View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Tuesday 23 March 2010

Tuesday 23 March

Overcast and increasingly windy. Just after 2pm, the wind ratched up a notch to about force 7 from the south. Made progress on foot rather more difficult than usual; in a built-up area, houses and buildings can funnel the breeze. As a result, we've been treated to the spectacle of shreds of paper blown around the area. Added to that were 8 inch blobs of suds which were floating on the wind. These emanated from a sewerage outfall pipe down the shore, across from my position, where a large blob of foam had congregated. The tide is out, so we'll just await high tide at 1 am tonight to wash it all away.

The British government has decided to expel an Israeli diplomat in the wake of the row over forged UK passports. Earlier this year, a leading figure in the Palestinian movement Hamas was assassinated in Dubai by a number of men carrying forged UK passports (and other European passports, also fake). Although the finger of blame firmly points towards the Israeli security agency Mossad, no concrete evidence to link the Israelis to the murder is available. Nonetheless, the UK Foreign Secretary has squarely blamed Israel for this "intolerable" misuse of UK passports. Mossad is well known for ignoring laws when executing its brief of protecting the security of the state of Israel. Hamas and Israel fought a bloody battle over Gaza a year ago. The "peace process" is as dead as it has always been, in spite of various talking shops hosted by people like Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and Tony Blair. I see no prospect of that festering sore being cured anytime soon.