BLACK DOG

Bid to hush-up hotel secrets

IN attempting to conceal the hotels where MPs stay when away from home, SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson claimed the details should be removed from the public record of expenses to protect politicians from attacks such as the horrific murder of Jo Cox. Apparently it never occurred to him that the fearless campaigning MP was attacked near her surgery, not in a hotel or at home. But Mr Robertson would have known it was MPs’ hotel expenses that helped journalists last year uncover a love triangle involving Nationalist MPs Stewart Hosie and Angus MacNeil with parliamentary journalist Serena Cowdy – which naturally they and the party would rather have kept secret. CABINET Ministers are meant to be above bribery, but a mother thought buying a favour from Finance Secretary Derek Mackay would be a piece of cake when the Scottish cabinet went on tour last week. In a Pitlochry canteen she presented him with a piece of tiffin, shortly before he and his SNP colleagues went on stage. There the squeaky-voiced Finance Secretary repeatedly called out a boy’s name until the unfortunate youngster had to stand up in front of his sniggering friends – to learn his mother had procured his humiliation.