Scotland's 'Pretendy Parliament' - A Laughing Stock
I was all in favour of creating the Scottish Parliament when the issue was put to a public vote in 1997, but now I'm not so sure - because Holyrood is turning into the 'Pretendy Parliament' Billy Connolly joked about years ago.
The calibre of MSPs has fallen off a cliff - the latest example being a Labour member who allegedly hid a spy cam in one of Holyrood's loos.
But this nonsense comes hot on the heels of the member for Glasgow Southside, Nicola Sturgeon, who resigned as First Minister back in March 2023, but has spent much of the past 2.5 years writing and promoting a new book on Scottish politics.
The same Nicola Sturgeon who has lambasted politicians in other parties for 'double jobbing' and not devoting their full-time attention to their role as MSPs or MPs.
Sturgeon also set up a private company to receive her book related earnings (£300,000 and counting) which means she will avoid paying the higher rate of income tax introduced by her own SNP Scottish government.
As if this weren't bad enough, we have another former First Minister in Humza Yousaf who claims to represent the seat of Glasgow Pollok despite living a two-hour car journey away in the leafy suburbs of Dundee.
Yousaf resigned after a year because he was a completely useless First Minister - like Sturgeon he's not standing in next year's Holyrood elections, but has taken on two new part-time roles and now spends most of his time banging on about Gaza.
The Scottish Parliament is fast becoming a laughing stock - as evidenced by a majority of its MSPs voting to support self-ID and the Sturgeon-inspired policy of allowing men to declare they have magically 'become women'.
Scotland was only rescued from this Holyrood nonsense by the intervention of UK ministers and the UK Supreme Court which begs the question:
Are there any MSPs left with real integrity?
