I wonder if any of you lot know the story of how the Jocks managed to get a couple of Panda bears shipped over to Edinburgh Zoo? I doubt if it is many of you, but it’s an interesting tale; to cut my typing short, I've stuck a few links in which give some of the detail.
Anyway, here we go. The Nobel Peace Prize, as you are aware, is awarded by a committee of five Norwegian parliamentarians (the other Nobel’s are awarded by the Swedes). Two years ago, the prize was awarded to the human rights campaigner, Liu Xiaobo. As you can guess, he's Chinese and his government were not exactly happy bunnies over this. So peeved off were they that they retaliated by effectively blocking the export of Norwegian salmon to China. Read about it here:
AFP: Norwegian salmon off the menu in China
The only other major supplier of farmed Atlantic salmon is, of course, Scotland. Now, you would have assumed that Scotland, being a good neighbour of Norway and sharing many of its maritime bounties, would have sought not to take advantage of this. There are, after all, certain principles at stake. But that is not quite what happened. Read on:
BBC News - Chinese appetite for Scottish salmon leaps
As part of the deal, Salmon got his Pandas.
Anyway, if there is a lesson to this story, it's this: Never thrust the Jocks - they are as morally bankrupt as they are financially and the sooner we have a referendum in England on whether to continue our union with them, the better. Lets end it now and the only question that will then remain will be how high we build the frontier walls to keep 'em out
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