
October 29th, 2007 at 10:57 am
I didn’t go to the conference this year, but I’m told it was ever so slick in comparison with former years, where there’s be people raising funds for the party by selling home made jam and such. Now they can rent out stalls to lobbyists for worthwhile money. Pity really. I used to like it when the Nats looked like, as Alan Cochrane observed “Conservatives in their gardening clothes”. No longer.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
“They Call Me Bruce?”
October 29th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
I think “Robert the Bruce” is like the coolest name ever — in all of recorded history. What is a “Bruce” anyway? It doesn’t matter, because it rocks. The combination of two first names, separated by “the”, is inherently awesome. (My dad’s first name is “Bruce”, so that probably makes it even more kewl for me.)
From now on, I shall be known as “Joel the Robert”.
October 29th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Well, I’d take a stab at answering your question, but I don’t think it would be my place to…
cough
October 30th, 2007 at 5:18 am
My mother-in-law’s middle name is Bruce. Family name. There are some very posh people called Bruce in Scotland, but my mother-in-law’s not one of them. Not that she knows that, of course.
On the other hand, in Australia, it sometimes tends to the, er, demotic:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eqgnExSiS0s