EDINBURGH, SATURDAY

We’re further up North than usual, and it’s a relief from the heat, I can tell you. Typically, when it’s raining we almost start moaning, being ungrateful humans who don’t appreciate when we have it good.

We’re up here having watched a stupendous U2 concert in Glasgow and then been driven around the Highlands by the Toxic Loan, who has now tootled off on his own, leaving the ancestors to explore the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe. We saw “Porn - the Musical” last night and it remains a great show. It’s been nominated for Best Musical, which is a blast.

The news here hasn’t been dominated by some dictum from one or the other of our politicians, though there has been a Malta connection.

Al Megrahi, the only person convicted of having a part in the Lockerbie atrocity, has been released to serve out the last few days of his life in Libya. To this compassionate act there was quite a reaction, much of it favourable but quite a bit negative, the negative, predictably, coming from the States and from politicians. Listening to the radio on Friday morning, many ordinary citizens expressed the view that compassion rather than revenge should be the driving consideration.

I found the position taken by the United States, predictable as I’ve already said it was, to be discomforting, if not surprising. It was not surprising because this is a country that, for all the good reason it has to want revenge post-911, still espouses the hypocrisy of extreme rendition and still maintains Guantanamo Bay, though Obama has made overtures to dismantling it. Many states still have the death penalty, and evidence of greater inhumanity is hard to find.

And you have to remember: if there was a “deal” element to the release, the deal was not made by or for American commercial interests, this time (as opposed, say, to the invasion of Iraq) so there’s no reason for the vested interests to spin the story positively.

So we have Obama being “disappointed” and Mrs Bill Clinton being sour, a feat she carries off with consummate ease.

Of course, the sight of assorted Libyans prancing around Tripoli celebrating Megrahi’s release gave fuel to the nay-sayers, and to be frank I didn’t find them to be an edifying sight myself. On reflection, though, you have to bear in mind that a) they’ve been fed the line, over the years, that the case against Megrahi is weak anyway and b) they’re probably the same type of people who jigged around celebrating after 911, so their antics were hardly surprising.

Incidentally, I had actually forgotten how weak the case against Megrahi actually was, though this should have nothing to do with my conviction that showing compassion is something a civilised country, which Scotland certainly is, should always do.

Being able to behave in a civilised, humane, way is what distinguishes a nation from the vengeful and the fundamentalist and if we don’t do the right thing, we’re no better.

Which latter theory is one that the United States is in danger of proving, sadly, if some of its government’s public utterances are taken at face value.