Hamish Macdonell - The things he said

MIKE Russell, Scotland's new arts minister has had quite an artistic past himself, and that includes his book 'In Waiting: Travels in the Shadow of Edwin Muir'.
Its fair to say that this tome would hardly have been required reading for anybody in politics, let alone the Labour Party, before Mr Russell assumed ministerial office.
Now, though, everyone is reading it or, to be more precise, everyone is going through it to pick out bits which might embarrass the new minister.
So far Labour have found such gems as these:
Russell suggests Glasgow is too dangerous to get out of a car, and that tenement closes were covered with the bodies of unconscious drug addicts
He claims the flag on Edinburgh Castle is "an awful mutant tablecloth"
He bemoans that Dumfries is full of "skinny, ill-dressed women", he brands Aberdeen as "inhospitable" and Stirling as "less desirable".
Such revelations might cause Mr Russell's civil servants a few palpitations but the new minister is made of sterner, and more arrogant, stuff than that.
He is also pugnacious enough to take on any Labour MSP prepared to argue the case on any of these descriptions (he might also be pleased that such interest in his book might add a few copies to the sales figures).
ends