David Maddox: Rewards for failure

So what price failure in the Scottish Government. Well in the last two years it has been £163,024.25, a price paid not by failed ministers but to them by the poor old tax payer.

This nuggest came out in a recent parliamentary answer by John Swinney to Lord George Foulkes, Baron of Cumnock, Labour MSP for the Lothians, First Lord of the Twittery.

It seems that 10 Labour and Lib Dem ministers who lost their jobs in May 2007 because the electorate preferred the SNP were paid £99,742.50 between them as a pay-off.

Then the three former SNP ministers - Stewart Maxwell (bottom left), Linda Fabiani (mid left) and Maureen Watt (top left) - deemed so hopeless by Alex salmond that he sacked them got £43,730.75 between them for not being up to the job - that's £14,576.92 each.

David Maddox: Welcome to the Greens' new keeper

One small aspect in all today's excitement over the reshuffle which has largely gone unnoticed is who has taken over the newly promoted Housing Minister Alex Neil's (pictured right) unofficial job as the doorkeeper to the Greens.

As mentioned previously in the Inside Holyrood column, Mr Neil shared a small section with the Greens, known to some as the SNP pocket, at the end of one of the SNP's corridors in the MSP tower of parliament.

The interesting dynamic here is that since the budget debacle - the Greens voting down the first attempt, then being publicly humiliated in the second when Finance Secretary John Swinney effectively dumped their free for all insulation scheme - the SNP can no longer rely on the two Green MSPs to get them out of a hole in tight votes.

But, with the combative Mr Neil now occupying a ministerial office, the Nationalists have obviously decided to persuade the Greens back on board with kindness.

Step forward Linda Fabiani (pictured left), who the Greens have always seen as one of their own in all but name - "a fellow traveller" as one Green source put it to me. Added to that there are few nicer politicians to be found in Holyrood, with the possible exception of the Greens' own Robin Harper.

So Ms Fabiani may have lost her job as Minister for Freebies (cultural events and foreign trips), but she may well have the comfort of finding herself among friends with the unofficial job of coaxing them back to the SNP corner.

David Maddox: Telling the truth

When Alex Fergusson the Presiding Officer launched his truth inquiry on Thursday, the opposition parties already had their dossiers ready to send out on alleged SNP ministerial lies.
One of them was claims in the main that Linda Fabiani had contacted the Foreign Office after the Mumbai massacre to ask if the Scottish Government could help. Labour correctly said that no such contact had been made, but this has greatly miffed the SNP because it was apparently not through a lack of effort on Ms Fabiani's part.
As one frustrated Nationalist spindoctor put it to me: "Lord Malloch-Brown (foreign office minister) actually refused to take the call from Linda Fabiani about Mumbai!"