Drumlanrig

LABOUR'S KIWI BIT OF FUN AT SNP'S EXPENSE

WITH the SNP's "arc of prosperity" now paying off its overdraft, the Nationalists have now turned further afield – to New Zealand – to find their latest role model.

The party's economic spokesman Stewart Hosie wants the UK to nick the Kiwis' Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Seeing as both Ireland and Iceland went belly up months after the SNP started extolling their virtues, mischief-making Labour MPs are joking about how they plan to write to the New Zealand government to warn them, before the curse of the Nats hits it too.

MSPS READY TO HAVE A DINE OLD TIME IN THE US

MSPs will be jetting off to the States next month for the annual Scotland Week jamboree.

Credit card receipts from previous years, released under Freedom of Information, have shown just how much fun the jaunt can be. In 2008, Presiding Officer Alex Fergusson, Labour MSP Frank McAveety, above, former Tory leader David McLetchie, the SNP's Alex Neil and Lib Dem Iain Smith as well as three parliamentary officials scoffed a meal at posh New York restaurant Maloney and Porcelli on the taxpayer's plastic. The bill? $743.43. Nice work if you can get it.

FROM BARD TO VERSE

NOT that MSPs splash our cash only on themselves, of course. The same FoI showed how the parliament (ie, us) stumped up a 710 bill for a lunch at Gleneagles recently for a group of worthies who had come across to Scotland to enjoy the celebrations of Robert Burns 250th anniversary. They had meat. They did eat. And so the taxpayer be thankit, as the Bard might have said.

BBC'S WEIRD SCIENCE

Viewers watching yesterday's BBC coverage of the Labour conference from Glasgow's Science Centre may have been a tad puzzled. The said Science Centre is, of course, about 20 yards from the Beeb's all-singing all-dancing new Scottish headquarters at Pacific Quay.

But their programme was broadcast, down the wire, from their studio in Edinburgh. 'Scuse me? It turns out that despite being all-singing and all-dancing, HQ hadn't thought of keeping a studio free in Glasgow. Doh!

RAISING THE ROOF

An interesting session in Holyrood last week, where MSPs were discussing prostitution.

The subject of street workers was proving fascinating fodder for members of the justice committee. That was until a strange scraping was heard in the ceiling of the committee room. Before you could say Bobby Moore, a panel was removed and a head popped through.

It was a workman carrying out essential maintenance. The meeting was temporarily adjourned.