Rock the Boat, Don't Rock the Boat Salmond

Alex Salmond has suggested that he, Mr Paisley and the future Welsh First Minister would be better off negotiating with Gordon Brown as one, rather than as individuals. Actually I am doing him a disservice as he has a much more poetic turn of phrase: "We take the view that three hands at the tiller steering in the same direction are better than one."

He indicated his interested in getting Scotland in on the act over the North's appeal to have our corporation tax of 30 per cent slashed to come into line with the South's attractive rate of 12.5 per cent.

Okay so as Mr Salmond said in his address to the Senate, we are divided by only a "thin band of water" but surely he recognises that the North's businesses are at a much greater disadvantage due to the divergence of corporation taxes, than Scotland.
Therefore we are in greater need of swift and significant movement on this matter. Mr Brown might consider giving the North some concession, although probably not the whole lot, and Mr Paisley today indicated that he has appeared more amenable of late, but if the future British PM thought that with every foot-up he gave to the North that he had to also give it to the other two, then each Parliament may well be worse off.

On the other hand, Labour didn't do very well in the Scottish elections, so would Gordon Brown be better served spending generously in his homeland where votes may be won back, rather than across the sea where they do not even stand? In that case it seems that the North would be better off clinging on to the tiller.

Another possibility is that Paisley, McGuinness and Salmond had to do and say something since the Scot had made the trip over and in reality their relationship was just to give something for the journalists to write. After all he mentioned that he was "pleased to sign a joint statement" but then they never released the contents of the statement.

Mr Salmond also said that "no two peoples in Europe had more in common," than bonnie old Ireland and the emerald Scottish isle.
Could he have meant our problems with sectarianism? Orange marches? Lousy weather? Fried food and alcohol obsessions? Heart disease?
Probably all the above, but I like to think he was referring to Ulster-Scots.
It seems that Jim Shannon's Ulster-Scots lessons are growing ever more popular with even the least likely of people becoming au fait with the language-dialect (delete as appropriate).
As everyone got their notebooks and dictaphones primed for a press conference today one journalist asked Martin McGuinness if he had any Ulster Scots, to which he swiftly replied, "Och aye!"