Edinburgh Sucks! | MSPs Track Record

Scottish Parliament

MSPs Track Record

By The Basa ⋅ April 8, 2006 ⋅

An interesting letter to tonight’s Evening News manages to capture some of the track record of our good parliamentarians:

MSPs feathering own nests at our expense

JEAN L CLARK (”What do our MSPs do?” Letters, April 4) asks what our MSPs have done for our country.

Well, as she says, they have sat back while some of the best regiments in the British Army lost their individuality, and hundreds of years of history was wiped out by the stroke of a pen wielded by some fourth-rate politicians like them.
They have closed hospitals, including the best orthopaedic hospital in Scotland, the Princess Margaret Rose, built a state-of-the-art infirmary where the food is shipped up from Wales, moved departments from one hospital to another, supposedly to save costs, but no notice taken of the inconvenience these moves cause the patients who have to travel because of this.

They have sat and watched while firms move their factories and call centres to other countries - as Jean L Clark says, even the kilt for this so-called Royal Regiment is to be made abroad. So much for helping Scottish business.

They have taken the rights of these soldiers and ex-servicemen to have a smoke in their pub or club.

Ms Clark asks what Jack McConnell and his friends are doing for Scotland - not a lot, but for themselves they are doing a very great lot. They have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on entertaining, refurbishing their bar, subsidising their restaurant, and making sure of a large wage and a gilt-edged pension - and how many millions to repair the Loafers’ Lounge at Holyrood? No one knows.

They have given the elderly free bus travel but why do some expire in 2009 and others in 2011? Why not for the life of the pensioner?

James Noble
Sighthill Grove,
Edinburgh

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