In July 1995 Ratko Mladic ordered the slaughter of 8,500 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. The memory fades but the enormity of the crime stays constant.

So it was always a long shot that the former Bosnian Serb General would escape extradition by citing various health problems.

OK. He appears to have a shuffling gait and creaky bones and may have had a stroke or two. But, hey, it is not Alzheimer’s.

Mladic appears well enough to understand the implications of his extradition from Serbia to the Netherlands. He will stand trial for war crimes.

There were of course many victims of the war in the Balkans. I remember Paul Goodall, an aid worker from the small East Lancashire town of Earby, who was brutally murdered in Bosnia in January 1994, leaving a wife and four young daughters aged two to ten. (see attachment below)

In today’s Observer, Henry Porter, writes: “The calculating lassitude of the European powers until the Autumn of 1995, particularly the wariness of British politicians and commentators, seems hardly credible today.”

I look back at the horrors of those days and remember the vacillation and indecision when firm purposeful action was required.

That hesitation allowed Mladic to believe he could get away with genocide.

I am certain he remembers it well.

Bob Rae

The new Canadian Parliament, elected on 2 May, will meet for the first time on Thursday. It will look very different from its predecessors.

For a start, the left leaning NDP will be the new Official Opposition. This is quite a big deal.

For as long as anyone can remember, the Liberals were either in Government or were the Official Opposition. Now they have slumped ignominiously to third party status.

Under the leadership of the former Harvard academic and one time BBC journalist, Michael Ignatieff, the Liberals collapsed from 77 seats to a rump of 34 in the 308 seat Parliament.

So I take my hat off to Bob Rae who, at 62, is the new interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

In better times, Bob Rae twice fought for the leadership and failed. Now, with the Liberal Party all but destroyed as a national force, he has the job he always wanted.

In the 90s Bob Rae was the NDP premier of Ontario but switched parties to join the Liberals. (But that is another story)

In the May 11 election, he held on to his Toronto Centre constituency while all around him “safe” Liberal seats were falling to the Conservatives.

Rae could have walked away from the wreckage, but chose not to. I like that.

Here is the CBC’s Rex Murphy’s take on it all.

Quebec secession from Canada needs 50% plus one

Jack Layton, the leader of the leftish NDP, now Canada’s official opposition, says Quebec can split from the rest of Canada if 50% plus one Quebeckers want to go it alone.

I doubt if things are quite so simple.

The Supreme Court of Canada talks of a “substantial majority” and it seems to me that 51% doesn’t quite fit the bill.

All this is of course very relevant to what is about to unfold in Scotland.

The SNP will hold a referendum on Scottish independence – that much we know - but the manifesto is light on the details.

Unless the rules are made crystal clear early on there will be trouble ahead.

Who exactly will be entitled to vote?

What about people with two homes in the UK - one in Scotland?

Will EU citizens have a vote? Even if they are, like the fabled Polish plumbers, only passing through?

Will citizens of Commonwealth countries living in Scotland have a vote? If so, why?

We allow Commonwealth citizens the privilege of being able to vote in UK elections. But this generosity is rarely reciprocated. Voting in most other Commonwealth countries is restricted to their own citizens. And quite right too.

I was born, brought up and educated in Scotland and know the place like the back of my hand. But I don’t live there - like thousands of expatriate Scots.

I’d rather like a say on what happens to the UK.

But I suspect I won’t be asked.

What is Ashcroft for?

David Mitchell tells us “Lord” Ashcroft is rich, bored and unpopular.

He is also famously reluctant to pay taxes.

Even, apparently, in Belize.

Attachments:

115a GC January 1994.pdf	[Pendle Report January 1994. Bosnia]	3810 Kb
SNP_Manifesto_2011_lowRes.pdf	[SNP Manifesto 2011]	1777 Kb