Madame LaFarge

I couldn’t help wondering whether it was a comment on the Parliament’s activities. On the front row of the public gallery was a lady in a red jersey. But that was not what caught my eye. She was knitting.

I recalled that as the nobility were being brought to the guillotine during the French revolution, Madame LaFarge sat and watched, and knitted.

So was it a political comment? Perhaps. Certainly the biggest round of applause of the day came from all political persuasions and in response to what? To the comments of a Labour member who said,

“I would not have chosen the banning of fox hunting as a priority for legislation in our new Parliament.”

But because of Lord Watson debating it we were.

Was it coincidence that the ‘Time for Reflection’ for the day was from Ms Kathryn Hendry of Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University? And that she persuaded Parliamentarians to relax and meditate for a few moments.

Her plea was for us to imagine all our weight transmitting itself onto the chair upon which we sat – easy so far. Then we must visualise a bright star radiating power as a third eye from the middle of our forehead – more difficult.

And finally we must relax and enjoy ourselves – impossible with a very complex debate ahead and a free vote meaning that we all had to pay close attention and make up our own minds on 100 amendments.

Sitting Comfortably?

The volume of mail received by Parliamentarians is formidable. Sometimes it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. So a paper titled ‘Anthropometric Study to Update Aircraft Seating Standards’ only got read because of the word ‘aircraft’.

In fact it contains quite good news for holiday charter travellers.

But one has to struggle through statements like “The current 660mm will only accommodate up to the 77th percentile of the European population” to get to the meat.

But the bottom line is - more room for bottoms, and legs, and arms. For the first time we are in sight of a pan-European minimum standard for airline passengers seats. And it is designed to give us more space.

It won’t mean less cramped flights to Spain in 2002. Perhaps from next year.

So the only challenge now is the one laid down by my campaigning colleague, Kenny Macaskill – more flights from Aberdeen.

Arresting Moments

Even the most upright citizen has a moment’s pause for thought when a meeting with the police looms. As a Parliamentarian I find it disconcerting that even Chief Constables defer to me.

But contact with the local police is another matter. I’ve always found them highly responsive to the issues I raise with them. And I generally find a high regard for our police among constituents.

Not that people think there are enough of them. And I agree; we need more.

So with a new Superintendent, Ewan Stewart, in post at Peterhead, there was a good excuse for a visit.

He appears not to be a tall gentleman, standing a clear six inches short of his Chief Inspector colleague. But as I approach I release that our new man is actually well over six feet.

It is just that the Chief Inspector is actually six foot eight! So when these two are seen on our streets, and they often are, criminals tak tent.

The police have cracking down on vandalism to very good effect in Fraserburgh. And the numbers show it. I will certainly be supporting similar initiatives throughout the area. The often small scale thuggery that vandalism really is, drags down morale in the community and success in tackling this is very welcome.

My SNP colleague Fiona Hyslop has found that there is a very serious problem with funding Fire Brigade pensions. Even though firemen and women have been contributing to their pensions all their working lives, the money has not actually gone into a fund anywhere. Instead it has been used to top up day to day Fire Service spending.

But with a large recruitment of fire service personnel in the mid 1970s, we are starting to see a sharp rise in retirements in the 2000s. And today’s funding is being diverted away from front line fire services to pay for pensions.

And it turns out that the police are in exactly the same position.

They pay in for a pension. But when they retire, the pension will be paid directly from money provided for policing. So in few years’ time, we could see enormous pressure on police budgets just to pay pensions.

And actual policing on the streets could suffer. So I’m working with my colleagues to ensure that police pensions are funded properly. The first steps are a raft of Parliamentary questions to find out the numbers.