Un Happy Land Far Far Away

As a PS to yesterday's post Huttonian strongly recommends the article about Michael Martin's constituency where his son is the sitting MSP.

The febrile atmosphere of Westminster? Indeed; having worked many years in and out of Whitehall I can vividly remember the hothouse frenetic feverish atmosphere in which we all worked long hours but achieving what? No matter, you felt at the centre of things, 'exciting intoxocating' is right,and it used to give me a bit of a frisson to be able to say at some party in reply to the usual first question 'In the Foreign Office, actually' pursing my lips to discourage the next probing question, as if to convey, ' Her Majesty's secrets are safe with me'. Most people I met on the social round used to assume that all members of the FCO were spies and it was fun to let that thought ride, undenied. One genuine spook acquaintance when naively asked 'What exactly do you do?' used to put one finger against the side of his nose, smile enigmatically and ask the waiter for 'Another Dry Martini please-less stirred than the last'

Now deep in the Borders, my one way pad and poisoned Carnation spray handed back to Q,I feel very detached from Whitehall, Embra and even Newtown St Boswells. The Borders doesn't do politics with a big P and I doubt if many people around here have got too worked up about the expenses row, and fewer still will know or care who their Westminster MP is. Certainly they will all know the MSP, the ernegetic Mr Lamont who pops up all over the place but the Scottish Executive has a much more sensible arrangement over MSP's expenses although it can be abused as alleged when the Laird made headlines over the use of a family flat in Embra (See here for a refresher course-scroll down a bit)

Mind you if we were suddenly ethnically cleansed and transported at gun point to Martin and Son land as described in the Scottish Review we might feel a bit differently about goings on in the capital

Some one being asked, this morning, in Nairns about voting in the forthcoming European Parliamentary Elections replied 'What Elections are those?' -he may have been tempted to add 'What Parliament?' but was suddenly distracted by the sight of the Jim Clarke Rally Official Event Programme. 'Closing all those bloody road, Effing inconvenient'

Now that really matters

(Does anyone know what the image is? Not Farmer C's latest Tweed Side Pad. I thought not)

Labels: Glasga, Jim Clarke Rally, Speaker Martin Expenses, Spooks, the Laird

  ¶ 9:40 AM