Politics | 7 February 2009

It takes more than an inch of snow to stop the wheels of Scottish democracy. The devolved parliament was hard at work on Monday morning, eight of its members engaged on a most sombre business: a motion formally denouncing a rogue political columnist. It reads as follows:

“That the Parliament notes that the journalist, Fraser Nelson, in comments on The Spectator’s Coffee House blog… referred to Castlemilk and Easterhouse as “beautiful names, scummy estates” draws Mr Nelson’s attention to… a motion which celebrated Castlemilk High Schools 2008 HM Inspectorate of Education report…and to motion which highlighted the recent award of the International Scotswomen of the Year title to Mary Miller, a former Castlemilk resident…and considers that Mr Nelson’s rudeness towards the communities of Castlemilk and Easterhouse is outstripped only by his ignorance of them.”

To trawl the internet and denounce offending phrases is, alas, not an atypical pastime for MSPs. Rather than seek new solutions to the appalling poverty in east Glasgow (whose ghettoes have the lowest life expectancy in the developed world), Scotland’s legislators attack those who draw attention to the problem. Devolution has hardly given Castlemilk bold new champions. Its first MSP, a young Labour peer, stepped down after being imprisoned for fire-raising. Its new representative, Charlie Gordon, was recently found to have paid £13,000 of public money to his son’s internet firm. He is the author of the above motion.

I crept on his radar, I suspect, not initially because of the blog but when I joined a BBC Radio Scotland debate on whether children in these deprived estates should be given a £10,000 education voucher. This was the proposal by Reform Scotland, a new (and rather optimistically named) think-tank. I was all for it, arguing that the desire to do what’s best for one’s child is a basic, powerful human instinct felt as strongly in Bearsden and Milngavie (two of Glasgow’s richest estates) as in Easterhouse and Castlemilk (two of the poorest).