THE summer slump has come early to FMQs. Although recess is still a week away, our MSPs have already mellowed into a drowsy slumber, practising for the rigours of life beneath a beach umbrella.
Messing with everyone’s mood, Ruth Davidson got all angry about schools.
The Scottish Tory leader pointed out some hadn’t been inspected for 16 years, and a fifth hadn’t been checked for a decade, “including one in the First Minister’s constituency and two in the education secretary’s patch”.
Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney exchanged a glance. There are schools in our constituencies? But the issue never caught fire, kept damp by a fog of stats and jargon.
Scottish LibDem fixture Willie Rennie then provided some entertainment amid the droning flies and dust motes.
He was unhappy about tests for five year olds. “Five year olds,” he kept repeating to annoy the teacher, not unlike, well, a three-year-old.
The FM should stop these time-wasting tests, he said. “Older pupils are being brought in because P1s cannot operate the computer - because they are only five.
“Parents concerned about the impact on their children - because they are only five.
“However the First Minister ignores all those concerns, because all she is interested in is her computer machine.”
Sorry, her what? “Her computer machine, with all her assessments and data.”
Mr Rennie evidently needs to find himself a flying machine and have that holiday.
Green Alison Johnstone asked Mr Sturgeon if she opposed fox hunting.
She did, but not Tory hunting, as was seen when Miles Briggs broke cover.
“The FM is known for never wanting to seek grievance and division between England and Scotland,” he declared, so why couldn’t she find it in her heart to welcome new Barnett formula cash for the NHS?
She welcomed his sarcasm like a wasp to her Cornetto.
Health spending is £163 per head higher north of the border, she reminded him.
“So if we were to match levels of spending in England, we would have to take £880m out of the NHS budget.
“If Miles Briggs does not mind,” she smiled lethally, “we will fund the health service fairly, by being honest about modest tax rises, instead of pretending there is a mythical unicorn of a Brexit dividend.”
The look on Mr Briggs’s crumpled puss said the recess couldn’t arrive too soon.
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