Drumlanrig: ‘We recommend that as the First Minister invest in an A-Z of England’

Nats enjoy a new spin on the art of stirring it

BBC Scotland was quickly on to the story last week about the “snub” given to Cardinal Keith O’Brien by the UK Government after it sent a delegation to the Vatican without him. The story was, as they say, given a big helping hand from SNP spin-meister Kevin Pringle.

All a bit different from a week earlier, when the same SNP spinmeisters orchestrated a perfect storm of protest against the Beeb over their “snub” to the First Minister after he was dumped from the Scotland-England rugby match.

Questions even the wisest cannot answer

There were some interesting contributions from members of the public to the Scottish Affairs Select committee’s inquiry into Scottish independence published last week. None more so than the following written evidence from a hitherto unrecognised constitutional expert in Shetland.

“What would we pay benefits with? Who would protect the vulnerable?” she asked. “What if Shetland say ‘its wir oil’. Or if the UK says its their oil? What gunboat are they going to send up to take it back?”

Quite.

Taxi for Salmond, and an A-Z as well

In a speech in Liverpool last week, Alex Salmond lampooned the Cameron-Osborne duo for their out-of-touch southern Westminster ways. Men like them no more understood Scousers than did the Thatcherite generation before them. Or as Mr Salmond put it: “Why should anyone in Liverpool believe that George Osborne, MP for Tatton, now cares more than Geoffrey Howe, MP for East Surrey?”

Unfortunately, this rhetorical blast from Scotia’s finest may rather have puzzled the assembled Liverpudlians, as the seat of Tatton, Cheshire, is not so much a distant southern outcrop as a 30-mile drive away down the M62. Oh well. We recommend that as the First Minister continues to sell the merits of independence to the English, he invests in an A-Z of their country.

For the Record, it’s staying with Labour

The SNP MSP Joan McAlpine is to write a column for the Daily Record.

Does the recruitment of the parliamentary aide to Alex Salmond, who caused a kerfuffle by accusing those who interfere with her master’s referendum of “anti-Scottishness” mean the Record is to abandon its slavish devotion to the Labour Party?

No, according to owners Trinity Mirror, who maintain the Record will continue to support Ed Miliband et al.