The Scottish Parliament’s first days: a personal memoir. Part VII

h2>Sheena and the Queen
The Scottish attitude to the Queen is an odd one. Many Scots, in the 20th and 21st centuries, might have taken against an English monarch who dared to lord (or lady) it over them. But everyone finds the Queen hard to dislike. She rules as a Taoist would rule: quiet, unjudgmental, adapting [...]

The Scottish Parliament’s first days: A personal memoir. Part VI

h2>Carry on up the Mile
On 1 July 1999, Her Majesty, a Queen, was privileged to join me in what turned out to be a rather splendid occasion: the official opening of the Scottish Parliament. It was made splendid by the lashings of left-wing sentiment that topped off the dignified proceedings: a meeting of old and [...]

The Scottish Parliament’s first days: a personal memoir. Part IV

h2>Pact away: Jimbo and Mainwaring take power
Next day, once more, I found myself barred from the press gallery. I’d phoned ahead and was assured I could waltz in unmolested. I got through the first hurdle, right enough, at the bottom of the stairs, and mingled with the great and the good in the black-and-white corridor [...]

The Scottish Parliament’s first days: a personal memoir. Part III

h2>The fun of being first minister
In the end, MSPs agreed to a Time for Repentance slot at the start of Wednesday afternoon’s proceedings (the main body of the Parliament only meets one and a half days a week: Wednesday afternoon and the whole of Thursday till about 6 o’clock).
After they’d agreed on a spiritual five [...]

The Scottish Parliament’s first days: a personal memoir pt.2

PART TWO: THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES
n May 1999, on the first day of Parliament proper, I was in for a couple of shocks. Firstly, I’d been a strong supporter of a Parliament, and had told doubters that, as a reporter, I’d been to business and trade union conferences, teachers’ meetings, the General Assembly of the Church [...]

The Scottish Parliament’s first days: a personal memoir

PART ONE: FROM HADDOW’S TO THE MOUND
GLASGOW, April 1999: Alex Salmond stood outside Haddow’s off-licence with a bunch of daffodils. The SNP leader wasn’t waiting for a date, but campaigning for the first election to the Scottish Parliament. The daffodils came courtesy of campaigners trying to save a local allotment. Later, I watched as he [...]

Column: You scratch my backwoodsmen, I’ll scratch yours

News that Nick Clegg and David Cameron might speak at each other’s party conferences has caused the usual outbreaks of rage, fury, and condemnation. You wish sometimes that folk would react in a calm and restrained manner to developments. Then you see them speaking on the telly and realise they did react in a calm [...]

Sketch: Floccinaucinihilipilification follies

Last week, I began this sketch with a complaint about having to listen to porkies in Parliament. By a curious, almost cosmically mystical coincidence, it was also one of those rare occasions in which I thought Labour leader Elmer Fudd had made a good point. Oh, I should have known better. Silly, silly, silly me. [...]

Sketch: Llama mince and retold porkies

rollies up, ladies and gents, as we prepare to be sprayed with more immature ordure in the baby of parliaments, the numpty nursery, the kindergarten of cack. Actually, I do a disservice to many MSPs with these childish ascriptions. But, speaking personally, I can’t wait for the summer holidays. The toll of hearing retold porkies, [...]

Election sketch: Out of the frying pan and into the lavvy

Hello, and welcome to the post-election world. Actually, would you excuse me a wee second? Thanks. Whap! Sorry, just had to hit masel on the heid with a frying pan there. Whap! And again. Whap! And again. Whap! And again. That’s better. No, it isn’t. Nothing’s making sense.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is nuts. First, how [...]

And now a new dawn, loosely based on the old dawns…

o here we stand at the brink. Yada, as it were, yada. A new dawn, loosely based on the old dawns. If you’ve an abyss about your person, you can start staring into it now. Failing that, a pint glass will do. For we are going where no man has gone before: to Friday, 7 [...]

Sketch: Except for viewers in Scotland…

ore news from St Elsewhere as, once again, Holyrood became a haven from politics. Politics, you will understand, is something that now happens on television. That’s where we hear the debates (Unionist v Unionist v Unionist), witness the gaffes and – based on choice of tie and cut of jib – decide which leader looks [...]

TV debate sketch: tough on chefs and the causes of chefs

eaving aside Scotland for the moment, let’s look at the second televised leaders’ debate, which saw Broon resume his obsession with keeping foreign chefs out of Britain.
First, though, I’ll cut to the chase and tell you who won: Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, by a country mile. Hardly surprising since most of his support comes [...]

Sketch: Carbon emissions a smokescreen for the main political event

Once more, there was a feeling that real life was elsewhere as the Scottish Parliament went through the motions at First Minister’s Questions.
As is traditional, the first motion was produced by opposition Labour leader Iain Gray, known to the masses as Elmer Fudd. He focused on carbon emissions and, in a surprise development, thought the [...]

Debate preview: Can Clegg avoid becoming One of Them?

o I detect that folk are resigned now to the exclusion of the SNP in the televised leaders’ debates, as the second one approaches this evening? All right, it’s foreign affairs, so the discussion will apply to Scotland (geddit?).
And fine, I still can’t see a way around the problem – Nat leader Eck Salmond isn’t [...]

TV debate sketch: Electoral reform? Bring it on

We all take universal suffrage for granted, but perhaps it’s time to reconsider. Certainly, it might be modified. For my part, I believe the voting age should be increased to 30. It’s also arguable that, regardless of ideology or party affiliation, only those passing general intelligence tests should be enfranchised. And, as I think many [...]

Leaders debate sketch: Hear no Scotland, speak no Scotland, see no Scotland

Historic moments are like buses. There’s one along every five minutes.  However, it’s not necessarily the right bus. And it wasn’t Scotland’s bus Thursday night, when three men competed for the grand prize of becoming Prime Minister of England and the Other Bits. A historic moment and we werenae there.
Says it all.
However, having said it [...]

Sketch: lava actually

t last, it was time for the big televised debate between the main party leaders.
That’s right. First Minister’s Questions.
After an Easter break, the weekly roister-doistering got off to its usual formulaic start with Labour leader Elmer Fudd, born Iain John Bull Gray, asking First Minister Eck Salmond, born Dolores Braveheart Blenkinsop, about his engagements for [...]

Scottish Parliament sketch: Comfortably numpty

he words “numpty” and “sap” were bandied around the Scottish Parliament today. It’s what you’d expect really, certainly if our politicians truly are representative of what most objective observers agree is a timorous, dimwitted nation.
The homely insults were hurled during First Minister’s Queries, much of which was taken up with the Budget announced in that [...]

Budget Sketch: Cider with Dozy

Read our full Budget coverage
It was a bad Budget for cider-lovers and a good one for fans of computer games. More interestingly, the sub-text of the badinage in the Hoose o’ Commons was more about alleged sleaze, involving alleged Lord Ashcroft on the Tory side and an alleged Hoon on Labour’s.
In a decidedly 70s-looking swirling [...]

Sketch: clowns, crowns and cloth caps

nother First Minister’s Questions, the half-hour of bad-tempered badinage that tests the mettle of our leaders and the patience of the punters. Sometimes, to be quite honest with you for once, I have to go gird my loins to go in. It’s not the show itself that’s so bad. It’s the putting on of the [...]

Sketch: Swedes to the sweet

ories usually look on Sweden with an expression of horror. Intelligent, progressive and humane, the Nordic nation stands for everything they detest. At least, that’s situation normal. However, abnormal developments are afoot, as the Swedes start to lose the plot and tinker with their “too good to be true” state.
This has attracted the attention of [...]

Sketch: The whole tooth and nothing but

As citizens will have noticed, the weekly hullabaloo at Holyrood is called First Minister’s Questions. It’s not First Minister’s Answers, which is just as well, given today’s shenanigans.
Of course, all politicians are trained not to answer the question. On television, in particular, they listen carefully to it, then talk about something else entirely. Pushed by [...]

Sketch: hypnotic swirl of illusions and delusions

I’m going to count down from ten and, as we get closer to the number one, your eyelids will start to get heavier, and you’ll feel very sleepy. Oh yes. “Just another sketch,” I hear you cry. But this week the boy can’t help it, as hypnotism was the big theme that emerged from the [...]

Sketch: To be or not to be or not to mention the ‘I’ word at all

Good old Holyrood. Just when you think you’re in for a dull time, matters always liven up. Put another way: thank goodness for Annabel Goldie.
And thank goodness somebody mentioned independence.
I’m not saying that knife crime – the subject that opened First Minister’s Questions – is dull. Far from it, obviously. It’s just that [...]

Sketch: Fessing up to messing up

icola Sturgeon apologised yesterday for acting like a lawyer. Arraigned before the notoriously harsh court of public opinion, the health minister decided to break the unofficial politicians’ code of conduct in two ways: she apologised and said she’d got something wrong.
The mob gasped and, unexpectedly, a wave of sympathy flooded towards her as she cried [...]

Sketch: Nicola faces enemies at the gate

Well, at least Lunchgate was off the menu, even if we had to put up with a meal being made of the Deputy First Minister writing in support of a fraudster. One Gate closes and another Gate opens.
Fraudgate, or whatever it is, involved Nicola Sturgeon writing a letter on behalf of a constituent recently found [...]

Sketch: Aggravated burgery steals the show

urgers and milk came up – as it were – during this week’s instalment of First Minister’s Questions in Parliament. All of which appetite-spoiling fare was apposite following revelations that citizens were paying nine grand a time to sit and have dinner with the First Minister, Alex Salmond.
Presumably, there was more than burgers and milk [...]

Sketch: Black and white and not-quite-dead all over

I want you to picture a man in his pyjamas lying down in front of a bulldozer. Ah, some of you are ahead of me already. You have recognised the man as Arthur Dent, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Put the image in your pending tray, for we will return to it later [...]

Sketch: Bakunin, where art thou?

Question: is oppositional politics a constructive or destructive thing? In particular, is First Minister’s Questions, highlight of the oppositional week, the best way to do things? The sad answer is: probably. And yet rammies like today’s just seem so, well, 17th century somehow. Delving even further back, you could imagine neanderthal moots that were more [...]

Sketch: A nose by any other name

The last thing you expect at First Minister’s Questions is to be offered a “bouquet of absurdity”. A panoply perhaps. But a bouquet? We smelled a rat.
It was Labour leader Elmer Fudd who introduced a pong into the chamber when he raised a question about – wait for it – “the security of the Queen [...]

Sketch: King Cnut’s tootsies trip up Annabel

There was controversy over the tootsies of King Cnut in the Scottish Parliament yesterday. But that wasn’t the oddest thing. The oddest thing was the consensus.
True, the subject under advisement was the need to tackle illiteracy. But, even so, the hardliners on the Labour and SNP benches usually couldn’t attend a church social without attempting [...]

Sketch: Eck’s true grit and Annabel’s hash

Oh, glorious new year! Twa thoosand and ten, ken? A new decade even. What an exciting time for Scottish democracy. Who knows where we will be ten years’ hence? All right, probably not very far, but join in here and help me build the mood.
Oh yes, so exciting. And the MSPs were back from their [...]