The MacKay Hannah conference in Edinburgh today did not fail to deliver, with the First Minister and the Scottish Secretary making back-to-back speeches and giving us a couple of useful additions to our political lexicography.

There was also plenty of free advance publicity when Jim Murphy issued an appeal for it to be a full-scale debate, which Alex Salmond brushed aside. Isn’t is weird to see a member of the Cabinet of the the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland feeling the need to act like an opposition politician?

Anyway, as I said, they did not disappoint an audience which seemed to be skewed towards the renewable energy sector, if the questions were anything to go by. The First Minister appeared to invent a new word especially for the occasion, and the Scottish Secretary coined a whole new phrase. Mr Salmond spoke of enjoying political “bandiage” while Mr Murphy offered the view that independence was “a black and white response to an HD conundrum.”