KIRSTY, I’ve got a hell of a hangover! I shouldnae have had six pints of yon local beer - Manzanilla, did ye call it? An’ I’ve lost my sombrero an’ toy donkey - I must have left them in the pub."
"You nearly left your pinstriped kilt there too, Jack, when you were up on the table, singing. We’ll just have to hope the paparazzi missed that little scoop."
"Aw, Bridget stopped me singin’ anyway, before I’d got intae ma stride. Whit’s wrong wi’ her? It wiz a gude song: ‘You can meet señoritas by the score - Arriba España!’ "
"I don’t think she liked that line; and it should be ‘Eviva España!’ Your version has rather different political connotations."
"I’ve been thinkin’ about politics, as it happens. I need a new initiative for 2005 - somethin’ to keep us goin’ till Easter. You remember Jack Straw an’ Pinochet? Well, I thought we might get the lads at Holyrood tae demand Franco’s extradition."
"Exhumation, more like - he’s been dead for 30 years, Jack."
"I don’t think MSPs would have a problem with that. Anyway, I’ve had an even better idea: a new Bill tae ban bullfightin’ in Scotland."
"But there isn’t any bullfighting in Scotland!"
"Aw, don’t be so bluidy negative, Kirsty - there wisnae any fur-farmin’ in Scotland, but we banned that. It’s called makin’ a difference, daein’ less better. Whit did Cathy Jamieson want on the phone?"
"It wasn’t Cathy Jamieson, it was a woman journalist speaking in Basque. Now, get that black coffee down you and we’ll try to get you to the airport incognito."
"Wid the airport in Palma no’ be more convenient?..."
Nomenklatura rules, OK! What could be more appropriate, in the incestuous power structure of the New Scotland, than for the First Minister Jack McConnell to spend the New Year enjoying hospitality from the First Lady, Kirsty Wark, in Majorca? It surely beats a howling gale funnelling up one’s pinstriped kilt on Edinburgh Castle esplanade, waiting for Unique Cancellations to pull the plug on the festivities.
Tony Blair is not fastidious about holiday hospitality, as his recent little difficulties involving a stay in a tobacco baron’s French château demonstrate; but even he would draw the line at holidaying in Jeremy Paxman’s house. The public outcry would terminate the career of one, or both, parties. Scotland, however, is complacent about cronyism. Jack McConnell has brazenly breached the Scottish Executive’s own Code of Conduct for Ministers.
Section 1.1 (g) of the code of states: "Ministers should avoid accepting any gift or hospitality which might, or might reasonably appear to, compromise their judgement or place them under an improper obligation." Section 9.18 reinforces this rule: "No Minister or public servant should accept gifts, hospitality or services from anyone which would, or might appear to, place him or her under an obligation." Hospitality is specifically mentioned and it is made clear that conduct which could be misconstrued, even if not an impropriety, is unacceptable.
So, will McConnell be censured? Of course not. The New Scotland has transparency of government, which means in-your-face contempt for the mug punters of the electorate. The Labour Party has bought the services of the Lib Dem tarts, most Scots do not want separatism and they have a pathological repugnance to voting Tory, so the one-party state can look forward to a 1,000-year Reich.
Kirsty Wark’s intimacy with the Labour nomenklatura is part of Scotland’s political landscape. Her invitation by Donald Three Millions to be one of the five members of the selection panel he chaired to choose a design for the Scottish parliament was emblematic of this cosy relationship. Incredibly, the BBC awarded her company, Wark Clements, the contract to make a documentary about the construction of Holyrood - ie about a project of which she was one of the six initiators.
Initially, The Gathering Place, as the film was titled, was given a grant of £186,743 by the Scottish Arts Council and £186,000 of licence-payers’ money from the BBC. The additional tranches of subvention, including £50,000 of lottery money from Scottish Screen, that have since been added have brought the total to £820,000. Seldom has the public had so large an investment in any documentary; yet the public has been denied access to it, despite its importance as evidence for the Fraser Inquiry.
The BBC would not release the tapes of the Wark Clements film to Lord Fraser. In this frustration of the democratic process, it had the full support of Wark Clements. In the words of the then controller of BBC Scotland, John McCormick, in 2003: "Wark Clements was opposed to untransmitted material being made available, very clearly and unequivocally." How shrilly would La Wark react to any such stonewalling from a guest on Newsnight? This scandal has not gone unremarked outside Scotland: writing in The Independent, Stephen Pollard observed: "Nasty smell doesn’t even come close to describing it."
The obstructive tactics of the BBC and Wark Clements were also aided by Jack McConnell. Last March he refused to support moves to compel the BBC to hand over the film tapes, counselling MSPs to think "very carefully" about any such action. This was not the only occasion on which he and Wark sang from the same hymn sheet. In December 2002, after McConnell had called for shared campuses for Catholic and non-denominational schools, Kirsty Wark spoke at an awards ceremony for prospective headteachers in Glasgow, urging her audience to question the separate funding of Catholic state schools.
By what right does the supposedly impartial presenter of BBC current affairs programmes intrude in so partisan a manner into the most inflammatory issue in Scotland? She went on, a few months later, to present the Scottish election night television coverage. What is the BBC thinking of? Every propriety has been trampled by the Scotia Nostra mafia. For the nomenklatura of the New Scotland, Majorca is now the gathering place. To the 1,775,045 Scots who voted Yes to devolution - Happy New Year, suckers!
