Doers and talkers

I read this morning that John Swinney thinks he can go even further than the £530m of savings and crank it up to £600m through efficiency and doing things smarter (or doing less better, remember that one!)

I applaud the sentiment but Swinney has to be careful he doesn't get pinned as a 'talker' rather than a 'doer'. This term of parliament is nearly a year old and ti's getting close to the stage where the SNP will be judged on hwhat they have done and not on what they propose to do. Basically, blaimg the last liot will start to wear thin if they're not careful.

These efficiency savings have been talked up a great game and I am all for them as there is far, far too much waste in the public sector but I did get the impression that the first attempt to tackle this was a bit of a botched job, particularly the SportScotland fiasco. I personally think the SNP did everything right but there's no doubt it was a bit of a PR nightmare with Dougie Donnelly and top Scottish athletes tearing strips off the SNP every chance they got.

So with regard to these efficiency savings I back Swinney all the way but it was the words of Derek Brownlee, Tory Finance spokesperson, that resonated most strongly.

Sadly, the Scotsman didn't merit his quote to be worth printing and I left the metro on the bus but I think it could be reasonably summed up as 'we've known Holyrood has been wasteful for 8 years, glad you're on board now hurry up and get on with doing something about it'

Fair enough really, but I fully expect Swinney will walk the walk just as well as he talks the talk.