The Scottish elections take place in a few weeks, giving the country the chance to choose from the usual bunch of yahoos with slightly different ideas about how best to make the country worse. No matter how cynical you are, though, you need to vote. The barbarians are at the gates.

Well, not barbarians. Christian nut-jobs.

Under the Scots voting system, minority parties stand a good chance of getting a place in the Parliament – and one such party is the Scottish Christian Party, whose platform (I hope) would offend any right-minded Christian. Their manifesto contains lots of gems, like this:

The Scottish Christian Party believes that the provision of Christian religious education should be mandatory, (with no obligation to promote ther faiths), the history curriculum should reflect Scotland’s rich Christian heritage and the science curriculum reflect the evidence of creation/design in the universe.

And this:

The Scottish Christian Party would seek to replace the standard of beyond reasonable doubt’ with the more biblical ‘evidence of two or three reliable witnesses’, reducing the tendency for the guilty to evade justice.

And this:

The Scottish Christian Party will seek that the Mechanical Copyright protection enjoyed by songwriters should be extended to featured recording artists and record producers.

You just know there’s a bitter musician in the party somewhere, don’t you?

Anyway, back to seriousness: they’re the usual anti-evolution, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-progress lot, whose big concerns are about evil gays, sneaky sex-changers (they’re very upset that people who’ve had sex changes don’t have to tell anyone; presumably they’d prefer it if transgender people had to wear a big badge and maybe ring a bell too), parents not being allowed to beat their kids (not being able to smack the weans is a form of child abuse, says the manifesto), swings being swung on Sundays in defiance of the Lord, and all that shite.

But – thanks to our voting system, we have to take them seriously. While you or I might think “ah, voting’s a waste of time”, their supporters will definitely be “putting their cross beside The Cross”, as the leaflets put it. And I suspect that if sensible people are apathetic and don’t bother voting, there’s enough idiots in Scotland to give them a few seats.