Gavin Yates (Edinburgh, GYMedia): The Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has taken the unprecedented step of writing to all 189 signatories of the International Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in an attempt to get all nuclear weapons out of Scotland.Salmond is asking them to back his bid for Scotland to have observer status at future treaty talks. The countries that the FM has contacted include Iran and Zimbabwe, causing one Scottish Labour MSP to say: "He has written to some very despotic and dangerous individuals, which we have very sensitive and complex relationships with, and treated it like a weekly political football. It is potentially very damaging to our national security."
I don't think Salmond writing to Robert Mugabe makes any difference to national security, but it does show that the SNP is consistently getting increasingly involved in matters that used to be the domain of Whitehall. They previously used fishing as a lever for a higher European profile and to the many CND supporters in Scotland their willingness to ‘do something about' Trident will be a positive.
On more domestic matters the announcement today that the Scottish Government is ready to scrap prescription charges will be met positively by many of the thousands of people in Scotland with long-term chronic conditions that are still working. In this correspondent's view this is an overdue move from any government. Making people with MS or MND pay for scripts is utterly perverse.
The announcement didn't play as well with the traditional English media, with the Daily Telegraph reporting it as a form of ‘public service apartheid' against patients in England. Perhaps rather than blaming the Scottish Government for moving towards fairness they should instead lobby Alastair Darling to follow suit.
