......AND ALL THIS MONEY FOR ONE WEE HAT

I read in the Sunday Post this week (yes, I know it’s Thursday, but I’m a slow reader) that the estimated cost of security during the Pope’s visit to Scotland this autumn will be around £70 million.

Now that’s a lot of money in any language (especially if the wee man’s only coming here to give Sophia Pangloss her red hat back).

As this is a State Visit and the Pope is here by invitation of Her Majesty’s government (ie wee Spud) as Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, we have to pick this bill up.

The security money, it seems, will come out of the Scottish government’s budget, despite the Scottish government having played no part in the invitation. And according to the article in the Post, the Scottish government says that it can’t afford it.

Now to be fair the Scottish government can easily afford £70 million pounds; it’s a lot, but in governmental terms it’s next to nothing, but at a time when pensioners are finding that their services have been cut, libraries are closing down, children’s services are being reduced etc, I think that Holyrood is quite right to say it can’t afford the money for a one day visit by a foreign head of state.

I’m not denying that this head of state may be important to a proportion of the Scottish population, and for those who feel that way his visit will be a huge event in their lives. The fact that I can’t see why, after all faith in God, is faith in God, not in a man in a long white garb, is of little relevance.

I’m also wondering who’s making the vast profit out of it. Who provides this security? As popular as the Pope will be with some people, he will be equally unpopular with others, I accept, particularly given his personal involvement in the scandals that have surrounded the Church, but £70 million... for one day?

The British Government invited the man on behalf of the British Queen. They should pay. And, as the Post suggests, it wouldn’t hurt if the obscenely wealthy Vatican City State were to put its hands in its pockets.

Alternatively Sophia could just nip over to Vatican on one of these cheap flights and get her hat back herself.

Pics: Sophia's hat (modeled by an elderly citizen of a small Mediterranean country), and an example of some of the Vatican's wealth that it might conside selling to pay for the Pope's security (in fact Michelangelo's Pietà which is in St Peter's Basillica, Vatican)