Ofcommittee

After reading the political column by Murdo Fraser (PA, March 2) titled “I’m sick of this stinking affair”, my heart went out to the poor man.

He is obviously a victim of his own obsessions.

He seems to be sick of a lot of things concerning the Salmond affair. Indeed, he emphasises this by starting several paragraphs with “I am sick ...”.

He seems to have brought it on himself. For days he has been tweeting about it, loading his Facebook page with it and – as he mentioned – sitting on the committee of inquiry.

He could have recused himself from the committee, of course, so I guess he wasn’t that sick of the matter.

Neither Twitter nor Facebook sent in the heavies to force him to put up posts on the subject over the days and weeks, so I guess he wasn’t so sick there, either.

He wasn’t too sick to raise the subject in the PA. In fact, to me he seems more sly than sick; more propaganda than puke.

Presumably he is sick of other goings-on, otherwise he wouldn’t have avoided mention of them.

For instance, there is Boris Johnson, the one who illegally prorogued parliament in Westminster and misled the Queen.

More recently Johnson has been in legal trouble, along with health secretary Matt Hancock, after being held to account by Mr Justice Chamberlain, for failing to release details of a hundred contracts to do with COVID-related materials.

These concern billions of pounds and many seem to have gone to Toryrelated firms and people.

He also seems to be too sick of the Priti Patel scandal to mention it: she has just done a court settlement for over a third of a million pounds plus expenses for bullying a senior civil servant so badly that he quit his job.

The taxpayer will have this bill – and there are more bullying allegations in the works.

Maybe he could curb his sickness for a moment to demand her resignation for breaking the ministerial code, along with Johnson and Hancock.

He even seems to have become sick of his hero Donald Trump in recent times. The worshipping tweets have died away.

An interesting thing about the contents of his column is that it appears, almost word for word, in his newsletter of March 1, under the claim that it was from an article he published in a newspaper on February 24.

The PA, therefore, has had dumped on it recycled third-hand material.

I said he was sly and I meant it.

Don’t expect a fair outcome from the harassment committee.

The Tories had already put in a ‘no confidence’ motion two days before Sturgeon spoke.

Tory propaganda again – find her guilty before the trial. They are also after John Swinney. Throw mud and some may stick. This will suit Murdo Fraser fine since he is going head to head with John.

John is a winner.

Murdo slips in on the list vote, sly as ever!

Thomas R Burgess St Catherine Square Perth