"The Scottish National Party has called on the first minister to return from the US to handle the government's response to the bird flu outbreak.
Jack McConnell is in America for Tartan Week celebrations and is not due back until Sunday, while his deputy Nicol Stephen is on holiday.
In the meantime, Rural Affairs Minister Ross Finnie said he was in charge.
However, the SNP's deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon said the situation needed a top level response.
"I think the first minister should come back from the United States immediately," she said.
"I understand the civil contingency committee will meet this afternoon and I think it would be appropriate in those circumstances for him to get back."
I am tempted to agree, if only to prevent the First Minister from making more embarrassing speeches in the US, such as this one reported in The Scotsman:
"JACK McConnell will today compare the post-devolution era to the Scottish Enlightenment in his Tartan Day address to mark the 686th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath.
The First Minister will tell an audience of academics and students at Princeton University in New Jersey that Scotland is enjoying a "democratic renaissance" which mirrors the 18th-century explosion of new ideas and values.
He will claim that Scotland's re-invigorated scientific industries and higher education could be the "tipping point" for a new period of advances in research."
As Freedom and Whisky has pointed out, the First Minister has lost the plot. He clearly knows little about the Scottish Enlightenment. To suggest that we are enjoying a democratic renaissance is daft enough but, even if we were, how would that mirror the Scottish Enlightenment? And the guys at Princeton might actually know about the Enlightenment...
In all the circumstances, perhaps he better hotfoot it back to Scotland and supervise Captain Mainwaring's dealings with dead swans.
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