LABOUR’S Danielle Rowley is never destined for polyglot status, Unspun fears. Arriving late for a meeting of the shadow foreign affairs team in the Commons, the Midlothian MP breathlessly warned colleagues to fall silent as a person unknown was speaking Russian outside their room. An intrepid soul was duly sent to check if Putin's spy was earwigging. It turned out to be someone making a phone call in Welsh.
OMNIPRESENT LibDem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton appears to have outstayed his welcome with Holyrood bosses. New papers reveal he has gone begging, yet again, for “exceptional expenses” for his office. This time he cocked up his budget by agreeing to pay way over the odds for utilities. Parliament’s overlords grudgingly gave him £3669 but only after noting its “concern” and warning it was “unlikely to approve a further request”. Ouch.
- Kevin McKenna: Has Jacob Rees-Mogg even heard of One Nation Toryism?
MR Cole-Hamilton also featured in the most disturbing event of the Holyrood week, the annual photocall of MSPs in garish Christmas jumpers for charity. Tory leader Jackson Carlaw sported a snowman with a stick-out carrot nose. ACH seemed to find this irresistible. Indeed, Reporting Scotland showed him repeatedly twanging Mr Carlaw’s carrot, like a cat entranced by a fuzzy toy. Armchair Freudians will have a field day.
RUM goings on at Scottish Labour HQ, where online boffins banged out a video for the SNP’s budget. The words and pictures didn’t exactly gel. As earnest slogans said Labour would deliver better benefits and an end to welfare caps, viewers were treated to overhead shots of £1m townhouses in Scotland’s poshest neighbourhood, Edinburgh New Town. “For the many not the few,” the ad ended, after just drooling over toff property porn.
What the HELL is up with Adam Tomkins? The Glasgow Tory MSP, once a mild-mannered law professor, seems in a permanent RAGE at Holyrood. He’s been chewing the FURNITURE over Brexit for WEEKS. On Thursday, he even challenged the Lord Advocate to a verbal square-go in the chamber. As the dormousy law officer tried to sidestep a political question and keep his answers legal, Mr Tomkins goaded him: “This is the parliament! This is the parliament!” Is it any wonder he has now been renamed ANGRY Tomkins?
TALKING of the previously bland going bananas, PO Ken Macintosh is at it too. At the close of FMQs he chided MSPs for ignoring his advice not to speak so long - and was largely ignored. Then later he tore into Mike Russell and John Swinney, calling them “among the worst offenders” for talking during a Q&A with the Lord Advocate. “We might have a better exchange if we allowed the questions to be asked and the answers to be given”, he tutted. “I live in hope.” Some hope.
MEANWHILE, in another part of the Holyrood jungle, a graveyard has been found. Well, a bicycle graveyard. It seems people have taken to dumping their bone-rattlers in the service yard. Unless claimed by December 21, these will be handed to police lost property. “We will continue to do this with other bikes that appear to have been abandoned,” says the latest staff bulletin. We are, however, still saddled with all those equally unwanted MSPs.
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