Elementary arithmetic
How are you this fine morning? Or at least it was bright and sunny as I drove through this am from Glasgow to Edinburgh.
Mayhap the forecast white hell will emerge later, probably in time to disrupt the kick-off tonight as United face the might of Falkirk following our slight set-back on Saturday against a team who scored on their only sojourn up the park.
(Such restraint, though, was understandable: they needed the rest of the 90 minutes to lie on the pitch, groaning and feigning injury. Bitter? Me?)
Anyway, I arrived at Holyrood in time to scan two alternative views re police numbers in Scotland. Let me share them with you.
According to a news release from the SNP, ministerial endeavour is "making Scotland safer with a record number of police officers on Scotland's streets".
According to a news release from Labour, issued a few minutes earlier, "the SNP's pledge to provide 1,000 extra police officers by 2011 is set to fail".
Both comments, of course, are based upon a single statistic: the number of coppers in Scotland.
Cause for celebration
They can't even agree on the elementary arithmetic. The SNP says there has been an increase of 441 "since the 2007 election" while Labour puts the figure at 410.
That discrepancy is perhaps explained by a glance at the Scottish Government website.
The increase of 441 does not date precisely to the election: it is based upon a comparison with the quarterly figure from March 2007.
Anyway, the SNP view the figures as a cause for celebration: let there be dancing in the streets and drinking in the parlours. OK, maybe not the drinking: unless it's responsible and high-price.
Labour see these same figures as a source of inestimable gloom. We are all doomed - especially, it seems, the SNP which delivered the pledge of one thousand extra bobbies.
Depends, I suppose, on how you look at things. Take another recent example.
Nationalists hailed Alex Salmond's visit to America as featuring the first talks between an FM and the US Secretary of State.
Carefully worded
Wicked observers said, yes, it was the first - but that may have been because predecessors had met the President.
All parties, at all times, are at the same game. Selective memory, carefully worded information - versus bombast and all out-attack.
Today for example the SNP statement talks of "real progress" and "delivering on our promise to put more police on Scotland's streets" - without repeating the 1,000 figure.
The Labour version says Kenny MacAskill "can bluster all he likes" - but now "needs to come clean": by which they mean they mean he should abandon his own thought process and adopt, wholesale, the Labour version.
The Scottish people, they aver, are "sick of his empty words".
If there is a nauseous reaction to politics, my guess is it is rather more widely sourced.
On the issue itself, it is right to offer judgement on the precise pledge - which was to increase numbers by one thousand via recruitment, retention and redeployment - when the four-year term is up.
I'm 
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