Eddie Barnes - The Dave and David show

If the gossip floating around Scottish Tory circles is to be believed, the event which took precedence in David Cameron's diary when he came to Scotland last week was not the party's one-day conference in Perth, but Cameron's lunchtime engagement at the Scottish Press Fund lunch in Glasgow which preceded it. The reason? Mostly because the event was being organised by David Dinsmore, the editor of the Scottish Sun, Scotland's largest selling daily newspaper.

The background to this episode goes back to last autumn when the English edition of the Sun decided to leap into bed with the Tories. Dinsmore, however, decided to play hard to get, declaring that he was "yet to be convinced". With the Tories polling only 20% in Scotland, it was not hard to see why. Nor is it hard to see why Team Cameron is now so keen to woo Dinsmore....if there's one thing about open doors, it's that you want to push them.

The Scottish Sun editor is clearly enjoying being a Tory tease - at the lunch last week, he made a few barbed comments in Cameron's direction about his difficult it was to get a date in his diary. Cameron responded with a light-hearted comment noting that, while he respected devolution, he hoped that in the case of the Scottish Sun, they would follow London's example. It was like watching a Jane Austen courtship ritual. It remains highly unlikely that David will actually agree to Dave's advances, but that's not to say the charm-offensive isn't working. Even Scottish Sun columnist Bill Leckie offers some grudging praise for Cameron in his column today.

Cameron isn't the first ambitious politician who has set out to win hearts at News International - and the rewards and the dangers remain the same. In Scotland, the reward within his grasp is the country's biggest-selling paper if not on his side, then certainly offering an open mind. That is probably as much as the Conservatives can hope for north of the border at present. The dangers, however, are that the courtship of one stable ends up enraging other media outlets, especially if they feel that announcements and interviews are drip-fed through certain favoured publications. As Labour long ago found out, this all soon spins horribly out of control, amid much gnashing of teeth - a noise which Cameron might have heard at the tables of certain newspapers last Friday.

In summary, the Sun might be creeping through the clouds for the Scottish Tories, but as is usually the case in Scotland, that doesn't mean it isn't raining elsewhere.

David Maddox: Who turned the lights out?

There was a members debate this evening to support the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour 2009, which aims to encourage millions of people worldwide and across Scotland to switch off their lights for an hour at 8.30 pm on Saturday 28 March 2009, as an act of awareness on climate change and the need to tackle it.

The debate this evening was led by one of the promising new Nationalist MSPs Shirley-Anne Somerville (pictured top right), who represents the Lothians, which has a certain irony to it. This is because, as contacts in both Labour and the Conservatives have pointed out, the SNP, in their view seem intent on turning the lights out permanently in Scotland.

The thrust of the (well worn) argument is that the SNP's obsession with renewable energy from wind, wave and sun and outright opposition to nuclear will leave Scotland without a stable base supply of power. Only time will tell who is right, but if the SNP are wrong then the results could literally send Scotland back to the dark ages.

But the fear of "the lights going out" is hardly a new one to throw at voters. Tony Blair and Labour suggested all sorts of cataclysmic outcomes if the SNP took power in Holyrood. However, after almost two years we are yet to see the four horsemen of the Apocalypse descend on the country.

No doubt Labour remembered well how the idea of turning the lights out managed to put off supporters in 1992 with the infamous front page of The Sun on election day (pictured bottom right), although in that case it was the last person to leave the country who was being asked to press the switch.