Black chat

last week, Channel 4 News sent Jon Snow to interview Mhairi Black MP as she got the train back to Glasgow. Quite understandably, she initially enthused about going home to see her family and friends.

However, she soon went on to say: “Fundamentally, I don’t want to be in London. I don’t want to have to get a flight in order to go and do my job and to go to a parliament. I think a parliament should be back up the road.”

These remarks were absurd, firstly, because there has been a parliament “up the road” for the past 16 years. The Holyrood parliament cost UK taxpayers £400 million to build and costs about £70m a year to run.

If Ms Black doesn’t like being an MP in London, I’m sure she would have little difficulty getting elected as an MSP in Edinburgh. Secondly, every MEP could just as easily complain that they don’t want to be in Brussels or Strasbourg and that there should be a parliament back across the channel. Their logic would be no less ridiculous.

Keith Gilmour

Netherton Gate

Glasgow