Evening, all
Hope you like the new layout, it’s not much similar to what it was, but as you can see the masthead has been changed somewhat!
Onto tonight’s thoughts and firstly the obligatory congratulations to Strauss’ boys for beating an equally brave and resilient Australian team – having said that I do think that if they were short of a Warney or a Glenn McGrath away from beating England. It would be great to try and get out over to Melbourne for the Boxing Day test next December.
Back however to the moment at hand and the ever-continuing fallout surrounding the release of the Lockerbie bomber, with politicians both in Washington and London not being able to help themselves but criticise the Scottish government over the way the authorities in Edinburgh handled the affair.
There is a thought beginning to come about in certain circles, that Labour are considering launching a ‘No Confidence’ vote in the Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny Macaskill, whose somewhat ‘higher thou authoritarian’ speech to the awaiting journalists on Thursday has been widely ridiculed, by the right-wing gutter press. If such a vote, was to go against the Scottish Administration, then it would seen plausible that Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland would tend his resignation, and then they could be looking at what would be termed to be a Extraordinary Scottish General Election. Now that would be interesting to see. However, as much as both the Scottish government and Lord Mandleson would like to protest, there has to be more to this than meets the eye.
Why the fuck is a letter being released now, from Chairman Brown to Colonel Gaddafi addressed to "Dear Muammar" and signed off by wishing him a happy Ramadan, suggests that the decision was well enough advanced and Brown well enough briefed to set terms for a homecoming – albeit unsuccessfully. Brown knew what was going on, and tried to cover his tracks, as per normal.
Whilst this letter has been released, details are emerging of a second letter written by the Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis to MacAskill, confirming that there were no legal reasons not to let Megrahi go and concluding: "I hope on this basis you will now feel able to consider the Libyan application."
Although the Foreign Office said it was not intended to make representations either way, the leaking of the letter suggests that representations were made not just by the Libyans, but by London itself. That causes into question what Mandleson said yesterday afternoon, alluding that those who suggested that a quid-pro-quo for oil in return for Megrahi was ‘offensive’.
Of course, Mandelson does have previous in lying to protect his own interests…
