Sky Bluenose

UNLIKE his polling numbers, Douglas Ross was reaching for the skies on Tuesday, as he visited Leading Edge Flight Training near Glasgow. Besides clambering into the cockpit for the photographers, he also did a broadcast interview in front of a small plane with the registration tag WATP in massive letters down the side. This, we understand, is also short for We Are The People, a phrase dear to those of a Rangers persuasion. His spindoctor insists it was all a coincidence, despite the whoops of delight back in the office.

Mid-Fife Crisis

ANAS Sarwar might enjoy the frantic pace of the campaign trail, but is is taking its toll, Unspun wonders? On a visit to Rosyth on Wednesday, the Scottish Labour leader forgot he was in Fife. A common wish, of course, but rarely granted. Chatting to the press, he bizarrely confessed: “Sorry, I thought I was in Lanarkshire.” Maybe he should have been. As he tried to woo the oldies at a community café, a local teenager was heard leaving the venue saying “F***ing Labour? Seriously!” So still got a bit of work to do on the youth vote then.
 

Doors of Reception

MEANWHILE Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton is being haunted, Sturgeon-style, by his predecessor. To show Willie Rennie is no longer in charge, ACH has axed the outrageous and often dangerous photo-ops beloved by his old boss. Alas, it has only galvanised Mr Rennie, who is now in a battle with ACH to see which of them can knock the most doors by 10pm on May 5. Mr Rennie is said to be gleefully thrashing the ungrateful little newbie. 

Kant understand

WE may not be as thick as we look at Unspun, thank God, but Tuesday's public administration committee still gave us a migraine. Mulling the Scottish Government’s new policy on harassment complaints, SNP MSP Michelle Thomson said she was rather concerned in case “the ethical approach is applied from a deontological perspective rather than a consequentialist perspective” and wanted to know what John Swinney was going to do about it, eh? The Deputy FM seemed to know what was going on. Although that is only from our ignoramus perspective. 

Question timing

PERHAPS Ms Thomson should give some advice about this speaking malarky to Tory MSP Jamie Greene, who came a cropper later in the chamber. Called to ask an urgent question on justice issues, he declared he had come “to ask the Scottish Government its position on the potential impact… oh sorry” before realising he’d repeated the previous question on the order paper, which had just been asked by Labour’s Daniel Johnson. “Very well asked. Worth asking again given we didn’t get an answer the first time,” he cringed.

Going commando

JUSTICE Secretary Keith Brown has a torrid time after FMQs when Holyrood’s press corps ambushed him over the CalMac ferries scandal. The SNP deputy leader had been close to the calamitous deal with the Ferguson Marine yard back in 2015, and hacks wanted to know more. But a startled Mr Brown, who was a Royal Marine commando in the Falklands, scarpered into the parliament canteen. He was more candid in a TV interview afterwards, but it was too late to undo nippy headlines about his “yomp of shame”. Mr Brown has, inevitably, now been nicknamed the Ferguson marine.