Paisley pattern

What do they know that we don't? Politics pundits David McCrone of Edinburgh University and Bill Miller of Glasgow University, who were much in demand by the media during Scotland's devolution referendum, have both left the country, McCrone for Japan and Miller for Egypt. Perhaps they were alarmed by the tone of their interviewers' questions: another pundit, Lindsay Paterson of Moray House Institute of Education, reveals that in advance of the vote, foreign reporters asked him whether there was rioting in the streets.

Visions of drugs wars and corruption also seem to have coloured the views of the BBC in London. Professor Paterson's comment that Paisley University offered an excellent example of good relations between further and higher education elicited the startled response: "You're not telling me there's a university in Paisley?"