Calum thinks everyone's been awfully unfair on the Icelandic government, formerly part of the Arc of Prosperity. He supportively cites their President's view that it'll all be all right in Iceland long before Britain's economy recovers, and the view (from a friend of their Prime Minister's) that some of their problems are actually Gordon Brown's fault. Now the use of anti-terror legislation was clearly over the top, but that's just how New Labour rolls. Protests about climate change? Let's use anti-terrorism legislation. Someone didn't pick up some street chocolate? Parents pretending they live in the right catchment area? Get the anti-terrorism legislation out.
But a whole country complaining about it? Brown didn't send Iceland to Guantanamo, after all. It looks more like Iceland joined the Arc of Blaming Westminster instead.
More seriously, the idea that Iceland is in a better position than us is rather undermined by the burgeoning "fleece revolution", backed by the local Left Green Party, demanding the resignation of Geir Haarde, the amusingly named Icelandic Prime Minister (Huffington Post, Guardian, Flickr).
The old Icelandic model is over, just as the Brown model is over. The difficulty for the Nats is that they also took the exact same policy positions, enthusiastically supporting casino capitalism and offering to bend over backwards for the financial services industry however irresponsibly they behaved.
If we'd been "Free in '93", in a Salmond-led Scotland, does anyone seriously doubt that a "kilt revolution" would have been gathering outside Bute House right now?
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