WERE I a fan, which I am not, of ''Special Advisers'' for the Scottish Executive I would be recommending Antony J McElroy as a replacement for the spin doctors that Donald Dewar is getting into a habit of losing. I would of course be doing so with the knowledge of Mr McElroy's letter in The Herald on January 28 attacking the Scottish National Party and leaping to the defence of the Liberal Democrats.
Indeed I was most delighted by his defence of the Liberals as I am led to believe that Mr McElroy is the Chair of Glasgow University Labour Club. I now appear to be getting into a habit of ''outing'' people as Chairs of the said organisation in the letters page of The Herald as I did this to the previous incumbent. I would make a plea to them not to be ashamed of their position. Indeed if it is the same Antony McElroy he is fiercely proud of being the Chair of Glasgow University Labour Club, as the GU Guardian recently reported.
His letter ridiculed the assertion that the Liberal Democrats have failed to deliver their manifesto commitment to ''abolish tuition fees for all Scottish students at UK Universities''. It is plain and simple, no amount of spin can deny it, that the Liberal Democrats have not delivered what they said they would. What really gets me is the statement regarding the SNP wanting to ''strengthen the defences of Hadrian's Wall''.
This is the case only in the mind of a prospective New Labour spin doctor and is rich coming from a member of a party whose leader admires Margaret Thatcher and would quite happily be isolated in Europe so long as he was right!
The Unionists forget one thing, probably deliberately, when they try to conjure up images of a Scotland independent but isolated and that it is the British State that has us separated. Separated from the European Union, separated from the United Nations. It is the United Kingdom that is behind a barrier.
He goes on to accuse the SNP of being ''content to see this Parliament fail''. The only people who appear intent on seeing the Scottish Parliament fail are those in the Administration, Millbank Tower, Westminster, and of course the Conservatives. The past 1000 days of farce show it to be the case. Let it be clear that remaining part of the British State is the real separatism and that with independence we will join the world.
William Henderson,
National Convener, Federation of
Student Nationalists,
3/2 35 St Mungo Avenue,
Glasgow.
January 31.
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