Friday 10 October 2008

A Motion Cubed

Can someone please comment and shed some light on this?


Correct me if I'm wrong: this is a motion, on a motion, on a motion?


Indulging in party politics by explicity slagging off someone else for indulging in party politics? There are too many repititions here, my head hurts. Read for yourselves:



Short Title: Working Together on Child Poverty and the Minimum Wage


S3M-02659 Bob Doris (Glasgow) (SNP): That the Parliament
expresses its disappointment that Labour MSP Mary Mulligan should engage in party politics on the issue of child poverty by laying down her amendment, S3M-2621.1, to motion S3M-2621 (Ending the Shame of Child Poverty); condemns the amendment on the basis that it seeks to break the unity that exists across a broad spectrum of political parties on the important issue of the national minimum wage by implying that this important development in the fight against poverty was not supported by SNP MPs; notes that SNP MPs voted in favour of the national minimum wage more often than Tony Blair and as often as Gordon Brown MP but would not use this information to imply a lack of commitment to the national minimum wage from either of the aforementioned MPs; acknowledges that SNP MPs not only supported the Bill but took part in the committee which oversaw its progress; looks forward to the continuation of a cross-party approach to tackling child poverty, and hopes that Mary Mulligan MSP will once again be part of that cross-party approach.

3 comments:

Indygal said...

The point is that you would expect there to be some cross party consensus on child poverty which is what Bob's original motion was about. But Mulligan decided to put down a catty amendment implying that the SNP did not support the minimum wage. That would be bad enough if it were true but it was pish so Bob really had to put that right. I'm surprised that you chose to highlight his motion and not her pathetically childish amendment to his. If you do a search on motions in her name you'll see that she uses them sparingly - you wait a long time for a Mary Mulligan motion and then all you get is this crap. I like your blog but I don't think you're being fair on this one. A

Holyrood Patter said...

The purpose of this blog is to highlight abuses of the systems in place, including the motions. Mulligans amendment would be termed "crap chat" but Bob's counter motion only added to it. By remaining apart from this, he would have looked alot better than descending to her level. If Ms Mulligan amends this motion, will there be another Bob one? And so on.

Not a Village in Westminster said...

Good point HP. At the end of the day, all of the parties engage in petty party politics - we expect and to a certain degree enjoy it.

However, it does become a repetitive waste of time which passes un-noticed to any but the most dedicated/geeky observers. For the public, these kind of interventions would be nonsensical (what language are they written in???) and hardly support the idea that MSPs are valuable contributors to life in Scotland.