Drumming up anti-English feeling

Well, it's so far so good on the Alex Salmond Northern European tour.

The unlikely sight of our First Minister laughing and joking with Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley really is quite something. And yet there it is, the main story on the BBC Scottish Politics page.

It seems they've easily made some progress in opening up lines of communication on such areas as tourism, education and renewable energy.

And given the high number of Northern Irish students in Scotland at the moment, I thought this line was pretty interesting:

Mr Salmond also agreed to look at the possibility of Northern Ireland students attending universities in Scotland benefiting from his executive's decision last week to scrap the £2,000 endowment fee paid after graduation.

Given that the rest of the EU are able to enjoy the benefits of this change to the graduate endowment fee, it's feasible that the only students from a nearby couuntry that would have to pay it are English students.

I do wonder about such a tactic. Is it too blatant a ruse to garnish anti-English sentiment and drive a wedge between the two countries? Is it even a tactic in the first place, maybe it's just an unlucky corollary of what the SNP see as best for Scotland...?

I daresay the biggest effect of all this 'joint-ministerial committee' stuff will be to fan the flames of the English Nationalist backlash which is well on its way apparently.

Next stop Scandinavia......