Cross-Posted At Harry’s Place.
Despite previously having being willing to galavant abroad to where he neither was requested nor required, the President of the Calvinistic Republic of Scotland has appealed to propriety and rules when declining a request for him or ministers to be questioned by the US Senate on the early release of Abdul Bassett-Baby.
Reasons included there being “no new information” to provide: such as his revelation that US authorities prefered compassionate release to a prisonor transfer scheme. Other reasons no doubt included a desire not to be turned into haggis, like Tony Hayward: a fate far worse than being called a “sap” on the floor of Holyrood.
In addition, Salmond is calling for the release of all relevent files by the UK and US Governments. Given that, unless persuaded otherwise, I assume that pertinent documents already have been made public within the letter of the law, this strikes as a courtesy.
I do not think you are in any position to demand those of others, Alex.
A Rabbit's Eye View of the Hyperborean North 
26/07/2010 at 15:07 |
Suggest you read this:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2010/07/26141356
26/07/2010 at 16:31 |
Although the WordPress software designated that as spam, I retrieved it and read it.
Very interesting.
Salmond’s looking a bit deflated, no?
26/07/2010 at 17:51 |
No. He’s looking consistent.
26/07/2010 at 23:33 |
Consistently passive aggressive, and equating criticism of him and his Party and its Minority Administration with criticism of Scotland? Not to mention a desire for self-promotion which is equaled only by an incapability to place himself in any situation which he doesn’t control?
Yes.
27/07/2010 at 10:43 |
What an extraordinary picture. I wonder if Silvio (or the PM of the state that shall not be named, above all not as the Republic of Macedonia) is jealous. Although I have to ask: what on earth were SCIAF (who in general are less prone to getting into…shall we say stupid things than their English/Welsh counterpart) thinking of in publishing such an image?
I suppose it says something for the SNP administration’s admirable anti-sectarianism that it has a Catholic charity bigging up the man like that.
(To those who don’t know the source of the image: it’s here http://www.sciaf.org.uk/get_involved/campaigning/news_and_updates/campaigns_news/climate_change_the_need_to_lead)
Maybe it’s a witty, post-modern, ironic (not to say irenic) reference to the relatively disproportionate role of Scots in the conquering, ruling and administering of the former British empire.
Nothing would surprise me anymore.
(Am currently reading Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie’s rather fine 1988 history of the Scottish Tories, which appeals rather to my inner and barely disguised Jacobite. It has a foreword by Margaret Thatcher and reminds us both of the Tories’ fall from representation north of the border for almost the best part of a century previously, and also that they had an absolute majority of the vote there as recently as 1955. Those times may yet come again, as party boundaries seem to be dissolving all around, both north and south of Berwick)
27/07/2010 at 16:20 |
No homoeroticism there, as with Putin’s publicity shots.
27/07/2010 at 19:14 |
Said Gerard Warner is a very wise man
His latest
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100048734/scrap-the-meaningless-terms-left-and-right-and-reclaim-the-honourable-title-reactionary/
Not that I necessarily agree with every last word: but my goodness, what a genuine (not in the Tony Benn we laugh at him so he is tolerable sense) national treasure of Alba that man is
In the words of (future national treasure) Andrew Cusack
“Much of what Gerald says is, to sensible people, simply obvious. But one of the great dangers of our modern age is that what ought to be simply obvious is becoming less and less so due to deliberate obfuscation by the political and media classes.”
Oyea!