SCOTTISH National Party MSP Christine Grahame represents the residents of Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale in the Scottish Parliament. Here, she writes exclusively for the Border Telegraph...

DUGS, DUGS AND MAIR DUGS: I have to say the free micro-chipping event in Gala recently at the Focus Centre courtesy of the Dogs Trust was a barking success. Sorry, no more puns. Some 110 customers to be exact, of all shapes and sizes - the dugs that is - were micro-chipped and vet checked. It was pouring cats and dogs (oops) outside but of course that did not put the event on paws (Mair oops). If you didn’t manage I am negotiating a further event in Peebles in the coming months and if you have a Peebles Passport (I know how Gala feels about Peebles) you’re very welcome. I’ll let you know when I have it set up, the time, place and so on.

BAWBEES: Now I don’t care a bawbee for what any Chancellor of the Exchequer and his Liberal lap dogs say about us not sharing sterling. Labour is a bit more of a disappointment but not unexpected as it rightly positions itself to win Tory votes in the Shires.

You know the term “Bank of England” doesn’t of course mean it is English. It is, of course, a UK asset. A bit like Trident, though of course we are being permitted to keep that.

Vetoing sterling, for the Rest of the UK (RUK) businesses amounts to cutting off your economic nose to spite your economic face, because we are the second largest import market to RUK, importing more than India, China, Japan and South Africa for example, put together. It would cost RUK businesses millions in transaction charges and is another scaremongering salvo.

Next there might be a cascade of kitchen sinks. I am compiling for my own diversion a list of possibilities of Biblical proportions starting with that plague of locusts. But could it be? Could it just be that the real issue would be the loss of North Sea Oil and Gas revenues, of whisky revenues to prop up that UK balance of payments? Of having to find a berth for Trident and all those decaying nuclear hulks at Rosyth ?Just a thought.

DNA: Now lest you think I am anti-English or indeed anti-RUK I have to confess to being a mongrel child of these islands. My mother was English and as you may know I “coom from Burton “(On Trent that is), my mother’s father was Welsh and my father Scottish. The diversification continues into the next generation. One son is married to a Canadian and the other is marrying a Londoner.

My Scotland therefore is not and would not be isolationaist. Not a bit of it. My Scotland would be good neighbours with England - apart from perhaps on the football and rugby pitch when all bets are off. You know, at a pinch, I think we might even vote for RUK in the Eurovison Song Contest. Now can’t say fairer than that.

HAWKS R BACK: I glanced out of the Garden Lobby windows today and I met the gaze of a handsome fellow. Straight backed, beautifully turned out and with a beady eye giving me the once-over. Mercifully I am neither pigeon nor gull so he soon got bored.