Down at the lower end of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, across the street from the queen’s summer house, you’ll find the architectural anomaly that is the Scottish Parliament. You’ll have no trouble picking it out from the surrounding medieval buildings that make up Old Town. The ground floor is open to visitors, and houses rotating exhibitions (there was one about Andrew Carnegie when we were there) as well as a permanent display about Scottish government.
Visitors who plan ahead can go on one of many free guided tours, sit in on a committee meeting, and watch a debate in the main chamber. Or, as we did recently, you can watch a live session of the First Minister’s Questions. This is modeled on the Prime Minister’s Questions (a weekly half-hour Q&A in the Houses of Parliament), but with somewhat fewer speech conventions. The Speaker calls on M(S)Ps who want to ask questions of the Prime/First Minister, and is also responsible for insuring that speech rules are adhered to. In the London version, no one is allowed to use the word “you” – rather it must be danced around with phrases such as “my right honorable friend.”
We saw one MSP get scolded for accusing the First Minister of lying, but her revised statement that he was “adjacent to the truth” was allowed to pass. There’s a lot of vocalization during question time, with M(S)Ps laughing, grumbling, and shouting to express approval or disapproval (this is often met with sharp calls for order from the Speaker). Overall it’s quite the entertaining half-hour of politics.
These days the doings of the Scottish government are particularly interesting, what with the hotting up of the independence debate. [People here really do say “hotting up.” All the time. Not “heating,” but “hotting.” As if “to hot” were a verb. It makes me giggle a lot.] The vote, as we are constantly reminded, is now less than six months away. Will Scotland leave the UK? Will it keep the pound? Will it re-join the EU? Will we have to learn to speak Scots to keep our visas? I cannae say.
