Dear All
I ate a couple of sandwiches in front of Alex Salmond once and washed it down with a can of coke.
The sandwiches were free and I brought my own coke, it was part of a six pack therefore cost effective.
We sat as a future Prime Minister of Scotland laid out his vision, we looked at each other, I kept munching my sandwich as we both settle in to listen to the future PM.
At the time the Labour Party didn’t see fit to broadcast it to the nation, presumably because the sandwiches were ham and tomato.
But now the Labour Party has got its knickers in a twist because Alex Salmond offered himself as prize in an auction to raise funds for a seat contested in the Westminister election.
He went for £9,000, so the winner gets a meal for four, hosted by Alex Salmond in Scottish Parliament restaurant.
The restaurant is famous because Frank McAveety missed a vote there because he was tucking into his lunch; democracy had to play second fiddle to a pie.
A similar lunch with Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon raised £2,000, so she will need to practice her stand up comedy skills if she wants to command a higher price on the auction circuit.
Labour MP Des Browne on behalf of the Labour Party described it as "cash for access" and said it demeaned the office of the first minister.
You don’t need to pay cash for access to Alex Salmond, he talks to anyone and his part in the auction was as Leader of the SNP.
All political parties use lunches with politicians as a way of fundraising right across the board.
A spokeswoman for the SNP said;
"Lunch with parliamentarians has been a fundraising opportunity across the parties for many years, and is not contrary to any current parliamentary rules”.
So, given no rules are being broken, it seems to be nothing more than sour grapes on the part of opposition parties to imply wrongdoing, when none exists.
Pie, beans and chips anyone?
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
I ate a couple of sandwiches in front of Alex Salmond once and washed it down with a can of coke.
The sandwiches were free and I brought my own coke, it was part of a six pack therefore cost effective.
We sat as a future Prime Minister of Scotland laid out his vision, we looked at each other, I kept munching my sandwich as we both settle in to listen to the future PM.
At the time the Labour Party didn’t see fit to broadcast it to the nation, presumably because the sandwiches were ham and tomato.
But now the Labour Party has got its knickers in a twist because Alex Salmond offered himself as prize in an auction to raise funds for a seat contested in the Westminister election.
He went for £9,000, so the winner gets a meal for four, hosted by Alex Salmond in Scottish Parliament restaurant.
The restaurant is famous because Frank McAveety missed a vote there because he was tucking into his lunch; democracy had to play second fiddle to a pie.
A similar lunch with Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon raised £2,000, so she will need to practice her stand up comedy skills if she wants to command a higher price on the auction circuit.
Labour MP Des Browne on behalf of the Labour Party described it as "cash for access" and said it demeaned the office of the first minister.
You don’t need to pay cash for access to Alex Salmond, he talks to anyone and his part in the auction was as Leader of the SNP.
All political parties use lunches with politicians as a way of fundraising right across the board.
A spokeswoman for the SNP said;
"Lunch with parliamentarians has been a fundraising opportunity across the parties for many years, and is not contrary to any current parliamentary rules”.
So, given no rules are being broken, it seems to be nothing more than sour grapes on the part of opposition parties to imply wrongdoing, when none exists.
Pie, beans and chips anyone?
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
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