David Maddox: Don't scare the children

A source at Holyrood who enjoys scouring the local papers has passed me a very funny tale from the Paisley Daily Express.
It seems that a year on from resigning as Scottish Labour leader over what she did or did not declare in her donations, Wendy Alexander (pictured right) has upset some local parents by allegedly canvassing the support of their children at the school gate.
As the MSP for Paisley North it is of course perfectly normal for her to visit local schools, as do most of her Holyrood colleagues across parties.
What "parents" or one parent at least - one Roseanne McKeown - reportedly found objectionable was Ms Alexander allegedly handing out postcards protesting against the Lib Dem/ SNP led Renfrewshire Council's education cuts.
This means the school in question, Ralston Primary, will lose £17,600 from its budget.
“I definitely wasn’t happy about it," said Ms Keown, apparently talking about Ms Alexander's canvassing of her child rather than the school's budget cut (odd priorities perhaps).
The really interesting question, though, is why children were being canvassed for support. it will, after all, be seven years before the oldest of these youngsters gets a chance to vote.
One suggestion that came my way was that Labour are in such a dire hole at the moment, not least because of Ms Alexander's unfortunate period of leadership, that they have given up on this generation of voters and have decided to started building up support for the future.
Even more strangely Ms Alexander seems to think that her actions as a politician were not political.
She told the Paisley Daily Express: “It wasn’t political, it was about cuts in the school budget.”
Which begs the question: What on earth is political then?