Hamish Macdonell - Interest stateside

GORDON Brown maybe in Washington at the moment, but he is not the only British politician grabbing the headlines.
A piece recently appeared in the Boston Globe, starting like this:
"One of the most interesting politicians in Europe these days is a Scot, and I don't mean Gordon Brown. Alex Salmond is the first minister of a devolved Scottish parliament, a creation of Tony Blair's Labor government designed to take the wind out of Scottish separatist sentiments.
"A few years ago, however, a ranking member of the British royal family, whose members aren't supposed to get involved with politics, committed an indiscretion by telling me that he thought devolved parliaments were a terrible idea because they could break up the United Kingdom. The Welsh would stay with England, and maybe the Northern Irish, he said, but the Scots probably would not. Salmond, the head of the Scottish National Party, is banking on the royal being right."
How fickle the American press is. Mr Salmond got mixed coverage during his recent trip to the States, getting some positive publicity from some quarters and ignored in others.
Now he is back here and getting glowing reports over there. Maybe he should just stay in Scotland.
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Hamish Macdonell - You can bank on it

THERE is always somebody who says 'I told you so', whatever the situation and today's latest bail-out of the banks has allowed the left-wingers of Solidarity to ride in, claiming they always wanted to see the banks nationalised.
Tommy Sheridan's supporters (in his self-enforced absence) don't quite go as far as praising Gordon Brown for following their policies of nationalising the banks but they come close to it.
They use today's latest gloomy economic news to call what they really want "genuine people's banks", which would lead to the nationalisation of almost everything else, including, crucially, the means of production.
I guess that's the true sign of a revolutionary, take change in your direction any way you can get it.
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