You might know that the Scottish Independence campaign seems to have been kicked off in Edinburgh yesterday with both Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown giving speeches on the subject. It isn’t all that often that I dip a toe into politics, usually it’s just when I feel the need to have a wee bit of a rant but James Stafford of Oil Price sent me a copy of an interview with Alex Salmond, and I suppose we should all be gathering as much information as we can, prior to voting for or against Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum. It’s quite a long interview but if you’re interested you can have a look at it here.

I had been intending to do a post on Scottish politics anyway, because Cardinal Wotsisname, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is having what in my family I call a huff-huff in a huff-tree – in other words he isn’t speaking to the Scottish Government at the moment because it’s likely that gay marriage will become law in Scotland at some point in the future.

Actually, despite my having no interest in any religion I do have some sympathy with them, although I understand that under no circumstances would priests, ministers, rabbis and the like be forced to perform marriage ceremonies for gay couples, I can’t really understand why gay people would WANT to be married in a religious ceremony. It sort of smacks of them poking a big stick at an already sore spot.

Homosexual couples can already become civil partners at a registry office, just as many heterosexual couples have done for years. It’s exactly the same for them all and heterosexual couples don’t go about saying that they had a civil partnership nowadays, it’s just called a wedding or marriage, no matter what it might be officially. I can’t see that what it’s called matters at all, it comes to the same thing, and if they want to break up then they’ll have to get a divorce like anyone else, in fact it seems to me that it’s all just more money for lawyers – as usual! Will getting hitched in a church make any difference? Well it hasn’t done for heterosexual couples.

But, to get back to the cardinal. I know how the next verse of his ‘I’m Not Speaking To You’ song goes, I’m sure everyone else knows too. It’s something like this:

If you don’t do what I want you to do Mr Salmond – then I will tell all of my flock that they must vote against Scottish Independence and the SNP in general. (The tune is Gleeful.)

Given that the turnout for any sort of election is woefully low now, that sort of manipulation could make a big difference. To make matters even more worrying, it’s a well known fact that until very recently the Catholic Church, in common with others was ‘fizzling’ out. They have even closed the seminary because they had no trainee priests. However in recent years they have had a big boost to congregations, due entirely to the eastern European economical migrants who have settled temporarily in Scotland.

The upshot of that is that the whole future of Scotland might be held in the hands of people who have no real interest in the future of the country, because they know that they’ll only be here for a few years, then they’ll go back home again.

It’s those evil twin subjects which should always be avoided in polite company – politics and religion. I know I’m being terribly impolite but it’s a bit of a worry when religious people with power over a lot of voters insist in flexing their muscles.