Add to this Branson's recent raids on the bridal industry (Virgin Brides), Internet services (Virgin Net), and the drinks business (Virgin Cola and Virgin Vodka) and you may well ask when and where it will all end.Can one brand - even one so well-regarded as Virgin - be stretched this far? Cassandras in the marketing business believe that the bubble must burst and the brand will come tumbling to earth - like Branson's failed round-the-world hot-air balloon attempts. In the near future, there is talk of a Virgin telephone banking service, and of the possibility of a role in Formula One motor racing too. Next month, the Virgin Group is launching Virgin Vie and the Virgin Clothing Company, new cosmetics and casual clothing lines. Virgin has lost its virginity surely; the only questions are whether Branson should go on pretending, or whether it matters at all. The pace of expansion is dizzying. Last month, Branson announced plans for a chain of 24-hour-business centres.

The 56-year-old former public schoolboy from Stowe can hardly claim to be a naive, hippy entrepreneur. Branson presides over a constantly expanding network of companies, with a turnover of pounds 1.8bn a year. Virgin is being compared to a keiretsu, one of the great Japanese conglomerates like Mitsubishi, and its success undermines the authenticity of the core values on which Branson has never stopped trading - innocence, innovation and an irreverence for authority. His experience since then has involved making his fortune several times over, selling Virgin Records to expand his airline business, and setting up V2, his new record company, only last year. When Richard Branson was 20 he chose the name Virgin for his new mail-order record company because it reflected his lack of business experience. But if Labour is seen to duck a purge in Glasgow, and Nick Brown fails to get to the root of the poison in Paisley, voters further afield will wonder about the quality of Labour's contribution to a Scottish Parliament.. But Tony Blair then has the opportunity to clean up the operations of Scotland's biggest council group and deal cronyism a decisive blow across the west.

Bereft of an effective opposition, or any apparent ideological differences, many councillors have devoted themselves to internal squabbles, patronage and perks.The inquiry kept Glasgow out of the limelight over the election period and no NEC action will be taken until after the referendum. In September, Labour's National Executive will consider a report into the "junkets for votes" scandal which rocked the council early this year. Bob Gould, the group leader, blew the whistle on his own fractious colleagues, alleging councillors had demanded foreign trips in exchange for their votes.The rottenness endemic in much of west of Scotland politics stems from the fact that for decades Labour has been the unchallenged Establishment On Glasgow City Council it has 77 of the 83 seats. Mohammed Sawar, the Govan MP, remains stripped of his parliamentary party "privileges" while police investigate claims that he gave pounds 5,000 to an election rival.Though the Blairite Jack McConnell believes the warring fiefdoms are slowly being broken up, the big test for the Labour leadership is how it deals with the group that runs Glasgow City Council. He referred to a report sent to Keir Hardie House claiming that 44 newcomers recruited from the local Royal Ordnance Factory had their membership fees paid by a single cheque from the TGWU, the transport workers' union.Jack McConnell, Labour's Scottish general secretary, seems irritated by the rekindling of scandals in the wake of McMaster's death. After all, two Renfrewshire members have been expelled following the 1995 inquiry, and 50 to 60 dubious names have disappeared from branch rolls in the troubled constituencies The organisation of Paisley North remains suspended.

McConnell and council leader Hugh Henry pointed the finger at the behaviour of MPs rather than the Labour Party.However, the sickness of intrigue, cronyism and petty abuse is by no means confined to Renfrewshire. Internal Labour inquiry has followed internal inquiry, from allegations of nepotism in Monklands, to electoral corruption in Glasgow Govan. Both deny smearing McMaster, but Graham has kept an invisible profile his week, and was not even to be found at his cottage, "Sunny Govan", on the north-west coast.If they get the chance, local activists will urge Brown to take a close look at Graham's selection process One aggrieved member called it "an abomination". Its full content has not been divulged, but in extracts the distraught MP asks how Tommy Graham, MP for West Renfrewshire, and Don Dixon, a former deputy chief whip, can live with their consciences. This ruse appears to have been part of a concerted campaign to oust McMaster, Adams and Norman Godman, MP for Greenock and Inverclyde, and replace them with friends of a rival MP. Adams and Godman will both give evidence to Nick Brown about the smears they have been subjected to at Westminster and on their home patch.For McMaster's version, Brown will have to rely on the suicide note found beside the body of the 37-year-old bachelor. Paisley people are known as "Buddies", but the politics of the place have earned its tabloid epithet - "a town called malice".The Crown Office in Edinburgh is currently considering a report by Strathclyde fraud squad officers into the activities of a security firm set up with pounds 180,000 of public money as part of a regeneration scheme for a housing estate formerly used a dump for problem families.Irene Adams, the Paisley North MP, named the now defunct FCB (Security) in 1995 as part of a brave campaign she and McMaster fought against the town's drug-dealing gangs Both became the target of death threats.