Mother of God! Could Line of Duty’s ‘H’ have been... Humza?
Douglas Ross chose to make FMQ’s about an auditor’s statement. Pretty insensitive given recent events. scotland’s auditor general stephen Boyle had been up before committee earlier and rubbished the £300million estimate ministers had been relying on for the over-budget, unfinished ferries.
Boyle is a human calculator. He deals in numbers and whether they add up. That makes this mild-mannered, apolitical bureaucrat a threat to the SNP.
In the olden days, he could have been leaned on but the Nationalists can’t be so brazen now.
so Boyle needn’t worry about waking up to a horse’s head. The state the SNP’s finances are in, all they could stretch to is a file photo of shergar.
Humza Yousaf admitted ministers were ‘now reviewing those projections’. They’ve spent more than £300million on £97million of boats. Imagine sending this lot to asda with a message line.
Yousaf looks tired. Most First Ministers lose steam towards the end of their tenure but he has barely had time to change the Bute House milk order and already looks like he needs a holiday.
It didn’t help that Ross was on form. He stretches to all of 5ft 9in but he packs a jumbo assortment of zingers.
‘only a party that bought a camper van for £100,000 could think paying hundreds of millions of pounds for two delayed ferries is a good deal,’ he snarked. Yousaf said he would not ‘take too many lessons on financial literacy from the party of Kwasi Kwarteng and liz Truss’.
THE sNP group are beginning to rally round their leader, though that’s not necessarily a good thing. Every time they applaud the weakest of lines and the dullest of barbs, they only draw attention to his shortcomings.
They clapped sturgeon because she energised them; they clap Yousaf to try to energise him. By now even his most ardent supporters must realise they’ve replaced a political dynamo with a lowvoltage motor.
But even feigned enthusiasm couldn’t save him from his own words. Yousaf, Ross reminded everyone, had admitted he didn’t know whether government ministers were using burner phones.
‘This is all starting to look like an episode of line of Duty,’ the Tory leader swiped. Mother of god! Could the mysterious ‘H’ have been ‘Humza’ all along?
Ross had procured a photograph of then transport minister Humza Yousaf visiting the shipyard to mark ‘the halfway point’ of the ferries project.
It was taken in December 2016. Ross held the picture aloft with pride. It could have been the North of scotland amateur league runners-up trophy but he flaunted it like the World Cup.
amid a taunting roar from the Tory benches, the Presiding officer gave him a ticking off for his display of a prop.
as a parliamentary procedure aficionado – some have suggested sharper terms – I applaud alison Johnstone for her strict interpretation of Erskine May.
The rules on props have tightened since Tory MP Michael Fabricant brandished a penknife during a Commons debate on offensive weapons. Ross’s offence somewhat pales in comparison. sometimes your mind wanders at FMQs – I’m surprised it doesn’t dart for the exit – and only snaps back to attention at a startling turn of phrase.
‘How many swimming pools’ worth of poo,’ alex Cole-Hamilton asked, ‘is the First Minister content to see put on our best-loved beaches?’ Cole-Hamilton was complaining about ‘19,000 olympicsized swimming pools’ of sewage dumped by scotland’s publicly owned water company in 2022.
In fact, since only 5 per cent of discharge pipes are monitored, the true figure was much higher.
Honestly, these unionists. scotland is breaking olympic records and all they can do is talk it down.