Which day would you like us to come and at what time? The Scottish

“Which day would you like us to come and at what time?” The Scottish equivalent would be: “Aye, well we might do you a favour next month but I couldn’t specify a time.”Scottish public service needs an injection of the Thatcherism it despised The consumer must come first. The insistence that consumers must applaud quangos through which corrupt incompetence runs like rot through a diseased elm must be obliterated. Putting the consumer first is always more democratic and more efficient than preserving the special interests of producers.I long for the day when a Scottish public sector manager responds to a service failure by declaring: “I am sorry This was inexcusable Customers will be compensated. I resign.”Until then? Washing a child in mineral water is tiresome and expensive, but the process can be enlivened if you use sparkling. Molly likes bubbles.TimLckhrst aol . I am writing this staring at the photograph on my desk of me with a beaming Saddam Hussein.

He is dressed in his trademark military fatigues – complete with gun in holster – and is grasping me by the hand as he is introduced to me by the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz. The year was 1989 and I was on a parliamentary junket, with five other Labour and Tory MPs, that took in Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq. Relations with Iraq were somewhat tense, but we still had full diplomatic relations and were heaving a sigh of relief that Iran, which was then world public enemy number one, was being contained by Iraq. But we did negotiate the release of a British businessman who was being held in an Iraqi jail. Our embassy and Tariq Aziz had, of course, already done much of the preparatory work, but it was clear that Saddam would take the final decision. I recall our ambassador, briefing us beforehand, making the point that Saddam liked to be flattered by the personal and direct appeal. Maybe that is a characteristic of dictators who tend to be isolated and who rarely get face-to-face meetings with other world leaders.Iraq was still in the grip of the conflict with Iran.

Baghdad reminded me of a scene from films about the First World War. Thousands of soldiers with knapsacks roamed around the main railway station. We were encouraged to make a pilgrimage to the gigantic war memorial where we laid a wreath. The country has been on a war footing for decades.Of course we knew vaguely about Saddam’s brutality, but during our discussions I was struck by his quiet voice and diplomatic courtesies. In that meeting we wanted a prisoner released, and it was clear that raving to him about atrocities was not going to get us very far. Suffice to say that we came away, as well as the prisoner release, with the thought that he was a shrewd negotiator and was far from mad.This conclusion was also reached a year later by Sir Edward Heath after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. His view is that diplomatic as well as military solutions should always be investigated.