David Maddox: Who is best to teach the youth of Scotland about financial prudence?

Obviously Gordon Brown would not be top of the list these days to talk about "prudence", a word he seems to have become less fond of since we found out that boom and bust had not really been finished.
But it turns out that SNP education secretary Fiona Hyslop has an interesting advisor for the "credit crunch" lessons for school children being proposed by the Scottish Government, as covered in today's Scotsman.
Labour's Bill Butler has uncovered that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is to be her main advisor.
Yes that is the same RBS which went on a spending spree of world banks, bringing down the once great institution with purchase of Dutch bank ABN Amro. The very same bank that was bailed out by the tax payer and is now mostly owned by the UK Government because of its erm.. expertise in financial prudence.
There was a suggestion that bankers should retrain as teachers. Maybe Ms Hyslop has a plan to supplement former RBS chief Sir Fred Goodwin's massive £342,500 a year pension (reduced after he took a £2.7 million lump sum) with a job in the classroom.

David Maddox: Getting back to the classroom

There used to be a cruel saying "if you can't do, teach." I must I admit I always took slight offence at it as the son of two teachers and the husband of another.

But sometimes my experience of politicians makes me think the saying should be: "If you can't teach, get elected."

A classic example was on BBC Scotland's Big Devolution Debate last night from Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray, a former Maths teacher (pictured right).

"Has it [the Scottish Parliament] made a difference?" he asked rhetorically. "Yes it has. When the Parliament started one in five children in this country lived in poverty. That's now one in three. That's significant progress."

So more poor children is a good thing or has Mr Gray just got his sums wrong?