Opportunists R US

Last time I worked in a secondary school in the 1990s, most of the management team were men. One man in particular used to make some female members of staff wonder how some of these men ever got promoted. Despite being an arts graduate and a history teacher, this guy only ever read the Daily Record and the only subject he had an opinion on was football. He had a slightly edgy relationship with the women he worked with: he either flirted with them (if they were lower in the school pecking order) or patronised them (if they were promoted).

And did I mention lazy?! His laziness really got to one of my colleagues, who was the person who organised the German home-to-home exchanges. She worked her socks off doing this. This man was allegedly her 'link' person on the management team but she only ever saw him the day before she left on a 36 hour bus journey with the kids, when he would tell her to bring bring him back something nice. One year, she looked him straight in the eye and said: 'What would you like? I could get you a German helmet?' To this day, I doubt if he has understood what she meant.

And yet...and yet...at every staff night out, there he would be with a younger woman draped over him. Notice I wrote 'younger', not young. He (early 50s and divorced) seemed to attract women around the 40 mark. All good-looking, well maintained and working at professional jobs but never promoted to the same level as him. Mostly they had been round the roundabout a couple of times relationship-wise, but they never stayed the course with him and last I heard he never re-married. I can see why they thought he was a goer to begin with but I can also see why they gave up on him. And I'm glad none of them ever took him on as a life partner. He was, as my father used to say, an opportunist.

I've been reading today about rumpy-pumpy by men in the upper reaches of the SNP. I'm not going to fall into the trap of suggesting all men are alike, thinking with the little brain in their trousers, having too little to do in their spare time when they're away from home and being, o heaven help us, just a wee bit naive when it comes to the ways of the Big Smoke. But maybe their media training at Westminster (which we know they get because Mhairi Black told us so on the telly - now there's one that knows how to use the media) should have included: how to look at offers of sex and work out if an offer is too good to be true.

Did either of the MPs who got into 'relationships' with Serena Cowdy google her name? They would have seen links to her blog and realised she's been (briefly) an actor and is now a journalist and is indiscreet about her lovers. Serena is another opportunist and her opportunities are for her and don't include any mugs she comes across in her working life.

I would suggest to Stewart Hosie that a woman who posts details of your underwear on her blog is not entirely trustworthy. And I would further suggest the next time you look around, she'll be off with someone else. The only people who will suffer here are you and your soon-to-be-ex-wife. So was it worth it?

I'm annoyed at these men for the pain they've caused. I don't support the SNP but I am disappointed that some of them turn out to be excellent MPs and MSPs (Mhairi Black, Philippa Whitford, Kirsten Oswald, Fiona Hyslop, Nicola Sturgeon) while others let us down. Surely these guys must know people are watching them? That the UK and Scottish press are anti-SNP and will use any excuse to do down the party.

And how boring for the rest of us - how utterly fkn boring - to see apparently intelligent people
paraded in front of the cameras and made to put in print how sorry they are that they have let so many people down. Not that these apologies work, really. I'm still struggling with the mental picture of Stewart Hosie stripped down to his glasses, socks and tighty-whities...