Hullachan round the hoose

Let us try to unwrap what happened yesterday at Holyrood between Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond and BBC Chairman Lord Patten, looking behind the words they used.

Lord Patten: "The First Minister has a specific complaint about the Calcutta Cup and the way his non-interview was handled. I’ve suggested that he should make a proper, formal complaint, or rather the government perhaps should on his behalf. [We can deal with this one dead easily; if he complains as SNP leader, no grounds - he loses. If he complains from his Government role, we can take a bit of time to think - but he'll still lose]

Alex Salmond: "On the specific issue of Murrayfield and what Lord Patten described as the non-interview, it was suggested that we take that to a specific complaint. That’s a very helpful way to progress.”  [Put Patten on the back foot at least - now for what we really want....]

Lord Patten: "We agreed it was important for us to agree with the First Minister’s party and others the terms of engagement in dealing with issues in the run-up, not only to the local elections, but to the referendum in a couple of years’ time. I’ll be discussing how we can best do that with the director-general of the BBC. [No real concession there - every referendum is different and the BBC loves guidelines. Talking to all parties means there's no rush] The First Minister put some serious concerns he had about the balance of our reporting of the referendum issue and other issues associated with it, which we will look at with the executive of the BBC.[Concerns are not the same as complaints, and we can keep the outcome between us]

Clearly unreported would be any discussion about a Scottish Six.

Meanwhile, not entirely unrelated, has anyone noticed a graphic similarity between the sites for The Scottish National Party, the Scottish Government and BBC Alba ?  Is that twinkly little star for Alba an emerging saltire ?