Sketch: Belter of a day for discussing discipline

Published on Thursday 7 May 2009 20:35

AS DRAMATIC statements about political violence go, it was not quite up there with "Et tu, Brute". But Eck Salmond's cry was nonetheless a startling one: "I have been assaulted with a paper clip!"

Dodgy foreign parliaments get tanks crashing through the doors and guns fired at the ceiling, and this is the best we get: a paper-clip. Last night, the finger of blame was pointed at Mike Rumbles (Lib Dem). He'd been seen fiddling with just such a weapon minutes beforehand, when he attempted to pull Scotland back from recession by calling for a beaver programme in Argyll to be scrapped.

As the First Minister stood to defend the controversial semi-aquatic rodent, he was caught amidships by the cruelly twisted ordnance, but managed to stumble through the rest of his speech with little or no loss of blood. His necktie, which bore the brunt of the assault, also appeared undamaged.

Rumbles, the would-be assassin, looked shaken by his failure, and the Samurai sword scabbard from which he'd drawn the clip still quivered on his belt. Last night, however, Lib Dem aides were calling the incident "an accident". The clip, it seems, had just sort of flown out of Mike's hand.

The attack came, ironically, on the day parliament had discussed unruly kids wielding weaponry in school. Other topics arising during that debate included: sticking silk handkerchiefs down your underwear; buying instruments of punishment on the internet; and doodling your way to a criminal record.

Elizabeth Smith (Con), started it all with a call for greater firmness. Wearing a jacket with a horticultural theme (it was made out of manure), she told those who might think her too harsh that all she wanted was a disciplined environment where decent pupils could prosper. "And if some people don't like that idea, then tough." Crikey, doesn't mess about, that gal.

Keith Brown, the schools minister, declared controversially: "Weapon attacks are plainly wrong." Well, I'm glad we got that one sorted out. Unfortunately, no-one told Mr Rumbles.

Ken Macintosh (Lab) pointedly said it was important for children to make friends at school. One detected a sad autobiographical note. He noted that Fiona Hyslop, the education minister, had used the Schwarzenegger-style phrase "You can run but you can't hide". I'm not saying that Ken is effete, but he's a very nice young man, and the gentleness of his rejoinder made it ironically effective: "Who's hiding now, Ms Hyslop?" Think Kenneth Williams addressing the Terminator.

Ken said there was a whiff of the 1950s about Tory policies and, when Murdo Fraser (Con) rose to intervene, he predicted: "Ah yes, the tawse!"

HOWEVER, it was not Murdo but Margaret Smith (Lib Dem) who addressed Lochgelly's most famous product by declaring an intimate acquaintance with it. But what had been her crime? "Talking too much." Never!

Margaret Mitchell (Con) highlighted a chilling example of criminal carelessness, when a grafitti vandal was caught by "the doodlings in his jotter". Ooh, nasty. No-one likes getting caught by the doodlings.

The brain of Ian McKee (SNP) is a gallimaufry of delightful doodlings. Yesterday, the affable maverick took us to the margins of reality when he accused the Tories of hankering after Wackford Squeers, the headmaster from Dickens's Dotheboys Hall. Squeers was based on William Shaw, whose harsh policies must be judged a success in Tory eyes, claimed Ian, as none of his pupils ever misbehaved.

Speaking from painful personal experience, Dr McKee said of the cane: "The rumour was that a silk handkerchief hidden under your pants mitigated the beating. But I can tell you that it did not." Then he offered this bombshell news: "You can buy tawses on the internet." Amid gasps, he added: "I will happily give details to other members in private if they so wish."

A distinctly uncomfortable presiding orifice intervened with this advice: "Please return to the point." Point? What point? I didn't know there'd been any point. Who cared about points? We were all agog.

IAN cheerfully ignored the injunction and proceeded to delineate the various prices and styles, from a lightweight tawse that Tories could use on schoolchildren to a more serious item to be found, Ian told us, "in the adult entertainment market".

The aforementioned Murdo (Con) said Dr McKee's "entertaining but utterly irrelevant" contribution had demonstrated a decidedly unhealthy interest in the details of corporal punishment. He added: "I'm sure I'm not the only one in the chamber concerned that Dr McKee spends his evenings surfing the web, checking the prices of instruments of corporal punishment."

Reacting to the jibe about being stuck in the 1950s, Murdo pointed out that in his modern party no old Fettesians littered the front bench. Indeed, he himself had attended a comprehensive (St Wilfred's Academy for the Incurably Peculiar). He added that there was only one old Etonian in the ranks, Jamie McGrigor, who had earlier staggered in looking dishevelled, as usual. Jamie took a desperate glug of his mineral water. He hoped Murdo wasn't going to punish him again for having gone to Eton. But, fearing the worst, he had already stuffed a silk hankie down his pants.