If you don't mind, girls, count me out

MANAGING to stifle her jubilation over Labour's woes, Christine Richard, once at the heart of local politics in the City Chambers, organised a wild weekend for the WISE girls (Women Into Self-Employment).

"I introduced them to some high culture with Scottish Ballet's Romeo & Juliet last night and this morning Irish Consul General Cliona Manahan hosted breakfast for them at the new spruced-up consulate at the start of an all-action day.

"They'll be guests of Telford College, then down to Ocean Terminal to visit the Royal Yacht before a walking tour of Edinburgh by night. Tomorrow morning I'll take them to the Scottish Parliament."

She says she'd opt out of walking the city in the dark. Wise girl.

Note: Christine decamped from the Conservatives to Labour but she's a Tory, born and bred. She doesn't kid me.

God on his side
It's been a hard life for Cardinal Keith O'Brien of late but he is making light of it. As if a pacemaker installed on Palm Sunday after a nasty fall in house in St Mary's Cathedral wasn't enough, he endured keyhole surgery for torn tendons between his shoulders a few days later.

He now has his left arm in a sling but steadfastly refuses to lighten his workload.

On Tuesday he flew to Rome for a meeting of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People.

"I am a council member and we advise the Pope on these matters," he says.

This morning saw him back visiting Primary 7 pupils in Galashiels and, this afternoon, at the AGM in Edinburgh of the National Union of Catholic Mothers.

He hosts at his Edinburgh home several bishops from Burma at the weekend (arranged before the cyclone), and on Sunday he'll be in Ireland again inevitably on church business.

Said His Eminence: "I was up at Ochtertyre near Crieff for the 200th anniversary of the Scottish Bible Society hosted by its president, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, last weekend.

"He was most sympathetic when he saw my arm in a sling, of course, but while I am one of the walking wounded, you might say, it's no great handicap. In fact, I am enjoying all the consideration I'm getting. Does somebody up there like me? I like to think so."