David Maddox: Murphy's law

You know when the silly season has begun because political parties start sending pictures of their opponents committing parking violations.
But this one is wholly deserved. Labour yesterday released a picture of SNP Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson using disabled parking spots for his electric car test (scroll down to the post two below this one) accompanied by the usual expressions of shock and outrage. So today the SNP have responded.
They found me this picture of Labour Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy with his car parked on double yellow lines near the Palace of Westminster. To make matters worse it actually appears on the Scotland Office website.

I seem to remember that there are some security risk issues about parking in that area too.
But the real lesson here is political parties in glass houses should not throw stones.
I guess we won't be having any games like this off the Lib Dems because we all remember the time when former Scottish leader Nicol Stephen parked his campaign bus on double yellow lines too.

David Maddox: Minister's electric shock

The SNP spin machine is a pretty effective one and certainly ahead of the game in Scotland at the moment.
But it appears that the party spindoctors paid for by the tax payer may have taken their eye off the ball for a recent publicity stunt in Glasgow by Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson when he was test driving an electric car or perhaps they left it to their civil service colleagues.
The footage run by the BBC showed the minister testing the car in a cordoned off area which is normally used for disabled parking. This at a time when a bill has gone through Holyrood protecting disabled parking, as pictured below.

So not only was the minister denying disabled people parking spaces, it is possible he may have actually been breaking the law.

The author of that bill, Labour Dumbarton MSP Jackie Baillie, has called on Mr Stevenson to apologise and make a donation to charity in recompense.

David Maddox: Separated at birth (Stewart Stevenson special)

My earlier blog on the above picture from 1982 where I mentioned a fellow hack's suggestion that Scotland's Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson (leading the walkout) looked like Peter Sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper has led to further suggestions.
The best one came from an unnamed Holyrood source who suggested that there's a vague echo of John Goodman's part in the Big Lebowski (below).

David Maddox: Those were the days

There is a fascinating piece by David Torrance in today's Scotsman (page 42) on the 79 Group, set up largely by young firebrands such as Alex Salmond, Kenny MacAskill, Stewart Stevenson and Roseanna Cunningham in the SNP to promote the idea of a Scottish Socialist Republic.
Of course its historical importance is that it modernised the SNP and provided the core of its future leadership. All the above are after all now ministers and Wee Eck is ensconced in Bute House.
But the above picture dug up by Torrance has provided much amusement in the media tower at Holyrood. It has Stewart Stevenson and Kenny MacAskill leading a conference walkout in 1982 because the party was not socialist enough. If you look carefully current Highland MSP Rob Gibson is there too, fifth down the line.
As we can also see those when the days of kilts and Scotland football shirts were still de rigueur in the unreconstructed SNP.
But the amusement was provided by the fashion of Mr Stevenson who depending on which hack you talk to looks like a hired hand for a Colombian drug baron (what was in that brief case?), an also-ran in the 1982 Scottish Che Guevara look alike competition or, rather cruelly, Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper), pictured right.
Anybody who knows what was in that brief case please get in touch.