Get yer apologies in first... Sorry, but this is an angry rant!!

Not long after the murder of the asylum seeker in Sighthill in Glasgow, Jim Wallace, leader of Liberal Democrats in Scotland and John Swinney, Leader of the Scottish National Party, separately conducted fact-finding visits to Sighthill.

Jim Wallace - Visionless leader of visionless party?

Not discrete fact-finding missions, but ones carried out in the full glare of the cameras. Fact-finding missions or publicity stunts? One wonders whether they know the difference.

What made FirstFoot's blood boil was not the self-seeking nature of the visits, but the reaction of the individual politicians. Both Swinney and Wallace declared that they were "horrified" by the conditions that they found in Sighthill. Not just of the asylum seekers, but also of the local residents.

Well, throw me off the top of a high-rise flat. Obviously poverty, abysmal housing conditions, unemployment, poor health, social deprivation and crime are recent phenomenon.

John Swinney - What would an independent Scotland led by this man be like?

Otherwise, the politicians would have been throwing hundreds of millions of pounds in urban aid in attempts to address the problems. Wouldn't they?

Instead, as an obscene manifestation of their priorities, they intend spending hundreds of millions of pounds building some glorified fucking palace in Edinburgh where, carefully insulated and air-conditioned, they can discuss the really pressing problems of the day? Such as the following recently enacted legislation:

It takes your breath away. Imagine the courage and fortitude required to sit all day, on a paltry forty thousand pounds a year, and talk about shellfish.

The people of Sighthill must be proud of their Scottish Parliament.

But, Scotland needs and deserves better than self-serving, small-minded, visionless, out-of-touch fucking bureaucrats.

End of rant.