First Minister Nicola Sturgeon rubbing shoulders with the Duke of Buccleuch.
NOTEBOOK by Bill Heaney
There can’t be many who think much of politicians these days, but St Andrew’s House, headquarters of the Scottish government in Edinburgh, is a nest of vicious vipers.
This is clear from reading the minutes of the committee holding the inquiry into the Alex Salmond affair.
Some of you may say what we are looking at in this document is an unsurprising record of politics in action in Scotland in the 21st century.
What else should we expect from the people who run our country when you look at the cack-handed way in which it is run at present?
Few of the people who occupy the coveted seats in the Holyrood chamber could ever be described as being statesmanlike.
Well, they are politicians after all and to a man and woman they can be economical with truth.
Indeed, for the number of times they feel they have to assure the public that they want to be honest with them, and the fact that the First Minister is someone who finds it necessary to do that more than anyone else (check the tapes), this should be a matter of real concern in this country.
However, it seems not.
This is Secret Scotland where Bravehearts are thin on the ground and too many people are feart to stand up to those who perceive themselves to be the elite.
The “here’s tae us, wha’s like us, no’ minny and they’re a’ deid” brigade, of which there are many, far too many of them in public service.
You know the crowd I am referring to here. The poet Louis MacNeice wrote about them thus:
It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
To far too many of these people, the press and public are an irritant. We are the proletariat in their eyes if you like, which I don’t, and not many of you do either.
To them we are just another inconvenience they have to put up with.
Like you, I saw the television news coverage of the Salmond committee on Tuesday evening.
It did not show the government up in a good light. Far from it.
I squirmed watching the “important” civil servants being shown into the committee room to give their evidence about alleged bullying and sexual harassment.
It was the obsequious way this was carried out that got to me.
Sir Peter Housden, the former permanent secretary to the Scottish Government from 2010 to 2015, who arrived in Edinburgh after a career of public service in England as a director of education, chief executive in a major local authority and a director general and permanent secretary in Whitehall is a case in point.
As permanent secretary to the Scottish Government, Sir Peter had a dual role, as principal policy adviser to the First Minister and the Cabinet and as head of the civil service in the Scottish Government.
Now to me that sounds like the CV of someone seeking the post of headmaster at Gordonstoun, or more probably Eton, not someone who should be running the new Scotland.
He was dressed like a toff, spoke like a toff and carried himself like a toff.
And he trained as a teacher no doubt which most probably explains why his attitude to those politicians asking him questions was that all this was beneath his pay grade and what he really should be doing was taking part in a four-ball out at Muirfield.
Sir Peter obviously thought it was right for him to be led by a flunkey from whichever witness room he was in – bet it wasn’t a bit like the ones the plebs have to put up with in our courts, where prosecution witnesses have to share a room with the accused’s witnesses staring menacingly at them.
Defence witnesses most certainly do not have someone standing by to open the door for them.
It’s just as well this is [for the time being at least] only a devolved Scotland. If the country were independent and these folk were running it, then we would be grovelling and licking the boots of the new great and good.
We would be all in this together right enough with elevated birkies such as the Duke of Buccleuch owning all the best land and livestock.
And the nation paying excessive taxes to look after the security of his paintings, such as his Madonna of the Yarn Winder, a De Vinci masterpiece worth £millions, now hanging on a wall on the first floor of the Scottish National Gallery at the foot of the Playfair Stairs.
That painting was stolen. Bet you the police were on the case within minutes and the jolly old Duke didn’t have to make a series of calls answered by robots initially and then geographically challenged call handlers at Bilston Glen.
A few moments later the police would have come screaming up the avenue in a blue-lit BMW to stand and stare at the blank space on his private gallery wall.
The Crown Prosecution Service brought the accused to trial before the High Court in the saltire-bedecked Lawnmarket. Needless to say they failed to convict the alleged felons.
Anyway, I digress.
Let us return to the new proceedings which once again have cost the public a fortune that even West Dunbartonshire Council’s SNP administration and chief officials would have difficulty squandering with friendly contractors.
There has been a recent lull in business in the fine dining rooms of Glasgow’s exclusive restaurants since some regulars who used to frequent them after a game of golf on the manicured fairways and greens of a Loch Lomondside golf course came to be living a quieter life.
So, what would the readers of The Dumbarton Democrat be most interested in at this ongoing inquiry into the affairs of Alex Salmond?
I would imagine the contribution of Labour MSP Jackie Baillie, of Dumbarton, Vale of Leven, Helensburgh and Lomond constituency would be near the top of the list.
She appears to be the only Labour politician around here saying anything worthwhile. The silence of the Labour councillors is deafening, which plays straight into the barrow of our highly paid officials who would like to keep it that way.
Here’s a taste how it went:
Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab): Good morning, Sir Peter. Obviously, the fairness at work policy applied during your tenure as permanent secretary, and it still applies for staff other than ministers and former ministers. Is there anything wrong with the fairness at work policy that you would change?
Sir Peter Housden: Five years after the fact, I would not venture a view on that. Serving officials would be much better placed to give you a view.
So, no joy there then. Sir Peter gives the impression that all this is rather tedious and that he would rather be elsewhere.
Jackie Baillie: Thank you. When you were the permanent secretary, did you identify a gap or see a need for a policy that covered former ministers and former civil servants?
Sir Peter: No.
Jackie Baillie: Did the current permanent secretary [Lesley Evans] consult you about the wisdom of introducing a retrospective harassment policy?
Sir Peter: No.
Jackie Baillie: I encourage you to answer my final question. I am not asking you to name people who reported concerns or even to name people about whom concerns were reported, and I am not asking about particular ministers; I am asking a process question that is not prohibited by the civil service code. You said in response to Alex Cole Hamilton [Liberal Democrat] that, when people raised concerns with you, you would speak to senior ministers. Will you define for me what a senior minister is?
Sir Peter: Let me be doubly clear. That was not an invariable part of a procedure that I followed. I would do that where appropriate.
Jackie Baillie: But you have done that.
Sir Peter: I have done that.
Jackie Baillie: I am seeking to understand what a senior minister is. A minister is not senior by dint of their age or longevity in office. It is clear that you are referring to a type of minister. I assume that that is not the entirety of the Cabinet. I am seeking to understand your own words, Sir Peter.
Sir Peter: I think that the adjective that I used was “senior”.
Jackie Baillie: You did.
Sir Peter: That would be a senior minister with whom I felt that such a conversation would be profitable.
If you are getting the impression that Sir Peter was answering the questions with the maximum of reluctance and the minimum of detail, then so did I.
Jackie Baillie: Forgive me for being a bit pedantic, but I think that you would agree that “senior” does not relate to longevity in ministerial office or to somebody’s age, but to the post that the person holds. When you talk about senior ministers, who do you mean?
Sir Peter: Longevity and experience are often factors in all of that. However, I am not going to play a part in the jigsaw identification of ministers.
And so it went on. A game of fencing in the manner of Yes Minister, which was funny.
However, this stuff isn’t funny. It a waste of time and public money at a time when it would be better spent on initiatives to drag Scotland out of the mess it’s in.
The inquiry should get to the point. Who blew the whistle on Alex Salmond and when was First Minister Nicola Sturgeon first told about it? And what did she do about it?
Watching politicians playing Perry Mason is unedifying to say the least.
The truth is a hard thing to get to in politics. As we have just found out (nearer home, but from outside the locked doors of the hearing room) in the case of Cllr Jim Bollan and Chief Executive Joyce White, they are not fond of anyone watching what they are up to.