And whilst we're on the subject of loonies:
Al Fayed: 'I'll move if Scots go it alone'
Harrod's owner Mohammed Al Fayed has said he would move to Scotland permanently if the country became independent.
Mr Al Fayed said his 65,000 acre Balnagown estate in Easter Ross, was "the most beautiful place in the Highlands".
And he told BBC Radio Scotland that when the country was "free and independent I am going to move there permanently".
The joke of a President is to visit the joke of an Assembly:
US President George W Bush is to visit Northern Ireland next month. The visit follows this month's US investment in Belfast.
The details of the presidential visit are still being worked out.
However, it is understood that Mr Bush wants to put his seal of approval on devolution.
WENDY Alexander's demand for an early referendum on Scottish independence two weeks ago holed a secret plan being drafted by UK Labour chiefs to trigger a vote on the matter as early as this winter, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.
Detailed proposals were being drawn up in Whitehall to put forward a Scottish referendum bill in the House of Commons which would have led to a quick vote on the future of the country.
Gordon Brown is understood to have been considering the plan, but it was ruled out after Alexander made a chaotic U-turn, forcing the Prime Minister to disassociate the party from such a scheme.
Labour's plan until then had been to organise a referendum at Westminster where it could have controlled the timing and the wording of the question put to the people. Labour sources point out that as the Constitution is a reserved matter, it should be Westminster which organises the vote, and not Holyrood. They also point out that, with Labour having a majority at Westminster, a bill proposing a referendum could have been passed "within weeks", thereby ensuring that the matter could have been dealt with quickly.
From our favourite Hate-Hack:
Make no mistake, Paisley’s big hearty handshake with Bertie at Farmleigh House last year was the beginning of what will inevitably be a lengthy dalliance.
That dalliance will only be consummated when unionists are confident enough to behave as equals.
Unfortunately you can’t see Robinson and Depooty Dawds stepping up to that mark
When a unionist leader finally does cut the mustard the resulting compact between the two dominant forces on the island, Fianna Fail and unionism, will have serious consequences for northern nationalists.
Alan Cochrane on the updating of the separatist (sorry, make that "social unionist") lexicon:
Nowadays, the SNP message eschews such vulgar, and oft times frightening terms such as "separate". What they want is for all of us to have a warm, cuddly feeling about breaking up the United Kingdom.
Not that they'd approve of "breaking up", either. I'm not sure that given their present state of mind they'd even admit to wanting to "leave" the UK. That's way too abrasive for the new, avuncular Alex.
What he wants us to believe is that somehow or other Scotland would just glide away from its 300-plus-year-old union with England, Wales and, now, Northern Ireland. And it would happen in such a fashion as hardly anyone would notice that we'd gone. (By the way quite a few English people wish we'd hurry up about it).
He keeps stressing that what he wants, in an ideal world, is for Scotland to maintain what he calls its "social union" with England, in that we could all keep watching Coronation Street and Big Brother but that we'd in some mysterious way be different from our former partners. Not "separate" - that word is banned, just different.
He concedes that we'd be "independent" - that word is still allowed, just, in the new Nat lexicon - from Westminster but that above all else we'd still retain our loyalty to the Queen, as would England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That way instead of the United Kingdom we could have the United Kingdoms.
About time:
TALKS between Whitehall and the devolved administrations on “common denominators” that can be included in a single UK-wide constitution for the NHS are in the pipeline.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the idea yesterday, and the constitution is expected to enshrine in law the right to treatment free at the point of need.
Rioting Rangers fans have weakened the Union they so love.
Up to about six months ago, the SNP constantly pointed to the Velvet Divorce of Czechslovakia in 1992 as an example of how their proposed split-up of the United Kingdom could likewise occur in a peaceful and amicable fashion. I pointed out previously that I thought this was a very dodgy comparison to be making; yes the split was a reasonably friendly one, but it heralded the rise of a meglomaniac fascist Prime-Minister, corruption, press censorship, a servile judiciary, political/business assassinations and more importantly (and still current) steadily increasing ethnic tensions in Slovakia. Now, if you were really going to take the original comparison to its logical conclusions, Slovakia being the smaller, more nationalist of the two countries, the (now) Czech Republic the richer, with most of the financial and industrial capital, then you can probably see why I (if I had been Alex Salmond) would not have been risking being identified as the Caledonian Vladimir Meciar.
I seriously doubt Alex is a reader of this blog, but coincidence or not, The Velvet Divorce is now rarely mentioned as the template to follow. So, it was interesting to see this different take on the question from Neil Ascherson in The Herald. Contrary to what I had been told from a previously impeccable source (Ms O'Neill has more than a passing interest in the politics of the region), it was the Czechs and specifically Vaclav Klaus (today the country's President) who basically manipulated the Slovaks splitting away; as the journalist Theodore Draper wrote: "It was as if Meciar pounded on Klaus's door without really wanting to knock it down; to Meciar's surprise, Klaus opened the door and Meciar fell in."
There was dissatisfaction in both parts of the old Czechoslovakia with the federal structure, but not to the extent that a majority in either the Czech lands or Slovakia wished for a complete separation- how do we know this? Well, the question was not trusted to the population in a referendum, the politicians basically made the decision on behalf of their people.
If you've got a fair to middling imagination you can tie in the situation in the Czechsolvakia of 1992 with that existing between England and Scotland 2008; there is great dissatisfaction with the present constitutional situation, nationalism is rising both sides of the border and there are cynical elements within the Conservative Party who want to take advantage of a SNP Adminstration to increase their power-base within England. There are crucial differences- whatever his faults, Salmond is no Meciar, Cameron intellectually is no Klaus and surely no UK government would attempt to make such an important constitutional decision without referring to their electorate?
But is it also not beyond the realms of possibility that the electorates of both countries could find themselves pushed, ever so gently, by manipulative forces beyond their control towards a separation that they do not want?
Isn't that the real lesson to be pulled from the Velvet Divorce?
Whether you live in England or Wales, it's still the United Kingdom and we should all receive the same treatment.
The community, nine miles from the Welsh border, has launched an online campaign to redraw the UK map and become part of Wales.
And it's not just because, though it pains me to admit it, Wales are the better rugby nation at the moment.
What started as an April 1 spoof has gathered momentum, and nearly two-thirds of those voting on Audlem's village website have voiced their desire to abandon England for good to capitalise on the healthcare benefits.
There is a growing system of medical apartheid between two countries with so many similarities, right down to the same legal system.
"Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun," Hermann Goering famously never said.
Sinn Fein, conversely, has put down its gun and reached for the word ‘culture’. There is little reason to believe that this strategy will be any more successful than the last one.
On Wednesday night, before during and after the UEFA Cup final, over 15 Greater Manchester Police officers were injured under a "severe level of attack" from Rangers fans, a Russian fan was stabbed and 42 arrests were made.
In all probability, a majority of those 42, if charged, will be served with football banning orders, which will stop from them attending any matches in England; however, there will be nothing legal to prevent them from still attending matches in Scotland. Quite clearly, as Alex Salmond as pointed out yesterday, it is a ridiculous anomaly when over 150 Chelsea and Man Utd *fans* on such banning orders, will be prevented from travelling to Moscow for next week's Champions League Final, but thugs involved in Wednesday night's trouble will be able to stroll unimpeded into the next Rangers away match in Scotland. It's high time this legislation was changed, British hooligans should be banned from all British grounds.
Mr Straw told MPs on the Justice Committee: “I am wholly opposed to an English parliament. If you went down that route, there would be little advantage seen by those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for maintaining the Union, because the argument would be, what exactly is in it for us?
“I am wholly opposed to a Northern Irish/Scottish/Welsh Assembly. If you went down that route, not only would there be little advantage seen by those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but also in England support for maintaining the Union would drop, because the argument would be, what exactly is in it for us?”
You get the feeling that Philip Stephens, writing in the Financial Times, is not a great fan of The Tartanissimo, or at least his personality; the summary of the first page of this article would probably read something along the lines of "Mr Salmond is a smug, conceited populist who has achieved nothing in real terms (other than upsetting the English) during the first year of his premiership.”
But as Stephen implicitly admits, there is an impressive Machiavellian cunning also at work there; Salmond senses that presently there isn't a majority of Scots wanting Scottish independence- if there was, then Wendy’s initial offer of a snap referendum last week would have been gratefully grabbed.
That being the case, the first theory in the article goes, let's get the English to deliver it for us, “enrage” them enough, so that they (with the help of the power-hungry, non-principled prostitute "pragmatic" wing of the Conservative party) "push Scotland out of the Union - or at least behave so badly that the Scots see no alternative".
Which is fine as a short-term tactic, but if the resulting fire and the fury prevents a full and uninhibited debate on the objective costs of separation, then, inevitably, the Scottish electorate will, at some point after independence, turn on Alex when those full economic, political and social costs start being realized. And, as mentioned before, Salmond is nothing if not a calculating and personally intensely ambitious politician.
Following on from that premise, then Stephens' second theory makes more sense to me.
Without the Nasty Brit Establishment as a scapegoat to continually blame (not to mention its central funding), then the SNP would actually have to produce real policies to ensure any newly independent state would remain a viable entity and, thinking about it further, once their raison d'etre was achieved, what actually would be the point of a SNP? More pertinently, even with a pissed off England, Salmond knows there "is scant prospect of independence." But taking a leaf out of the Quebecois and Catalunyan separatist handbook, that inconvenient fact needn't stop him from grabbing even more power from the centre, without suffering the economic and political consequences of total and complete separation.
So, in a reverse of Scottish Unionism's present policy, ie "fighting independence by requesting more independence"; the SNP would be "fighting Unionism by keeping the Union in place". The personal benefit to Mr Salmond, given the state of the opposition, is that he'd probably be PM for life, without the attendant and bothersome responsibilities that position normally entails.
Sound feasible?
You do not have to arrive at the destination, however, to enjoy the journey..
For all his True-Brit bluster, the one thing guaranteed to save the Union is the one thing Brown will never do:
It’s too late, Mr Brown. The chicken has flown the coop, the genie is out of the bottle. You saw to that on the day you said devolve and it is too late to put back the stopper. Unless, that is, you once again make sure that privileges, taxes, rules and legislative procedures are the same from Lands’ End to John o’Groats.
Ole Cap’n Orangebeard’s still at the helm and if you don’t obey what he says, with no question like, he’ll slap ya' in a irons, and thro' ya in da' brig, arrr.
Er, right...so, The Newsletter’s letters’ page is usually a refuge for DUP party hacks disguised as “Delighted of Dungannon” or “Ecstatic of Edenderry", informing us that (thanks entirely to the Dupes), the Union’s safe, Irish Nationalism defeated forever, today is Saturday, black is white etc.
It was nice to see a rather poetic alternative today, and from a UUP councillor at that.
DR Paisley says that he is launching a stately ship - well, there are pirates on board.
The skull and crossbones remind us of the unsolved murders and the patch over one eye partial sight toward the British mainland. There is no mention of life boats, the top crew think it is unsinkable and able to negotiate Irish currents.
Those who cry iceberg cause the 'big guns' to roar and threats of internal mutiny is put down with signed agreements to be cast overboard.
The shanties are bilingual and self-indulgent intoxicating spin of battles fought and victories won.
I hardly think the rugged men of the shipyard would have broken a bottle on this new sea vessel, more likely over the heads of the crew.
Councillor David Barbour,
UUP, Coleraine
Scottish Labour are obviously not finished yet making fools of themselves:
Labour MSPs have said they could not guarantee support for a referendum Bill when ministers bring it in 2010.
Following a group meeting, the party insisted it had never promised a "blank cheque" to the Nationalists.
The real problem now for unionism, as it was in 1921, is that we (the pragmatists) are being forced to defend a structure of government which we never really wanted and which may, in the long-term, prove to be thoroughly bad for us.
