Tom Peterkin on Salmond and Obama

There was a thought provoking column in yesterday's (Tuesday's) Times. Angus Macleod picked up on an article in the most recent Scotland on Sunday in which we revealed that Alex Salmond has sent an invitation to Barack Obama to a Burns Supper the First Minister is hosting in Washington next month as part of Scotland Week.

Angus remarked that it can only be a matter of time before Obama is invited by someone at Holyrood to learn the words of "My Granny's Heilan' Hame" as he lamented the "small country-itis" that appears to be infecting Scotland.

It has also occurred to me that we are seeing more and more Brigadoonery, tartanalia and shortbreaditis (if those are words) festooned about the place in this year of Homecoming.

Angus went on to say that Obama "would be well-advised to steer clear of the event (the Burns Supper) rather than risk an interminable Salmond lecture on how Scots invented and discovered everything worthwhile and how the whole world is obsessed by a small country on the northwest fringe of Europe".

The contributions offered by Scots to the world (penicillin, the telly, telephone, the Tunnock's tea cake) are surely things to be justifably proud of, although the swaggering "Wha's Like Us" attitude is in danger of being overdone.

On balance, however, I almost prefer that sort of attitude to the talk of ending the "Scottish cringe" that was such a feature of Jack McConnell' s administration. I never knew what the "Scottish cringe" was. Was it something to do with an inferiority complex? In any case, nothing made me cringe more than listening to McConnell blethering on about ending it.