Today's Holyrood Debate

Okay. Today's rant.

I'll come clean. I hate Tories. All of them.

From 1948 on, I was brought up to detest and despise Tories. Working class Tories were the worst people imaginable to my very political Communist/Socialist Glasgow family - we didn't make any distinction between the two ideologies. Working class Tories were not so much poor confused souls as class enemies with a long history of betraying their own people. I've tried over the years to forgive them but they remain my main hate group.

And as today's Tories move further and further to the right, attacking trade unions and the poor and disabled, espousing free market economics of a kind never before seen in Europe but quite common in the minds if not the lives of American politicians, I find myself horrified by what I see and hear in Holyrood and in Westminster.

I'm not even going to mention UKIP, who are also Tories but a different kind.

The Conservative party to me have characteristics that I find deeply offensive: they are greedy, the kind of people who know the cost of everything (especially in places like the Home Counties - why am I the only person who finds that title annoying?) but the value of nothing. They are frankly out for themselves. Arrogant. More than a little bit stupid.

I was going to attach a few names to these adjectives: greedy - George Osborne. Cost of everything/value of nothing - Michael Gove. Arrogant - David Cameron, David Davis, Boris Johnson.Well, let me be honest: just about any of them. Stupid - what can I say? David Cameron, David Davis, Boris Johnson...

But today in Holyrood saw us reaching a new low in Conservative politics. The Tory leader in Scotland's parliament, a woman whose abilities have I think been over-estimated, argued with the First Minister and at one point told her to 'sit down' because she wasn't going to 'cede the floor' to her. The words who the f*** do you think you are? came to my mind unbidden.

Now. I was taught the rules of debating by some very smart teachers at Crookston Castle Secondary School in Glasgow in the 1960s. A lot of them were active in the Labour Party and some among the Liberals, although I'm not sure any ever owned up to being Tories. I learned, for example, that you should have your arguments properly laid out and you should give way gracefully if your ideas are challenged - and have your answers ready.

I'm not too bothered about Nicola Sturgeon being upset by Ruth Davidson's comments. She's a tough cookie and will survive, but I would like Davidson to apologise for her rudeness to the office of First Minister. I can't imagine her ever speaking to Donald Dewar or Jack McConnell or Jim Wallace like that. And she should be ashamed for speaking to Nicola Sturgeon in this way.