Drumlanrig: Travel firm stages cross Border land snatch

SCOTLAND is getting bigger, it appears. Travel Agency Low Cost Holidays told a customer recently that Newcastle was in Scotland. Vowing to set them right, the man, Jamie O’Neill, emailed back to inform them otherwise.

Travel Agency Low Cost Holidays told a customer recently that Newcastle was in Scotland. Vowing to set them right, the man, Jamie O’Neill, emailed back to inform them otherwise.

The firm wasn’t having it. “Thanks for your email,” it declared. “Newcastle is indeed located in Scotland.”

This may offer Alex Salmond an alternative to independence: if Scots oppose it, why not start taking over bits of England?

Jack’s cup runneth over for a bra cause 

Lord “Jack the lad” McConnell is “supporting” an attempt to collect one million bras this month.

He organised an event in the House of Lords last week to support the “Big Bra Hunt”, an Oxfam campaign urging women to give underwear to the charity. The bras will then fund projects in Senegal, where bras are “expensive and much sought-after”.

McConnell’s co-host at the event was Oxfam’s GB director Dame Barbara Stocking (you couldn’t make it up).

“Oxfam persuaded me to support this campaign because this project supports sustainable businesses in West Africa,” McConnell said.

Election leaflets that keep voters reading?

Plenty of dodgy election leaflets in the current council elections. A contender comes from David Barnes, a Tory candidate in Glasgow, who calls for higher educational standards but then, in the same flyer, spells Byres Road incorrectly. Or there is DJ MacRae, a Labour candidate in the Western Isles. In his own wild offering, he decides to level with his prospective constituents. “I have always been truthful, even when guilty. I have had a colourful past. I do not deny that. Anyone who wants to know, just ask.” Keeps you reading, to be fair.

First Minister’s takes third person approach

As he attempted to fend off the pelters hurled at First Minister’s Questions over the Doosan situation and the SNP’s swithering over Nato, Alex Salmond used an interesting turn of phrase.

Drumlanrig noticed that Dear Leader has taken to referring to himself in the third person.

When tackled on the Nationalists’ slippery position on Nato by Ruth Davidson (above), the First Minister said: “The First Minister believes that investment in new nuclear weapons in Scotland would be a total and utter obscenity.”

It didn’t attract as much attention as Maggie Thatcher’s famous use of the Royal we when she said: “We are a grandmother,” but it was revealing none the less.