Former Conservative MSP for Highlands and Islands
4. To ask the Scottish Government whether it complies with its social justice policy objectives for self-funding older people in residential care to pay more than local authorities for the same care. (S4O-05699)
I thank David McLaren in the chamber desk team for randomly selecting me for this question, given that I have been complaining about not being selected for the past year.
How can it be socially just when councils pay about £470 a week for a placement in a care home but a self-funding placement costs well over £1,000? As this is my final question, I will just say that I have been asking this question since 1999. The Labour Party’s response used to refer to a 1951 act of Parliament that forbade it from applying charges equally. With the huge raft of powers...
I have an email from West Highland College, which says that it is unable to sign up to the current national bargaining initiative because it threatens the college’s financial viability and business continuity. I welcome the fact that some colleges have signed up but, where the disparity is the greatest—in other words, among the University of the Highlands and Islands colleges—will the...
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thought that I would keep the tears until the end. I thought that that was a shameful speech for Angus MacDonald, the son of a crofter from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, to make. He should be ashamed of himself. The crofters will certainly not be dancing in the streets of Stornoway tonight after hearing that. The Public Audit Committee has been looking at...
Revenge, indeed. Finally, I thank Ruth Davidson and my Conservative colleagues for their friendship and their support over the years. They are the best bunch of people I have ever worked with, and I will miss every one of them. Thank you.
I was the committee member who raised the concerns about telling our world-class universities that they had to advertise on the internet and that they had to tell people where to get an application form, so I thought that it was important and appropriate for me to welcome Gordon MacDonald’s and Liam McArthur’s amendments. The amendments will reduce the prescriptive content that I was...
It has been quite a long day. When the cabinet secretary mentioned Thomas Carlyle, I thought that I would look up one or two quotes on my iPad. He said: “the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.” I liked that one. I also liked the quote where he said: “All great peoples are conservative.” So there we are.
