Bugging

Despite not being a Labour supporter I have always like the three Labour First Ministers we've had, Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell, especially McLeish. How can one not like anyone who has played for East Fife.
The news that McConnell was hacked by News of The World journalists does provoke more than mild surprise though. Why bother. Back in the the old pre Devolution days Hugh MacDiarmid acidly pointed out that the trouble with Scotland was that there was no political person worth an assassination. Nowadays bugging and printing the results brings the same end result. But why bother with Jack?  I recall someone( aren't the best stories always third hand) of someone who had spoken with a former Secret Service person who was tasked with bugging ex Scottish National Union of Mineworkers chief Mick McGahey. He found this the most tedious of jobs he ever did as all he ever listened to was McGahey's wife's gossip on the phone from her Corstorphine bungalow. Corstorphine gossip, I suspect, would not furnish enough material for much, certainly not the great book which George MacKay Brown wrote about village gossip in Orkney. My memory is lapsing but think it was entitled "Greenvoe". Well worth a read.
Anyway I'm in the middle of a working period just now and the bowling season is upon us again so busier than normal but will keep the blog going as much as I can, hope no-one is bugging my talks with my teddies...