A Week in Parliament

Lords Appointees

One of the Tory mantras false assertions for Brexit is to get away from unelected bureaucrats. Yet they have no problem with another 36 appointments unelected bureaucrats to the House of Lords. Stand out nominations is Boris Johnson’s brother and six other former Tory MPs who never have to worry about elections again. There is Ruth Davidson, former leader of the Scottish Tories. Someone standing down as an MSP to spend more time with her family. So either she doesn’t plan to spend more time with her family and is content to travel up and down to London, or she will be a typical part-time Lord. There are honours given to other Tory activists – what qualifies them to be part of the law-making process? In the same vein, why does Theresa May’s husband qualify to be a member of the House of Lords? Nigel Dodds of the DUP was rejected by the voters in his constituency and has been elevated to the Lords. Ian Botham?! Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn’s principled stance on the Lords continues as he complains about people he nominated getting rejected. Still, five former Labour MPs have also been elected to the Lords. It really is a corrupt system of cronyism and an affront to democracy.

Cruachan Hydro Dam

As part of my Energy and Climate Change Spokesperson role, I travelled to Cruachan Dam near Oban to see and discuss how pumped hydro storage works for electricity generation. It was a fascinating visit. Firstly viewing the dam up Ben Cruachan was stunning but also seeing the engineering that went into carving out the mountain to house the turbines/generators that are powered by the water cascading 400m down the mountain from the reservoir. The reservoir is refilled by water being pumped back up the hill – this is done when there is spare electricity in the national grid that otherwise would go to waste. So it is a really efficient way of creating electricity. Drax, who own the site, have plans to expand the site and create a second-generation station. As we target climate change this should be a “no brainer” for the UK Government to agree to. However, as the Tory Government is still obsessed with nuclear energy then this will require a lot of work to get them to agree to a sensible renewable energy project.

Scottish Tory Leadership

Jackson Carlaw has been pushed out the door of the Scottish Tory Leadership in a clearly orchestrated move to lever in Douglas Ross. There is no doubt that the Tories are rattled by the high levels of support for independence. Don’t forget the UK Government uses our taxpayers' money to carry out private polling so they must be seeing this in their private polling. Ross is a good performer in the chamber – talks well without notes and is very combative. I have noticed though he doesn’t let facts get in the way of what is saying but delivers so confidently it all sounds true. Tailor-made for leader then!