Work continues down on the farm

By John Knox
Political reporter, BBC Scotland

Returning to the old farmstead after a summer in the high shielings has been a strangely psychedelic experience.

It has been an eventful old week on the Holyrood farm

The barnyard is full of hay bales from the summer campaigns and there are cartloads of problems - high food prices, increased fuel costs, a housing slump.

In one corner, farmer Salmond is piling up 15 new bills. In another corner, Wendy Alexander is celebrating a victory, of sorts.

Her supporters are in three distinct groups, though, as they try to round up the sheep for the three Labour leadership contenders.

In another corner Tavish Scott, a young farmer from Shetland, is wearing a bright yellow tie and talking of winning gold in the Liberal Democrat Olympics.

And in the fourth corner is Auntie Annabel waving her rolling pin at everyone and calling out: "Why can't you spend your spare £281m on a tax cut?"

Meanwhile, in the orchard, only one apple hangs invitingly from a tree. It is the apple of knowledge and none of us dare eat it. For what strange things we would discover.

Despite the council tax issue promising to dominate debate here at Holyrood all winter, nothing much will happen soon

Alex Salmond outlined 15 new bills to parliament. But actually only one of them, the Budget Bill, is of immediate importance.

This is the £30bn spade with which farmer Salmond hopes to dig Scotland out of a threatening recession. "Sustainable" economic growth remains, after all, the Scottish Government's first priority.

The other bills include restrictions on cigarette sales and the purchase of alcohol, a reform of maritime law, a new sentencing council, a bill to protect rural schools and a bill to replace the council tax with a local income tax.

These sound more frightening than they really are.

Take the council tax bill, for instance. The SNP seems determined to press ahead with the idea of a centrally fixed 3p in the pound local income tax.

But the bill will not be published untill next year and even the first vote is unlikely before the next summer holidays.

It depends too on backing from the Liberal Democrats and on the UK Government agreeing to hand over the £400m it currently pays out in council tax benefit.

There was bitter debate over Wendy Alexander's donations

The Conservatives are also asking a pungent question - if there's to be £281m less raised by a local income tax, why not have a straightforward cut in the council tax?

So, despite the council tax issue promising to dominate debate here at Holyrood all winter, nothing much will happen soon.

Then there was the bitter and surreal debate about Wendy Alexander's campaign donations.

The lady has already resigned her leadership of the Scottish Labour Party over the issue. But now, after all that heartbreak, she's been cleared, by 70 votes to 49.

The standards committee, which found her guilty by 5 votes to 2, was left with egg, or worse, on its face.

"It's a victory for the law, natural justice and common sense," she told reporters as she faced the crackling electric fence of cameras in the Garden Lobby. And she smiled like a scarecrow.

How cruel is this animal farm.

Her three would-be successors saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil as they sat on the front bench together as Alex Salmond outlined his programme for government on Wednesday morning.

But they each did themselves a lot of good with speeches that pitch-forked the SNP agenda and pointed out the bits that were missing . . . action on class sizes, on training, on help for first time home buyers.

'So stupid'

At question time on Thursday, one of the contenders, Cathy Jamieson, put up a brave performance against the SNP's deputy farm manger, Nicola Sturgeon.

Mr Salmond was away at a friend's funeral. Labour's Rhona Brankin got a battering with a handy piece of fencing for pointing out that only 770 out of 3,426 probationary teachers had found permanent posts so far this year.

"I have rarely heard anything so stupid," said Ms Sturgeon. How else were schools to fill the 6,000 vacancies due this year from teachers retiring?

Last year, 93% of probationers had permanent jobs by the end of the year.

The new Liberal Democrat leader, Tavish Scott, made his first notch in the doorpost by asking why Enterprise Minister Jim Mather was not booked on an afternoon flight to Copenhagen to argue the case for the 100 workers in danger of losing their jobs at the Dutch owned wind mill factory in Campbeltown.

Scottish ministers are pressing ahead with scrapping council tax

He asked: "Why have ministers been travelled round Scotland promoting independence when they should have been travelling round Europe protecting jobs?"

Mr Scott was, of course, referring to the cabinet's procession round Scotland over the summer, from Dumfries to Skye, holding "National Conversation" events.

That is, when they weren't winning hearts and minds in the Glasgow East by-election and ploughing the fields and scattering seed corn in Glenrothes.

In this topsy turvy first week back at Holyrood, there's not been much time to think of plain issues like the care of vulnerable children and obesity, though these were on the debating agenda.

It's rather been a case of singing: "Old Macdonald had a farm" and welcoming everyone back for another season of "Eey-eey-eey-eey-oh."

But though we laugh - and sometimes you have to - a farm is ultimately a serious place and MSPs are settling in for some serious political spadework in the months ahead.