So it's true, small really is beautiful

WE could do with some more art around the Holyrood building, to take the bare look off some of the big expanses of concrete, if for nothing else. I'm thinking of taking up a collection to fund a statue of Pasqual Lamy, managing director of the World Trade Organisation, and former EU Trade Commissioner.

This super-intelligent, savvy and experienced diplomat, politician and international trade expert has said quite clearly that in dealing with the global market, small economies cope better than big economies. You've no idea how much his words cheered me up.

I've been banging this drum for years, but now someone as eminent as the boss of the WTO has implicitly contradicted the claims of unionists that Scotland benefits from being a region of the UK represented by Westminster ministers in Brussels, as compared to the Republic of Ireland, whose ministers and civil servants wheel and deal in the EU.

I don't claim to having anything more than a fraction of this Frenchman's knowledge of international trade, but I cottoned-on to small being beautiful in the international trade business when I happened to be in Dublin, making a programme for BBC TV, on Black Wednesday, when Chancellor Norman Lamont pulled the pound sterling out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the forerunner of the euro.

Interviewing the then Minister for Commerce, I discovered she would announce, the next day, a raft of measures to protect Irish businesses that exported into the UK. When I reminded her that such measures were illegal under EU rules, she smiled and explained patiently, as if speaking to a none-too-bright ten-year old. She reminded me everybody knew the Irish were good Europeans and that by the time the case against the Irish Government was out of the European Court, the then current economic upheaval would have blown over, trading would be back to normal, and nobody would be too much bothered at how Ireland had protected her traders.

Ireland's effect on the EU economy was small enough for the Commission to ignore, but similar action by a big power, like the UK, would have been impossible for the EU to accommodate. There's a difference between the opportunities, and limitations, for large and small countries to be had from international groupings of countries, whether for trading or economic reasons.

A small economy like Scotland will not exercise the political influence of a big, rich country like France, Germany or the US. But small countries like Norway, Sweden, Singapore or New Zealand can, and do, spend their national resources on health, education, transport rather than on the trappings of national greatness.

Some unionists may scrape some small comfort from Lamy's enthusiasm for subsidiarity, taking decisions as close as possible to the people affected by them, unless it can be proved more beneficial to do otherwise. The WTO does not take political sides, so Lamy, correctly, did not single out Scotland as benefiting, potentially, from organising its own economy and negotiating its own trade deals.

But he had nailed his colours to the mast when he quite categorically pointed out the advantages in being a small fish in the global trading pool. He also put paid to the notion that political independence equals separatism, and people drawing apart from each other.

He spelt out that negotiation was the name of the game in the global economy. That's the process by which different countries or groups have to listen, and see the other guy's point of view, before reaching agreement or agreeing to differ. But both sides know it's in their interest not to fall out, because there will be other deals waiting to be done, in the future.

Gaza calling
WHAT'S the most densely-populated part of the planet? No, not Bangladesh, a country that doesn't have its sorrows to seek, but that can at least count on the international community doing something, however small, to alleviate the effects of natural disasters.

Gaza's one and a half million, mainly refugees, hold the unenviable record for overcrowding and containment, without access to essentials like medical supplies. Khalil Alniss and Linda Willis have the determination, and a van, to get to Gaza. Now they need to fill the van with medical supplies . . . with your help.

Views set in stone
I'VE so far spoken to four people who've seen the film about the Stone of Destiny being returned to Scotland by Ian Hamilton and his three pals in 1950. All agreed it to be really enjoyable and amusing. All were supporters of different political parties, two being unsure about independence, but all agreeing that The Stone was a Scottish icon that transcends politics.

Yet do I detect the whiff of unionism on the defensive in the panning the film's taken from the critics?