2's company, 129's a crowd

Sitting watching First Minister's questions last night I got to thinking, do we really need all these MSPs? Who decided upon the rather bizarre figure of 129 anyway?

And my thoughts were compounded with a few stories today, and in the past couple of weeks......


Mohammad Sarwar - is to quit Westminster but hinted that he might be tempted to join Holyrood with this quote:

"I might get bored and want to come back, perhaps to the Scottish Parliament. It's too early to call," he said.

So whereas some people like to take up golf Mr Sarwar would like to perhaps be an MSP to pass his time. I don't know much about the MP but my impression is that he has done an outstanding job at Westminster. But I still don't like the tone of the above line, like working at Holyrood is an easy ride and you don't really have to do too much work there.


George Foulkes - Apparently finds parts of his job boring so has simply (1) not turned up to committee meetings and (2) resigned after a week to do more supposedly enjoyable stuff down at the House of Lords. It seems, much like Gordon Jackson, he sees his role as an MSP as a part-time post.


Helen Eadie - Her breezy resignation from committees suggests that there's plenty of flexibility going on in there and perhaps these committees are over-staffed with the simple aim of giving MSPs things to do.


This is backed up further by the constant charge that list MSPs find it very difficult to fill their time as an MSP. And yet, I daresay use the generous expenses and mortgage allowance schemes to their full potential.


My take on it is that the Holyrood parliament has to be leaner and meaner in the way that it goes about it's business. But getting a group of people who have a penchant for awarding themselves medals and big payrises to move in the other direction and cut back on some of the flab is, well, tricky to say the least.



So maybe we should whittle the numbers down to 100 by having a Big-Brother style set of evictions for the next 29 weeks which might get more people involved, reduce the democratic deficit and all that.