Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Who speaks for Scotland?

From The Economist's Letter page
SIR – The only thing more excruciating than watching the release of Mr Megrahi to a hero’s welcome in Libya was the truly toe-curling performance of Alex Salmond, Scotland’s nationalist first minister, proclaiming that this decision had not impaired Scotland’s relations with America.

Gathering from the calls that I received at my desk from irate Americans I would respectively suggest Mr Salmond is totally wrong. For once I was very glad to pinpoint my nationality as English and certainly not Scottish or even British. Maybe this is the way forward?

David Doe
Oxted, Surrey
It'll be interesting to see the likes of Mr Doe's and indeed the irate Americans of Boycott Scotland etc to the likely outcome of this afternoon:
The Scottish government is facing likely defeat in a Holyrood debate over its handling of the case of the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber.

Opposition MSPs are expected to join forces to defeat a government motion backing the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
Who then will have the truest claim to speak for Scotland in this particuliar case?

3 comments:

Timothy Belmont said...

My aunt is just back from visiting her family in Scotland. They attended the Edinburgh Military Tattoo and she told me that, when McCaskill's name was mentioned somewhere, there were boos!

then again, perhaps those at the Tattoo were not innate SNP supporters...


Tim

O'Neill said...

Or maybe they were all English and Northern Irish ;)

tony said...

Honestly

Scottish Tories who are hang'rm'n'flog'em, Labour who we really don't know what to expect of, do they? and the Lib-Dem's who are focussing (like Labour and to some extent the Tories) on the minutaie of procedure to back up their 'it was the wrong decision whinings'

Thankfully it is getting boring now because minute grains of sand are not what political storms are made of. The SNP followed Scots law with all the mechanisms that entails, and did Broon and Straw really do the wrong thing by sensing the wind and trying to shine the best light for their trade deals? The guy wasn't an explicit part of the deals the British government negotiated. Should he have been then there would be an issue.

Oh and from the little Englander-Jock;

"Gathering from the calls that I received at my desk from irate Americans I would respectively suggest Mr Salmond is totally wrong. For once I was very glad to pinpoint my nationality as English and certainly not Scottish or even British. Maybe this is the way forward?"

It is a good job he lives with his fellow Englander, saves me telling him to eff off there!

Best joke on Mock the week, the show on BB2 I think.
"The release is a double edged sword for Scotland, on the one hand we have outraged part of world opinion. On the other hand we have annoyed some Americans."

The last line for me encapsulates why this is dragging on, the toadies don't want to upset that paragon of humanitarianism in the US.