Holyrood HQ a sign Scotland can’t go it alone

It seems to have been forgotten that after Edinburgh’s Royal High School moved from Regent Road to Barnton in 1968, the vacated magnificent building was refurbished to become the Parliament building for the devolved Scottish Parliament, and was actually renamed “New Parliament House”.

I am a former pupil of the “real” Royal High School in Regent Road and vividly remember the magnificence of the assembly hall which was subsequently fully kitted out with all of the electrical gizmos available at the time. The end result was a debating chamber of supreme elegance.

The 1978 devolution referendum failed to gain sufficient backing for a devolved assembly, so the Regent Road building was used for meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee until 1999 when Devolution was introduced and the Old Royal High Building, ready for immediate use, was again mooted as the home of the Scottish Parliament – but the Scotland Office decided to construct a new building at Holyrood. A loopy Spanish architect was engaged, and in conjunction with RMJM he designed a new Parliament building, a dysfunctional eyesore, with “thinking pods” for MSPS ( subsequently changed to bay windows because thinking is not an MSP’S strongpoint). The original cost was estimated at £ 10-£ 40 million. The final cost was £ 171 million. It was scheduled to open in 2001. It opened in 2004 when it immediately became apparent that its outlandish design would land taxpayers with endless maintenance costs. Then a Public Inquiry cost another £ 717,500.00, and of course, like all Inquiries, noone was held to blame.

This was the beginning of foul- ups by the Scottish Government too numerous to list, but one little known example is that there are 120 unelected quangos in Scotland costing taxpayers £ 14 billion a year, plus Nicola Sturgeon’s 14 advisers, the top one paid around £ 100,000 a year, five others around £ 90,000 a year. Profligacy with taxpayers’ money is endemic in the Scottish Paliament yet SNP supporters still think Scotland could go it alone without becoming a financial basket case.

DAVID HOLLINGDALE Easter Park Drive, Edinburgh