Bush's Baghdad Palace.

Mr Smith notes the renewed interest in the media about the new American Embassy in Baghdad.

A recent article by the Guardian reported that "Rising from the dust of the city's Green Zone it is destined, at $592m (£300m), to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth... It will cover 104 acres (42 hectares) of land, about the size of the Vatican. It will include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls. Most of the embassy staff will live in simple, if not quite monastic, accommodation in one-bedroom apartments."

Already it has been christened Bush's Palace, a parody of the naming of the palaces that were used by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But if things in Iraq go wrong and America is forced to withdraw then who will be left to occupy the 27 buildings? This is one building project that makes the £420 million Scottish Parliament building look like a wise long term property investment. The only "insurgents" they have to worry about in downtown Edinburgh are the local neds, and they only carry Buckie.