IT'S TIME TO GET A GRIP

It is worrying that at Scottish Question in the London House of Commons the Labour MPs from Scotland seemed reluctant to hold Michael Moore and  David Mundell to account (as they are supposed to), on deprivation,  high fuel costs, lack of financial investment (there are currently 43 projects "shovel ready" to create thousands of jobs, but which London will not sanction).

Instead they preferred to join with the Home County Tories (why are they even there?) to ridicule the SNP government and ask Moore and Mundell about the iniquities of "separation". Some even, à la Lamont, refused to face reality and argue that despite Cameron and the First Minister signing the Edinburgh Agreement, the Scottish government does not have the right to call a referendum.

Meanwhile Jim Murphy seems to be doing his best to close down shipbuilding on the Clyde, which is under threat because of a tightening of London's Defence budgets: 

"The Tory government plans are adding to the worries but there is one certainty which is that the SNP proposals would sink Scottish shipbuilding.

"The rest of UK would become a foreign country to Scotland and the UK Royal Navy has not built a warship in a foreign land in living memory.

"The Royal Navy order book keeps Scottish yards afloat but independence would see orders dry up. Thousands of jobs are put at risk by Nationalists' plans."

As a Scottish MP should he not be talking up the yards, at a time when at least one yard will have to close, pointing out that there are many other places to go for orders. Scottish shipbuilding is amongst the best in the world and there is no reason why we could not build ships for, for example, Gulf states. After all England builds planes for them!

But no, as in Holyrood where you would have thought there were many real problems waiting for the attention of our MSPs, hatred and division has become before real politics.

I remember the first time I attended a debate in Holyrood. I left the chamber walking on air and proud as punch that discussions in our parliament were so civilised, and yet relatively informal, without any of the (patently untrue, indeed laughable) "honourable/learned/gallant/reverend gentleman/lady" of the brawling of the London parliament. 

Now Holyrood has turned into a hate fest. The modus operandi appears to be: never mind the problems besetting the country, let's  talk for as long as we can, all the time putting down Alex Salmond, before putting a question. Let's get our hatred for the government on the BBC and in the papers never mind if we have to bend the truth to do it. And who the hell cares about the constituency questions that actually matter to real people: people who are not overly interested in the independence question 2 years before the date of the referendum?

Lamont's inability to get past her script doesn't help, of course, but her insistence on asking 4 questions which seem to fail to take into account answers previously given is an embarrassment:

"Why isn't Alex Salmond's government using Scottish steel to build the Forth crossing?"

"Because we don't make steel in Scotland."

"Alex Salmond says that we don't make steel, but why is his government going to China for its steel instead of using home made steel?"

"Because we don't make steel in Scotland."

"Has the First Minister thought about the number of jobs that would be created if he had chosen to use steel made in Scotland."

"As I've said before Presiding Officer, Johann Lamont knows that the London government shut down the steel making industry in Scotland and Labour did nothing to revive it. We have no suitable steel making facility in Scotland."

OK, the words are mine and I've used considerable licence, but that was a rough outline of how the argument went, although both Lamont and Salmond talked at length. But months after this point was made, Joanne Lamont still refers to the dreadfulness of buying steel from China.

She's not thick enough not to take in the fact that we didn't have the facility to make that steel in Scotland. She just thinks that its a good line that people will pick up on and hate Alex Salmond for; that jobless youngsters will be able to say..."If only Alex Salmond had bought Scottish steel, I could have got a job making it."

The trouble with all this is that it is not only causing division in the country, it is also putting people off politics. And I think it may be polluting the way that other people debate politics. After all, if the leader of the opposition or the Conservative party doesn't bother to try to make any constructive criticism of the government, why would Jock down the pub?

A definite plus once upon a time, for an independent parliament would have been a raised standard of debate. Unfortunately that is no longer so.