There's something in the air these days, down Gorgie way. That isn't, of course, news - there's always something in the air round here, but for once it's not just the brewery. Yes, cup final fever has started to set in - even the normally tranquil oasis that is McLeod St has been positively fizzy in recent days. I can't pretend to have any deeply felt interest in Scottish football - even at its so called Premier level, it has all the excitement of a particularly slow episode of Watercolour Challenge, but without the redeeming presence of Hannah Gordon. Yes, people, that bad.

Despite this instinctive indifference to the pursuit, it's almost impossible to live in Scotland and not be drawn into the inconsequential world of football. Our media are obsessed by it: there's scarcely been a day in the last three months that the Rangers imbroglio hasn't been the lead story. Now to be fair, it did start off interesting: big company with major cultural significance, brought low by years of tax dodging and other self-inflicted shenanigans. If it weren't actually true, you'd think the Rangers story was one of those clunking great metaphors that Ian McEwan goes in for these days. And, like most recent McEwan novels, it was hard to maintain any interest in the unfolding Rangers saga as it rumbled on.

I do make some effort to stay au courant with football news, although as you've seen, it's not difficult given that the sport is everywhere in these parts. I take an interest partly out of politeness - it allows me to have an at least rudimentary conversation on the subject in social situations. But mainly, and I'm mortified to admit this, is that one of my colleagues is convinced that I'm an ardent Hibee and, whenever we meet (too often for my comfort) he asks me very detailed questions about recent Easter Road developments. Now, I know I should have nipped this in the bud but, an uncharacteristic surfeit of good manners stopped me from asking him why he might conceivably want my opinion on the relative merits, if any, of Gary O'Connor and Leigh Griffiths - "who the fuck" indeed - and managed to form an acceptable response. A response, while doubtless idiotic, born as it was of almost complete ignorance, was sadly not quite dumb enough to prevent subsequent enquiries.

The consequence of my ill-judged good manners - and, trust me, I won't make that mistake twice - is that it has impelled my unwonted and frankly unwanted engagement with all things Easter Road. It turns out that it's not only in relation to Rangers that the most interesting things occur off the pitch. As a co-opted, and hopefully temporary, Hibee the highlight of the season for me was the press report, since denied, that the striker Leigh Griffiths not only headbutted his manager, Pat Fenlon, but punched the assistant manager to boot. Young Mr Griffiths clearly subscribes to the idea that one must speak truth to power - a real philosopher it seems. And as a riposte to those who claim that Hibernian never win anything, I take vicarious pride in "my" team being named by the SFA as the most ill-disciplined side in the league - and given that they were up against Rangers for that title, winning the Scottish Cup could only ever be a footnote to an already glorious campaign.

The news from Euro-land is unremittingly bleak these days and likely to remain so until after the next Greek election. Until well after the next Greek election I suspect. I was going to write about how the European Investment Bank could do more to get a recovery started; how regrettable it is that David Cameron's foolishness (in taking the Tories out of the EPP grouping and that stupid veto he used last year) has obliterated British influence; and how things would be different (meaning better) if Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were still running the show. I'm sure I'll be giving that lecture again at some point but for now, I think this is all that's required - a quote from the French diplomat Paul Claudel, speaking in 1931 but depressingly pertinent:

In the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne.

There are many things nobody will ever admit to being bad at: driving is the notorious example of a skill where almost everyone claims to be "above average". Now, with my rather snazzy maths hat on, I should point out that it's quite possible (if not necessarily likely) that >50% or even >99%, for that matter, of any population can be better than average at a given task. If you're very bad, I'll maybe demonstrate how that works one of these days. For now though, we're sticking with unlikely claims. Nobody, of course, admits to being bad in bed - even if their performance is akin to that of a sack of spuds, they'll never let on (until it's too late...). Similarly, you don't much hear of people owning up to lamentable cooking. This glass-half-full type of self-assessment applies as much to qualities as it does to skills: open-mindedness being one of those attributes that nobody concedes they lack.

Well, except me. I'm happy to admit that there are a whole bunch of things I'm resolutely closed-minded to. Examples off the top of my heid would include David Cameron, religion and exotic bedroom arrangements. Either individually, or in any combination - so don't even offer, Dave - no matter how much you put LOL in your texts. The reality is that none of us, even me, are as open-minded as we might tell ourselves - but you don't need to take my word for it. The late Stuart Sutherland, former Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex spent a lot of time thinking about this and I owe him for publishing details of a rather intriguing study on the subject, the gist of which follows.

Experimenters fabricated four pieces of plausible evidence on the effects of capital punishment. The experiment's subjects were told that these were the results of genuine studies on murder rates. Two of the faked studies showed the number of murders before and after the introduction of capital punishment within various states of the US: one showing that the murder rate had decreased (indicating capital punishment worked), the other showed the opposite. The other two studies compared murder rates at the same time between states that had introduced the death penalty and those that had not. Once again, the figures were manipulated so that one indicated that capital punishment had reduced the murder rate; the other that it had the opposite effect.

The subjects in the experiment were all people who had strong views on capital punishment - strongly in favour or strongly against. They were each given two of the four studies to read: viz one that supported their existing beliefs and one that did not. Then the analysis began. The subjects were asked first to rate the reliability of the studies they had read: every single person agreed that the study they read that matched their existing views was "more convincing" and "better conducted" than the one that didn't. Hmph - can you see where this is leading?

They were then asked again about the strength of their views (either for or against) after reading each study and after reading both. This is where it gets interesting - even after reading a study that undermined their beliefs, the level of commitment to their original view was unchanged. And after reading two studies, one for and one against, people believed even more strongly (whether for or against) than they did before they started. So there's the thing - we shut out evidence that doesn't suit our existing prejudices and will in fact strengthen these prejudices even where the evidence to do so is weak. And, what's more, we do so unconsciously. Now that's something to think about when you're reading your Metro tomorrow morning.

The suggestions to date have been rather predictable - the overblown (and inaccurate to the point of sarcasm) Land of Hope and Glory and the just plain weird Jersusalem. England deserves better. As indeed do Wales and Scotland so here are my proposals. For our Taff friends, they should look no further than Catatonia's inspiring International Velvet: 'every day when I wake up / I thank the Lord I'm Welsh'; while Sacha Distel's Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head could only ever have been written with Scotland in mind.

For our English friends Noel Coward is, as so often, the answer. Now, my love of the songs of 'the master' has already been documented at great, not to say tedious, length but hear me out. Could there possibly be a more apposite choice than his 1952 There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner? It has all you could ask for such an  anthem - eminently sing-a-long-able lyrics, a rousing chorus and a quintessentially English mix of wit, gloom and stoicism as this sample verse indicates:

There are bad times just around the corner
There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
And it's no good whining
About a silver lining
For we know from experience that they won't roll by
With a scowl and a frown
We'll keep our peckers down
And prepare for depression, doom and dread
We're going to unpack our troubles from our old kit bag
And wait until we drop down dead

Words & Music: Noel Coward; (c) Chappell & Co Ltd, 1952

My big fear is that, in the spirited of misguided have-your-say "democracy", some bright spark will come up with a popular vote to decide the final selection. That does mean that England will end up with something banal (like Hope and Glory); embarrassing and banal (anything from the Take That songbook) or an entirely facetious choice like Mousse T's Horny or Blur's Girls and Boys. On reflection, that may not be such a bad thing...

As I'm a kindly soul, underneath, I've pulled out some of the highlights for your edification. Be warned: they are all genuine. There are some, like the one about the dwarves [sic] that I assumed to be an ill-judged attempt at humour. It wasn't. As a list, the petitions cast an interesting light on the preoccupations of the British public. True, predilections for hanging and racism do crop up with depressing regularity but there is room for whimsy, parochial concerns and, well, see for yourselves:

Abolish Nadine Dorries
More male full frontal nudity on TV and less female full frontal nudity
National Taylor Swift and Beyonce Appreciation Day
Eradicate all ghost-hunting groups and impose restrictions on all paranormal activities
Remove the new traffic lights on Bridge St, Morpeth
Stop The Welsh Language
Bring back Ready Steady Cook and have Daniel Christie on as a special guest
Reintroduce extinct species into the UK
Ban transgender models from Miss Universe
For Parliament to inform Samantha Brick that she is "not attractive"
Rename Euston Station "Whitney Euston" Station
Dog Bins for Buckshaw Village
Bring back Top of The Pops
Petition to stop John Prescott from going on TV
Legalise three-way marriage
pot holes - filling them in wont make them disappear
Danger warnings on Lilly flowers to make people aware of the severe dangers to cats!!
Masterchef to be on more than once a week
Renaming of 'Good Friday' to 'GREAT Friday'
Bring back Royal Scots biscuits
Pizza Express to provide serrated knives for their pizzas
Reopen Bojangles in Rochdale
Make sexual relations and marriage between dwarves illegal
Stop selling crap screws with everything that needs fixing to a wall
Ban the evil of ciggies
The use of the characters ':p' in sequence should be banned in the UK
putting down the unfortunate

That last petition ("putting down the unfortunate") was, alarmingly, a genuine plea for euthanasia to be legalised. There were some petitions that I didn't understand -  "Make Ace Rimmer The Patron Saint of England" - but lacked the courage to investigate further. There were, inevitably, some postmodern suggestions: "Get rid of e-petitions" and "Abolish the e-petition sham". My favourite of those was "E-Petitions containing spelling errors to be automatically rejected" as, alas, the typography in many petitions isn't all that it might be: some petitioners had "no confidants" in the government, while others were unaware that "service personal" has a very different meaning to service personnel.

Well, I think we've all learnt something there... but what?

If ever there were an argument in favour of reforming the House of Lords, it was the 2007 outburst from the then Bishop of Carlisle, attributing the floods that had befallen his town to "gays". Now, perhaps I do him a disservice but I am not persuaded that Christopher Biggins' doubtless fearsom abilities extend so far as summoning up typhoons to afflict northern towns. Perhaps it was Miriam Margolyes, or Colin & Justin from Channel 5 that our frock-wearing cleric had in mind, but even so, I remain sceptical. There is, I think, a case for institutionalising people with such deranged views - you should hear him on the dangers of oral sex (whatever that is) - but I think a medical facility might be more appropriate than a seat in the House of Lords... and yet there's still room in the "mother of parliaments" for no fewer than 26 bishops.

It's somewhat disheartening, particularly on the bicentenary of Edward Lear's birth - a man now most famous for his paean to inter-species romance The Owl and The Pussy Cat - that people still get hot under the collar at the notion that members of the same sex (and species) may be allowed to marry, with or without a runcible spoon. In recent weeks, we've had the Tories ascribe their electoral unpopularity to their gay marriage proposals; here in Scotland, many Tories stayed at home, partly in protest at their party being led by a gay woman; the SNP attribute their failure to win Glasgow partly to the Scottish Parliament's ongoing plans to legalise gay marriage in Scotland.

Now, as I've said before, I'm not entirely in favour of marriage as an institution, regardless of the gender combinations, if any; indeed if someone were to suggest banning the whole damn thing, I'd give them a sympathetic hearing. What I can't get my head round, and I have tried, is why anyone actually cares about this stuff. It's not as if many people are going to take up the option: the number of civil partnerships in Scotland has fallen each year since they were introduced; last year the total was in the low hundreds. And it's not as if there weren't bigger things to worry about either: the economy's still fucked despite two years of George's marvellous medicine; the Union is under threat; the Euro is on the brink of meltdown; the Middle East is more precarious than ever; public services are suffering while youth unemployment is through the roof.  I could go on.

This isn't unprecedented. When e-petitions were relaunched by the government last year, within days the top request was for parliament to debate the reintroduction of the death penalty. Now, leaving aside the moral repugnance of capital punishment as an idea, the fact that swathes of the population asked themselves "what one thing would most improve the quality of life in Britain?" and could only come up with "hanging" is rather depressing. Indeed, if you look at the list of rejected petitions, 13 of the 20 on the first page relate to judicial killing (12 in favour, one against). Other hot topics further down the list include the reintroduction of national service and, not sure what this means, "children should be let out of class to use the toilets". I started writing this piece thinking it was the House of Lords that needed reforming - now I fear it's the electorate who need sorting out.

As I never manage to follow any of it, I'm not sure why I'm drawn to advice on dating and job interviews. The most regularly cited suggestion, in both regards, is the utterly misguided "be yourself". Unless you are the Dalai Lama, and the chances are you're not so put down that orange bed sheet now, you would be better being almost anyone other than yourself in either of these situations.

These occasions, as I've probably said before, have so much in common so the skills required to perform either well are almost certainly transferable. Both, as you'll know, are weirdly artificial social rituals; both parties making increasingly improbable claims and promises to the other in direct proportion to the degree of desperation felt. Their outcomes are also very similar - even if they go well, the chances are that both parties will be bored with each other within six months; filled with frustration and resentment after twelve. There are differences between the two occasions - it's acceptable to ask for feedback after an unsuccessful interview while asking for pointers from someone who blew you out after a night of tequila shooters in Diane's Pool Hall is regarded as a no-no. The curious thing is that it's dating feedback that might be more useful than the interview kind.

Whether from fear of litigation, or, more likely, an attempt to avoid social embarrassment, it's not easy to get honest or useful feedback from employers. I rarely ask for interview feedback myself (I've usually got a pretty good idea of where I went wrong) although I did once get the comment "very entertaining" which, while technically a compliment, wasn't exactly the impression I'd been aiming for. On reflection, dating feedback is unlikely to be much more helpful than the job kind. While there are plenty people out there happy to tell you that you're an unshaggable old donkey, it's hard to see how you can turn those, er, qualities to your advantage. Trust me on that.

On the advice side, the only piece I can really offer is this: even if sexual adventurousness is your key, or indeed only selling point, it shouldn't be your opening gambit in either context. You can thank me later. Yesterday though the Guardian offered their list of ten things you shouldn't say at an interview. Most of it can be filed under "shit you knew already" like not turning up late, slagging off your current employer etc. Below the line though there were some slightly more helpful suggestions from readers. This, from Walkerno5, is by far and away the most useful and I'm strongly tempted to adopt it as my strategy in both interviews and dates (in the unlikely event I ever find myself invited to either):

Around this time of (an election) year, I'm sorry to say I turn into a world-class bore. My social skills, such as they are, take a turn for the dreary. Any invitations I get - always fewer than I might like - I invariably decline; partly as a result of election-related activity but mainly as I am liable to induce deep narcosis on anyone unfortunate enough to spend an hour in my company. Seriously, have a night out with me at the end of April and you won't be fit to operate heavy machinery for at least two days afterwards.

I have made matters worse for myself this year by also being in training for a marathon at the end of next month. And if there's one thing more tedious than an election drone, it's a distance runner: nobody, but nobody, is actually interested in your PBs and your carb-loading. If they pretend that they are - and yes, they are pretending - it's because they want to get your uncharacteristically toned body bouncing in their bed before it reverts to its natural state: ie like a binbag full of yogurt.

The question I'm occasionally asked is why I bother with the election stuff - which is a fair enough enquiry given that mainstream politics is so deeply unfashionable these days. My response, predictably, is that I fundamentally believe that it still matters. The decisions made by our political leaders have a profound effect, most particularly on the most vulnerable people. Any little I can do to encourage people to take five minutes out to engage with the democratic process on polling day is a worthwhile investment of my time. This year it is particularly important - so many core services are provided by local authorities, it's vital that we have wise leadership. It's also particularly important in Edinburgh this year - not just as the city has been so badly let down by the Lib-Dem/SNP coalition the last few years but more that Edinburgh Labour have a thrillingly radical set of proposals.

Now, even for me, "thrilling" might sound a bit much but the Moving Edinburgh Forward plans are genuinely exciting - the proposed city-wide childcare cooperative scheme for example or the new Transport Forum so that actual real people can be involved in road & transport planning. There's a whole bunch of good - and deliverable - things in the manifesto. It depresses me a little to know that so few people (and mainly the opposition at that) have actually read it. Ah well, as Thomas Gray said "many a flower is born to blush unseen / and waste its sweetness on the desert air".

So then, these are the big reasons I turn into an election-head. There are other motivating factors though. It sounds a bit pious to say this but going round unfamiliar parts of the city, street by street and door by door, you get a real insight into how your fellow citizens live. It's not always fun at the time but talking to strangers is also very worthwhile - you are guaranteed to see and hear unexpected things: the charm of Stenhouse for example, the care that many Wester Hailes people take in their local environment. You wouldn't know these things without going there. And each year throws up a number of memorable encounters. My abiding memory of the 2010 campaign was the guy in Stenhouse who gave me a solid ten minutes on why all drugs should be legalised and then, as I was leaving, shouted "and sort out the dogshit" and the woman in Hutchie who wanted the government to do more about the plight of single people.

The big revelation each year, and literally a revelation, is the number of people who come to the door in their pants - or, as happened to me at Tollcross last year, buck naked (he was apparently "expecting his girlfriend"). Last night though, I had a deeply affecting conversation with a 91 year old woman in sheltered housing. She told me of her loneliness, how difficult it was to meet people. I was the first non-professional visitor she'd had in days. Her husband had died 20 years earlier- "I didn't expect to be here so long without him". I don't know how you're meant to respond to something like that but my heart went out to her.

This gentle woman has been on my mind ever since then and I'll have her on my mind long after Thursday's election passes. Anyone in any doubt about why council services matter, and why it's important to have decent and thoughtful people running their local authorities, really needs to get out there and talk to the people who rely on them.

See if a mate of yours was totally skint - to the extent of having to borrow money from unsavoury people just to keep the lights on, you'd naturally be very concerned. You'd possibly want to help, even if you were feeling the pinch yourself, particularly if you knew that if they went down, they'd be taking you with them. That seems to have been the logic behind Posh George's decision to chip in an extra $15bn to the IMF's Europe in Need appeal. I'm not, as I've said before, a fan of Mr Osborne - I am troubled by both his economic analysis and his fiscal practice. I am however in favour of trying to keep the EU afloat so, in principle, contributing to the IMF's bail out fund seems the right course.

Getting back to our imaginary friend though, one thing we might want to do, at the same time as offering financial help, is question them on their bad shopping habits. You'd be less inclined to stick your hands in your pocket for a friend who, despite being down to the bones of their arse, continued to pay large sums of money to their gardener; particularly if their gardener wasn't actually managing to get anything to grow. The EU is currently spending around £50bn a year on the Common Agricultural Policy. The CAP was originally designed to support food production in the post-War era and was (then) an excellent thing. From its noble origins, the CAP deteriorated rapidly, in inverse proportion to its budget, leading to obscenities like butter mountains and wine lakes as well as causing such massive global distortions in the world food market as to impoverish large swathes of agricultural Africa.

In belated recognition of this grotesquery, subsidies were "decoupled" in 2003 - rather than being paid to produce crops that nobody wanted, payments were instead made for, ahem, 'stewardship'. Notionally this meant being rewarded for keeping their land in decent shape but was in practice a bung to keep French farmers (and, of course, British farmers) quiet. Nine years on from that, er, 'reform', we now have the situation where landowners are still getting big wads of cash for sitting on their tweed-bound arses. Vast chunks of EU largesse find their way to such needy people as, um, Prince Charles's Duchy of Cornwall and the €91m handed to French bank Credit Agricole. There is now even a secondary market - landowners sell the rights to EU subsidies to urban investors who wouldn't know a chicken shed from a chicken shit.

I don't get this notion of paying people to produce nothing. Be they ever so decorative, you don't get child benefit for simply possessing a functioning set of genitals - the Treasury only ponies up the dough when you use them to produce an actual child, or more than one. Why are farming subsidies different? True there are plenty of company directors who manage to get themselves "performance"-related emoluments when their companies are going south at the same rate as their share price and they too are being paid for doing less than nothing in some cases but at least they're not getting paid out of your taxes and mine.

Now, as I've mentioned before, I love the EU - 60 years of international cooperation and peace in an area home to some of the most belligerent nations on earth? It is a wondrous thing. I sometimes think it may be one of civilisation's towering achievements and a beacon, admittedly an occasionally flawed one, of how once-hostile nations might work together harmoniously. But it doesn't make the lives of its supporters easy when it does foolish things like piss £50bn a year up against a wall at a time when public services everywhere are being cut - and then ask for a sub.