How Scottish is Gordon Brown?

"Is it because he's a Scot?" asked a Scottish friend in Cornwall, wondering why Gordon Brown was getting such bad publicity.

The answer,probably, is yes. The Scots, as anyone who has worked and lived there can tell you, are intelligent, generally better educated than the English, hospitable and well organised.; Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have surrounded themselves with fellow-Scots in their governments.

So what is the problem? "It's difficult being a Scot," one well-known arts critic from Edinburgh told me. "There are a lot of rules and you have to keep them or you are in trouble. I like Cornwall (the critic was on holiday) because it's like Scotland without the rules."

Once New Labour came in, armed by Scots, I knew there would be more rules. I had lived and worked in Scotland for five years. You have to be much more careful there about the minutiae of every day life than in England.

So now we have a cascade of legislation making sure we are watched and counted and don't break any rules without being punished......proposals for ID cards (hated since they were abolished at the end of the last war) 42 days' detention for suspects before trial, cameras watching our movements from every angle. And Gordon Brown asking us to feel "British", put flags in our gardens and celebrate being British once a year. Oh, yes, and wars. The Scottish clans were always keen on those.

No, thanks, Gordon. It all feels like being back at school again. Soon they will be telling us where and when we can run and at what times we can eat. The Queen feels British, I'm sure. Gordon almost certainly secretly feels Scottish to his calvinistic backbone. And as for me, I'm Yorkshire. The Cornish don't mind that, so long as we remember than they are far superior to any of those "up country."

ends