Change of Heart.

"An MSP who quit as a councillor to take up his Holyrood seat accepted a bumper payoff - despite telling voters he would not take it. Nationalist Keith Brown said during last year's election campaign that he would refuse the golden goodbye he was entitled to for quitting Clackmannanshire Council."

He said he wouldn't claim the cash and then he did. And now he plans to distribute the cash to organisations within constituency which raises questions about trying to win votes by handing out the cash, paid for by the taxpayer. Highly questionable.

Democracy on the cheap.

So, "THE COST of last year's Scottish election fiasco soared by £9 million more than the previous election to £25m, figures released today reveal. This has led Scottish Nationalist MSP Keith Brown to call on the company which supplied the electronic counting machines to offer a rebate."

Mr Smith would point out to our elected representatives that the major reasons why the costs of the elections rose so significantly was because our politicians in their infinite wisdom decided to change the electoral systems for local government to a system of proportional representation, as well as holding the elections for the Scottish Parliament and local government on the same day.

The fundamental reasons why costs rose so much was because politicians made bad decisions about the running of the elections. To try and pass the buck onto the makers of some counting machines that turned out not to work very well really is a bit rich.