Sometimes I look at my darling partner and think: why have you never bought me a Fortnum & Mason musical advent calendar? Where are my £2,600 crystal Lalique Feuilles salt and pepper grinders with their Peugeot mechanism and engraved leaf pattern? Is a three-grand Husqvarna robotic lawnmower totally out of the question? And if you really loved me you’d buy me some luxury leather goodies from Frank Smythson, maybe a £2,495 jewellery box for all the emeralds I don’t have, plus two £500 tote bags – one navy, one burgundy – to carry home all the loot; the fountain pens, the silver wine coasters, the wristwatches, the necklaces, the tea sets and the books that you absolutely refuse to lavish on me. You say we have to live within our means, baby. So boring! For it doesn’t seem to apply to everyone out there.
We both had a bitter laugh at Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon, not to mention the glittering tornado of luxury goods that whirled into their new-build redbrick in Uddingston and elsewhere. Yet this is not a comedy, it is an utter tragedy for Scotland. Not just because SNP members donated their hard-earned money to the party coffers in the honest belief that it would help fund their nationalistic dreams and further the cause of independence. It was not – absolutely not – meant to be used to fund the Sturgeons’ lifestyle with expensive domestic knickknackery such as coffee makers and £110 pencil sharpeners, for God’s sake. I may not agree with their political views but what poor mugs these voters have been taken for, and I don’t mean the Le Creuset ones that Murrell bought by the dozen.
