Unnatural selection

Survival of the fittest, Darwin's voyage of discovery, evolution, Gregor Mendel and his little pea plants, natural disasters. All theories or events that basically involve separating the wheat from the chaff. That every generation will be stronger and more able than the next. If your neck isn't long enough, you don't eat the leaves; if your claws aren't sharp enough, you won't kill your prey and if your snout isn't long enough, then the trough is out of reach.

But for a while I have wondered if such theories have fallen by the wayside. If human nature is spiralling, not so much out of control but back into the safety of its own fur. The most able and the most attractive are seemingly shunning marriages and dirty nappies in favour of a global, single life whereas the insecure, the less intelligent and the co-dependent types (not to mention those who don't know how or are too drunk to wear a condom) are the ones more likely to propagate the planet with similarly less able babies who will take this world into the next century.

The model of perfection of course should be the Royal Family. The leaders of the land, a valiant , wise King alongside a beautiful, cultured Queen. The family that (in theory at least) we should all look up to and aspire to be like. They should be the most able and the most attractive. OK, so things fell by the wayside, I'm guessing around Henry VIII's time but, without being mean to Prince Charles, things are back on track after Princess Diana provided her genes to a rather limited pool.


Anyway, a stifling of progress? Limited gene pools? The insecure leading the way? The next generations struggling to be more able than the last? Yes, I am gunning for a tenuous link to Holyrood.


OK, I do think the Scottish Parliament does a good job but I do also think there is a stale aroma around the unnatural selection of candidates at election time. The local parties don't seem brave enough to put the rising stars in place of the tired MSPs who may have run their course. A fear of change perhaps, from the local parties right through to the voting public, is stifling Scottish progress.

The weak cling to the weak in the name of self-preservation. So much back-scratching ensues within political parties that it's probably a good thing the unevolved claws are not as sharp as they could be. Though one could argue that the trough-laden snouts are plenty long.

I know I am biased but I do think, if anyone, it's the SNP who are leading the charge in giving the next generation a chance to shine. Every other seat seems to pit a wet-behind-the-ears SNP challenger against a rather staid Labour incumbent with arguably little new to offer. The political DNA has remained depressingly constant for too long for many constituencies out there.

So without the governing duo putting up their own fresh DNA, one can only hope that the disillusioned public, starved of variation, turn to other parties or to the independents to get the progress they deserve.