David Maddox: A funny thing happened on the way to the job centre...

Strange indeed. Peter Duncan (pictured right), the deposed and would-be Conservative MP for Dumfries and Galloway, ran into a spot of bother whilst he was trying to make a local job centre a useful means of getting his old job in Westminster back.
In his recent In Touch leaflet Mr Duncan made great play about how job centres were being shut and included a picture of himself outside the JobCentre in Stranraer with a young woman who he said was "a jobseeker" suggesting the picture was taken quite recently.
Except she was not a jobseeker and the picture was five years old.
Kate Nassar, the young woman in question, in fact turned out to be a local teacher, but had been employed by Mr Duncan in 2004 when the picture apparently was taken.
"It really is ridiculous," Mrs Nassar told her local paper. "At a time of economic instability it really makes you wonder whether they are taking the issue seriously. Surely they should be speaking to people genuinely affected by the recession.

"Instead they used a five year old picture of me and I wasn't even unemployed then - I was working for Peter!"

Mr Duncan has reportedly declined to apologise but has promised that the picture will not be used again.

He said: "There are clearly a lot of unemployed people in contact with me and angry with the current economic situation and I will give them the opportunity to be involved in the future."

The offending leaflet can be found on page 2 of this link: Duncan%20leaflet.pdf

But never mind at least his Conservative colleagues in Holyrood are on the ball.... Or maybe not.

This week Nanette Milne (pictured left), the party's environment spokeswoman, the Scottish Government's efforts to reduce waste, even though the Tories tried to amend deposit and return out of the Climate Change Bill.

Then she praised the a recycling company Wood Works for doing good stuff on waste, except they ceased trading in June last year because of cuts in (Scottish) government funding. Maybe her researcher (Miles Briggs) is spending too much time trying to win Menzies Campbell's seat in North East Fife.